Infinite Harmony (13 page)

“I was thirteen,” she reminded him, snatching the notebook back out of his hands.

“So what did you write down to replace that one outstanding life goal?”Joshua asked, grabbing onto the edge of the notebook and giving a tug. “Being the subject of one of Scout’s glares? Enduring one of Angel’s lectures on complimentary accessories?”

Ada jerked the notebook away from him and held it to her chest. “None of your business,” she said, thinking of how
Make out with Joshua the Immortal
was now occupying one of the lines. Of course, he might have been able to guess that one since her cheeks had gone from pink to a flaming, glowing red and her gaze kept snagging on his lips. “It’s private.”

“That’s not fair. You’re the one who brought it up in the first place. You can’t just leave me in suspense like this. It’s not very sportsmanlike.”

“Sportsmanlike? What sport are we playing exactly?”

“The sport of flirting, of course.”

“I… I mean, I’m not…“ What kind of person just said things like that? Ada wondered if he would politely go away if she was to crawl under the covers and hide.

“It’s too late now,” Joshua said, pushing himself up so he was sitting fully on the mattress. “I was going to stay away from you. Really, I was. That was the plan. But I can’t, because we’re already leaning.”

Not for the first time, Ada wondered if Joshua was sane. “Leaning? Are you making any sense whatsoever?”

Joshua smiled, but even though it covered half his face, it was still tinged with sadness. “Love rarely makes sense,” he said.

“Love?”

Seriously, what was he talking about?

“I think I’m falling in love with you, Ada Jessup. I’m trying like hell not to, but you’re making it really hard.” He said the words as if he was commenting on some small, insignificant thing, like the weather. He was so casual about the whole thing Ada thought he might be teasing, but then she met his eyes and knew he was serious.

“In love? With me?” If she was given a dozen minutes instead of just the one she had, she still wouldn’t be able to sort out her thoughts. “You hardly know me,” she said, although she knew that wasn’t completely true. He knew her the same way she knew him. It wasn’t the details of who they’d been, but the truth of who they were.

Still, they’d known each other for less than three days. It was a little soon to be declaring themselves.

“I’m a little surprised myself,” Joshua admitted, “but life is too short to pretend I don’t feel something I do.”

“Life is too short? You’re immortal.”

“Which means I understand how fleeting time is more than anyone else.”

Ada finally found a familiar thread of emotion in the jumbled mass settling into her stomach and recognized it as joy. She was
happy
that Joshua thought he was in love with her.

This was insanity. Ada didn’t even believe in love, at least not in the kind Joshua was talking about. She had never bought into the Disney princess, one true love crap, but she couldn’t deny there was something drawing the two of them together. She felt it deep in her soul, and for the first time in her life, she questioned whether she might be wrong about the whole notion of The One.

A whole new jumbled mass formed in her head and she realized she might need more time to figure that out. Like a few hours. Or days. Or years.

“Listen, I know my timing sucks,” Joshua said, repositioning himself on the bed so he was facing her. “You just had a very public and emotional breakup with some guy you’ve been dating for a long time, but you’re the most fascinating person I’ve met in forever. Just being in the same room with you makes me feel alive again. I know I should back off and give you time to recover and let us get to know each other first, but there isn’t time. You’re dying, and I refuse to waste a single minute.”

“Good grief, Joshua. It’s not like I’m going to expire tomorrow. I’m actually doing really well. My doctors are predicting I’ll get to see the gray hairs, wrinkles, and the overwhelming despair of middle age.”

Joshua picked her hand up off the bed, turned it over, and traced the line in the center of her palm. “But one day, you’ll die.”

The jumbled masses in her chest and head were making her feel as though she was suffocating. “Everyone dies.”

“Not me,” he said, making those two little words sound like the saddest, most heart-wrenching confession in the world.

Ada was confused about a lot of things, but she knew when Joshua was around, the rest of the world disappeared for a little while. Maybe that meant she was falling in love with him too, or maybe it was just what happened when you finally found a friend who you didn’t have to pretend around. Either way, Joshua made her life better, and she was getting the distinct impression, she wasn’t doing the same for him. While
I think I might be falling in love with you
might have meant
I’m feeling all sorts of warm and fuzzy feelings
when anyone else said them, Joshua’s words hinted at sadness. She wanted to apologize, but for what? For having a finite number of days on this earth when his had no end? For becoming his friend? Both would be empty apologies, completely devoid of honesty. So instead of saying anything, she turned her hand back over and threaded their fingers together, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze to let him know that now, at this moment, he wasn’t alone.

