***
Diana and Yvette find Will’s roommate, a mousy boy with big glasses, and tell him what’s happened. He sighs in relief, saying he hates Will, and god bless us for fucking him over. He stays in Diana’s dorm, and they, curiously, stay with him. But I’m too exhausted to be very curious for very long about it.
Jack helps me into my room, and collapses on the bed with me.
And I cry, and he strokes my face and my arms and cries with me.
-14-
2 Years
29 Weeks
3 Days
I’ve decided the sun is out to end me.
A lot of things are out to end me – cancer, teletubbies, general death. But out of all of the dire and dangerous things in this world, the sun has to be the worst of them. It grows our food and keeps us warm in the vast infinite cradle of space-time, so it forces us into the illusion we should be grateful for it, when in fact it is very hard to be grateful to anything blinding your eyes with a cheerful sawblade of ultraviolet rays.
“Ugh,” I roll over on my beach towel. “Can you cool it for, like, five seconds?”
The sun brightly declines. I sip my Barbie-colored fruity drink from a fancy glass and try to pretend it doesn’t exist.
“Where the heckle –” My hands scrabble for my sunglasses, and I shove them on my face. “Ahh, temporary relief. So sweet, so transient, so Gucci.”
“Mademoiselle!” A voice rings out. I groan and sit up, watching Gregory waddle his way through the sands towards me. Even the southern French villagers, used to bright and colorful Mediterranean clothing, stare at his atrocious green-and-orange Hawaiian shirt.
“Gregory, you’re an eyesore,” I complain. Gregory laughs and offers me a hand up, his eyes taking in my white swimsuit with the low-cut back.
“And you, madame, are quite the opposite.”
“No!” I protest as I stand up. “No no no, look at these thighs! I’m far too young to be a madame. Try again in like, a seven thousand years.”
He chuckles. “Very well. Come on, he sent me to fetch you and for some reason he’s antsy as fuck-all.”
“Antsy? Jack?” I quirk a brow, picking up my towel and drink and slipping on my sandals, trudging through the sands with Gregory. “Are we talking about the same human being I’m in regular personal contact with?”
“The one and only.”
“Are you taking him back with you? Please say yes, please! I want those amazing little chocolates from Paris again - I want them with all my crappy idiot heart.”
“God knows you deserve them, putting up with him all the time,” Gregory huffs. “He’s been so off-kilter lately. After that last case, I told him to stay home, but it’s only made him worse.”
“He needs to get out,” I assert. “Put him on a nice case, something that has to do with saving the world or at least, like, non-fatal revenge. That’s his specialty. He’ll love it and I’ll love you for it and my love is, frankly, the most important thing you should be bargaining for here besides oxygen.”
“And French ladies,” Gregory eyes a village woman who passes in a short skirt.
“We have the crème de la crème here,” I agree, and wave at the villagers. “Bonjour! Francois! La bouche un petite chienne! Oh dear, they don’t look happy about that last one.”
“That last one didn’t even make sense,” Gregory emphasizes, and makes little ‘pardon’ noises at the offended nearby villagers. I walk briskly past him and up the cobblestone road. The village is tiny – white-washed, cramped store fronts housing bakeries and butcher shops and candy stores on the street level, and houses on the second level, windowboxes spilling with fresh herbs and flowers. Lines of laundry are thrown between windows, sheets and shirts flapping in the summer breeze. The smell of the ocean is everywhere, children carrying boogeyboards and floats bob and weave between bikes and too-slow couples. A pair of old men in stodgy caps take turns playing chess and drinking wine under the eaves of a flower shop.
Towards the edge of the village the cobblestone fades, replaced with a well-worn dirt road. Tall summer grasses sway on either side. I scoop up yellow and purple and white wildflowers, a honeybee fighting me for a particularly beautiful orange blossom.
“Go on!” I shoo her. “There are a thousand more, you can afford to donate one to the poor humans!”
Gregory chuckles, looking out at the ocean and the small farmhouses we pass.
“I’ll miss this town. You two’ve picked the best place in the world to settle down, I reckon.”
“Hey! No one’s settled! We’re going to Cambodia next year, and we went to Greece this spring! This is home base, not a settlement.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Settlement means like, minivans and baby barf. Home base implies we are explorers of the highest caliber.”
Gregory shakes his head. “Still, this place is fantastic.”
“Oh yeah, it’s great. Fresh honey and bread and lots of fruit in the fall, and I can’t speak a word of French but at least my boyfriend can.” I smack my lips. “Boyfriend. Ugh, that word still tastes funny. There should be another word. Prince, maybe? No, that’s too regal. Significant other? Ugh, too suburban. Buttbear?”
I pause, then turn to Gregory.
“I think I’ve struck gold.”
“Buttbear sounds like a carebear,” He sighs.
“Exactly!”
Gregory and I walk in silence, me skipping and him sticking to the shade of the oak trees. Another farmhouse passes, all white stone and logs and dogs chasing goats around.
“Will gets his parole hearing today,” Gregory tries. My heart stiffens a little, but the warm air is too sweet for it to last for long.
