Darkness Bound (38 page)

Or, as he’d realized during his trek through the jungle, he might get lucky and be killed in the invasion. The thought of death in battle—where he could, at least, take down as many of the colony’s enemies as possible before forfeiting his own life—was the one thing that had ultimately made him turn back. He could use a few people to kill right about now.

He was aware that his reaction to Jacqueline’s leaving had blown far past Shakespearean levels of melodrama into the ridiculous, but he didn’t give a damn. She was gone. His life was over. Whether he eventually died of a broken heart or at the business end of a gun was just splitting hairs.

So whoever was calling his name could go right on doing so until his tongue fell out. Hawk wasn’t moving from this spot. A rock sailed over the edge of the porch railing, bounced off the mattress, and landed in the middle of his chest with a painful
thud
.

He leapt up with a muttered oath, rock in hand, and went to the railing, snarling in fury. He leaned over, arm cocked back to retaliate, but restrained himself when he saw who it was.

“The Queen wants to see you,” said Zaca, peering up at him from the forest floor below. “Says it’s important.”

The Queen. Another strategic planning meeting, no doubt. He didn’t know why their enemies hadn’t attacked yet, but when they got here, they were in for a big bloody surprise, he knew that.

The story of what Hope and Honor had done to Caesar had spread like wildfire through the colony. People were talking about them as if they were weapons of mass destruction, which Hawk thought they probably were. When he wasn’t thinking about Jacqueline, he was thinking about Olivia Sutherland’s face when she said “The children can take care of themselves.”

Gave him the willies. Didn’t matter, though. Everything that mattered had walked out of his life. And didn’t even remember him, anyway.

Zaca waved his hands overhead. “Hey—you listening to me, old man?”

Hawk didn’t even have the energy to return the playful insult with one of his own. He nodded and withdrew, leaving Zaca to stare up with a worried look, until he wandered off, hands stuffed into the pockets of his shorts.

Hawk dressed in no particular hurry, then headed out.

When he arrived at the Queen’s residence, he was welcomed by Morgan. “Has your shoulder healed yet?” she asked, her expression revealing nothing.

He nodded. “Why?”

“Oh, just wondering. C’mon in.” He followed her through the house to the living room, where Leander was standing with his arms crossed, behind Jenna, on the settee. Both of them were staring at a satellite television screen.

The image on the screen was frozen. It was Jacqueline.

She stood behind a Plexiglas podium in front of a large crowd of seated people. A view of trees and greenery loomed open behind her, light reflected off wide expanses of glass. A title at the bottom of the screen read, “Live from the
New York Times
offices, reporter Jacqueline Dolan.”

A press conference.

His heart seized. His stomach clenched. He wanted to say something but all that came out of his mouth was a choked noise of shock.

“You’ll want to see this,” Jenna said without turning around. “It was recorded just an hour ago.”

Leander looked at him, gestured to a chair. The expression in his eyes, Hawk noted, was one of faint amusement.

He sank into the chair, grateful he no longer had to stand because his knees had started to shake.

Jenna pushed a button on the remote control in her hand, and the image sprang to life. Jacqueline’s soft voice filled the room.

“Thank you all for coming. I won’t take up too much of your time, and I won’t be taking questions. After today, this is the last time I’ll speak publicly on this subject.”

She paused and gazed down at the podium, her hands gripping tightly on either side, her chest rising and falling erratically. She looked wan and exhausted, with purple bruises of sleeplessness beneath her eyes. He drank in the sight of her like one who’s gone too long without water, gasping and gulping it down, until something made him blink.

Were those drops of
blood
on the collar of her white blouse?

Stomach in knots, he leaned forward in his chair.

She looked up, stared slowly around the room at the gathered faces, then focused her gaze directly into the camera. “Someone recently accused me of being a bigot. And . . . he was right.”

The clicking of camera shutters. The lights on her face, searingly bright.

“There are few things in life more difficult than seeing yourself objectively, especially when what you might see if you look too closely is something ugly, or painful, or small. I thought I knew everything about myself. I thought I was a good person. But it took forgetting everything to remember that I
wasn’t
a good person. In fact . . .” She swallowed, blinking into the glare. “I’m ashamed of myself. The things I’ve said and done have spread misunderstanding and distrust, prejudice and hatred, and if I could take them all back, I would.”

The silence in the amphitheater was deafening. Hawk’s heart was clenching and twisting, and he put his hand over his chest, pressing hard against his sternum as if it could help.

“I owe an apology to those I’ve harmed with my ignorance. The op-ed I wrote—“The Enemy Among Us,” for which I was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize—is so filled with ugliness it disgusts me now to read it. The people it maligns are not deserving of such a thing. In fact, I think it safe to say they’re deserving of nothing less than our utmost respect and admiration. They’re different from us, yes. Their ways are foreign and their culture strange, but that only means we should work harder to understand them, and find ways to bridge our differences so we can live together in peace.”

