“You do,” I cut in. “You absolutely have a say.”
“Nobody truly has a say in someone else’s emotions. Well, except an Emotional . . . But you know what I mean.” His smile is faint. “What I’m trying to say is that, while it was Kellan’s choice to exile himself from you, I actively encouraged it.”
You’d think this would upset me, but it doesn’t, because I know Jonah is not capable of being malicious towards either me or his brother.
“And,” he continues, “I’ve always known what this has done to him. But he’s done it, because he’s altruistic and because he loves me, and I’ve let him because I’m a selfish bastard.”
“No.” I reach over to touch his face, but he gently grabs my hand before I can make contact.
“Yes. I am. But I had an epiphany recently, and even if it kills me to do so, I’m going to back off and let things fall where they may.”
I don’t understand. . .?
“What I mean,” he says, sighing as he places my hand down next to me, “is that I will no longer encourage my brother to stay away from you.” Just as my panic hits the top and spills over the Chloe Terror Meter, he adds, “That’s not to say that I’m encouraging you two to go off and get married or even . . . do anything like you did in that cave . . . but, there has to be some kind of halfway point we can all meet at. Because I miss him and hate knowing that I’m destroying him like I’ve been doing—”
“You would never do that—” I start, but he waves me off.
“Yes, I did. I’ve fully known every last misery he’s been going through. People with Connections are not meant to deny themselves of their significant others.”
“He’s not my—”
“You know what I mean. The fact that he’s been able to go this long is, frankly, astounding, and a testament to how much he loves us both. But having no contact with one another hasn’t done either of you any good. So what I’m suggesting, I guess, is that maybe you two can be . . . friends?”
I dumbly repeat back, “Friends?”
“Yes,” he says quietly. “Friends. Not friends with benefits, you know, because I have my limits, but . . . friends . . . who are there for one another. Who are actively involved in each other’s lives.” He studies me intently. “What do you think? Is this maybe an acceptable alternative?”
I search his face. As much as I love him, and as well as I know him, sometimes his face is so guarded that it’s difficult to tell if he’s serious. “Is this what you want?”
“What I want is for you to only have a Connection to me. But since I can’t have that, I suppose this is something I can live with.”
I am so selfish, so incredibly selfish, because I tell him after a long moment, “As long as you’re okay with it, then yes.”
There’s a knock on the door and Jonah rolls off the bed. My Jell-o has arrived, three cups of it. When the orderly leaves, Jonah flips over the table leaf that goes over the bed and peels off the lids. In a very neutral, carefully controlled voice, he says, “There are some things you ought to know about Kellan nowadays.”
A cup is handed over, along with a spoon. Thanks to the sickening mixture of guilt and unease at the pit of my stomach, I don’t know if I can even get this Jell-o down, which is absurd since I fantasized about food for nearly a week. But I take a bite anyway, mostly because it appears Jonah’s going to make sure I get something in me, even if it’s cherry flavored gelatin. “Um, okay?”
He scratches the side of his neck. “Obviously, you’ve heard the gossip on my brother.”
Another spoonful gets shoved into my mouth. I swallow slowly, debating how to answer that. Yes means I’ve been seeking out gossip on Kellan and thereby, cheating on—no, not cheating, but thinking? About another guy, other than my fiancé? And no would be an obvious lie, because, well . . . why wouldn’t I be seeking out gossip on my other Connection? So, I end up with a carefully selected, “Uh . . .”
“He’s popular,” Jonah continues clinically. “And very social.”
Caleb murmurs, Is that how they’re phrasing it nowadays?
I choke on my bite of Jell-o.
Jonah keeps on going. “He dates. A lot. You should know that, Chloe. The gossip on him isn’t wrong about that.”
More choking. How is it possible to choke on Jell-o? Jonah ends up having to smack me on the back a few times before I manage another classy, “Uh . . .?”
“And he’s reckless. He and his friends,”—this is said most derisively, like Jonah couldn’t imagine anyone worthy of the title—“do incredibly stupid things, like skydiving while seeing who call pull the cord at the very last moment without breaking every bone in their body. Which they come perilously close to doing, far too often. I’ve been in this hospital with him and his broken bones more than you can imagine. I’m sorry for not letting you know beforehand, but he made it clear it wasn’t any of your business.”