It was over. Their time on the island was done.
The Coast Guard cutter had found the La Huerta survivors waiting on the warm sand below the smoking towers of the Celestial. Now it bore them home, chopping and rocking through the waves.
Diego, Quinn, Sean, Grace, Michelle, Estela, Aleister, Craig, Raj and Zahra all sat in a long line on the seats at the front of the cutter. They were mostly quiet, just needing and wanting to be together. Rourke was there too, belowdecks, trying as always to recover some small grain of ambition from the sand slipping through his fingers. They'd had to leave Varyyn behind - Diego swearing a tearful vow that he'd return the minute he could.
So all that remained were the eleven surviving Catalysts, sitting in the spare space at the front of the cutter.
Jake sat toward the end of the group. He was quiet. In the space of six, seven hours, he'd lost his best friend and his wife. The man who'd put a bounty on his head was dead. And the whole world had come back.
Looking out over the choppy water, he remembered what it had felt like to wrap his arms around her, bracing her against the crystal on the Celestial's rooftop. He'd told her he'd get her where she needed to go, and even as he was saying it he could feel something massive, something powerful move through her and then through him. It had felt like her, but also somehow much more than her. It wasn't human. It had been too big to be human.
Jake shook his head, staring out at the choppy water, marveling, baffled, overwhelmed. He couldn't deal with this. He'd gotten on this Coast Guard cutter with the rest of these guys just a couple hours ago. And he'd gotten on here fully meaning to stick to what Princess wanted. To go home. To face things. Face Mike's family, face his own. But as the hours passed and the sun rose, as Destination Reality grew closer, as the knowledge of them being front page news hit him, the guilt and uncertainly weighed him down, and it was harder and harder to sit still.
Eventually, he'd had too much time to think, and he couldn't sit still at all.
He stood up and walked deftly toward the stern. Katniss glanced up as he passed, but Jake ignored her, kept going. "Jake?" Sounded like Captain America. But he kept going, didn't look back.
He passed fellow military everywhere, they were crawling every inch of the cutter, rigging and hoisting and moving around. Some of them glanced at him, he'd nod back. Jake had been on more than one of these rigs before, and it was kinda comforting to be back aboard one. Familiar. Something that belonged to his old life, the life of Military Prodigy Jake. Crack Shot Jake. He missed that life, and there was no way he could ever go back to it now, but it was nice to be surrounded by something familiar.
The men on here had been patrolling for the missing college kids, but hadn't expected everything they'd found - the missing college kids yeah, with one dead and the tour guide dead, but also a pilot and a sobbing raving middle-aged famous rich asshole. And a completely empty hotel, too, now collapsed and a smoking ruin. Jake took the lead when the military guys anchored and approached and he'd somehow made it all sound sort of sane to these straightforward dudes, but the questions were going to keep coming, and they were only going to get harder from here.
Now was the time to do it. Now that he had time to think. To get a handle on the future. He needed freedom and space so that he could.
He slipped belowdecks, toward the mess hall. Quick and quiet, no fuss. Looking for a quiet spot. Maybe booze too.
Lundgren was dead. Good riddance there. Mike was dead. He missed Mike like a motherfucker, but mourning was later. And Princess was gone, gone before she could finish talking, gone to somewhere he didn't understand. Back to Vaanu, the heart of the island. Which, what the fuck did that mean? His gut understood it but his head didn't.
Vaanu was the island, as the Blues Clues people told them, but what did that mean? Vaanu had been the ghost they'd seen, but also the thing that had Exorcist-ed Quinn, right? How was Princess connected to that? And where the hell was she now? "The stars"?
Was she beyond his reach now? Mike and Princess both?
He decided that thought could go fuck itself. Mike might be gone - undeniably gone, "body a smoking broken wreck" gone, Christ don't think about it, there was time for that later - but she wasn't, not if he had any say on it. Whatever had happened, wherever she was, he'd find her.
He wandered the hall, closed and locked doors to either side, completely alone. Alone was good but not enough. He spotted a sign for the mess hall and followed it. There had to be alcohol in there somewhere.
And what did all of this mean for his freedom? The men on this boat didn't know who he was yet - they'd been looking for the Hartfield kids, not him - but how long before they figured it out? They'd called it in twenty minutes ago. Maybe ten more minutes, an hour, before they knew who he was? Would they slap the cuffs on him the second they landed in Miami? Who was left to even speak up for him?
