“Other than having the week from hell, I’m fine.”
I glance towards Kellan’s door and try to block out the memory of us kissing in the cave. “I’m sorry you had to go through all of this.”
“It’s not like you purposely went out and tried to get yourself killed.”
“You know what I mean.”
He sighs, rolling onto his side. I do the same, so we’re facing one another. “I love you more than life itself. You know that, right? You are everything to me.”
As always when he says things like this, my entire being fills will contentment and bliss. “I feel the same way about you.”
He’s staring directly into my eyes, so deep down I swear he can see my soul. “But you don’t, not really.”
Whaaaat? “How can you ever say that?” I gasp, and when I’m about to jerk up, he reaches out to hold me down.
“That came out wrong. You love me, yes, I absolutely believe that. But whereas I have one Connection, to you . . . you have two.”
“You have two as well,” I shoot back, suddenly so alarmed that I can’t even think straight.
“It’s not the same,” he says, shaking his head softly against the pillow, all black-blue, beautiful hair against white. “And you know it.”
“Is this . . . is this because of what happened in the cave?” Hysteria pounds furiously against my walls, screaming to be released. Even Caleb, suddenly aware in the back of my mind, is stunned into silence.
Jonah closes his eyes and rolls back onto his back. “Maybe. I don’t know.” He covers his eyes with a hand. “I just . . . fuck. This is all so much to take in right now.”
He’s cussing. It’s a bad sign; Jonah hardly ever cusses around me. “You . . . you said we shouldn’t talk about this!” I’m babbling, sitting up and grappling at his free hand. “And you know that I love you, that you’re the one—”
“I know you love me, Chloe.” He’s tired; Caleb reminds me just how much stress he’s been under this last week: fighting the Elders, being trapped, himself, in a dungeon, escaping and then fighting another group of Elders, all the while dealing with his fiancée and twin brother being trapped and dying slowly in some remote, random cave. And then, to top it off, find out said fiancée and twin brother kissed while he was doing everything in his power to save them.
A lesser person might have broken under such circumstances.
I take a few deep breaths, frantically trying to think of what I can say that will even be appropriate at a moment like this. Like the sad, pathetic drama queen I am, I start out with, “I am so, so sorry, Jonah . . . please, if you let me, I’ll try to explain . . .”
He’s still not looking at me. “You don’t have to explain. Logically, I absolutely understand why things went down like they did. You and he share a Connection.”
I muster up the horrible audacity to ask, “What all do you know?”
“Enough.”
When I saw Jonah kiss Callie a year before, it shattered me and nearly destroyed everything we have together. And when Jonah found out I’d kissed his brother shortly afterwards, it’d been just as devastating for him. What if he’d seen it? Through Kellan’s eyes? Worse yet, felt it?
I cry, and even though there’s no doubt he can feel the agony and misery in me, I still try to muffle the sounds. Fat, hot tears well down my face in soundless paths.
“I’m trying,” I whisper when the silence in the room becomes unbearable.
He knows what I mean. “Where has that trying gotten you, Chloe? I’ve known these eight months what his absence does to you. I can feel it in you. Trying means nothing, not when you’re Connected to someone. You might as well try to cut off your arms. You could get one off, but you’d never be able to take the other one off by yourself. It’s impossible. He can try to force as much distance between you, but it’ll never work.” Jonah lowers his hand and stares up at the ceiling. “The two times distance has been forced between you and me—when the doorway was lost and then last year, with Callie—it never helped me. It made things worse.”
“Sometimes it helps.” A tear rolls across my nose; it tickles but I’m afraid to even move in this moment. “The distance, I mean. When you’re with me, I don’t feel his loss.”
“I know,” he says.
“I didn’t choose this. I mean, I chose you. I didn’t choose to have another Connection with another person, let alone your brother.”
“I know, honey,” he says, and part of me softens in relief with the endearment. “But, you need him. I know that now.”
If someone could shatter in fear, it’d be me. Eight months without Kellan is one thing. But I cannot fathom life without Jonah. I wouldn’t want to. “What are you saying?”
He finally rolls back over so we can look at one another. “I am willing to . . . concede, no—not concede, because that would indicate I actually have some say in this—”