All We See & Seem (Timber Wolves) (10 page)

“I’m fine.”

Jase studied her from the corner of his eye and there was something in that look that made her chest tighten. If she looked sad, then there had to be another adjective to describe how Jase looked because it was something beyond how she felt. The word “lost” came to mind.

“Really. It’s nothing.”

“If I were Scout, you would tell me.”

“If Scout was here I would have considerably less reasons to feel sad.”

Jase continued to look at her for a long time. She was starting to worry she had something gross on her face and he was trying to think of how to tell her.

“I’ve got an idea,” he finally said. “Pretend I’m Scout.”

“Jase…”

“No, come on, Tal. This will work.” He pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes, glaring at everyone crossing from the parking garage to the hospital. “All these insipid people annoy me,” he said in the most bored voice he could manage. “Did one of them make you mad? If so, I’ll go punch them in the throat. Hard.”

She thought about mentioning how Scout would punch him in the throat if she could see him.

“You can’t punch life in the throat,” she said instead.

“Life? Life has hurt my Talley?” Jase tossed his head and pushed imaginary hair off his shoulder. “I will not only punch life in the throat, but I will also knee it in the nuts. How dare life mess with my friends.”

Talley laughed, but it sounded as empty as it felt. “She would, you know. Scout would try to punch life in the throat.”

“She would do anything in the world for you.” Jase took a deep breath and licked his lips. “You know I would, too, right? If I could, I would beat the shit out of life for being so hard on you.”

Tears stung in the backs of her eyes, but she beat them back with pure determination. “Life has been pretty rough on you, too. Maybe I should go out and hunt it down to defend your honor.”

“And what exactly would you do once you found life?”

Talley patted the bag she had slung over her shoulder. “I’m thinking a bullet to the kneecap would be in order.”

Jase smiled down at her, and then it was like someone flipped a switch and his expression became completely serious. “Does it bother you that I won’t let you See me?”

The question was so out of left field it took a minute for Talley to understand what he was asking. “It’s no big deal.” It was the same thing she’d been saying for a year now. No big deal. One of the people she cared about most in this world was repulsed by her touch and didn’t trust her enough to not dig into his head and See all his secret thoughts and emotions. Nope, not a big deal at all. “I understand.” At least that part was true.

“I didn’t ask if it was a big deal or if you understood. I asked if it bothered you.”

Why did he have to look at her so intently? She might have been able to blow off the question if he’d been even the tiniest bit distracted, but she knew he would see the truth in her eyes no matter what her mouth said. Her mother always said her eyes gave her away, and over the years, Scout, Jase, and Charlie had all made similar observations.

“Maybe a little.” Or a lot. Whatever.

He didn’t say anything. He just kept looking at her like he could See inside her mind, and then something in his eyes changed. It was a type of resignation, but Talley didn’t have any idea what he could have resigned himself to as he hopped down off the planter.

“I’m ready,” he said.

“Ready for what?” This conversation had taken so many twists and turns she wasn’t quite sure what they were talking about at this point.

“Take whatever you want,” he said, reaching for her hand. “I want you to have it all.”

“Jase, I don’t—” but her protest died the moment his hand grabbed hers.

When she first came into her Sight a year ago, she’d had trouble filtering the information. Her first experiment had been with Toby. Not knowing that she didn’t have to try to See, she’d made an effort to pull information out of his head. What she’d gotten was a barrage of thoughts that sent her to her knees and left her with a headache for days. The only other time she’d come close to being that overwhelmed was when she tried to pull thoughts from Alex Cole’s head on the first day of school last year.

Both of those times looked like child’s play in comparison to what happened when Jase touched her. So many thoughts and emotions poured into her head that her brain shut itself off in self-defense. Her knees buckled, and she would’ve crashed to the sidewalk if Jase hadn’t caught her and slowly eased her to the ground. Some girl walking by told her friend, “And that’s why I don’t start drinking until after four during the summer.”

“Talley? Talley! Are you okay?” Jase’s face swam in front of her. “Come on, Tal. Talk to me. Tell me you’re okay.”

“Not your fault.” She had to fight to get the words out, but he had to know.

“Actually, there is no way you could argue this wasn’t my fault. I’ve never seen you pass out from Seeing someone before.”

“No, this is your fault.” He had to have been projecting as hard as he could when he grabbed her hand. “But not Scout or Charlie or Alex or any of it. It’s not your fault.”

“Talley—”

“It’s not your fault, Jase. Life sucks. We’ll punch it in the throat together.”

“You’re not punching anyone, anywhere right now,” he said, putting an arm under her shoulders, helping her to her feet. “Come on. Let’s get you to your room.”

He was no longer dumping the entire contents of his head into hers, but he wasn’t exactly being quiet with his thoughts. And now that her brain was back in the thinking game, she was Seeing him in all his beautiful, damaged glory, and it made her love him even more. How did he walk around every day with that much guilt and self-loathing and still make the world believe he was okay? If you would’ve asked Talley just minutes ago, she would have told you he was better than okay. He was Jase, for the love of all things shiny. Of course he was okay.

But he wasn’t. He blamed himself for everything that had happened over the last year, and he knew with the type of deep conviction he normally reserved for the name of the best basketball team in the world (University of Kentucky Wildcats) and best pizza topping (ham and pineapple) that Talley would hate him the moment she touched him and realized he was responsible for all the tragedies and stress they had endured.

Talley thought about explaining how stupid he was, but since she now knew about his academic insecurities she thought it might not be a good idea.