Hawk closed his eyes, struggling for air, sick and aching and so swamped with longing he wanted to scream.

“This planet doesn’t only belong to the human race. It belongs to every living creature on it. Equality isn’t an ideal that can be applied according to the whim of popularity, or toward one race or gender or species in lieu of another. We either believe in equality for all—
all
—and strive toward that . . . or we’re nothing but a bunch of hypocrites.”

There was another beat of silence after she stopped speaking. Then the room erupted into noise, everyone shouted at once, questions were volleyed, cameras clicked furiously.

“There’s one last thing I’d like to say.” Jack held up a hand and the roar slowly dulled to a restless murmur.

The cameras zoomed in tight on her face so it filled the screen. Pale skin, dusted with freckles. Bloodshot eyes fringed in a curve of brown lashes. Her mouth, the lower lip full and trembling. She inhaled a long, deep breath, nostrils flaring, and for a gut-wrenching moment Hawk thought she might cry.

Instead she said in a steady, soft voice, those blue eyes burning, “Lucas Eduardo Tavares Castelo Luna, you underhanded son of a dung beetle . . . I love you. With all my heart and soul, I love you. I’m not a religious person, but because of you, I believe in miracles. You taught me how to be loved. I never knew what that meant before, I was too busy feeling terrible and hating myself and thinking that’s the way things were always going to be, but you gave me the gift of yourself and a glimpse of happiness, and for that I want to say thank you.”

She bit her lower lip. Her eyes filled with tears. Her voice breaking, she said, “Knowing you made me a better person. I’ll always be grateful I met you. And I’ll always be yours.”

She turned and ran off the stage.

The room leapt to its feet, the reporters shouting questions, shooting pictures, surging toward the stage to get one last, final picture of her before she disappeared through a side door. A team of newscasters behind a desk came on to comment on the broadcast, and Jenna pushed a button on the remote, plunging the television screen into darkness. She rose, turned to look at Hawk, and smiled. “So, what did you think? Interesting speech, wasn’t it?”

He stood unsteadily. His chest felt constricted, as if an invisible winch was tightening around it, and he couldn’t catch his breath. He thought for one wild, deranged moment he was having a heart attack.

Jacqueline remembered. She remembered everything.

And she loved him.

He stammered, “I . . . I . . .”

“I know,” said the Queen, moving to the other side of the room. She stopped beside Leander, glancing up at him with a smile. When she looked back at Hawk, her whole face was alight. “Go,” she urged softly, resting her head on Leander’s chest. “If you catch a good tailwind, you’ll be in New York by nightfall.”

Hawk made a noise that was somewhere between a sob and a laugh, then put his hand to his face, rubbing his jaw. He nodded, looking between Jenna, Leander, and Morgan, who was grinning mischievously.

Without another word, he Shifted to Vapor and surged out of the room and into the sky, leaving his clothes behind in a pile on the Queen’s living room floor.

The carton of noodles with spicy garlic sauce was empty, as was the carton of curry dumplings, the box of veggie rolls, and the container of pad thai, which Jack normally didn’t order because it tasted vaguely of pork. She suspected those small, meaty chunks Mr. Hsu at her favorite Chinese place always claimed were fried tofu were, in fact, of animal origin.

Tonight, consuming things of animal origin seemed like a perfectly rational idea. Right up there with ruining your career, conducting a weepy confessional on national television, becoming the laughingstock of everyone you ever knew, and realizing you’d lost the love of your life because you were, one: suffering from amnesia, and two: a complete jerk.

“Maybe no one will recognize me in Iceland,” Jack muttered, looking up at the moon hanging in the night sky. Cold and remote, it stared balefully back through her apartment windows. “Or . . . Costa Rica.”

Yes. Costa Rica. Better than Iceland. Less ice.

She’d finally convinced Nola she’d spent enough time away from her own life and should return to it, and that
no
, she was in no danger of slitting her wrists. Nola had gone grudgingly, threatening to call first thing in the morning, though she’d already texted her three times in the past three hours.

Instead of walking to China Palace as Jack normally would have, she’d asked the restaurant to deliver the food because there were still two news vans parked outside her apartment building, filled with reporters waiting to pounce. And now she was sitting on the floor in the living room, with her back against the wall, surrounded by empty food containers, wondering why she’d never had the sense to buy more furniture.

“Because you didn’t need it, that’s why,” she said aloud to the empty room. “You were never home.”

Home. Now there was a concept. For the first time in her life she knew where home really was.

The same place her heart was. With Hawk.