That thought scared him. As he headed toward the mess hall, that was the thought that scared him most. Who was going to back him up when the proverbial shit hit the fan?
The two people who could have done that best were...
They were both...
He stopped in the middle of the hallway.
He was alone. In all the ways that mattered, he was alone.
He could run again. Maybe he'd need to. He might need to be ready to slip through security once they got home - to get on a ship headed the other way, or to steal a plane, to get out, to find some other tropical place, another warm beach, another hammock, another endless bottle of booze. Or somewhere different - mountains, maybe. He could learn to ski. Skiing wasn't that hard. It was falling down a mountain on skinny rails.
He didn't want to go backwards. Princess would have called it giving up, and it was. But it was the safer solution, if he had the read on the situation right. Jail, the mistrust of his family, and the guilt after losing Princess and Mike - for the second time, with Mike - would kill him this time. Even after the complete insanity of La Huerta, now that she was gone, he wasn't up for this. He couldn't do it alone. Not when they were both-
Dead.
Jake, through exhaustion and the torrent of thoughts in his head, alone here in the hallway, getting further away from the island by the minute, was able to finally look reality in the face. He let the word fully enter his head.
And all of a sudden he couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't plan. Because the only two people he'd fully let in were-
Then he heard a beep from his pocket.
He blinked - he'd been really deep in his head there, earth to Jake - then reached down and pulled out his cell phone. La Huerta had zero cell phone coverage, he'd tossed it in his hotel room what felt like decades ago and he'd unconsciously grabbed it on his way to board the cutter. But they were back in cell phone range now - full bars - and he had a message.
A voicemail. From an unrecognized number.
Who the hell...?
He halfway thought about destroying it. It was a prehistoric phone - from, like, 2001, and he'd bought it used - just enough for him to function in Costa Rica. But now he'd have to ditch it. Should ditch it.
But he didn't. Instead, he opened up the voicemail and put the phone to his ear.
"Jake. I'm standing on the roof next to you. I'm sending this from Deigo's phone. Hope this works right. I hope you get this. Time is frozen, but it's slipping. I don't have long, but I know you, and I know you need to hear this."
Her voice. It went through him, fire and ice, love and longing. It was her voice.
"This third choice - you're right, you'll lose me. I'll be going somewhere you can't follow. But I need to make this choice, Jake. It's right. It's the right choice. The future you saw will come true. Yours, and everyone's. So I'm going to do this. You'll be free. All of you will. You'll all be able to move on, the way you were always meant to. The way each of you saw in the Embers. And the whole world comes back. All timelines restored. Everything back where it should be.
"This also means you get what you wanted: your freedom and your friend. Because everything is restored, that means the people that died will be too. Jake: Mike is back. Mike and Lundgren will both be back - I had to - but don't be afraid. Trust me. Go home and testify. It'll still work, just like you saw in the Ember. You'll be able to come home. See your sister. Your parents. I am giving you back your life.
"There's only one catch. You already know that too, you knew it when you saw it on my face. I'm gone and I'm not coming back."
His breath caught in his throat, he loved her so much he couldn't breathe. Her voice was so strong, unwavering. Filled with love.
"The Endless couldn't see any further than her love. She loved you, all of you. You were the family she - and I - wanted most in the world. You're the best family we could have ever hoped for. And so she wanted to stay with you. Protect you. She wanted it so badly she looped you through life and death two thousand times over. She was wrong to keep you trapped in those loops. She was wrong. That life was no life at all.
"And if I was just her, I'd make that same choice all over again. To keep you with me. But I'm not just her. She was the young version of me. I'm the old version of her. I've lived over two thousand lifetimes, and I've grown to see beyond her. Grown into my own person.
"Both she and I started as a tiny piece of Vaanu. That's what I needed to grow to accept. She was too young to understand, but I'm not. I'm the island itself. And the island is me. Once it crashed here, once it tore time and space apart, it couldn't leave. So it made me. But I was nothing on my own. Your need made me grow. Your love made me flourish. All of you. Vaanu must love something enough to let go. So it built me for you guys. In exchange for that love. And it works. I make this choice now because I love you all too much to keep you."
She paused. A hitch in her breath.
Jake began pacing. Something in him had understood this. How? Too much, too much for his head to wrap around.
