Part 35 (1/2)

We were quiet for a moment. I studied his face-the bend of his cheekbones, the curve of his lips. Softly, I touched the post in his eyebrow.

His eyes crinkled in response.

”When did you get it?” I asked.

”A month after you left,” he said, ”my mom told me to forget you. That you were gone, and you were never coming back, and that I was better off without you.” His lip quirked up in a half smile. ”I knew she would hate it.”

I smiled, then leaned in and kissed his eyebrow.

His eyes flicked to my arm. The mark crept along, unstoppable, and as I watched it, the weight of all the things I couldn't change came cras.h.i.+ng down on me. This was the last night. Our last night. The last time I would feel his calloused hands on my skin. I looked at his beautiful face, and I couldn't bear it.

Every breath I took meant another grain of sand in my hourgla.s.s disappeared, and I only had a few left. I tried not breathing. I was losing it, and I turned away.

Jack put his arm around my waist and pulled me tight against him, so my back was cradled against his chest. He knew exactly what I was feeling. He breathed slowly, deliberately near my ear, willing my own breathing to mirror his.

”Do you want to know the first time I ever saw you?” he said with his lips at my ear.

I knew the story, but I nodded anyway, frantically.

”Your family had just moved in. You were ... how old were you, Becks?”

I shrugged, and he ran his fingers over my head, calming me. He knew the answer.

”You were eleven,” he said. ”I was twelve. I remember Joey Velasquez talking about the pretty new girl in the neighborhood. Actually his exact words were 'the hot chick.' But I didn't think a thing about it until I saw you at the baseball field. We were having practice at the park and your family showed up for a picnic. You had so much dark hair, and it was hiding your face. Remember?”

I nodded. ”I know what you're trying to do.”

He ignored me. ”I had to see if Joey was right, about the hot chick part, and I kept trying to get a good look at your face, but you never looked over our way. I hit home run after home run trying to get your attention, but you couldn't be bothered with my record-shattering, superhuman performance.”

I smiled, and breathed in slowly. I'd heard this story so many times before. The familiarity of it enveloped me with warmth. ”So what did you do?” I asked, fully aware of the answer.

”I did the only thing I could think of. I went up to bat, lined my feet up in the direction of your head, and swung away.”

”Hitting the foulest foul ball anyone had ever seen,” I continued the story.

I felt him chuckle next to me. ”Yep. I figured in order to return the ball, you'd have to get really close to me, because...” He waited for me to fill in the blank.

”Because someone made the mistake of a.s.suming I would throw like a girl,” I said softly.

He pressed his lips against my head before he went on. ”Which, of course, was stupid of me to think. You stood right where you were and chucked the ball farther than I'd ever seen a girl, or even any guy, chuck it.”

”It was all those years of Bonnet Ball my parents forced on me.”

”The entire team went nuts. You gave a little tiny shrug, like it was no big deal, and sat back down with your family. Completely ignoring me again. So my plan totally backfired. Not only did you get the attention of every boy on the field- which was not my intention-but I got reamed by the coach, who couldn't understand why I suddenly decided to stand perpendicular to home plate.”

It'd worked. My breathing was slow again. I turned against his body, so I was facing him, and wrapped my arms around his back and tangled my legs up with his.

I'd spent a hundred years with Cole, in a similar position, but this was nothing like it. There were no outside forces keeping us together. No otherworldly powers interfering with this simple act.

No. Jack wanted me close because he wanted me. Separating from him now would be worse than anything I'd felt before. Separating from him now would make me bleed, and I would never stop.

I didn't tell him this. I didn't have to.

We stayed like that for hours-my head on his stomach- trying so hard not to fall asleep. As if we could stop time.

THIRTY-TWO.

NOW.

My house. Hours left.

In the morning, Jack left to go pick up Will, and I went to my kitchen and took out a pen and two pieces of paper. My dad and Tommy deserved letters this time. They were the closest thing I had to a real good-bye. In the letters, I tried to explain that I was gone, and that I wasn't coming back. I tried to express my love. I tried to make it all okay. I tried.

When I was finished, I folded up the letters and placed them under the milk carton. Except for the rare dinner of French toast, the only time my family ever drank milk was at breakfast, so I was pretty sure my dad wouldn't discover the letters until tomorrow morning at the earliest. If I made it back, I could get them before they were ever read.

Jack was back on my porch within the hour. ”Sorry, it took me a little while to find Will.”

”Is he sober?” I asked.

He nodded. ”Mostly. Enough to drive his own car. You ready?”

I glanced behind me, toward the empty house and the letters to my family, and then I turned back to Jack. ”Yes.”

Jack took my hand and pulled me toward his car. I looked up at him as we walked. The sun was behind his head, burning through his hair, and I had the feeling that the way he looked right then would be the picture in my head forever. ”Jack, do me a favor?” I said.

”Anything, Becks.”

”Don't let go of my hand. And if the Tunnels come for me, don't let go until the last moment.”

”If the Tunnels come for you, I'll hold on, and they won't be able to take you.”

I smiled at the sentiment, even though I knew that no one would be able to hold on.

Jack and I drove toward the condo in a new state of mind. We'd both been stripped of all the evasiveness, all the lies, everything we'd ever kept from each other. Layer by layer, we had given up our defenses and our excuses and our demands for whys and hows, and what was left were two broken beings. Clinging to one last shred of hope. Tethered to each other.

I couldn't speak as to what occupied Jack's mind on that drive, but I knew what I was hoping for. That Jack would be able to recover. That he would heal. That those who loved him would soon repair the broken sheathing around his raw soul, and that his memories of me, while tender, wouldn't define him. I couldn't tell him this, because then he would know the doubt in my mind, and now wasn't the time for doubt.

First, I hoped we would succeed in destroying Cole's guitar. The other things were a silent prayer, kept close to my heart, for just in case.

As we got closer to Cole's condo, Jack and I went over our plan again. It wasn't very complex. I would let Cole believe I'd chosen him over the Tunnels, and then when we found the guitar, we'd make a break for it and toss it off the balcony and into the cement courtyard. Or smash it against the floor. But tossing it sounded better, because then n.o.body would be near enough to fight us.

We didn't talk about my dad, or Tommy, or Jules. We didn't talk about failing. We didn't talk about how the mark was about a finger-width's distance from my wrist line.

I remembered the bend in the road that would reveal the ma.s.sive condo on the hillside closest to the resort ski lift. I'd made this drive almost exactly one year ago. That time, there'd been an early spring, and the road was clear. Now it was covered with a couple of inches of packed snow.

Jack parked as close to the door as possible, and we climbed the stairs. Outside the front door, I looked at Jack and he nodded. I knocked. Maxwell opened it, and I shoved my way past him.