22. 1960
It was a truth universally acknowledged that when two young star-crossed lovers shared a bed and a single copy of Tropic of Cancer, their story would end in ruin.
“Jasper, would you please stop pacing back and forth and sit down?” Catherine sat perfectly composed at the small table and chairs sitting outside the secret cabin, her hands wrapped around a chipped mug of chicory coffee. She had yet to take a sip, but the warmth of the beverage seemed to be giving her strength. “You’re making me dizzy.”
“I knew this was a bad idea,” Jasper muttered without slackening his pace. He felt pretty sure he’d never be able to smell chicory again without feeling this same sensation: utter, blinding terror followed immediately by a happiness that was so overwhelming it threatened to topple him where he stood. “I never should’ve let you seduce me.”
Catherine’s rich, delicious peal of laughter did much to calm the frenzy of his stride.
“Bless you, Jasper Holmes, for making me the villain of this piece. It’s a role I’ve always had a desire to play.” She patted the seat opposite her. “Sit. I mean it.”
He sat, but only because he was pretty sure the first rule of ruining a woman was letting her decide when and how to proceed with the fallout.
“How far along are you?” he asked, his voice hoarse. He took the mug from her and kicked back the coffee, wincing at the earthy burn of it. “Or—wait. Do you even know? Have you been to a doctor?” He groaned. “Oh God. Have you told your parents?”
Her hands slid over the top of his, her grip strong despite her smaller size.
“No, I haven’t seen a doctor yet, but based on my math, I’m guessing I’m about three months along.”
He nodded, even though he had little idea what three months of pregnancy signified. That she probably wasn’t mistaken about her condition, certainly, but what else? That he’d be a father in six short months? That he was about to be responsible for the care and upkeep of two more people?
His mouth went dry at the thought. There was enough savings inside his mattress to carry them for a little while, but he’d have to start looking into other revenue streams. A night job at the supermarket, maybe, or a logging contract in Canada where there were fewer safety protocols but—
“Stop it,” she said.
He blinked. “Stop what?”
“Making plans and machinations for our future together. I swear on everything you love, if you propose to me right now, I’ll never forgive you.”
He tried taking his hands back, but she proved herself to be the stronger of them in this as well as everything else. Her eyes crinkled with a smile that made his heart ache.
“You forget that I already proposed to you once, and you turned me down,” she said. “You obviously only want me for my body, so there’s no going back now.”
It took Jasper a moment to realize what she was talking about. And when he did, his heart started hammering uselessly in his chest. If only he’d known. If only he’d had the strength to walk away then.
“Wait,” he croaked. “You mean in the margins of The Haunting of Hill House? That doesn’t count. You were only trying to get a reaction out of me.”
“I’d end up with six or seven kids, I believe you said.” She heaved a playful sigh. “It’s more than I’d like, but if it’s what you have your heart set on…”
“Catherine,” he pleaded. “This is serious. Please be serious.”
“I am being serious,” she said, suddenly so quiet that he had no choice but to believe her. She lifted her hands and settled them in her lap. Jasper felt their absence even more than he’d felt their reassuring weight. “I know this feels sudden to you, but it’s not to me. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I don’t see any reason why you should have to ruin your life over this.”
“It won’t ruin my life—” he began, but it was no use. With Catherine, it was never any use. She’d get her way, and all he could do was watch as the entire train of their future together derailed before him.
“Maybe not,” she agreed, “but it would ruin your mother’s life—and the lives of all five of your brothers and sisters.”
“It’s not a problem. Tina is likely to get married in a few years anyway, and—”
“And that’s going to free up enough of your time and resources to support a family of your own?” Since the question was a rhetorical one, she didn’t bother waiting for an answer. “You said it yourself, Jasper. There’s no romance in poverty.”
“There could be. We could make there be.”
She shook her head then, her gaze fixed on her lap in a way that made Jasper’s blood run cold. “I’ve already made up my mind. Asking you to support both me and a baby is out of the question.”
Something frantic clawed at Jasper’s throat, but he fought the beast back. For as long as he could remember, money had been a barrier between him and the rest of the world. He knew it didn’t buy happiness, and that families had been surviving for generations on whatever they could scrape together, but he also knew that Catherine had never known that kind of struggle.
She’d never heard a child’s hungry cries being muffled into a pillow. She’d never felt that gnawing ache that was so much more than the biological need for sustenance. Tropic of Cancer did a decent job of portraying what poverty was really like, but even that was hidden behind layers of self-indulgent introspection and an alarming lack of personal consequences.
Catherine had never known that kind of deprivation—and if Jasper had his way, she never would. Even if it killed him, even if it broke him in Hemingway’s proverbial thousand different places, he would give her that much.
“Okay,” he said, his throat tight. “Whatever you want from me—whatever you need. I have some money saved up if you want to…explore your options, and I won’t stand in the way of what you decide.”
She eyed him with an intensity that made him feel as though she was peeling away his skin to reveal his inner workings.
“You mean that, don’t you?” she asked. “You’d really give me everything you have—even if it means spreading yourself so thin that you disappear in the process.”