"So that's it. As best as I can explain it. But I need to tell you something important, Jake, and I've told you all that just so I can tell you this:
"You are not going to look for me. I know you want to. I know you would cross all the stars in the universe to find me. But I'm gone. I was real, and I was with you, but only because you needed me to move forward. If you don't live your life from here, what I do now is utterly pointless. Don't you dare ever render my sacrifice meaningless. Don't you shut off again. Don't you run. And don't you stop opening up. Don't. You. Dare.
"I've left a separate message for the others, but I'm saying this directly to you because this means you have to listen to me. I want you to live your life. I'm in your heart and you are in mine, and we have to let that be enough. Know that I'm with you always, in your heart. You can feel it and so can I.
"I love you, Jacob Lucas McKenzie. You mean the world to me. The literal world. Now go and live."
The message clicked off and there was silence. Jake stopped pacing, stock-still in the hallway. There had to be more.
He pulled the phone away from his ear. Clung to it, staring down at it, willing there to be more.
But there was no more.
He tried to think fast, but his thoughts were sludge. She loved him. She was literally built to love him. Them, all of them. She was the island itself. She was gone, completely gone. And she'd given him his life in exchange. And Mike. Mike! And his freedom. But it wasn't what he wanted. He wanted her. The hot barely-legal coed who somehow understood all of time and space. What was the point of the rest of it without her?
But if this message he held in his hand was real, if what she said was real, then even though his heart was breaking...
"Dammit, Princess," he said at last. "Dammit."
He needed a drink. He looked ahead at the door to the mess. He wanted to drown in gallons of alcohol.
He slipped into the mess hall, poked around, and found some vodka hidden in a little flask in back of one of the cupboards. As he pulled it out, he swigged straight from the bottle - it was the cheap stuff, practically rubbing alcohol. It burned going down. He relished the burn.
Then he sat straight down on one of the benches, pulled up his phone, and listened to the whole voicemail again.
He looked for a way to back it up, to save it, email it to himself, whatever. But his goddamn prehistoric phone wouldn't do anything but replay it. No iCloud, no magic Internet access. Little green bars on a 20 year old screen.
And it hit him: this was the other reason she'd sent it to him. Not just to make him hear her words, but because he knew what these words would do. What she'd walked him through in this voicemail couldn't get out to the wider world. She wanted him to trust her and to live.
And to erase this.
So. All right.
He stood up, pushing his hair out of his face. He couldn't follow everything, but he'd understood enough.
If she'd done this, if she made this choice, then he had to trust it. For her. And after all ... even if she was wrong, what was a little prison time after a voicemail like this one? Seemed smart to listen to an extraterrestrial spirit whose tiny sliver of soul had changed his whole damn life. If that was how it even worked. Who knew. But fuck it. Bring on the news cameras, the cuffs, the jail time, the court dates. Fuck it all. He'd listen to her, and he'd trust her. He'd surrender.
He took one last drink, not even bothering to put the bottle back - what was the American Coast Guard doing with vodka anyway, what red-blooded American doesn't have bourbon or beer?
He put the phone in his pocket and slipped back abovedecks.
He was just in time to see Diego discover Princess's message - her loving, safely phrased message - to the group. Diego forwarded it on to everyone else, and they all listened intently, Jake included. He didn't mention his own. It wasn't the first time in his life he'd kept secrets.
As the ship landed in Miami, as he planted his feet on US soil, as the La Huerta survivors exited straight into the news cameras, he held his phone tightly in his hand, never letting go for an instant. He answered reporters' questions as briefly as he could, and he never let go.
The La Huerta survivors managed to get a few moments alone before they all split up, to trade contact info with each other, and Jake ran anxious hands through his hair, watching the crowd around them. Any minute now. Any minute now they'd find him.
He watched a reporter step away, look directly at Jake, and speak to a Scooby Doo villiain looking guy in the crowd.
Jake stepped away from the other Catalysts, into a corner of the airport, and took one final moment to replay the message meant just for him, memorizing every word, holding on tight. "I love you, Jacob Lucas McKenzie." I love you too, he said, to the air. To no one.
Then he deleted it, and he wiped the phone.
By the time the cops came and cuffed him, right there in the airport, he'd repeated her voicemail in his head dozens of times, making sure he had every word right.
His family came to see him when he was in holding. His folks, and Rebecca. His folks had never felt ashamed of him, and neither did his sister. They told him so a bunch of times before it really registered in his head. And before they left, they said that Mike had been asking for him - and Mike was being held somewhere in the same prison.
She'd done it. Mike was alive.
