I am the worlds’ first person to exist without a beating heart.
He finally looks at me. There is so much hurt in his face that I wonder if coming home was a mistake. He’s in anguish, and it’s because of me. “I know a lot of things. For example, I know you hid your emotions from me for months behind some kind of shield that some hider—Kopano, most likely—taught you how to construct. I never said anything to you about it, because I figured you needed it and would tell me about it when you felt it was time. My father used to use one against us when we used to live together, so I know what one feels and acts like. I knew it had to be difficult to live with an Emotional, and I regretted being so in tune with your feelings all the time, but I also knew there was no way I could ever turn that part of me off—at least, not when it came to you. I knew about the deaths you’re talking about, but I didn’t know you knew. They were accidental, by the way. Not that that diminishes how you feel, but selfishly, I hoped you’d never know, because I worried it’d gut you. I knew you’d be angry with me if you found out I knew and never told, because you hated being kept in the dark—even though I watched you increasingly keep everyone in your life in the dark, too. Ironic, isn’t it, that you hated all the secrets your parents kept over the years and accused me of holding things back and you did just the same.” He blows out another hard breath. Runs his hands through his hair, yanking the strands. His point, valid as all hell, is painful. “I know you and Kellan . . . that something happened in Costa Rica. And on that damn yacht he took you out on in Kauai. I knew you were falling apart. I knew that every single one of us was self-destructing—you with your ulcer and depression, him with his efforts to reassign his pain, me—” He looks down at his hands. “The thing is, I knew all of this, but I didn’t know how to fix any of it.”
I have to search for my voice. Jesus. I’d been so very blind. “How were you self-destructing, Jonah?”
He stares out of the window on the far side of the room, silent for a good twenty seconds that leaves me even more anxious than before. And then—“Did you know that sometimes my brother and I release memories to one another without even realizing it?” When his focus returns to me, it’s accompanied with a bittersweet smile. “It happens when we’re dreaming. I don’t know why, or how, but sometimes he sees my memories and I see his. For Kellan last year, the more he held in what had happened between the two of you, the more it ripped his soul apart and the more frequently I saw it all.”
Oh, gods. I’m back to ugly crying. “You . . . you saw what happened?”
He nods, his barely-there smile so incredibly sad and rueful.
I have to close my eyes. I have to focus on breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Because he knew, he saw, and suddenly, it all makes sense. He stopped talking to me toward the end because . . . he knew. I’d hurt this man, the one I love more than anything in all the worlds, and all I could focus on then was my own pain. And then I left him without a single word, which had probably been an entire ocean’s worth of salt on the wound I caused. It would’ve been absolutely understandable if he believed I’d never truly loved him at all, Connection or not. Or that I didn’t love him enough, which is even worse.
“I know it probably means nothing to you now, but I am so sorry,” I choke out.
He’s silent again, simply watching me with that awful agony in his eyes.
I love him so much that it’s ridiculous, but my love is not the kind he deserves. At least, it wasn’t then. Maybe one day it will be, though. If I’m lucky enough.
“Jonah—”
“When I found out we had a Connection, I was . . .” He leans forward, his elbows against his knees. “Relieved, I think. Because I knew it would be forever. What I felt for you—what I wanted, what I hoped for—forever seemed like a blessing. But in reality, forever is a really long time when your heart wholly belongs to a person who doesn’t reciprocate in kind.”
My cheeks are soaked.