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~Waylon’s POV~
I glared at the counter, my emotions ranging from pure excitement to downright bitterness. Josie was back. She was healthy, all things considered. She wasn’t suffering in some prison cell, she wasn’t starving on the streets, or wasting away in a hospital bed as a Jane Doe. She wasn’t in a coma or decomposing in an unmarked grave.
She was alive, she was healthy, she was safe.
She was here.
The fact that she wasn’t Josie anymore didn’t settle well with me. The information sat heavily in my stomach, clawing at my insides, taunting me with the fact that she was right there, but she wasn’t at the same time. I couldn’t even process the fact that these things—these fae—existed in the first place. It all sounded too fantastical.
The elderly man behind the counter at the restaurant cleared his throat, grabbing my attention. He eyed me with caution. I sighed and sat in one of the chairs lined against the glass window, doing my best to steady my leg so as to not show the anxiety I felt.
I had to stay stoic. I needed to remain clear-headed.
And I needed to get back as soon as possible. Foster normally kept himself restrained, going at things with an analytical mind—except when it came to Josie. There was no telling what he was doing without anyone there to chaperone him. He finally had her, and I worried what kind of promises he’d make, what he’d be willing to do to make sure he didn’t lose her again.
My phone buzzed, and I answered without looking.
“Yeah.”
“How’s it going?” Jason asked.
“You’d know if you didn’t throw a tantrum and run away like that.”
He was silent for a moment. “I know.”
“Do you? Because we discussed this. You needed to remain coolheaded.”
“She dumped us. She up and left us for ten years to go to some fucking place that shouldn’t exist. And then she waltzes back into our lives like this, disrupting everything. Fuck no. Just no.”
I thought over my words carefully, trying to find an explanation that made sense. It was hard. I didn’t have all the facts, and I hated going into things as blindly as this. “I think,” I said carefully, “we don’t have all our facts. We’re led to believe one thing, but I think there is so much more information that we are missing. There’s something we’re missing.”
“You heard her. She’s been living it up in Faerie. She didn’t even plan to reach out to us when she came.”
“I also saw her and how broken she is. I agree, Josie’s presence is not ideal. It’s been a long time. We’re finally getting to a point of normalcy, of living without her. Her being back, it’s...”
I didn’t know what it was exactly, but my stomach clenched at the idea of her being around, both in nerves and in fear.
“Her presence easily toppled anything we’d been able to do to get past her,” Jason said.
“We need to talk to her sister.”
Jason snorted. “Madeline hasn’t talked to any of us in nine years. Her parents were very clear that we needed to stay far away from her. That she can’t and won’t help us.”
“She knows what happened. I don’t think Josie will tell us, but I think we can get through to Madeline. We can promise to bring her to Josie. Maybe that will work.”
“You saw Madeline that night,” Jason said. “You saw how destroyed she was when she was found.”
I closed my eyes, remembering Madeline in the hospital. They’d had to restrain her. Her eyes were glassy, she kept screaming for her sister, apologizing, begging to go with her. Whatever happened had ultimately destroyed her. “And that’s exactly why I think we need to talk to her, why we can’t assume that Josie has been living it up in Faerie like she’d like us to think.”
Jason’s silence was all the agreement I was going to get from him.
“Something bad happened to Madeline and to Josie. I want to know what it was. I want all the facts. With Josie around, I think we can finally get them.”
“She’s not going to stay. You heard her. She can’t.”
Bile rose in my throat. “I know.”
“And from the sound of it, it’s impossible for humans to go to her. It sounds like it isn’t a simple doorway to walk through to see her. A hundred years. Our ten to her hundred. If we even try to go see her, and if we can even make it back, how long would have passed?”
“I get it.”
“Do you?” Jason asked. “You have Sofia.”
I blinked as realization dawned on me. Sofia. My very serious girlfriend. “Fuck.”
“Yes, fuck. Did Josie’s presence already make you forget about the woman you’re planning to ask to marry you? You’re building a life, more so than any of us. Don’t fuck it up. Don’t give it up. Because at the end of the day, Josie will solve whatever she’s here for, and then she’s gone. We’re left behind to pick up the pieces that she easily shattered. Foster is already going to be a fucking mess, I know it. You know it. We need to keep our minds clear about this. We need to stick in reality.”
“It’s Josie.”
“And our future.”
Fuck. He was right. I rubbed at my face, trying to figure out how we got to this clusterfuck.
“Your order is ready,” the old man said, grabbing my attention. He frowned at me, a huge bag sitting in front of him.
“I have to go, man. I’m getting them dinner.”
Jason grunted and then hung up, not bothering to say anything else. There wasn’t much else to say. I stared at the home screen of my phone. It was a picture of Sofia and me. It was of our first vacation together last year. We had our arms wrapped around each other. I was looking at the camera, smiling, while she looked at me with more adoration than I knew what to do with. Guilt gnawed at me because since seeing Josie, I hadn’t given Sofia a second thought.
What kind of fucking boyfriend did that make me?
I zoomed in on her features and reality slammed into me hard enough to clench my lungs and freeze my heart. What had I done? How had I not realized it?
Sofia was practically an exact replica of Josie. Long black hair tumbling around her shoulders, deep brown eyes that could look into my soul. Shit. Even her personality. Her stubbornness, her softness. The way she could grasp a situation.
I was dating a replica of Josie. And the bitterness came when I realized she still didn’t compare to the real deal at all.
I was a true bastard, someone I fought to not be my entire life.
As if life wanted to mock me, my phone buzzed as Sofia’s name popped up on the screen. My finger moved before I knew what I was doing, sending her to voicemail. She’d assume I was busy at work, probably in a meeting. No guilt at letting her think that grew in me. I’d let her if it meant she didn’t know what I was doing.
Getting up, scowling hard, I grabbed the plastic bag. The old man paled and stepped back. That pissed me off more. I wasn’t going to hurt anyone. I’d never physically hurt a person.
Apparently, that didn’t stand when it came to a person’s emotions though.
What was I going to do? Knowing what I knew now, I didn’t know how to proceed, not with Sofia, and not with Josie.
What did I want to happen?