After they left, alone in his cell, Jake called out, but couldn't hear Mike call back. Of course not. Wherever Mike was, it was nowhere near Jake. But that didn't matter, because his best friend was alive.
He started to pace, reciting her voicemail out loud, reminding himself. She'd been right.
She'd been right.
He thought of one of their first moments together, climbing the control tower and seeing the Doppler lights. How those lights had been one of the most incredible things he'd ever seen in his life ... at least up to that point. How her hand had instinctively found his, her fingers curling around his fingers. How much of a sign that was for things to come. All the moments with her after that had topped that one in beauty and connection and love. Even the shitty ones.
He curled up on the thin holding cell mattress and wept.
It took months before the trial happened, months by himself in a cell. The surviving Catalysts visited him, all of them at various points, bringing him news of the outer world - their new celebrity status, their new freedoms, their new lives. Things happened very quickly out in the rest of the world. Rourke was arrested, charged. Varyyn was able to come stay with Diego in London. Aleister and Grace married. Sean and Michelle got back together. Zahra started her band. Quinn started her charity. Estella went back home. Raj started his cooking show. Craig started making games.
Princess had been right about all of it. All of it.
In less than a year, he was finally in front of the judge, and it played out just the way he'd seen when he touched the helmet back on La Huerta. When Jake arrived in the courtroom, Mike was already there. They'd called to each other, the old nicknames, Mike's face flooded with relief and love. They'd grabbed each other in a hug, though they hadn't been allowed a long one.
And just like that, his trial was finished, Lundgren was sentenced, and Jake and Mike were found not guilty.
He was out of custody. He was free.
The second they told him, he wanted so badly to hold her. "I love you, Jacob Lucas McKenzie. You mean the world to me. The literal world. Now go and live."
In that second, he wanted nothing more than to get in whatever vehicle would shoot him out into space. Whatever allowed him to cross every single mile of creation.
In that second, he would have traveled ten thousand lifetimes to find her.
The next day, he left holding and met Mike out front. It was the day before Rebecca came to pick him up and take him back to Pearl River and his folks, so they had a little time. He and Mike had dinner in a crappy diner a quarter mile from the courthouse.
Mike embraced him again once they were there, and they held each other tight. Princess hung in the air, but neither of them spoke her name. Then Jake made a comment about Mike grabbing his ass, at which point they broke apart, laughing.
They sat at a torn up booth and ate shitty food. Jake cracked sarcastic jokes, just like the old days, and Mike replied in kind. They both laughed, a lot, and bought up a few rounds of drinks each. They shared jokes and shared the shock and relief together. Then they recounted what they remembered from La Huerta, and Princess finally came up.
"You married her? In that island ceremony thing?"
"I married her in every way I could, kid. I'd marry her sideways and upside down if I could."
Mike smiled, a lot of love for Jake in his eyes. "Wish I'd been able to be your best man. Never thought I'd see you in love, Grandpa."
"Yeah I love her. To the stars and back." It popped out, and just like that, he was back in the cabin in the snow, seeing the joy in her eyes when she said those same words, remembering his rush of relief and his own answer of joy.
Sadness settled on Jake, sadness and grief, thick and heavy.
Mike's hand reached out and weighed on Jake's arm. Jake looked up.
"Tell me your story, youngun," Jake asked him. "About how you got back to the States."
"Truthfully, old man? It's fuzzy. I remember a lot of pain. I remember grabbing the commander, dousing him, then flying up toward the ceiling of the Celestial, holding that bastard with everything I had. And then a lot more pain. And then I woke up back here. Weirdest thing - I was in an old apartment I used to have, and the apartment was full of things I'd lost. Like time had gone backwards."
Jake shakes his head, his shaggy hair falling in his eyes. Amazing, what she'd done. The power of it.
"She brought you back, kid. Princess. You're alive because I wanted you to be. I think - I dunno, but I think - it was the last thing she ever did. As herself."
Mike sat back, baffled. "How?"
Jake told him. All of it, everything she'd said. Through it all, Mike's eyes shone. When Jake was done, Mike shook his head.
"I guess I don't even have the words for what she was. How she was able to do that for us."
"Yeah." He missed her the way he'd miss a limb. "I can't stop thinking about her. Hearing her voice. Remembering. She's on my mind all the time. It was like that when I thought you were dead. And back then, I fucking ran, Mike. I ran as far away from the memories as I could to a warm place and I flew planes and I drank. And now you're alive and we're here and she's gone and she wants me to move on. After all that. I don't know what to do now. I don't know."
