A Matter of Heart (54 page)

We’re sitting out on the
deck, in front of a fire despite the balmy weather. I’ve insisted on us sharing
the same chair, so I’ve snuggled deep into his arms as I watch the flames twist
and change colors in front of me. Orange to blue to purple, and then to yellow.

“Do you ever wonder,” I
muse, “if we made the right choice deciding to wait to have sex until we’re
married?”

His hand, which had been
tracing patterns on one of my arms, stills.

“I mean,” I continue, “it’s
not like we won’t be married soon. So . . .”

“Will we?” he asks quietly.

“Have sex?” I laugh. “I sure
hope so.” Tonight would do nicely.

“Get married,” he clarifies.

Squeezing my eyes doesn’t
hold the pain in. “Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I shift slightly in
the chair. “Why are you asking this?”

“I wonder about it
sometimes.”

It’s like a punch in the
stomach. I mean, yeah, there’s the Connection to his brother and all, but I
feel like I’ve never given Jonah any reason to doubt that my future is with
him.

Even when I struggle with
that fact myself.

For awhile now, Jonah’s been
the solid one of our messy triangle. He’s reliable, reasonable, comforting, and
trustworthy. Kellan finds ways to hurt himself to deal with the pain. I
withdraw or apparently run away, like I did to Hawaii. But Jonah . . . Jonah is
our rock. My faith in him has never wavered.

I may struggle with the love
I feel for his brother, but I’ve never thought once that Jonah would ever
not
be part of my life. Because he’s Jonah. He’s my everything. Even torn as I am,
I know this truth.

“Don’t wonder. Don’t ever
wonder that.”

I
take his hand and trace every finger of his, up and down and back again. These
fingers, this hand—they hold so much of my past, my present, my future. Without
these hands, I’d be lost.

The water at night is still
warm, like a bath. I don’t let myself worry about things like sharks (Jonah
swears he’s never seen one around the house once) or the lack of bathing suits.
I’ll admit I was a bit nervous jumping buck-naked from the deck, but I figured,
sometimes life is too short to worry so much. And goodness knows, I do my fair
share of worrying.

“I love this place,” I tell
him, and he chuckles. Thankfully, over the last day, with much teasing and
kissing on my end, Jonah is acting a bit more like his old self.

“You say that about every
place.”

“I guess that’s true. It’s
the toddler traveler in me; every new place is exciting and interesting.”

His lips curve in a smirk.
“Toddler traveler?”

I splash water at him. “You
know what I mean.”

“Okay, toddler traveler—tell
me the place you want to see the most.”

I think about this a moment,
allowing myself to bob with the gentle waves that crash against the house’s
pillars. “Rome.”

“You realize we’ve been to
Rome, right?”

“I know. But you asked. As
for places I’ve never been, maybe Paris. I used to imagine going there with you
when we were . . . maybe thirteen? I thought you could be a prince, and I’d be
a commoner that you fell in love with and we’d live in Versailles.”

He bursts out laughing. And
then, gently as one of his feet stokes my leg, “If anything, you’re the
princess and I’m the commoner.”

Yeah, right. “Your turn.” I
nudge him with my foot. “Where do you want to go?”

“Nepal.”

“Why Nepal?”

“Why not?”

“It’s not very romantic,” I
offer.

“Travel isn’t always about
romance,” he says, brushing aside a wet strand of my hair. “Sometimes it’s
about growth.”

“And in Nepal you think
you’d find growth?”

“I do.”

“We should go then.”

His dimple deepens and my
limbs go weak. “Alright,” he says. “We’ll go to Nepal.”

“And Paris.”

He grins. “And Paris.”

“And Rome.”

He pulls me closer until our
bodies are flush against one another. “Oh, most certainly

Rome.” Our lips brush
lightly. “And every other single place we want to go. We’ll have almost two
hundred years to hit them all.”

I want him so much right now
it’s painful.

“So you like this place,” he
murmurs in my ear before our lips meet again. He holds us up, strong swimmer he
is.

“No,” I sigh against his
mouth. “I love it.”

His lips travel to my neck.
“Because it’s beautiful?”

I can feel how much he wants
me, too. I reach down and graze my fingers against the length of him; he gasps,
and I can’t help but thrill that my touch can do that to him. “Because I’m here
with you.”

Our mouths come together,
over and over; his fingers slide across my belly, lower and lower, until I’m
the one to gasp into his mouth. I’m having trouble staying afloat, but this
time, it’s not because I’m drowning in sorrow, it’s because I’m literally so
weak in the knees I can’t keep kicking and thinking at the same time. We need
to get up on the deck. Now.

“Uh, yeah. Excuse me?”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

We break apart and find a
guy standing on the deck, leaning over the railing. He’s holding a pizza box,
practically leering. I can’t believe we forgot we ordered pizza earlier.

“I tried knocking; when
nobody answered, I came around the side. You two look like you’ve worked up an
appetite, huh?

Dying. Absolutely dying of
mortification right now. Also, why is the universe so conspired against me
seducing Jonah?

Jonah laughs under his
breath and presses his forehead against mine for a brief second. “Yeah. Just.
Can you wait for us at the front of the house?”

I’m uneasy with the guy’s
blatant staring, but Jonah makes it so he loses interest and wanders away. But
our magical moment has already slipped through our fingers.

