JACK
Please, stop.
The words I said to Sage rattled around in my brain, even while my lips were still pressed to hers. I wanted to get lost in those lips; I wanted to pull her closer, to pick up her slender frame and carry her over to that four-poster bed.
Please, stop.
Jack. Stop.
Jack. What are you doing? You can’t do this.
STOP!
I pulled back abruptly, mid-kiss. Sage didn’t look surprised, not this time, and I wondered what was going through her mind. I wanted to keep going. I wanted to kiss her for hours. If she knew how badly I wanted to ….
But I couldn’t let her see that—couldn’t let her see any of it. Because this could never happen again. I wouldn’t have the strength to stop myself again, and we were not meant to be.
We couldn’t be.
Not with Vasterias. Not with the possibilities, the risk.
Sage would be worse off with me. She’d grow to hate me once she saw the person I was inside.
I wanted to tell her so badly what she’d done for me, how she’d saved me, how she gave me hope that I could actually live, even if it were without her and Beckett.
Why couldn’t I tell her all of that? Why couldn’t I just say it?
The problem was, for a half-second, I’d let myself hope.
Maybe we could make it work. Maybe I could be with her.
That bracelet on her wrist had done me in. Against her olive skin, it sparkled in the soft light of the room, and I felt a deep lonesomeness, stemming from so many years ago.
I remembered an image of my mom wearing that bracelet, too. She stood in the kitchen, chopping apples for Beckett and me. She turned to hand us our bowls, she smiled at us, and the bracelet sparkled in the sunlight coming through the kitchen window. In that moment, I felt her unconditional love.
And sitting there in that hotel room chair, the lonesomeness for that feeling hit me full force. I missed her unconditional love. The emotion nearly took my breath away.
And then, there was Sage, standing in front of me, wearing that golden bracelet. The girl who, aside from Beckett and Caesar, was probably the next closest human being I’d ever felt that type of love from. On the island, she just kept coming back, again and again, to break down my walls. Not giving up on me, not letting me go, staying vulnerable even when I gave her nothing in return ….
And that’s why I reached for her.
I didn’t know how to say that she’d saved me … she saved me from having to die, saved me from myself.
I just wanted for time to stop. I didn’t want the moment to go away.
And then I was kissing her, without even thinking. Maybe that was my problem.
I wasn’t thinking.
After I pulled away, Sage retreated into the bathroom, closing the door behind her without looking back.
I sighed, slumping down into the chair. I rubbed my face to try to focus my thoughts.
Why did I do things that hurt people? In ways I never intended?
I know Mom wouldn’t be proud of all I’d become.
But I vowed to myself.
I would make it up to Mom. I would make her proud. I would do right by my brother and by Sage.
You will not touch her anymore. You will not lead her on. You will not give into your feelings or desires. No more. She deserves better.
I kneaded the back of my neck. I needed to cool down.
At the phone in the corner, I dialed 0.
A chipper voice answered, surprising, seeing as it was the middle of the night.
“Room service,” the voice said.
“Yes, could you please send up a bucket of ice to room 712?”