"Grandpa..." Mike looked like he didn't know how to respond. Jake just kept talking.
"She ain't human. I mean, she was real, but she wasn't human. She'd been built, invented, created, whatever, to be the perfect companion for all of us. To be what we all needed. And to fall in love with us herself. And then she died so we all could live. What the hell do I do with that? How do I deal with that? And why couldn't I have saved her from that?"
Mike leaned forward again, his hand on Jake's arm. "Here for you Grandpa. And we're out. We're free. She did it for a reason."
Jake wondered what the hell the reason had even been, but he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer, so he shut up.
He stayed in a shitty motel that night, provided by the state. He couldn't sleep, and kept looking out the window up at a dark sky drowning in city light. It was the first sky he'd seen since his long imprisonment.
He couldn't stop thinking of the whole of time and space, and how long that might take him to travel.
He left the hotel and wandered until he found a liquor store still open. He'd gotten all of his stuff back when they sprung him, including twenty whole bucks in his wallet. He used that to buy bottom-shelf whiskey and he walked in circles around his shitty motel parking lot, drinking it and looking at the stars until it was gone.
In the morning his old cell phone - searched and then wiped clean again by the government, the voicemail would have been theirs, thank God she'd known he'd be a cynical bastard about these things - was receiving texts and phone calls from the La Huerta survivors. They were checking in on him. They were glad he was out. He didn't know what to say back, other than that he was okay, and he was glad they were there, and also thanks.
Rebecca picked him up a few hours later and drove him back to his childhood home in Pearl River, where his folks were waiting. They took him in, gave him the spare back bedroom, just like when he'd been a kid. He bought a toothbrush the next day, some new clothes. Wandering a department store was surreal. He found himself often staring blankly off at nothing, hearing nothing but her voice.
"I love you, Jacob Lucas McKenzie. Now go and live."
He was glad that there was a liquor store nearby.
Next thing was a job. Baby steps back to a normal life. He wasted several days in that back bedroom doing Internet searches about astronaut programs. Some of them took former pilots.
But that wasn't what she'd asked. And that wasn't what she wanted. And the truth was ... he didn't trust himself with a plane right now.
He'd entered the military young and had always been drawn to planes, and he'd taken the first jobs he could in training that got him anywhere near one. He loved the freedom, the escape, the ability to leave the earth. It satisfied his desire for free and open space, his desire to run. And he'd expected that, once he was free, he'd immediately take that freedom in his hands again.
But a plane couldn't get him where he wanted to go. And it couldn't free him from his grief, either.
He felt so lost.
After a few days, he bought yet another bottle of whiskey, and after he was drunk enough he applied for a job as a security guard instead. And they took him - his resume was impressive, the Lundgren trial meant he was half-famous, and he interviewed well, even half buzzed. He'd spend his days patrolling various stores he was hired to protect, reciting her voicemail in his head.
He took to spending nearly all his free time in the backwoods, fishing, camping, hiking, climbing. Drinking too, that was never far away. Rebecca flew over from LA and hung out with him, and they did beer pong and shots of rum and they roasted hot dogs and fished for crawdads, but it became clear over the course of a few days that they didn't have much in common anymore. And there was a lot he didn't feel like he could tell her.
He sent her home with a hug and a promise to see her soon, but he didn't follow up on it.
A month later, he moved out of his parents' house and he and Mike moved in together. At first it was great, just like the old days. But eventually it was clear that with Mike it was the same as with Rebecca - they'd both seen too much, lost too much. And the more time they spent around each other, the more it became clear they were going two directions, and those two directions didn't line up.
Eventually the siren call of alcohol was the only thing left. Jake started spending all of his awake time drunk.
After a few months, he started flirting with women in the stores he worked security for and in the bars he frequented at night. Most of them knew him from the news around La Huerta and the news around the trial. He was a damn celebrity. The thought amused him in passing, but that's all it did. He'd charm them - his sarcasm and his fame and his wounded heart appealed to far too many women looking for men they could fix. And it gave him relief from thinking about Princess for an hour or two or five.
He'd give them halfhearted nicknames - Pretty Backpack Girl, Barbie, Hot Goth Chick - and he'd try to get to know them. But he could never remember what any of them looked like the next day. Night after night, he'd miss the fireworks, the connection, the REALNESS of Princess. And morning after morning, he couldn't remember faces or even nicknames from the night before. Only hers. Only ever hers.
