I don’t argue with him—the pain is too overwhelming for that now—but I want to ask how he thinks I can just surrender to it when it feels like every nerve ending in my body is being dipped in lava…at the same time.
Before I can think of a way to explain that, Hudson leans over and deposits me gently—so, so gently—into Jaxon’s waiting arms.
It feels like coming home.
Despite how worn out he is, Jaxon takes me with ease, holding me steadily against his chest for long seconds before carrying me a little away from Hudson and Macy. Then he sinks down onto the snow and cradles me in his lap.
“It’s okay,” he whispers as he strokes my still unruly curls back from my face. “You’re going to be okay.” But I can see in his eyes that he knows the truth. Unlike Hudson, Jaxon understands that I’m already gone.
He doesn’t like it, but he gets it.
Next to Hudson, the ground makes a sound like it’s screaming, and we all turn to watch him turn the snow to vapor as he splinters the rocky ground in front of him wide open.
“What are you doing?” Macy demands. “I thought you were going to help Grace. I thought—”
Hudson holds a hand up and she freezes, which is ridiculous because he won’t hurt her and yet totally understandable, considering she just watched him vaporize a stadium and a shit ton of trees all in the space of ten minutes.
As we watch, the dirt that was frozen beneath the snow explodes up and out. But Hudson barely pays it any attention as he digs deeper, deeper, deeper. The sounds get worse, the ground grinding against itself as he literally carves through granite with a thought.
“What’s he doing?” Macy whispers.
“I have no idea,” Jaxon answers, still watching his brother with bewildered eyes.
I don’t know, either, but I know that whatever it is, it’s his long-shot idea. And because I can’t stand the thought of hoping, of thinking that Hudson might somehow find a way to save me only to have my hopes dashed at the last possible second, I turn to Jaxon, who looks as exhausted and traumatized as I feel.
I hate it—hate it for him, and I hate it for us. Maybe that’s why I give him the closest thing to a smile that I can manage and softly ask, “Tell me the pirate joke?”
“What pirate joke?” he asks at first, still distracted by what his brother is doing right over our shoulders.
“You know exactly what pirate joke I’m talking about.” I groan as another wave of pain rolls through me.
“The pirate joke from the hallway?” Jaxon says in disbelief. “You want to hear that now?”
“I’ve always wanted to know the punch line. And I’m probably not going to have another chance, so—”
His dark eyes fill with tears as he stares down at me. “Don’t say that. Don’t you fucking say that to me, Grace.”
“Tell me the joke,” I urge him again, because I can’t stand to see the pain in his eyes. I’d take it if I could, take it all into me and away from this broken boy who’s already suffered so much. “Please.”
“Fuck, no,” he says with a scowl that almost—almost—battles back the tears. “You want to hear the punch line of that joke? You don’t die, okay? You stick around and I’ll tell you next week. I promise.”
Another wave of pain hits me, and this one is accompanied by a cold that chills every part of me. Together, they overwhelm me, nearly take me under. I struggle against it, not forever but for now. For a few more minutes to spend looking into Jaxon’s beloved face.
“I’d really like that,” I tell him after a second. “But I don’t think it’s possible.”
I raise a hand to his cheek, run my thumb back and forth over the scar he’s spent so much time despising and trying to hide. “You know that you’re going to be okay, right?” I tell him.
“Don’t say that. Damn it, Grace, you don’t get to talk about dying as easily as brushing your teeth in the morning and then say that everything is going to be okay!”
“I love you,” I tell him softly, wiping away one of the tears that fall in an endless streak down his cheeks. And I mean it. Maybe not in the same way I did when I first came to Katmere, but in a new way. Maybe even a better one.
“Please don’t leave me.” It’s a whisper from the deepest, most broken part of him—from the little boy who’s already lost so much—and it nearly shatters me.
I shake my head a little, because I won’t promise him that. I won’t be just one more person who treats him like he’s somehow more than a god and less than a person at the same time.
So I do the only thing I can in this situation, the only thing we still have time for. I smile at him and ask, “What did the beach say to the tide when it came in?”
He just stares at me, seconds ticking by as silence stretches hopelessly between us. In fact, he waits so long to answer that I’ve almost decided that he’s not going to. But then he takes a breath and blows it out slowly, so, so slowly. And says, “I have no idea.”
Of course he doesn’t. He’s terrible at these, but he indulges me anyway. Which is why I’m grinning as widely as I can manage when I answer. “Long time no sea.”
Jaxon laughs, but in the middle, it turns into a sob and he buries his face against my neck. “I’m sorry, Grace,” he whispers to me as hot tears slide against my skin. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not.” I comb my fingers through the silky coolness of his hair. “I’ll never be sorry for having found you, Jaxon, even if I didn’t get to keep you as long as I would have liked.” I pull his mouth down to mine, press my lips to his. And nearly sob myself when he whispers, “I love you,” against my mouth.
Behind us, Hudson finally stops doing whatever it is he’s doing to the land and takes a step toward me.
“It’s time,” Macy says, and there are tears streaming down her face, too, as she reaches for my hand.
“It’s going to be okay,” she tells me. “You’re going to be okay.”
I don’t know how, but as Hudson bends down and slides me from Jaxon’s arms back into his own, I get my first real look at what he’s been doing while I talked to Jaxon.
And horror seizes my chest. For all this time, Hudson has been carving a grave for me out of the frozen earth and the granite that lies below.
My breath catches as I whisper, “Why?”
125
Between a Rock
and a Hard Place