“Jase, stop.” He tried to drag her back towards her dorm, but she planted her feet and refused to move. “Stop. Look at me.”

This is it
, he thought.
Time to face the music
.

“It’s not your fault.” Jase tried to look away, but Talley put a hand on his cheek and turned his face back towards her. Even with all the drama of the moment, the contact caused a pack of butterflies to take up residence in her stomach. Her heart stuttered as another cluster of thoughts and emotions coursed through her, but she pushed them aside. She could try to process that little bombshell later. These thoughts and emotions - this conversation - was more important.

When Jase was finally looking her in the eye, she said it again. “It’s not your fault, Jase.” His eyes turned a startling shade a green behind the tears welling up. She knew she would fall apart if one of them fell and wanted to say something witty or clever to lighten the mood, but she didn't. This had to be done. “Bad stuff happened. Bad stuff is still happening. You made some bad choices. But you know what? So did I. So did Scout, Alex, and Charlie. Do you blame me for keeping Scout and Alex a secret? Is it my fault that I insisted on staying with you guys, causing my parents to go to the Alphas? Do you blame me, Jase?”

“No, but—”

“It’s not different, so don’t even say it,” Talley said, dropping her hand from his cheek, but immediately grabbing onto his hand. It wasn’t because she wanted to See him, but because she needed to touch him. “If you want to blame someone, either blame all of us, or none of us.”

“I wish I could go back and do it all over again.” He swept a hand underneath his eyes to keep the moisture in check. “I would do things differently. I would be different.”

“So would I,” she said, and then because she could for the first time in a year, she threw herself into his arms.

For a day that started with sneaking a girl out of his dorm and having an emotional breakdown on the sidewalk, the rest of Jase’s day was rather surreal in its normality. Despite all the other stuff going on in his life, he was still a college student with lectures to sit through, papers to write, and an entire book of algebra to teach himself. It was nearly midnight when he finally made it back to his dorm after a long night tucked into a study corral at the library.

For the first hour he just lay there, trying to figure out how it was that after all this time he’d finally been brave enough to let Talley See him. Was it Joshua’s ultimatum? The realization that he was hurting her by being a coward? Or was it just a frantic attempt to wipe the look of defeat out of her eyes. Honestly, he couldn’t remember. Maybe because it wasn’t a conscious decision. He just did it, and then it was over and Talley was saying all the words he didn’t deserve to hear.

And none of the ones he wanted to hear.

Eventually fatigue overwhelmed him and pulled him under. He woke up two hours later with someone poking him in the shoulder.

Poke. “Jase.”

Poke. Poke. “Jase.”

He cracked one eyelid open to see Talley leaning over him, her hair falling forward to obscure her face enough that he couldn’t really see the expression there.

“What’s wrong?” As he sat up he was already making plans in his head. He had a bag packed and ready if they needed to hit the road. He hadn’t been keeping up with the weather like Liam had told him to, but it was August. It wasn’t exactly like they were going to hit snow anywhere along the way. He would have Talley look and make sure there were no storms between Lexington and wherever it was they were going. As long as she wasn’t here to tell him someone was dead, he was ready to handle whatever it was.

“Nothing! Nothing is wrong.” She sat down on the edge of his bed and flipped a strand of hair around her finger. Suddenly, he was feeling even more anxious than when he thought the Alphas were coming for them. “Can we talk?”

“At three in the morning?”

Talley nodded.

He thought that since opening up to her that morning he would never shy away from her touch again, but he found he didn’t have the mental fortitude to let her See him now. He repositioned himself on the bed, making certain no part of him could accidentally brush up against any part of her.

“So, what do you want to talk about at this fine hour? TV? Music? Basketball?” He felt Guido wedged between his arm and the wall and considered clutching onto the little sock monkey for some moral support. That would have made him look all kinds of cool and macho. “I think the team this year looks promising, although they’re probably all a little nervous about having to move forward without me.”

Talley completely ignored the fact that he’d spoken. “Jase, you think you’re in love with me.”

So she had gotten that out of his head with all that other stuff. Well, at least he knew now and didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

“Talley, I don’t think I’m in love with you.”

Even in the dark with only the street lights shining through the window to illuminate the room he could see the uncertainty in her eyes. “But I Saw—”

“I know I’m in love with you. The verb is similar, but the difference is an important one.”

She just sat there unmoving for what felt like an eternity. He wanted to scream at her to say something already. There was nothing as painful as this anticipation. The not knowing was going to kill him.

“I won’t be one of your girls,” she finally said.

He thought he’d been smart and kept himself from hoping, but he was wrong. He knew he was wrong because at that moment he felt all the hope he didn't know he was holding onto die a quick and painful death just below his ribcage.

“I understand,” he somehow managed to say without bursting into tears like a two year old girl.

“Do you?”

Was she really going to torture him by laying out all the ways he wasn’t good enough for her? Didn’t she realize he already knew? Hell, if she wanted him to, he would write a ten page paper detailing his inadequacies. He would do anything if she would just leave and let him fall apart in peace.

“If we do this,” she continued, “you can’t just toss me aside tomorrow because you get bored. I’m not a plaything or an experiment on what it would be like to sleep with a fat girl—”

“Do
not
call yourself fat.” He wasn’t really understanding anything else she was saying, but he wasn’t going to let anyone put her down like that, including Talley herself.

“I’m a person, Jase. And my heart may not be worth much to anyone else, but it’s mine, and I will protect it with everything I have, so don’t say you want to do this unless you’re serious about it—”