“You know,” she said, “I’m going to get to mark another item off my list now.”

Joshua’s thumb made slow circles on her wrist. “Really? What?”

“Number thirty-three,” Ada said, tapping into a reserve of bravery she didn’t know she possessed. “
Kiss someone other than Marsden.
”

It took some time for her words to sink in, but she knew the moment they did because his lips curled up into a giant smile for a split second before crushing into hers. It wasn’t the hesitant, chaste first kiss she was expecting. Joshua’s kiss said he wasn’t kidding about this wasting no time business. His lips were insistent, demanding full and complete participation, and she had no problem complying. There was no awkwardness, no bumped noses or badly aimed lips. Their mouths moved against one another as if they’d been doing this their whole lives.

Joshua eased her back so they were laying down, and she didn’t even pretend to resist. It would have been pointless anyway. Her entire body had turned to jelly. She couldn’t sit up if she tried. His tongue slid against hers and a moan escaped from her throat. One of her hands tunneled under the edge of his shirt, the heat of his skin causing the flames in her own body to burn hotter.

“Sorry,” Joshua said, pulling back just enough that their lips were no longer touching. “I shouldn’t have—”

Ada pulled his head back down and cut off the rest of his words by pressing her mouth back to his. She didn’t want to hear about what he shouldn’t have done or why this was a bad idea. She wanted the blissful oblivion that came with his kisses. She wanted to feel his heat instead of the sterile coldness she hadn’t realized existed within her until the first time they’d touched and she’d felt something different. She might have felt a little guilty about it, but by the way he was kissing her back, she didn’t think he was quite as sorry as he might have been trying to make her believe.

Over the years she’d shared hundreds, maybe even thousands of kisses with Marsden, but none of them ever warmed her from the inside out like the ones Joshua was placing along her jaw. She felt as if her body was made of flame and worried the sheets would soon follow suit.

Ada was inching her hand up Joshua’s side, debating on whether or not it would be going too far to pull his t-shirt all the way off, when something crashed against the wall beside her head. Joshua was moving over her in a protective pose at the same time she tried to sit up, which resulted in them hitting their heads together with enough force Ada saw stars.

“I hate you!” a familiar voice screamed and Ada winced, both at the pain in her head and the one in her heart. She got her bearings just in time to see Angel Donovan disappear down the stairs.

“Angel!” Joshua started toward the door before remembering what he’d been doing before shattering glass had interrupted. Ada was sitting in the middle of the bed, her arms wrapped around her knees. A few feet to the left of her head was a giant wet spot on the wall. Shards of a broken drinking glass littered the bed and floor.

“Go,” she said as if she could see his internal should-I-stay-or-should-I-go debate. “I’ll clean up this mess while you take care of that one.”

Joshua hadn’t spent a lot of time in the Jessup house, but he had spent a lot of time listening to Angel talk over the years, so he had a pretty good idea where he could find her. When she wasn’t in the reading nook she and Kinsey had created under the stairs, he headed outside. He could see the blond of her hair and the red of her swimsuit coverup through the slats of wood before he even started climbing the ladder.

The treehouse hadn’t been intended for full-size people, a point made clear by the tiny door Joshua had to do all sorts of twists and tilts with his shoulders to get through. Once he was inside, the situation wasn’t much better. He crawled the four feet to the other side where Angel was curled up in a ball, crying so hard her entire body shook.

“Hey, munchkin,” Joshua said, laying an arm on her shoulder, which she quickly shrugged off.

“Go away,” she said, her voice thick with tears.

“No can do, kid.” He stretched his legs out in front of him, his feet nearly touching the far wall. There were two windows cut into the tiny structure, but they weren’t facing the direction of the wind, which turned the tree house into a sauna during the hot and humid summer months. Joshua was pretty sure some of the less humane countries put people in places like this as punishment for hideous crimes, like murder or taking the last ice cream treat out of a friend’s freezer. “Want to tell me what happened in there?”

“No.”

Joshua knew this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation the moment he saw Angel’s face full of fury. He didn’t have a clue what she was upset about, but he did know there was no one more stubborn and strong-willed than Angel Donovan, especially when she was pissed.

“You made a pretty big mess in Ada’s bedroom,” he said, trying a different tactic. “I hope we can get up all the glass before she cuts herself on it.”

Angel mumbled something into her arms that sounded suspiciously like, “I don’t care.”

