I shook all over; the room blurred beneath tears I couldn’t stop.
Jace sighed and uncrossed his arms. “Faythe.” I looked up to find him staring down at me, his blue eyes dark like the sky before a storm. “He’s gone.”
“No…” I fell onto my knees, clutching at my stomach, trying to fight the hollow feeling growing inside me. “He can’t be. He promised…” I sniffled, and pain flared to life in my still-kind-of-broken nose.
Jace sank to the floor in front of me, his back against the door. He pulled me into his lap and I wrapped myself around him, my chin on his shoulder, his pale stubble rough against my wet cheek. I put one palm against the cold metal door, willing it to open. Willing Marc to be standing there.
But Jace was right. He was gone, and the closed door wasn’t going to deliver my miracle.
“What am I going to do without him?” I whispered, as Jace’s hand smoothed my hair down my back and slow tears trailed toward my chin.
He inhaled, and his chest expanded beneath mine, solid and warm. “You’re going to cry, then you’re going to pick yourself up and keep going, because there are a lot of other people depending on you now, with or without Marc.”
Even beneath the weight of this new catastrophe, I knew Jace was right. I held him tighter. “But I get to cry first?”
In reply, he guided my head onto his shoulder and stroked my hair again as I sobbed.
Later, when my tears were spent and his legs were probably half-dead from lack of circulation, I sat up and leaned my forehead against his. “Thank you.”He rubbed my back with both hands. “Anytime.”
“I’m sorry I hit you.”
Jace frowned. “Me, too. Did it bruise?”
“Yeah. Does it hurt?”
“Hell, yeah, but probably less than your nose.” He set me on the floor so he could stretch his legs. “You want something to eat?”
“No.” Maybe never again. “I just want to sleep.” Forever and ever.
“No problem,” Jace said, but his familiar grin was noticeably missing. This wasn’t how he wanted to win. I knew that. But I didn’t have anything else in me at the moment.
I cleaned up in the bathroom and changed into the tee and boyshorts I’d brought to sleep in, and when I came out, Jace sat in a chair at the table, fully dressed. Both of the beds had been turned down. His bag lay on the floor beside the one nearest the door, and he’d put my duffel in the middle of the rug between the beds. “Take your pick,” he said, and I wanted to cry all over again. Though I’d never thought it possible, I was tired of making choices.
When I just stared at both beds, he went into the bathroom and closed the door.
I turned out the light and climbed into the bed farthest from the door, turning to put the bathroom at my back. When Jace came out, he stood silent for a minute, and my heart ached for us both. I knew what he was doing. He was watching me not-sleep in the bed Marc had left cold and empty, instead of the one he’d be warming.
My eyes watered again, and I hated myself. I’d lost Marc, and it hurt so much. But turning away from Jace out of guilt wouldn’t make any of us feel any better. Yet I couldn’t make myself say his name.
Finally he sighed, and his footsteps headed for the other bed. Cloth rustled behind me as Jace got undressed. A moment later, the bedsprings creaked and the lamp clicked off.
I closed my eyes, and the tears ran over.
We lay there in the dark, but for the glow from the alarm clock, together, yet alone. Suffering similar brands of misery. I could hear him breathe. I heard his mattress creak every time he moved, and I knew he was listening to me not-sleep, too. But I couldn’t get his words out of my head.
Could he be right? Was Marc gone for good? It hardly seemed possible. I could still smell his scent on the duffel he’d left behind. Had he left it on purpose, because he was coming back? Or had he abandoned it, like he’d abandoned us? When I closed my eyes, I saw his face, so hurt, so angry. Would it be any easier to live without him, knowing he was still out there somewhere? Or was he as lost to me as my father was to my mother?
Would I lose Jace, too, if I shut him out? If I didn’t give him what was left of my heart, now that no one else wanted it? Would I be betraying Marc again by taking the only option left to me? Or would I be saving us all from further misery by finally making my decision—even if I no longer had much of a choice?
Marc had made his decision. He’d left me with Jace. And I felt wretchedly cold and empty, lying in bed alone, when someone I loved—someone who loved me—was doing the same thing six feet away.
