Page 10

Chapter 10

Caleb

J asper wasn’t getting better.

Oh, he was better in that he wasn’t dead of poison, but as time passed the dizzy spells got worse, and they were joined by a listless boredom.

Once, Caleb looked up to find Jasper looking at him like a starving man looked at a steak. He’d immediately thought of taking the man to bed and giving him a sound fucking, but Jasper was clearly ill, and sex was not going to help that.

Jasper had to be a supernatural to have survived the flowers, and Caleb was starting to mentally catalogue the kinds who ate people. There weren’t many, and barring vampires, none were so beautiful. Jasper had spent enough time in the sun, and he seemed far less intent on Caleb’s major arteries than other major parts of him.

Caleb fed him and fed him, until most people would have popped. Until Jasper clutched his stomach and groaned, mumbling something about Caleb fattening him up to eat him.

It didn’t help. He gave him another dose of the remedy for the damned flowers, and Jasper made a face at the flavor of it, but it didn’t do much either.

Nothing helped.

One night, after almost a week of “I’ll just stay one more day”s, they were curled up on the couch, watching some mindless comedy show, when Jasper looked up at him, eyes unfocused and half closed. “Can we go out and look at the stars?”

Maybe some men could have said no to that, but Caleb was not one of them. He was weak, okay?

So he wrapped Jasper in the blanket from his bed and carried him up to the cabin’s loft, through the window, and out onto the roof. He laid down next to him, and Jasper moved to cover him up, so they were both draped in blanket.

“It’s beautiful,” Jasper whispered after a while.

Caleb didn’t want to admit he’d never paid much attention. He was a land-bound kind of guy, and the stars were just something that existed. They weren’t important to him. Or, well, they hadn’t been. He brushed Jasper’s hair back from his face and kissed his cheek. “It is,” he agreed.

“I wish we could stay here like this forever,” Jasper whispered as he snuggled into the space under Caleb’s arm. He fit there perfectly, like Caleb had been carved just to hold him. “It’s hard to see the stars from Lyric. This is much better.”

“It is better.” Caleb wasn’t sure whether he meant that the cabin was better than Lyric, or something else.

No, that wasn’t true. He knew. The cabin was better than life in the city, but life in the cabin had gotten so much better since he’d stumbled over Jasper.

He’d been well aware of the hole in his life, and not just because of Poppy’s prodding, but he hadn’t had any idea how to fix it. It had seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. Caleb didn’t like to leave his cabin, but he also wanted to find someone to be in the cabin with him.

In his dreams, he couldn’t have imagined anyone better than soft, sweet Jasper.

If only soft, sweet Jasper didn’t have some horrible mystery illness that was making him weaker and weaker by the day, Caleb could have someone to spend his days and his nights with. Someone to lie with him by the fire and drink cocoa all winter.

“Thank you,” Jasper whispered. “Thank you for everything.”

The words made Caleb want to curl in on himself. It didn’t sound like thank you. It sounded like goodbye.

He wanted to answer, if only to talk to Jasper more, but what could he say? He hadn’t given the man anything but a place to stay while he recovered from the poison. And of course, he wasn’t recovering. He was getting worse as time went on, and nothing Caleb did made a difference.

The moment Caleb voiced that, he felt like something would break. Maybe something between them, maybe something inside himself, but something irreparable. So instead, he pulled Jasper tighter against him and leaned down to kiss him on the top of the head.

All he could do for the time being, while Jasper refused to tell him what was wrong, was keep hoping he would get better.

A few moments later, Jasper gave a soft snore from his place on Caleb’s shoulder. He should move them inside. Jasper would be more comfortable indoors, with the fire.

He looked up at the stars for a long time, wishing on each one he could see for a way to fix whatever was wrong, so Jasper could stay.

If he wanted to.