Mike saw it - Jake made no effort to hide it - and wasn't happy, but he gave Jake space.
Jake knew Mike was wrestling with his own demons. Part of him wished he was together enough to be there for Mike, whose bionic eye and limbs were causing problems of their own. But he wasn't. He wasn't together at all.
"I love you, Jacob Lucas McKenzie." He replayed her voicemail back in his head, over and over. Replayed their times together in his head. Replayed her smile, her eyes. He worked hard to remember every word, every sensation, every look. The thick emotion when she told him she loved him in the tent outside MASADA. Her incredible beauty at the handfasting ceremony. The feel of that ribbon in his hands. The huge, huge smile on her face.
There was no traversing space. There was no getting her back. That wasn't what she'd wanted.
How could he possibly live with that? How could she ask him to live with that? Didn't she know it was the only thing he'd want to do?
Maybe ... maybe she hadn't really known him at all. And maybe he hadn't known her.
How could she even have been real? Given what she was?
A few months more in to his slow spiraling out, Jake overslept at the house of a woman who he hadn't bothered to nickname. It was the third time he hadn't turned up to work when he was supposed to. He lost his security job. He came home late. And Mike blew up at him.
"What the hell are you doing to yourself, Grandpa?"
Jake gave Mike his familiar crooked, cocky grin. "Mourning. What's it look like?"
Mike shook his head. "Bullshit, old man. This is self pity, not mourning."
"She shouldn't have done it. I didn't deserve it."
"What, saved you?"
"Yeah."
"She didn't just save you, you arrogant ass."
Jake had no response for that.
Mike looked him dead in the eye. "You've got to start flying again, Jake."
"If I fly again, it'll be to go find her. That's all I want to do. I couldn't stop myself."
"And she told you not to, so you can't."
"That's very astute of you, Professor Obvious."
"Nicknames are my thing, Drunken Copycat." Mike was upset and trying not to be pissed. He started pacing. "You have to let go. Of feeling sorry for yourself. Of her. You've got to do what she asked you to."
"Like it's just that easy."
"It's not easy but that doesn't mean you don't do it. And you have to or it'll kill you. And I need you, man."
Jake couldn't look Mike in the eye. Mike kept going.
"You hold on hard, Jake. And the world has a way of shaking you loose. Whether you like it or not."
Jake finally looked - his old friend was in front of him, and hurting, partly because of him. "Sorry, kid. You don't deserve this. You shouldn't be dealing with my worthless ass."
Mike stopped pacing. He shook his head. Before he left the room, he said "Sort your shit out, Grandpa."
That night, Jake dreamed she was disappearing again, touching the crystal, leaving right in front of him. He braced her, held her, against the sharp reflective glass, and she turned to sand in his hands, to dust, to nothing.
He found a new job a week later tending bar - they were hiring at the one he frequented most and he figured it gave him faster access to the booze. He'd done it before, years ago, tending bar. Back then it'd been for a classier joint, a place that ordered Sazeracs and absinthe and two thousand dollar bourbon. But this bar? Ladies' nights and PBR. Half the bartenders showed up drunk, which gave Jake permission to do the same. And that, at this point, was all he wanted.
Every day he'd feed people who were addicted to escape, just like he was. Every night he'd come back to the house with Mike and pass out. Sometimes he brought women along. He didn't even bother to nickname any of them anymore.
He and Mike barely spoke now.
Every once in a while, the surviving Catalysts would still check in, mainly through calls and texts. They were all far away, mainly on both coasts, and Jake was happy to keep them all that far away too. They'd call and text him mainly to remember, to stay connected, to process. Jake found it was the only real connection he had left, these people who had been where he was, who had known her - but now they were all moving on. Diego had a bestselling book. Grace was becoming a famous artist. Aleister and Estella had jointly inherited Rourke's old fortunes. Sean's football career was like a bullet shot into space. Ditto Raj's thing, Craig's thing, Zahra's thing, Quinn's thing.
Their lives were becoming amazing. He wished he was moving on with them.
He quit the bar job after six months and went camping without telling Mike where he was going. He just drove until he ran out of road, then hiked until he ran out of path, then set down his tent. It was on the shore of a lake, and the water reminded him of the time Princess swam with him in the cave.
