“I wish I could. But as you know, sometimes a vision can be just a feeling, a knowing. I could feel the weight of a painful, frightening decision bearing on you – a decision that affects so many, that your safety rests on.”
Jared, who was feeling kind of numb as if he didn’t really know how to feel about all this, spoke. “So what you’re saying is that if we bring Paige West here, there’s a distinct possibility that things will go tits up and Sam could be harmed?”
“Yes.”
Sebastian sighed. “The question is: are we willing to risk all that happening in order to save the lives of Evan, Max, and Stuart?”
Cursing a blue streak that had everybody’s eyes widening, Jared dropped back down into his seat and buried his face in his hands. So many emotions were flickering through him so quickly that I couldn’t even identify what they were.
“We will give you both some time alone.” With that, Antonio led the others out of the room.
I sat beside Jared, placing a supportive hand on his back. “We have to do this, Jared. We have to help Evan, Max, and Stuart.”
He lifted his head, gazing at me with eyes that were filled with so much turmoil that it hurt to maintain eye contact. “I can’t risk you. Do you understand that? I can’t risk you.” Then he was on his feet, pacing.
“But we can’t risk them, either. You know this.” But he wasn’t listening. He was deep in his own mind, lost in his own thoughts. I rose from my seat and grabbed his arm to halt him. “We can’t ignore this. They’ll die, Jared.”
“I know,” he gritted out. “And I hate being in a position where I actually have to fucking choose between you and my twin brother. But baby, nothing in this world could make me risk you. I just fucking can’t.” He locked a hand in my hair and roughly pulled me close.
I tucked my head into the crook of his neck and slipped my arms around him. “You’re not choosing. I’m choosing.”
“No.” The word was filled with agony yet resoluteness. His overprotectiveness often tended to piss me off, but this was so much more than overprotectiveness – this was a bone-deep, all-consuming fear of losing me. I could feel the echoes of it. An ache started to build in my temples from the pressure of it.
“Jared”
He pulled back to cradle my face. “You just don’t get it. You never have. You are essential to me. I told you the night of our Binding ceremony: I need you here with me, always, no matter fucking what.” His expression said, ‘And you’d agreed’. Yes, I had.
“But”
“Did you see the look on Luther’s face when he mentioned that decision you’ll have to make?”
Yes. He’d looked stricken, wrecked. And it had put the bloody shits up me.
“He said your safety rests on it.” I opened my mouth to speak, but Jared shook his head and stepped away. “You might be prepared to risk yourself, Sam, but I’m not. Not for you, not for anyone.” His eyes, expression, and tone were adamant – he wasn’t budging on this.
Anyone else might have accepted their fate and backed down, but that wasn’t who I was. “I don’t expect you to like my decision to help them. I don’t even expect you to respect it. But I’m asking you to understand it. Evan’s been a great friend to me, like a brother, and I adore him. Max and Stuart are part of our squad, I care for them, and it’s my responsibility to protect them.”
Jared simply shrugged, seemingly unmoved. “They’ll understand.” Annoyingly, they would. In fact, they would insist that we didn’t even try to find Paige West. They would put me before themselves, the plonkers. I couldn’t let them do that.
My words were quiet, pained. “I can’t let them die.”
“And I can’t let you be hurt.”
“I love you for caring as much as you do, Jared, I do. But this is Evan, Max, and Stuart we’re talking about.”
He smiled a little. “Trying to put me on a guilt trip, baby? It’s not going to work. I know how you think.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s look at it this way: Luther said the whole ‘me being faced with a decision’ thing could happen, not that it definitely would.”
He shot me an ‘oh for God’s sake’ look. Of course he did. I was clutching at straws, and we both knew it.
“His vision means we’ve got a heads-up. It means we know we need to be even more vigilant and careful than usual. That puts us a step ahead.”
He shook his head, incredulous. In fact, he looked like he was considering throttling me. “You’re just not getting it. Maybe that’s my fault. Maybe it’s because I don’t tell you I love you often enough. Baby, you’re the only ‘good’ thing that I’ve ever had. There’s simply no fucking way I’m letting anything at all happen to you. No. Way.”
“Jared, please just”
“Put yourself in my position, Sam.”
Oh the bastard just had to say that, didn’t he?
“If Luther had been talking about me just then, would you have been so eager to go track down Paige West?” When I didn’t answer, he gave a soft, humourless laugh. “Didn’t think so.”
But there was another way to look at it. “If Luther had been talking about you, would you have wanted to sit back and let Evan, Max, and Stuart die just because I was worried and scared of losing you?” He wouldn’t even meet my eyes, let alone respond. “Didn’t think so.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “You won’t talk me in circles, Sam. You won’t get your own way this time.”
“You think I want to risk myself? Now that we’re Bound, we’re interconnected so tightly that if I die, you die. Even the thought of you dying makes me feel ill.”
“Then you know exactly how I’m feeling. To risk ourselves is to risk each other – neither of us wants to do that. This conversation is pointless.”
I counted to five in my head, seeking patience. It didn’t work. “You’re twisting what I’m saying. My point is that you can count on me being on high alert and having a distinct sense of self-preservation simply in order to keep you alive.”
His smile was rueful. “Touching, but I will not risk you.”
“And I will not risk them.”
There was still no hint of compromise in his expression at all. “Stalemate, baby.”
“What if we get other people to track Paige down for us?” Maybe if I agreed to sit in the background a little, it would settle his nerves.
He snorted. “Nice try, but it won’t make any difference, and you know it. Luther said that Paige West coming here would be the catalyst. It’s not going to matter who brings her.”
“So we’re just going to sit back and watch Evan, Max, and Stuart die?”
“Hell, no. I’m not giving up on them. But I’m not bringing Paige West to The Hollow, and that’s final.”
We couldn’t even take Evan, Max, and Stuart to see her instead. They needed to remain contained. “How about a compromise?” I held up a hand to halt any attempts he might make to object. “Just hear me out. We spend the next few weeks trying to find some way of helping them. We’ll track Quentin Foy down as well; ask him how The Call suddenly struck his nest. During that time, we’ll have Sebastian locate Paige West. If we don’t find a counteragent or some other solution in those few weeks, we approach Paige then. That’s a reasonable deal, Jared.”
He sighed tiredly, shaking his head. “You never give up, do you?”
“You like that I never give up.”
“In other circumstances, yes, I do.”
I closed the distance that he’d created between us and fisted a hand in his t-shirt. I kept my tone gentle, sensitive, cajoling. “At least agree to Sebastian tracking her down. What harm could that do?”