Page 54 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

Jasper grunted his agreement. They both knew it was only a matter of time before someone found one of their books and discovered the communication inside them, but that was the whole point. Jasper would never be one of the literary greats. His education had been cut too short, his time too taken up in physical toil. He’d never be able to say even a fraction of the things he felt in his heart.

But for a few lines, for a little while, he got to pretend. In his own meager way, he got to write his love story down.

“Just don’t be surprised if he starts quoting Edgar Allen Poe at you,” Jasper said by way of warning. “And don’t—”

She glanced up at him, her head tilted in an innocent query. “Don’t what?” she asked.

It had been on the tip of his tongue to tell her not to fall for it—not to fall for William—but he knew better than to make the attempt. He’d read enough of the books to know how therealstories ended.

Not with happily ever after. Not for a man like him.

“Don’t encourage him to pick up D. H. Lawrence,” he said with a huff. “He’s the exact sort to think the scandal is the point.”

19

1960

The spot by the river where Jasper and Catherine met on the sly was as rustic as it sounded.

Jasper had discovered it on one of his many walks through the forest, a habit he’d gotten into when he’d first moved to Colville and hadn’t known a single soul outside of his logging crew. The habit had stuck during the three years he’d continued in his post. It wasn’t that he didn’tlikethe other guys on the crew, but he had a hard time finding a common ground with them.

To be fair, he had a hard time finding common ground with anyone, but that wasn’t the barrier. The barrier was that the people he worked with were rough men, tired men—men who’d been forced to trade their strength and youth for a paycheck that, more often than not, fell short of a living wage. They drank and fucked like tomorrow could very easily be their last day on earth, preferring the shortsighted perks of the coarse-minded over the long-term benefits of a well-read mind.

“I had no idea you were such a snob.” Catherine laughed as she lay in his arms, sipping from a thermos filled with strong coffee and evenstronger spirits. “How can you look down on men for drinking and fucking when it’s the same thing you literally just did?”

Jasper shook his head as he watched some of the whiskey-laced coffee slide down the side of Catherine’s lipstick-smeared mouth. She dashed a quick tongue out to catch the drop, but she missed a spot. Naturally, he had to finish the job she’d started, so it was a good five minutes before they were able to get back on topic. By then, he’d not only forgotten the question, but he was pretty sure he’d forgotten all the answers, too.

“How did you find this place, anyway?” Catherine asked with a crooked smile made all the more lopsided for the lipstick that was evenmoresmeared now. “A cabin like this must belong to someone. What makes you so sure the owners won’t come back?”

Jasper cast a look around the dilapidated shack—he refused to buy into Catherine’s optimism and call it acabin—and snorted. It had a roof and four walls, it was true. There was a bed and a fireplace and, thanks to Jasper’s painstaking efforts, enough chopped wood and supplies to survive for a few weeks, should the need arise. He’d also built a bookshelf where he kept the few books he actually owned. He dreaded the moment when Catherine’s curiosity took over her languid, feline sleepiness and she looked closer at his collection. He felt pretty sure she’d laugh outrageously over each of the titles he’d gathered over the years—all his favorites, and all books she was likely to eschew as romantic nonsense. Unless you counted Beth March succumbing to scarlet fever or Matthew Cuthbert being carried off by a heart attack, there wasn’t much death anywhere in those pages.

“The owners won’t come back because no one in their right mind would want to live here,” he explained when she cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at him.

“You would.”

He gave a small start.

She giggled. “You can’t fool me, Jasper. You’d give up everythingto come live out here in the woods like a hermit, chopping wood and growing your food and refusing to have any communication with the outside world.” She paused before adding, “In fact, I’m curious why you haven’t done that already. You’re already nine-tenths a hermit. Why not take the final step?”

“I can’t,” he said simply.

Just as simply, she answered. “Why?”

Jasper sucked in a sharp breath, wondering—not for the first time—why this woman’s soft, sweet brevity so unnerved him. In anyone else, her ability to cut straight to the heart of the matter would send him running for the hills. In Catherine, he only felt himself to be at peace for the first time in his life.

She didn’t play games, his Catherine. She teased and taunted. She pulled him so far out of his comfort zone that he was pretty sure the only thing holding him up at this point was a wisp of a cloud that would disperse at the first strong wind. She made love easily and joyfully, and for no reason that Jasper could discern other than because she wanted to. But never, in all the time they’d been writing back and forth, had she been anything but herself.

So even though it pained him—even though his heart suddenly started beating as though it would grow wings and fly straight out of his chest—he told her the truth.

“My life isn’t my own,” he said. “It never has been.”

“What do you mean? Like the company you work for? Are you…indentured?”

“In a manner of speaking,” he admitted, scrubbing a hand over the rough landscape of his jaw. No matter how many times he shaved, his shadow seemed to reside at a permanent five o’clock. The trick came in handy when he needed to give off the air of a man who didn’t want to be bothered, but he sometimes wished he didn’talwayslook so weathered. He’d barely been able to hold on to any sort of childhood as it was.

“Do you owe them money or something?” Catherine persisted. “Because if you do—”

He interrupted her before she went any further down that particular road. “I have a family back home,” he admitted. “A big one.”