“Of course I would,” he said. He’d never been anything but honest with Catherine before, and he didn’t see any reason to stop now. “I love you, C. The only thing that matters to me is making you happy.”
She drew in a deep breath. That breath, more than anything else, made him feel as though the world was slipping out from underneath him—and that he’d never again stand on solid ground.
“Then you won’t be upset when I tell you that I’ve decided to accept an offer of marriage from William McBride. I told him about the pregnancy, and he’s willing to claim the child as his own in exchange for certain…gifts from my father.”
“No.” Jasper felt all the blood drain from his body. It started with his head and rushed down in a cascade of emotions, all of which left him feeling cold and empty.
“It’s the only way out of this situation, and you know it.” She pushed back from the table and stood towering over him. If he looked closely, he could detect the signs that had evaded him before—a slight thickening of her waist, a fullness in her cheeks that hadn’t been there before. But most of all, it was the healthy, blooming glow of her that confirmed his worst fears: that she was pregnant, yes, but also that she was happy.
“I want you to know that these past few months have been the greatest ones of my life,” she said in a voice that didn’t waver even once. She extended her hand, but Jasper didn’t reach for it. He couldn’t. Moving was out of the question, touching her even more so.
“Naturally, William has asked that you and I stop seeing each other. Considering his position and what he’s doing for me, I think he may be right.” She paused and frowned, her hand still outstretched. “Please shake my hand. I need you to be okay with this. I need you to move on.”
“Move on?” he echoed blankly. “Move on to what?”
He was on his feet then, standing over her but somehow still so small.
“There isn’t anything else for me, Catherine,” he said as he raked his hands through his hair, desperate to hold on to something but knowing, despite her proffered hand, that she was no longer an option. “You’re it. You’re everything. If you leave—”
“Jasper, I was always going to leave,” she interrupted, her voice slicing right through him. “You know that as well as I do. The only difference now is that I get to take a part of you with me when I go.”
He felt the whole of the world leaking out from the wound her words left behind. Not because what she was saying was wrong, but because she was right. He’d always known that he couldn’t keep Catherine, that she was only on loan to him for however long fate decided to smile on him, but he’d always assumed she’d be moving on to the life she wanted—the big city lights and exciting adventures, the world just waiting for her to take a crack at it.
Not the same drudgery her mother had settled for. Not William fucking McBride.
“Say something,” she pleaded. “I can’t leave until I know you’re going to be okay.”
He wanted to give her what she was asking for—he really did. He knew that the best thing he could do for her was to let her go, to allow her to move on to the next chapter of her life with an easy conscience, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t going to be okay, and no amount of lying to her—or to himself—would change that.
“Do you remember when you asked me what my favorite book was?” he said. He didn’t wait for her answer. “I wouldn’t tell you because I knew you’d laugh at me. You’d want to write notes in the margins.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” she asked, her brows drawing together.
It was the worst possible thing. She was already so much a part of that story that he’d never be able to look at it the same way again.
“‘Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad,’” he quoted, his throat raw. “‘Only do not leave me in this abyss where I can not find you.’”
Her eyes narrowed with recognition of the line, pulled straight from the pages of Wuthering Heights. Instead of mocking him for his choice—one of the English language’s most disastrously romantic works, a book about lovers who destroy each other from the moment of their first meeting—she lowered her hand and took a step back, a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth.
In the long silence that ensued, the rest of the quote stood pulsing between them, so much a presence that neither one of them needed to hear them spoken aloud.
Oh God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!
She was the first to break that silence. “That’s not fair, Jasper.”
He knew it wasn’t. None of this was.
“I’m doing this for you—for your whole family,” she insisted “You have to understand. If I stayed—if I asked you to—”
She cut herself off and turned away, but not before he saw the angry way she dashed her hand at her eyes. “God, what a fool I am. I should’ve known you’d turn this into some romantic melodrama instead of seeing it for what it really is.”
Her words hurt him, but not nearly as much as the way she held herself, as if poised for flight. It almost felt like she was afraid he’d try to physically restrain her—or, worse, let her go without any kind of fight at all.
“And what is it?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “In your wise, all-seeing, unromantic view of the world, what’s happening here?”
It took her a full minute to answer. Jasper knew there were a dozen different ways he could have filled those sixty seconds. With weeping, perhaps, or a Heathcliff-like fury that lashed them both with its sting. By getting on his knees and being every inch the dramatic, lovesick sap she was accusing him of being.
But he didn’t. He stood in stony silence and waited for her to say the words out loud.
“It’s real life, Jasper. That’s all. Not some dark horror story I get to read as a way to avoid my humdrum existence, and not some sweet tale of redemption you can pretend waits for you in the future. It’s just two people who made a mess and now have to deal with the consequences.”
It was the cruelest thing she could have said to him, and she knew it.
So he said the cruelest thing he could think of back.
“He’ll make you miserable,” he warned, his voice surprisingly calm considering the way his whole soul was tearing apart inside. “He’ll make you miserable every day of your life until one day he doesn’t. Then and only then will you realize what you’ve done.”