A Matter of Heart (10 page)

But, he’s wrong. At least
about it being okay. Because now I can truly admit to myself that it won’t be.

I’m not over him. Not by a long
shot.

Three days.

To recap, we’ve: not eaten,
drank what I estimate to be two full cups of water each, slept fitfully due to
the constant screaming outside, and not touched each other again since the hug.
On his end, Kellan has lost his ability to communicate with Jonah entirely,
although he claims his brother probably can still sense his feelings and hear
his thoughts. On my end, I have descended into what I (well, Caleb) can only
term sheer despair.

“You should sleep,” Kellan
tells me. He should talk. The dark circles under his eyes would make a boxer
proud.

I’m lying on the blanket,
staring at him. It’s what I do nowadays. I stare at him. I’m too tired to do
anything else. “You should.”

He sits down next to me,
which spurs me struggling into my own sitting position. Three days, and he’s
kept his distance. Well, other than when he hugged me, but I think he’s the
smarter of the two of us and decided that once was more than enough. But now .
. . now he’s right here by me. Within touching distance, if I was to only
stretch out—

“I’m sorry,” he says as
quietly as one can when there’s shrieking going on around you. When I scrunch
my nose in confusion, he adds, “For calling you a bitch the other day.”

A giggle bubbles out of my
chest due to the absurdity of this. And he smiles, too, even if it’s sad. “I
deserved it. I called you an asshat.”

“I knew you didn’t mean it.”
He grins at my laughter. “Or, at least, you only did in the heat of the
moment.”

“Did you?” I ask, and he
knows what I mean.

His lips curve even higher.
“Only in the heat of the moment.”

“Well, I’m sorry, too. For
picking that fight.” And I can’t help it. I really can’t. My breathing goes
shallow and the butterflies that have always loved him take flight in my
stomach. Even here, even now—he affects me like no one else but his brother
can.

“Does it help?” I ask when
he doesn’t say anything else. “The distance?”

What I mean is: the distance
you’ve put between us?

His eyes leave mine and
settle on his cuff, once more in heavy rotation around his wrist. “Sometimes.
Not always.” There’s a small breath of a laugh before he looks back up at me.
“You?”

Three days with no hope of
an exit. I tell him the truth: “The same.”

He nods, his smile more
rueful than before. I adore his smiles, all of them—even this bittersweet one.
Kellan Whitecomb has some of the best smiles ever created. And maybe it’s
because I’m hungry and tired and totally weak, but I find one of my fingers
tracing the lips that make those smiles.

My name is soft and hot
against my finger, making me shake my head. Because if I let him say anything
further, he’s just going to spout off some kind of rationalization why I
shouldn’t be touching him. Why he shouldn’t touch me.

I drop my hand so it can
join my other to rest against his chest. His heart sprints in time with mine.
And then, because . . . because . . .

I have no real reasons other
than I want to and think I might die if I don’t.

I
press my lips against his.

We are full-on, insane,
frenzied lips-crashing-against-one-another making out. My hands don’t quite
know what to do; his are the same, and it’s like we’re grappling with one
another with energy that comes from nowhere, trying to memorize each other’s
bodies with the skin on our fingertips. He pushes me down against the blanket,
and my senses flood in pleasure. He is above me, over me, and his lips are
against mine and it’s so heady, so deliriously overwhelming that I can, for the
first time in days, block out the screaming surrounding us.

I moan against his mouth,
and he groans against mine, and our tongues go to war against one another. But
then Caleb goes and says something I can’t ignore.
He’ll know
, he
shouts, an elephant’s weight of force behind his words.
You think Jonah
isn’t keeping close tabs on his brother right now
?

It’s enough for me to jerk
away. And for Kellan to leap away from me, like he can feel the fire under my
skin, putting twice the distance between us than usual. There’s a wild look in
his eyes, desire mixed with agony, and then dipped in heartbreak.

What
have we done?

We do not discuss what
happened. Hours go by, sleep goes by, and I think about it, obsess over it, and
yet . . . I can’t say anything. Because, what would I say? What would even be
good enough?

I watch Kellan squat in
front of one of the small tubes leading out of the end of the tunnel he’d found
on day one. There are three in total, but they’re all so small it’s impossible
for either of us to fit through. Even still, he has the lantern at the entrance
and is peering within, constantly trying to figure out how to make the
impossible work.

I’m sitting to the side of
the tube, observing thoughts flicker across his face. When he’s tired like he
is now, he isn’t able to easily control his feelings. He’s anxious. Stressed
and tired and frustrated and feeling more than a little helpless, which drives
up my guilt, since I unfairly accused him of doing nothing during that awful
fight. But he still studies the opening, tries to see into the tube to
calculate what things would be like if one of us could get through, where it
leads to, and what obstacles might lay ahead. If the risk is worth it.

When he rubs tiredly at his
eyes, a small white head peeks out of the tube. Pink eyes and whiskers stare
back at me. My first thought: I’m Alice, and this is the rabbit hole. My
second: rabbits can be eaten.

“Kellan!” I whisper, not
moving. “Grab the rabbit! I’ll make a fire.”

His eyes blink open, his
head swivels around, searching. “Rabbit?”

The pink orbs stare
balefully at me.
Eat me?
it seems to accuse.
You want to eat me?

I try not to even move my
lips as I hiss, “In. The. Tube.” I mean, honestly. He’s about a foot and a half
away from the little bugger.

