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
“No,” I beg, confusion muddling my already pain-soaked brain. “Hudson, please. Please don’t do it. Don’t make me—”
“What are you doing?” Jaxon demands, shoving to his feet and moving toward us. “Dude, don’t touch her—”
Without ever taking his gaze from mine, Hudson reaches out and explodes a wide fissure in the ground, leaving Jaxon and Macy on one side and