Page 65 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

“I want you to know that these past few months have been the greatest ones of my life,” she said in a voice that didn’t waver even once. She extended her hand, but Jasper didn’t reach for it. He couldn’t. Moving was out of the question, touching her even more so.

“Naturally, William has asked that you and I stop seeing each other. Considering his position and what he’s doing for me, I think he may be right.” She paused and frowned, her hand still outstretched. “Please shake my hand. I need you to be okay with this. I need you to move on.”

“Move on?” he echoed blankly. “Move on towhat?”

He was on his feet then, standing over her but somehow still so small.

“There isn’t anything else for me, Catherine,” he said as he raked his hands through his hair, desperate to hold on to something but knowing, despite her proffered hand, that she was no longer an option. “You’re it. You’re everything. If you leave—”

“Jasper, I was always going to leave,” she interrupted, her voice slicing right through him. “You know that as well as I do. The only difference now is that I get to take a part of you with me when I go.”

He felt the whole of the world leaking out from the wound her words left behind. Not because what she was saying was wrong, but because she was right. He’d always known that he couldn’t keep Catherine, that she was only on loan to him for however long fate decided to smile on him, but he’d always assumed she’d be moving on to the life she wanted—the big city lights and exciting adventures, the world just waiting for her to take a crack at it.

Not the same drudgery her mother had settled for. Not WilliamfuckingMcBride.

“Say something,” she pleaded. “I can’t leave until I know you’re going to be okay.”

He wanted to give her what she was asking for—he really did. He knew that the best thing he could do for her was to let her go, to allow her to move on to the next chapter of her life with an easy conscience, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t going to be okay, and no amount of lying to her—or to himself—would change that.

“Do you remember when you asked me what my favorite book was?” he said. He didn’t wait for her answer. “I wouldn’t tell you because I knew you’d laugh at me. You’d want to write notes in the margins.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” she asked, her brows drawing together.

It was the worst possible thing. She was already so much a part of that story that he’d never be able to look at it the same way again.

“‘Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad,’” he quoted, his throat raw. “‘Only do not leave me in this abyss where I can not find you.’”

Her eyes narrowed with recognition of the line, pulled straight from the pages ofWuthering Heights. Instead of mocking him for his choice—one of the English language’s most disastrously romantic works, a book about lovers who destroy each other from the moment of their first meeting—she lowered her hand and took a step back, a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth.

In the long silence that ensued, the rest of the quote stood pulsingbetween them, so much a presence that neither one of them needed to hear them spoken aloud.

Oh God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!

She was the first to break that silence. “That’s not fair, Jasper.”

He knew it wasn’t. None of this was.

“I’m doing this for you—for your whole family,” she insisted “You have to understand. If I stayed—if I asked you to—”

She cut herself off and turned away, but not before he saw the angry way she dashed her hand at her eyes. “God, what a fool I am. I should’ve known you’d turn this into some romantic melodrama instead of seeing it for what it really is.”

Her words hurt him, but not nearly as much as the way she held herself, as if poised for flight. It almost felt like she was afraid he’d try to physically restrain her—or, worse, let her go without any kind of fight at all.

“And what is it?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “In your wise, all-seeing, unromantic view of the world, what’s happening here?”

It took her a full minute to answer. Jasper knew there were a dozen different ways he could have filled those sixty seconds. With weeping, perhaps, or a Heathcliff-like fury that lashed them both with its sting. By getting on his knees and being every inch the dramatic, lovesick sap she was accusing him of being.

But he didn’t. He stood in stony silence and waited for her to say the words out loud.

“It’s real life, Jasper. That’s all. Not some dark horror story I get to read as a way to avoid my humdrum existence, and not some sweet tale of redemption you can pretend waits for you in the future. It’s just two people who made a mess and now have to deal with the consequences.”

It was the cruelest thing she could have said to him, and she knew it.

So he said the cruelest thing he could think of back.

“He’ll make you miserable,” he warned, his voice surprisingly calm considering the way his whole soul was tearing apart inside. “He’ll make you miserable every day of your life until one day he doesn’t. Then and only then will you realize what you’ve done.”

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