Kellan looks down at the
rabbit; the rabbit looks up at him. There is a small standoff that elicits a
fairly good-sized gurgle from my stomach. “Get it before it hops away!”

But Kellan does nothing
except turn back toward me and frown.

The rabbit smiles—smiles!—at
me.
Your loss
, it seems to say before disappearing into the black.

“Why didn’t you catch it?”
Another rumble, one that would normally cause extreme embarrassment, rips
through my stomach.

“I didn’t see a rabbit, C.”

He’s more tired than I
realized. I say gently, “It was right there.”

He slowly shakes his head.
An uncomfortable lack of words opens up between us. Finally, when I can’t take
it, I say, “I think it’s time to admit that these tubes aren’t viable options.”

We’ve both tried getting
into them; I have my doubts that even a four-year-old could slip through. A
rabbit, yes—but not a kid.

He fingers the edges. “Maybe
we can—”

“No. We can’t, and you know
it. Unless you let me blast it.”

“No.” He sits down next to
me, shoulders sagging in defeat. “I’m so sorry, Chloe.” And I know he means
business, because he used my full name.

I wish I could hold his
hands right now. “Two apologies in as many days,” I tease, because it’s better
than crying. “What are you sorry for now?”

“I can’t get you out of
here.”

“No one could get us out of
here.” I ache to kiss the knuckles on his right hand. They’re rough; a few have
scabbed over from his efforts with the tubes. “So you have no reason to be
sorry.”

His head slants back against
the wall. I shove our shared cup toward him, insisting he drink the bit we’ve
collected over the last few hours, but he’s so stubborn. He only takes a small
sip before handing it back. Arguing does no good, so instead, I ask him if he’s
heard anything from Jonah, even though I know he hasn’t. He confirms this but
adds, “He’ll find you, C. I know there’s nothing in all the worlds that could
stop him from coming for you once he’s capable.”

“Us,”
I stress. “He’ll come for us both.”

When nighttime hits, Caleb
announces it mournfully.

Kellan is asleep, his head
in my lap. My choice, not his—when he’d last fallen asleep, I wanted the
contact. I’m raking my fingers through his hair, every so often prodding him so
he’s forced to shift just enough to show me he’s still here. I can’t rely on
his breathing, because I don’t trust my hand or eyes to verify its existence,
it’s so shallow.

Four days. Four days of no
food and precious little water. And he’d spent the better part of two days
continuously working on me, so it makes him all the weaker, which is hard to
even comprehend, because I’m ready to turn myself over to sleep without a fight
and I’ve hardly used my powers.

I toy momentarily with the
idea of blasting open the wall in front of us, just to finally end the
maddening sounds and unbearable waiting. Because that’s what we’re doing now.
Waiting. Waiting for water to drip down and collect, waiting to sip the teeny bit
we do, waiting for sleep, waiting, waiting for something, anything. Waiting
most likely for death, because I can’t help but rationalize that if someone
knew where we were, we’d have been rescued.

This line of thinking only
exacerbates my panic over Jonah. When Kellan is asleep, I allow myself to worry
about my fiancé. Because I know Jonah, and if he were free of that dungeon, he
would move heaven and earth to get to me and his brother. But he’s not here, he
hasn’t found us, so . . .

No. I can’t let myself think
anything further, not if I want to stay sane and here for Kellan.

When Caleb announces
morning, Kellan is still sleeping. I shake him awake, desperate with fear he’s
slipping away from me. He’s dazed, confused for far too long, murmuring
something about how great the waves are today thanks to storms before he’s able
to focus on my face. And then, he’s gone, lost to dreams once more.

Out of the corner of my eye,
bright lights flash. My head whips around and I see Jonah. Clear as day. He’s
standing there, staring at me, but he’s not saying anything. Why isn’t he
saying anything? The rabbit’s at his feet—small, white face; pink eyes;
whiskers—and it’s just so bizarre, so . . . just . . . I don’t even know what
to say. I call his name, beg him to help us, but he disappears. I scream for
him but he’s gone, gone, gone. The rabbit remains, watching me, unblinking,
smiling
.
I toss a rock at it, but it skips to the side. And then it’s gone, too, into
the dark.

My skull feels too small for
my brain. Or maybe my brain is too big for my skull. Or maybe my eyes . . .?
They’re so dry, and I’m hungry, and I’m . . .

Gods, I’m thirsty. The cup
is filled with one, maybe two good swallows. I allow myself one, and then
promptly wish I could spit it back up just so I can give it to Kellan when he
wakes up.

When Caleb announces noon of
the fifth day, I fight to keep my eyes open. I’ve resorted to pinching myself
and pleading with Caleb to yell as loud as he can in my mind, sing annoying
songs—anything that will keep me awake.

But
the truth is, I think I’ve lost hope.

I’ve just counted to nine
hundred when I realize that the only sound in the cave is my voice.

I hold my breath so I can
hear better. There is no screaming. No pounding. I stare at the wall I’d
reinforced days before, and there, sitting on a large boulder, is the rabbit.
It’s wearing a collar, something sparkly. Diamonds, maybe? One of its hind paws
comes up and scratches at the gemstones; rays of rainbowed light spread out in
massive arcs from where it sits.

I am dazzled.

Chloe!

The room explodes in color.
It’s so, so beautiful that I want to cry. Am I crying? I should be crying.
Gods, it’s so gorgeous—

CHLOE! FOCUS!