I rolled over and Jace blinked at me from his bed, lying on top of the covers like he was impervious to the cold. He wore black boxer briefs and a frown. I swallowed, then took a deep breath. “You said I wouldn’t have to sleep alone—that you wouldn’t ask for anything. Did you mean it?”
Something passed over his face. Something like relief, only deeper. Something that hurt but felt good at the same time. “Yeah. I’m good for whatever you need me for, Faythe. Just don’t push me away.”
“I need company.” Warmth. Consolation by touch—the human-form version of werecats sleeping in big piles for comfort.
He blinked again, and I barely saw him move. A second later, the mattress sank and Jace was warm beside me. The red glow from the alarm clock showed me half of his face and one deep blue eye. I kissed him, then turned over and snuggled into his chest. He draped one arm over my waist, his hand splayed across my stomach. His next breath was deep, and slow, and shaky, but true to his word, he just held me.
I stared into the near dark and tried not to think about the war, and the men that we’d lose. Marc, whom I’d already lost. Jace, whom I wanted so desperately to keep, but couldn’t let touch me.
I’d lost Marc because I loved Jace, but I couldn’t truly be with Jace, because I loved Marc. And it all hurt so deeply I could hardly breathe.
“Are you okay?” Jace asked, and his arm tightened around me, pulling me closer. His bare chest was warm against my back, even through my shirt. His foot slid between my ankles, an oddly intimate contact that somehow demanded nothing.
“He promised he’d stay,” I whispered, hating myself for letting Marc go, and for not being able to let go of him. “He promised my dying father that he’d stay and help me. He didn’t just leave me, Jace. He left us all.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jace said, and I believed him. He knew what the loss meant to the Pride, as well as to me personally.
“I don’t understand. He loves the Pride more than anything in the world. More than he loves me. I wanted to skip out on our wedding and elope, but he wouldn’t go, so I went without him. He chose you guys over me when I was eighteen. How could he leave us all now?”
Jace had no answer. At least, none he wanted to say out loud. But we both knew I’d broken Marc’s heart.
Jace sighed and brushed my hair over my neck. “He’s gone, and I can’t replace him, Faythe. But I love you as much as he does. And I’m still here. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
I closed my eyes, and more tears fell on the pillow. I rolled over and kissed him, and when I finally pulled away, I met his tortured gaze so he could see the truth in mine. “It means everything.”
That night, I fell asleep breathing Jace, still tasting him from our last kiss.
But I dreamed about Marc.
Thirty-one
We got up early to make our flight and arrived at the gate with half an hour to spare. Marc wasn’t there, and it took every bit of self-control I had to keep from looking devastated by his absence. He still had his ticket—it wasn’t in the duffel he’d left behind, which I’d checked as my luggage—and we were headed back to his house. Where else would he go?
What kind of massive bitch must I have been to run a man out of his own life?“He’ll be fine,” Jace whispered, pulling me close to drop a kiss on my temple. “He always is.”
“I know.”
While Jace took one last trip to the restroom, I called Michael. I’d already given him the thunderbird update, so when he answered, my unprecedented lack of an opening line was a dead giveaway that something was wrong.
“Faythe?”
“Yeah.” I fidgeted in the plastic airport chair, but couldn’t get comfortable.
“What’s wrong? Did the thunderbirds back out?”
Yeah, right. “Um, I think they’d move forward even if we backed out.”
“Then what is it?” In the background, I heard pots clanging, though it was only five-thirty in the morning, their time. Obviously I wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping.
“Have you…?” I leaned back in my chair and covered my eyes with one hand, as if that would shield me from the questions he would surely follow mine with. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Marc, have you?”
“Not since you left.” Michael hesitated, and I heard footsteps. Then a door closed, and the background noise disappeared. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. Bless my oldest brother and his flawless sense of propriety…. “Why? What happened?”
“He left. I lost him.” And the admission hurt just as much aloud as it did rattling around in my hollow chest.
“Because of Jace?”
“Because I couldn’t choose.”