In the busy week following
our return from Tahiti, the one thing I never got around to doing is calling or
seeing Kellan. This was both purposeful and indirect. On one hand, I barely had
any free time for myself, what with a trio of quick missions and lengthy
Council sessions; I rationalized that any contact with him needs to be
meaningful. A one-minute phone call wouldn’t suffice, nor mere minutes in his
presence. On the other hand, I’d just decided, yet again, that I’m definitely,
absolutely going to marry Jonah.

Which technically means I
ought to call or see Kellan so I can tell him straight up about the decision.
But, being the coward I am, I’ve made sure there’s absolutely no time to have
that discussion.

I figure he must know we’re
back in town; after all, he and Jonah talk to each other constantly. At least,
I’m assuming they’re still talking to each other, but lately I’m not so sure.
Because during our entire trip in Tahiti and the subsequent week home, Jonah
hasn’t mentioned his brother’s name once, which is bizarre. So strange, in
fact, it’s never happened before. When they weren’t hanging out with each other
at the end of high school and the first few months we lived in Annar, Jonah
still talked about his brother. Still talked
,
their way, to him. But
this last week and a half?

It’s like he doesn’t even
have a brother.

I don’t know what to make of
it, and frankly, I’m too nervous to bring it up considering Jonah is mostly
acting like normal. And yet, despite being good with the decision that I’m
going to marry Jonah, I miss Kellan so much it hurts. Physically, literally
hurts.

How
can one person be so goddamn happy and miserable at the same time?

My class gets out early; the
professor is called away for what I can only assume is an imaginary emergency
(since it happens more often than not this semester), leaving everyone to burst
through the doors towards freedom with forty minutes of so-called lecture (i.e.
internet surfing) left to spare.

I’m supposed to meet Jonah;
we’re going to go have lunch at a café I’ve been dying to try out now that my
appetite has semi-returned, but as he’s still in his one so-called class, I
decide to head out to the quad and work on my golden tan achieved in Tahiti.

Before I can do so, though,
a familiar profile coming out of a building across the way catches my eye. All
of my hesitations about talking to him go flying out the window because I
simply cannot resist getting my Kellan fix.

We stare at each other with
loopy, matching grins as we meet halfway in the quad. And when we both finally
decide to speak, it’s at the same time.

“You first,” he offers after
we both stop talking. For some reason, this makes me take a step closer, which
I shouldn’t be doing, considering my recent decision to get married within the
month, but it’s no use.

I absolutely cannot resist
Kellan Whitecomb. And that’s the real problem, isn’t it?

Nor can I lie to him. So I
give him the two words that he and his brother hear far too often from my lips.
I ought to just get them tattooed on my forehead: “I’m sorry.”

The grin slips away, but he
doesn’t move his eyes off of mine. My stomach churns as I, for the millionth
time, curse Fate for the crummy hand it’s dealt me.

“I know it wasn’t your
idea.” His anger and disappointment are palpable, but I know they’re not angled
at me. Kellan’s furious at his brother.

Why he doesn’t blame me is
unfathomable, but then, don’t they tend to always blame each other and not me?
Which is grossly unfair because even I know that I’m the sole cause of pain in
this trio. No Chloe means no friction between brothers.

“Don’t be mad at him,” I say
quietly.

“Why wouldn’t I be mad, C?”

“It’s not like he did this
to hurt you!”

His lips quirk up at one
corner. “Is that what you think?”

Everything around me grinds
to a halt. “Excuse me?”

He tugs his dark sunglasses
on so the one part of his face that ever gives me the smallest glimpse of his
emotions is effectively shielded. “Nothing. Forget I said that.”

“No. Explain what you
meant.”

He tilts his head to one side.
“Do you really want me to tell you?”

“Obviously, or I wouldn’t
have asked.”

He rocks back on his heels,
hands stuffed in his pockets. “Fine. I happen to know all this came about
simply because he wanted to put me in my place. He’s royally pissed off at me
but won’t tell me why. All I know is he’s so mad he won’t even speak to me
anymore and the last time we were in the same room we came—” He catches
himself. “
Almost
came to blows.”

“Whaaat?”

“Marrying you would’ve been
his checkmate move against me. His response to whatever I’ve done that’s
angered him.”

I refuse to believe this.
“You must be mistaken.”

“No. I’m not.” He’s
inscrutable behind his dark glasses. “Sometimes we’re able to tell each other
things that we may not necessarily want to reveal. It’s sort of like surging,
but mostly come about when we’re tired or asleep. We don’t have any control
over it. I saw the whole thing in his mind, C. I know it was his idea. I saw
the entire reasoning behind it, how he knew it’d be like throwing a grenade at
me.”

I fumble for rational words.
“But . . . but . . . Jonah? He’s not like that!”

Kellan laughs grimly under
his breath. “He is
exactly
like that.”

“But—”

“You just so happen to see
the very best of us, C. We don’t tend to show you all the nasty sides of our
personalities. But just because you don’t see them, it doesn’t mean they’re not
there. Jonah is quite capable of a move like this—and, if I weren’t the
intended victim, I’d congratulate him on his deviousness because I’m capable of
just such a move, too.”

“Are you saying that he only
wanted to marry me because it’d hurt you?”