“Yeah. I heard.”
“He won’t get parole, of course,” He adds. “Felonies aren’t easy to appeal, and from what I’ve heard the judge seems very determined to keep him right where he is.”
I smirk, and Gregory smirks back at me.
“I’ve also heard a funny, beautiful girl has a cooking show that’s gotten very popular lately on a certain you of the tubes. Something about…a network approaching her? And a contract?”
I wave him off. “It’s nothing big, really. People just like to watch me slop sauce around and say weird things. That’s pretty much been my entire life. So really they just like to watch my life. Not bad for a girl who got kicked out of college for defacing a Professor’s office, huh?”
“But you make enough to live here,” He presses.
“Yeah. I mean, Jack helps too. A little.”
We share another smirk. Jack helps a lot. Gregory’s business of ‘information dealing’ pays well here in Europe, and now that Jack’s the head of his own cell with Charlie as his co-captain, it pays even better. Politicians and moguls and nosy, jealous husbands always want to know what’s going on with the competition. And sometimes the CIA contacts him, but Jack usually turns them down more than he accepts, for quote, ‘personal reasons pertaining to the fact my lovely girlfriend isn’t in the same country they want me to work in’ endquote. Whatever. He’s a dunce.
“He’s your dunce,” Gregory corrects, and I roll my eyes and run up to the gate that is the entrance to our house.
It can’t really be called a house – more like a run-down shack planted next to a peach tree. The walls are white stone reinforced with wood. The windows are a little crooked and don’t keep much heat in the winter, but our wood stove takes care of that, and the roof never leaks, so it’s the small things that count, really, and also the big things, because we have the biggest claw-foot tub and the fattest gray cat named Oolong sitting in the windowsill sunning himself. I dash up to the door and Oolong raises his head, giving me a thorough and vastly intimidating once-over before purring himself back to sleep.
“The party has arrived!” I herald my own return and throw my towel on the back of the chair and survey the kitchen – seaglass and shells decorate the windowsill by the rusty sink, mugs of morning coff
ee still sitting on the counter next to stringy remnants of the waffle-maker’s mess. I fish around in the fridge and look up as Gregory seats his weary butt at the kitchen table. The chair protests loudly.
“Do you want milk? Fresh from the cows next door. Or, ooh! We still have some wine left from last night.”
“Water will do fine,” Gregory insists. I pour him a glass and pop my head into the living room. My laptop and camera equipment I use to record cooking videos are still in a pile on the ugly yet hella charming paisley couch. Gregory’s makeshift bed, a cat-pee smelling air mattress, takes up the middle of the living room along with his backpack. The wood stove is cold, only used for the chilliest of nights in the summer, and the pile of wood next to it is high. Jack must’ve refilled it.
I tiptoe through the living room and into the bedroom. The door’s open, the queen-sized, brass bed just as unmade as we left it this morning. Jack sits at the desk in front of the windows overlooking the sea, talking to someone on Skype on his laptop. His disheveled tawny hair catches the sun, his lazy sweater and jeans only making his back look broader. But I hardly have time to appreciate it, because at that exact moment I see who he’s talking to.
“…but what if I ask her and –”
“Wren!” I scream, launching myself across the room and hanging over Jack’s shoulder. “Look at you! I can’t believe you’re graduating early, you dumbass! Or, shit, I can’t call you that anymore can I?”
Wren, his glasses perched on his nose and his stubble dark, laughs.
“No, you can’t.”
“I think you should still call him that!” Kayla chimes from behind him, picking lint off his graduation cap. “And hi, you. Love the tan you’re working on.”
“Hi sweetstuff,” I coo back at her. “It’s been too long.”
“Isis, we talked last night.”
“Too long! You should come back. I miss you and the house misses you and the shitbaby cat misses you,” I lament. Jack reaches up and strokes my back with one hand, the other clicking around on Skype.
“Alright you two, I should go,” He says.
“Right! Talk to you later,” Wren smirks.
“Good luck!” Kayla beams. Jack growls and shuts the laptop quickly.
“Hey grumpass! What’s the frown for? Wait, don’t tell me, Oolong took a shit in the bed.”
Jack sighs and entwines his arms around my waist, pulling me into him. “No.”
“Diiiiddd he eat your hair gel again?”
“No,” Jack murmurs, resting his head in the crook of my neck and sniffing my hair. “You smell like ocean.”
“I smell like questions!” I correct, and turn to face him. “What’s got you so worked up, huh? You’ve been out of it for days. And every time I catch you on Skype with Wren you always exit out so quick! Are you two sharing porn? Is this a porn thing? Am I a widow now?”
“He’s going through puberty!” Gregory shouts from the kitchen.
“Shut up!” Jack shouts back, then quickly adds. “Sir!”
Gregory’s chuckles can be heard from here, and I laugh with him, but Jack hugs me close and it’s then I know something’s really wrong.
“Hey, hey you.” I pull away, cupping his face. “If you don’t tell me what’s wrong right now, I’m going to die. And then fly away. Or, wait, reverse those two, I don’t think dead things can fly unless they are zombies slash angels and I am most certainly not an ange-”
Jack’s mouth is so close to my ear. “Marry me.”