Joshua sighed.
What would Scout do?
he thought and then realized whatever it was, it would probably involve a lot of snark and sarcasm and end with both Angel and Scout not speaking to each other or anyone else for days.
Better yet, what would Talley do?

Of course, Talley would use her super-Seer skills to look into the kid’s head to find out what her issues were and then tell her exactly what she needed to hear. Basically, she would cheat, which Joshua would do in a heartbeat if he could, but unfortunately there were no special Immortal powers to make dealing with weeping almost-teenage girls any easier.

“You know, I can’t fix whatever it is if you don’t tell me what is wrong,” he tried. This time she did look up, but only to give him the stink eye before burying her face again. “Come on, Angel. You’re obviously upset—”

“I’m not upset.”

“You threw a glass against the wall hard enough to shatter it, which was impressive by the way, and screamed, ‘I hate you’ at Ada. And if those weren’t big enough hints, you’ve cried so hard your face is all blotchy. All signs point to upset, kemosabe.”

She mumbled something else into her arms. “What?” Joshua asked, starting to lose patience. Angel lifted her head and fixed her glowing blue eyes on him. “I said, ‘I don’t hate Ada, you giant ass. I hate
you
.’”

“Oh.” Joshua had been the subject of Angel’s anger more times over the years than he could count, but it was always blew over after a couple of hours. Somehow, he didn’t think he would be so lucky this time. “I guess that changes things, huh?”

Angel used the edge of her swimsuit coverup to wipe off her face. Some of her fine blond hair still clung to her cheek, making her look small and fragile.

“You were kissing her,” she said, her eyes fixed on a spot of the floor just beyond her feet. “You’re not supposed to kiss other people.”

Joshua was a smart guy. He had multiple college diplomas and enough coursework hours to have many more. Most of the devices the Alpha Pack used were years, if not decades, beyond the technology being used by the CIA, NASA, and Homeland Security, and he knew that because he was behind some of the government’s favorite toys. But at that moment he felt like a mouth-breather because he had no idea what Angel was talking about.

“You’re mad because I was kissing Ada?”

A fresh tear streaked from the corner of her eye to bottom of her chin. “You don’t understand.”

“You’re right. I don’t. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

“You weren’t supposed to kiss her,” Angel said, bottom lip quivering. “You’re supposed to kiss
me.
You’re supposed to fall in love with
me.
” And then she broke down yet again into the kind of heaving sobs only accomplished by the very young and the very broken. Since Angel wasn’t very young, Joshua had to assume she belonged to the second group.

He’d broken Angel.

He hadn’t meant to, of course. It wasn’t as if he purposefully broke her heart, but he was to blame all the same. If it had been any other person in the entire world, Joshua would have torn them from limb to limb for causing her so much pain. Since self-harm wasn’t really his thing, and wouldn’t do much good anyway since he’d recover from whatever damage he’d inflicted overnight, that wasn’t an option, which left him with trying to fix it.

“Come here,” he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder, which she immediately slung back off with a growl of, “Don’t touch me!”

“Angel, I didn’t mean to…“

What hadn’t he meant to do? Kiss Ada? He couldn’t say that, because that would be a lie. He very much had meant to kiss Ada. He had every intention of doing it again and again and again as long as she would let him, no matter how much of a bad idea it was.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and that much was true. He genuinely regretted hurting Angel, but it didn’t change how he felt about Ada. He wasn’t lying to her before. He was on the cusp of falling in love with her. He knew it was too fast, and it would most likely end in a mutilated heart for him, but he knew deep down in the place where only truth exists that he belonged to Ada Jessup. She might not want him, but he was hers all the same.

As if she could hear his thoughts, Angel curled herself back up into a ball of sorrow. Joshua wanted to hold her, but she’d made her feelings on him touching her abundantly clear. He considered going away and leaving her alone, but while she might have said that was what she wanted, Joshua knew it wasn’t what she needed. It wasn’t what
they
needed. He might not love her the way she thought she wanted to be loved, but he loved her all the same. Their relationship was one he would fight for, even if it meant uncomfortable conversations and more crying.

“You know,” he began, “I’m old. Like three-years-older-than-your-grandfather old.”

“I’m not going to be twelve forever. And Ada is only six years older than me, so it’s not like she’s oh-so-much closer to your age.”

Joshua tried to hide the smile he knew she wouldn’t appreciate, but it was hard.

“True,” he said, “but I met Ada just last week. So to me, she’s close to my age.”