Just thinking his name hurt. She squeezed her eyes shut, took a few deep breaths, then pushed herself up to her feet, leaving the cartons behind. She wandered through the dim, silent apartment, went to stand at the tall windows to look out into the night. Lights in windows and streams of traffic and a skyline forested with skyscrapers . . . New York City was about as different from the rainforest as it was from the moon.

She’d finally called her father. The conversation was awkward. At the end, Jack told him she loved him, and that if he ever again uttered racist, sexist, hateful things about people in her presence that would be the last time he’d see her. He’d gone quiet when she said that; then he’d said, “Okay, Jackie,” and Jack had felt such a surge of relief she wished she’d demanded it years ago.

Then he told her Garrett had finally succeeded in killing himself.

She’d sunk to her knees as he spoke, clutching the phone so hard she thought it might break, every muscle in her body shaking.

“Made himself a rope of thread he’d been pulling from his clothes. Took him over a year to make it, they think. Guess he was determined.”

There was an exposed metal pipe along the ceiling in the communal shower at the mental institution. They’d found him swinging from it, with the rope he’d fashioned with his own hands tight around his neck.

She’d thought she would cry then. Emotion rolled through her, there was an awful constriction in her throat, but the tears wouldn’t come. Finally she’d just said goodbye to her father and ended the call, exhausted.

She’d napped. She’d ordered food. And now she was staring out the window, trying to decide what to do with the rest of her life.

“Hawaii could be good,” she said to the glaring moon. Then, “No, not far enough. But definitely somewhere tropical. Maybe . . . the Caribbean.”

From behind her a low voice said, “What about Brazil?”

She whirled around and there he was, a shadowed presence against the open rectangle of her bedroom door, cat’s eyes shining silver through the dark.

Light coursed through her, pure and blinding bright, and for a moment it was all she could do to stand still and breathe, feeling blood pound in her temples and a happiness so profound she thought it might leak through her pores in drops of sunbeam gold.

“I . . . you . . .” Astonishment was wreaking havoc with her ability to string a sentence together, and she stood there staring at him stupidly, gaping, her body taut with hope and disbelief. “You’re here. You’re
here
.”

“I was in the neighborhood. If a continent south could be considered the neighborhood.”

The sound she made was a weak approximation of a laugh, gutted by shock, and it made his cat eyes flash mercury bright.

“Interesting speech you gave.”

“Oh, you know,” she said, failing to match his offhand tone, “those silly speech writers. Anything for the ratings.”

He stepped away from the door, his gaze scorching the air between them like a lit fuse.

He was nude, and glorious. Had she ever seen a thing so beautiful as him, drenched in moonlight, moving toward her with that predatory gleam in his eye?

She closed her eyes just as he reached her, terrified he might be a dream. But then his hand brushed her cheek, his thumb traced the curve of her lower lip, and everywhere he touched it felt like he left a trail of fire.

He was no dream. He was here. Her rigid disbelief gave way and she was wracked with trembling.

“Yes. I’m sure the ratings were amazing,” he murmured, moving closer. “That was quite a show, Red. About-face of the century.” He radiated heat, standing so close now she felt his warmth straight through her clothes, burning her chest and stomach. He put his lips to her ear and in a thick voice said, “I especially liked the end part.”

“I thought that would be a good touch,” she whispered. His hands came around her waist. She wound her arms up around his shoulders, broad and bare and strong. “More dramatic, you know.”

He angled his head, gazing down at her with a scant smile, fire burning in his eyes. “For the ratings.”

His hands tightened around her waist and she said his name, a catch in her throat. Her pulse was a jagged throb in her neck. He dipped his head and pressed his lips against the throbbing vein. “Say it again, Jacqueline,” he whispered, his lips moving against her skin. “I want to hear you say it again.”

Her head fell back. Her eyes slid shut. He pressed his mouth against her neck, teeth and tongue and wonderful sucking, and she felt a jolt of electricity straight down to the soles of her feet. Gasping, she said, “I’m yours.”

He chuckled, a sound with an edge to it like a purr. An arm snaked around her waist, pulling her hard against him, a hand tightened in her hair.

“No, that wasn’t quite it.” Lips, velvet soft and teasing, brushed against hers. “Try again.”

He slid his tongue across her lower lip, that hand still tight in her hair, holding her head, and for a moment she thought her knees might give way altogether, so intense was the pleasure and emotion. She tried to speak, but all that came out was the smallest of sounds, a low, choked sob.

He took her face in his hands and demanded, “Jacqueline.
Say it again
.”

With the first of the tears burning her eyes, she whispered, “I’ll
always
be yours.”

Then he kissed her, hard, until her breath was short and she was clinging to him, shaking so badly she was shaking him, too. He broke away, panting.

“That’s right,” he growled, lifting her up in his arms in one swift, smooth motion, one arm supporting her back, the other hooked under her knees. “I lay claim to you, woman. You’re mine, and you always will be, and there’s nothing in this world that’s ever going to separate us again.”