I freeze, a horde of icy tingles cascading down my body.
“W-What?”
He groans and nuzzles into my neck. I can feel the blush on his cheeks with my own skin.
“Don’t make me say it twice.”
“Jack, what the fuck –”
“Marry me,” He repeats. “Marry me. I want you to be my wife, Isis. I want you to – I want you to be mine.”
“I am yours, idiot,” I kiss his neck.
“I know. But I want everyone to know. I want your Mom and Dad to come out, and my Mom, and I want Wren and Kayla here, and Diana and Yvette, and Mira and James and Charlie –”
“Ugh, do we have to invite Charlie?”
Jack laughs. “He’ll bring his grandmother. You’ll love her, she’s much better than he is. I just want them all here, with us, I want them to see how happy we are, and I want them to celebrate with us, and I want to see you in a white gown smiling and cutting a cake and being happier than you’ve ever been.”
“I’m happy here! You know that!”
“But you haven’t seen your parents in years. And I haven’t seen mine. Just imagine this house filled up with people –”
“They’d sleep…on the table?”
“ – Imagine the village motel filled with people,” He corrects. “All the people you love. You could show them around, we could go to the beach and do fireworks, you’d make the best cake known to mankind –”
“Every cake I make is the best known to mankind,” I say haughtily. He pokes my belly and I giggle and twist away, but he leans in and captures me again.
“And you’d be…you’d be Isis Hunter. If, shit, if that’s alright with you. You obviously don’t have to, I’m perfectly content being with you forever like this, but I just thought, I don’t know, I just thought –”
I turn and kiss him, shoving him onto the bed and sitting on his stomach playfully.
“Okay. So I marry you. What’s in it for me?”
“I devote myself to you,” He answers, face serious.
“You are already quite devoted,” I smirk, kissing down his jawline and into his collarbone.
“I protect you. As much as a hellion like you needs outside protection.”
I laugh against his chest, and trail my mouth down it.
“I become yours,” he adds. “In every way.”
I kiss the hem of his jeans. “You already are.”
He pulls me up and kisses me hard and fierce, flipping us over and pushing me into the pillows, gently nipping at my ear.
“Then it’s easy, isn’t it? All that’s left is one silly white dress, and a cake, and our families.”
“You just want to see me in a wedding dress,” I snicker. He looks me up and down, and gives me a cocky smirk as he gently snaps the thigh of my swimsuit against my skin.
“Can you blame me?”
“I blame you for everything. World hunger, Ronald Regan, Lady Gaga –” I inhale as he presses his knee between my legs. “ - my current about-to-be-ravished state.”
He laughs, and the sound rings so clear and true in the house I want to kiss him again, and again. Forever. But he knits his lips, instead.
“So, is that a no?”
I lace my arms around his neck and bring him closer to my face.
“Who do you think I am? I’m Isis Blake. I try everything once. Or four times. If it’s cheap enough and tasty enough - ”
Jack’s ice eyes are serious and hard, and I lose my joking edge.
“- and I’d be honored to try marriage with you - ”
Jack smiles.
“- you big stupid idiot.”
THE END
Acknowledgments
~To the readers. To the brave soldiers of broken hearts, who read to the end and endured countless wounds on the way – you are the inspiration of my life. Thank you for making this book more than a book, but a living, breathing thing. You’ve poured so much love into this series, and I can only hope I gave you as much love back. Isis and Jack will always be waiting to welcome you home.
~To Laura, Sarah, the LBs – As always, thank you for believing in the lackluster writer I am. ;)
~To Katie Ashley, Emily Snow, Michelle Valentine, you have been so instrumental in helping me discover this path. Thank you. Your kindness and love has kept me moving forward. A huge, massive, standing applause thank you to Stephanie Higgins at Romance Addict Book Blog. She’s put on every blog tour for me, and has been a lovely, patient, beautiful woman t
o work side-by-side with.
~To the community, reviewers, book bloggers, goodreads librarians – Rock on so hard. Keep rocking until all the rocks in the world turn to sand, and then throw a huge beach party. You’ve earned it. You work so hard for so little, read so many books for so little thanks, and keep your ears and minds and hearts open to each story. I can never thank you enough for your reviews and support. God bless the heckie out of you.
About the Author
Sara Wolf is the author of LOVELY VICIOUS, a dark Young Adult/New Adult series about the war between a fiery girl and an icy boy, both equally damaged. She’s currently working an untitled new Contemporary Romance New Adult about the queen of nerds and the king of bad boys coming together to figure love out. She’s addicted to the Vampire Diaries, loves chocolate and romantic angst, and can’t get enough of PINK STARBURSTS BECAUSE OH MY GOD PINK STARBURSTS SHE WROTE THIS ENTIRE BOOK ON PINK STARBURSTS FOR REALSIES. For additional books, news, teasers, and giveaways, visit her at sarawolfbooks.blogspot.com or facebook.com/sara.wolf.3304
Sara Wolf, Brutal Precious
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