This earned him a full-on eye roll and an exasperated sigh. “So now she’s like a hundred because you met her last week. That makes a lot of sense, Joshua. Thanks for clearing everything up. I feel so much better now.”

“I meant she’s eighteen to my nineteen. No matter how many years I’m alive, I’ll always be nineteen.”

“But I thought you were really old,” Angel bit back. “You can’t have it both ways.”

“Actually, I can. I do.” He’d never tried to explain it before. It made sense in his head, but once he started trying to put it in words, it became absolute rubbish. “It’s like when you look at a picture in a magazine. You’re looking at this model, right? And she’s got this amazing, blemish-free skin, and there are no scars or bulges on her body. Her stomach is flat and smooth, and her legs go on for miles. You’re looking at it, and you think, ‘Okay, this is what this chick looks like. She’s literally flawless.’ But that’s just your perceived reality. It’s real to you because it’s what you see, but in actuality she’s been Photoshopped from here to Mars. They buffed out a zit, smoothed out some belly rolls, and added an extra two inches to her legs.

“That is how time works for me. There is real time with all those years adding up one on top of the other, and then there is my perceived time. And just like you looking at the Photoshopped model, even though I know the truth, it’s the perceived reality of time my brain actually processes and believes.”

Her eyes were still red and glowing, but the tears had stopped. “Your perceived time? What does that look like?”

“Like a picture,” he said. “Just like a picture captures a single moment and preserves it forever, my brain snaps onto something and keeps it at one point in time forever.” He wasn’t making sense, so he tried again. “In my head, I will always be nineteen. No matter how many hundreds of years I might be forced to live, I’ll still be nineteen. But it’s not just my age that works that way for me. I think of your parents as adults because they were in their forties when I met them. To me, they’ll always be in their forties, even when they’ve lost all their hair and teeth and can’t remember when or where they took off their pants. Same goes for Jase and Scout. No matter how old and boring they get, they’ll always be teenagers to me.”

Angel scrunched up her eyebrows. “But I was only eight when you met me.”

“Exactly, munchkin.” He ran his hand over the top of her head to mess up her hair. She shot him a death glare, and this time he didn’t even try to hide his smile. “And eight you will always be to me. One day you’ll be all grown up with a husband and kids of your own, and you’ll still be my munchkin.”

“I’m never getting married and having kids,” she said, turning her head so he couldn’t see her face.

“Of course you will.”

“No,” she said, “I won’t. I’m never falling in love again. It hurts too much.”

After Joshua first became an Immortal he went through months and months of intense training. During one of the sessions, Benjamin stabbed Joshua through the heart with his own sword to prove a point or four. That wound hurt a hell of a lot less than the one Angel just ripped into his chest.

He wanted to tell her it didn’t always hurt, but he didn’t like lying to her. If there was one thing his long life had taught him, it was love always hurts. There was a time when he shared Angel’s it’s-not-worth-it sentiment, but then he met Jase and Talley. Not long after that he watched as Scout and Liam, and later Charlie and Maggie, figure out how to navigate love’s pothole-riddled road. It was hard to be a romantic pessimist when surrounded by people hopelessly devoted to each other.

“Someday, Angela Sophia Donovan, you’re going to meet someone amazing. He’s going to be strong and kind and funny and he’s going to love you with his whole heart. But he’s still going to make you cry, because love is just too big and too extraordinary to fit in a small, comfortable place in our hearts. It has to run all through you and rip out some of the old pieces to make room.” Joshua placed his arm around her shoulders again, and this time she let him. She was limp but compliant as he pulled her against his side and kissed the top of her head. “And when you finally decide he’s worth it, and you give him your whole and reformed heart, I’m going to come along with my big, shiny sword and threaten to cut him into a million little pieces if he so much as thinks about bruising your beautiful gift.”

“Why do you care?” Angel asked, wiping her nose on the edge of his shirt sleeve.

“Because despite the way you’ve mistaken my vintage t-shirt for a Kleenex, I love you, munchkin.” Her eyes were filled with confusion and hope. “You’re like the pesky little sister I never knew I wanted,” he clarified, and then wished he hadn’t.

“I. Don’t. Want. To. Be. Your. Sister,” she said, punctuating every word with a fist to his sternum.

“Yeah, well, you don’t want to be Jase’s sister either, but it’s the luck of the draw. You don’t get to choose family.”

“You’re not my family.”

“Of course I am,” he said pulling her even tighter against him. “I have to be, because you guys are the only family I have.”