Jack buried her face into his neck and sobbed. He swung around and carried her into the bedroom, laid her on the bed, tore off her clothes, and kissed her everywhere until her sobs turned to moans. Still the tears didn’t stop, even when he came between her legs and pushed inside her, even as he told her everything he felt for her, how much he loved her, how he’d thought he would die when she’d left, his eyes rapt on her face, his body moving inside hers.

When finally the culmination burst over her in a blazing white flare, she cried out his name, her body bowed with a pleasure so acute it was almost agony.

He pumped deep, hard and rough, letting his hips take over as she met his every thrust with her hips, coaxing him to where she wanted him to go. Then he stilled, his entire body flexed, and he moaned, his head thrown back, eyes closed.

She felt it deep inside her—throbbing, a spreading heat—then he shuddered.

“Say it again,” he begged, his voice broken. “Please—Jacqueline—”

“Always, only yours,” she wept, pulling him down with her hands on his face so they were staring into each other’s eyes as he twitched and groaned, his beautiful face flushed, dark hair falling over his forehead, down his cheeks. “Forever.”

He collapsed against her, wrapped his arms so hard around her she wondered briefly if there would be bruises. He kissed her wet face, her mouth, her eyes, turned his face against her so her tears dampened his cheeks, too. He said hoarsely into her ear, “You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, or ever will.”

And her heart, her poor hummingbird heart that had been broken so long ago and kept in a dark little box behind a thousand locked doors, was finally free.

Hawk had set her heart free, and it was soaring.

Jacqueline woke as the horizon was turning faintly pale in the east, and shifted her head on his arm. When she opened her eyes there was a moment of confusion, then recognition, and then they blazed with a heat that made his soul sing.

“I was having the most wonderful dream.” She burrowed closer to him beneath the blankets, and he pressed a kiss to her forehead, stroking his hand over the smooth satin curve of her hip.

“Hmm.” He nuzzled his nose into her neck, inhaling the sweet, soft scent that rose from her skin. Though he was tired from his flight, and hours of lovemaking, he couldn’t fall asleep; instead had just watched her all night, marveling.

Love. It burned hot as a swallowed sun within him.

“We were on a sailboat, out in the open sea. It was sunny and warm and the water was this amazing, crystal blue, and we were sailing right into the most beautiful sunset, all crimson and orange and purple and gold. You were feeding me figs, sips of wine, little bites of cheese—”

“A picnic on a sailboat at sunset. I had no idea you were so romantic,” he teased.

She blinked up at him, coy. “I’m super romantic, buddy. You’re going to have to invest in some poetry writing classes and guitar lessons, because I have high expectations. I mean, you can’t just throw me over your shoulder and toss me into bed every time the mood hits.”

He said, “Watch me.”

She pretended to pout. “I need some wooing, cave man! I deserve to be wooed!”

He rose up on one elbow and stared down into her face. He said quietly, “I want to spend every second of every day for the rest of my life with you, finding out what makes you happy, and doing it. I want you to have my children, and grow old with me, and love me until the day you die. I want to protect you from harm, and I will kill anyone or anything that ever hurts you. I want to shower you in love and worship you and I promise there won’t be a day that goes by that I won’t tell you how much you mean to me. I want you to be my wife. Will you marry me?”

She breathed, “Oh,” and her eyes went wide.

He raised his brows, waiting for her answer. She nodded. He said, “Good. Consider yourself wooed.”

He kissed her, feeling the curve of her smile against his mouth. Then he rolled over and pulled her atop him, cradling her to his chest.

After a while, she whispered, “Okay, I admit that was some pretty great wooing.”

He stroked her hair off her face and shoulders, smoothed it down her back. They lay in silence for a while, watching the streetlights wink out with the first rays of dawn, until his gaze settled on an embroidered square of fabric hung in a frame on the wall. It was the only thing on any of the walls in her apartment, which suggested it held sentimental value. Which made him curious.

“You a big fan of Edgar Allan Poe?”

Her laugh was sweet and low. “I am now.” She lifted her head and looked at him. “But I wasn’t before. Morgan gave that to me. Remember, the present with the white bow? I think she made it herself, but I can’t be sure. She didn’t say.”

He looked again at the patch of fabric, stitched with a quote.

The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.

“He was a smart man, ahead of his time,” Hawk murmured, trailing his fingers up the gentle bumps of her spine. “ ‘Hope of the world made new,’ indeed.”

“Wait—you’re not telling me he was one of you . . . are you?”

He smiled at her. “One of these days I’ll make you a complete list. But in the meantime, we’re going to have to decide where to live.”

“Oh. Well . . . why not the colony?”

His hand on her skin stilled. “You would live there with me? Leave your life here behind?”