Never (Never, #1)

by Jessa Hastings

He looks back at me, smile cocked. “Ye get the punch in the gut around me, don’t ye?” I scoff, indignant. “I do not.” “Aye, you do.” He smirks, eyes all lit up. “I ken ye do. You buckle a wee bit whenever ye see me.”

“Well.” I take a huffy breath and put my hands on my hips as I stare up at him. “You feel a punch in the gut when you see me too.” “No.” He shrugs indifferently as he shakes his head, and I feel my cheeks flush again but differently. My face falls a little. He lets it hang there—the awkwardness, the disappointment that shouldn’t be there but nevertheless is disastrously evident on my face—and then he leans in towards me. His face is close enough to mine that I can feel his breath. His eyes flicker to my mouth, and he runs his tongue over his bottom lip. “That’s no’ where I feel it,” he whispers. He takes out a flask and has a swig before he offers it to me. “Well, so—” I shake my head at him as I glare over. Swallow. “Where do you feel it then?”

Jamison clears his throat as he takes a step closer towards me, his mouth as close to my ear as it can be before it touches. “Between my shoulders. Like a weight.” He shifts his head so we catch again, his gaze going from my eyes to my mouth to my eyes again. “And I feel it in my bones.” He pauses. “Not that bone!” He nudges me playfully, and where his elbow touches my ribs, the feeling of him being there lasts so much longer than it should. “Get yer mind out o’ the gutter.” He smirks at me. I breathe out loudly. “I wasn’t even—” “In my normal bones.” He keeps going, ignoring me. “I feel it all over. Like a flu.”

“You’re not half as bad as he says you are,” I tell him. Jamison’s head tilts, and his brow furrows. “And yer twice as brave and beautiful than he lets ye think y’are.”

“Did someone say something to ye?” He takes my wrist in his hand, keeping me still.

“Joking!” he says again, shoving me playfully. That’s flirting, I think. “No.” He shakes his head. “I am joking.” He pauses, licking his bottom lip. “Till November first, and then a’m probably no’ joking anymore.”

“I like talking to you” is what I say, and ultimately, it is the truth. Three seconds go by before he says anything. “Aye,” he says, and I hear the sound of him dragging a chair over to the other side of the divide. “I like talking to ye too.” “Just don’t peek,” I tell him. Pause. “No promises there.”

I stare at the clothes in his arms and shake my head. “I haven’t paid for them yet.” “I paid for ’em.” He shrugs. I stare up at him wide-eyed as he puts the clothes in my arms. “You didn’t have to do that,” I say quietly. His mouth pulls a little. “Daen want ye to have to sell your earrings.” “Jem—”

“Aye, y’are. Ye dae this thing with yer eyes when yer angry, where yer nose pinches but yer mouth goes heavy at the bottom, like yer frowning but yer no’.” I blink at him a few times; my cheeks go hot. “How do you know that?” “Because I see ye, Daphne!” he yells.

“Thirty-one days,” he breathes out, nodding to himself as he stares at the ground. “What?” I stare at him, hurt and confused that he just dashed the moment completely. “He’s steeling himself,” says a voice I’ve never heard before. A woman’s. I look past Jamison, and my eyes land on her. Lean, pretty but sharp featured, sparkly eyes. I can’t completely place her age, but she’s young. She’s youthful looking. “For what?” I frown over at her. She raises her eyebrows. “For you.”

“Well.” I cross my arms over my chest. “You think I’m attractive.” “Sure.” He gives me a look. “Ye dïdnae need the stones to tell ye that though.”

He walks down the mountain a bit more, his pace picking up. “Ye could buck it, ye ken?” he calls back, not turning around. “Love someone else.” I stop walking. “You, do you mean?” “No,” he says quickly, and then he stops walking. He turns around. “Maybe.”

Imagine this: You’re carrying around a disastrously heavy duffel bag, you wear it on your shoulder, and it weighs enough that it makes you walk funny while you’re holding it. But then you put it down. The bag is still there. Even if you were to leave the room, even if you were to leave the house, the bag is still there. And of course, you could think of the duffel bag at any given moment, think of how you felt when you held it, how heavy it was, why it was heavy, what was inside it—but it’s so much easier to not think about the bag when you don’t have to hold it. And as time goes on, the harder it becomes to remember the contents of a bag. If you check a bag every day, it’s quite easy to remember what you’re carrying around in it, but if you put it away, it sort of fades away into a blurry memory of a thousand things that could be crammed into a bag.

His face falters. “It’s November first.” “I know,” I tell him, rather dignified. He waits a few seconds, lifts an eyebrow. “It’s yer birthday.” I don’t know why, but my face falls to a pout. “How do you know that?” He cocks an eyebrow. “’Acause ye told me and I’m no’ a piece o’ shit.” I say nothing, because what could I even say?

“What about these?” He flashes me that dagger of his I’ve seen before. “Ye have these on Earth?” I gasp again at the sight of it, and he offers it to me. I take it in my hands, roll it around in them. “Oh, it’s beautiful.” “Golden blade, ruby inlays.” “It really is so gorgeous.” I can’t take my eyes off it. “It’s yers,” he says, and I look up at him, surprised. “What?” “It’s fer you.” He shrugs and gives me a quick smile. “Happy birthday.”

“No, I dïnnae think yer drunk.” He gives me a long-suffering look. “But, Daph, yer figuring yer shit out. Yer mind’s all over the place.” He breathes out his nose. “I just want it on me.” “It is on you!” I protest, and my foot stomps in my heart. “Now”—he shrugs like he’s already conceded to it—“for bye, when we do that, we’re no’ doing it because some wee footer forgot yer birthday.” “Why will we do it?” I ask him very quietly. Jem stares over at me a few seconds. “Because we cannae no’ anymore.”

“Mum,” he calls again, and then his eyes land on me. “Oh.” He looks confused but not displeased. “What are y’doing here?” I say nothing for a few seconds. I don’t know why? Because he’s so lovely to look at, sometimes words escape you. “I had a fight with Peter.” “Surprise, surprise,” he says, though he looks pleased.

“Yeah.” He shrugs, telling the wall in front of him. “Forbye, this girl frae England bathed in it once and ruined it.”

“Then a’m going t’ reach up and touch yer face.” He does. “Push some hair from it, sure, but I won’t need to really. I’ll just want to.”

“Then I might just look at ye fer a minute.”

“Oh.” I shrug airily. “Just, you know, pirate this, pirate that, serves me right for falling in l—” I stop myself short. My face freezes, eyes wide in a mortified horror. Not him though. His smile is cracked wide, eyes delighted. “In what?” he asks, mouth open, waiting. “Nothing.” I shake my head quickly. “No.” He shakes his head back. “Go on.”

“Fer what it’s worth.” He gives me a look that makes me turn to a puddle. “I fell a long time ago.”

“Are you embarrassed of me?” “No?” Jem’s face pulls back, blinking a couple of times. “No, I’m in love wi’ ye.”