He built a fire outside his tent, cooked beans and remembered making love to her on the shore of that cave, the dancing light all around them, complimenting their own fireworks, that incredible chemistry that no one else had.
Now he understood. Now he understood exactly why they'd clicked the way they had.
He lay back on the shore and looked up. He could see the stars from here. Winking, layered dots of light in a wide, wide dark. He wanted to get up there. That was where she was, somewhere out there. And he was a pilot. He was built for it. Flying into nothing was exactly what he did. And he loved her. Across all of time and space he loved her. He could find her. If only she'd asked. If only she'd said. If only she'd given him any sign at all.
He got majorly drunk after that, and stayed that way for several endless days, not eating, wandering in the woods, drinking a full gallon of Jim Beam, eventually climbing high up onto a bridge in the middle of nowhere, Louisiana, then jumping straight down into a deep deep river. In the water, far far down, he hit his leg on a rock, came up with blood all around him, fought his way through the current to shore. Halfway disappointed he hadn't drowned, he patched himself up on the bank, and remembered what she'd said after they'd ridden the cart in the mining tunnel. "A ride with Jake is rough, wild and fun as hell."
Jake began laughing wildly, sitting on that shore with his leg splayed out, soaking wet, shivering, drunk off his ass.
He built a fire on that shore that night, and thought of her, and drank. And in the morning he found himself standing beside the ashes of the fire, and he thought of the New Year's party they'd held on at the Elysian Lodge, the dress she wore and the suit he'd had, the way he'd kissed her at midnight, the fire that had burned to ashes beside the beautiful bed they'd slept in. He'd kept the suit with him after that night, as they traveled, hoping to keep it nice. Hoping he could marry her in it. And when Varyyn told them about the handfasting ceremony, he knew he'd finally have his chance to keep her by his side for the rest of his life.
Standing over the ashes of his fire, remembering, Jake knelt down and buried the entire thing under rocks and shore dirt and sand.
He spent the morning carving her name into a rock by that shore, and the words "YOU SAVED THE WORLD AND YOU SAVED ME AND YOU ARE NEVER FORGOTTEN" underneath. And then he walked back to his tent, packed up, and limped home.
It wasn't enough. He didn't know what would be enough. He couldn't forget her or stop loving her or wanting her. He couldn't live, and he couldn't let go.
"You mean the world to me. The literal world."
Me too, he thought. You mean that to me too, you know?
When he came home, Mike said he'd had enough, and they needed a break from each other. Jake got another job, in a warehouse this time. In a few months, they paid out their lease and moved apart. Jake lived alone for a full year. Drinking, wandering, rarely speaking to anyone, and missing her.
That's when it happened.
Four years and six months since they'd left the island, Jake got calls from the survivors. And six months after that, he flew down to Costa Rica, which was exactly the same as when he'd left it. And from there, he flew to La Huerta.
The La Huerta survivors met again, five years to the day after they'd left, on that same old beach on that island, each future now come fully true just like she'd said. They stayed in the same hotel - now up under new ownership, like a regular hotel now, completely repaired and redone, nothing like the Celestial of before - and they bought out the cheap rooms on the bottom floor.
They toasted her memory on the same beach that she'd long ago left. He sat among them, emotions fighting for dominance in his broken lost heart, and toasted her too.
He stayed on that beach a long time after the rest of them had returned to the hotel. He cracked open a small fifth of whiskey, still buzzed from the earlier toasts. He drank it slow, watching the sun rise.
An hour after sun cleared the flat ocean horizon, he spoke aloud.
"My turn, Princess," he said. "You talked plenty in that voicemail, and now it's my turn. I love you too, I always will. You're always in my heart. You hear me? Every day I want to do what you asked me not to. To go find you. Or travel back in time somehow, Christ knows we did enough of that here. To stop you from even having to make the choice to do that, to leave me. Because I don't buy it. You can't be gone. And sacrificing yourself is all noble and shit but I'd rather have you here. In our little house on the island, with the stone path, the wind chimes, the silk sheets on the bed. Having my folks back, Rebecca, Mike, it's all great, don't get me wrong. But it's just not the same. You're missing from this picture-perfect postcard. You always will be. I need you. This ain't what I wanted. I wanted you. I know you asked me to move on, but I can't seem to. I can't seem to."
And then.
Then.
He felt her sitting next to him, wrapping her arms around him. Just for a second. He could swear it. He could swear it on everything.
He sat very still, not daring to even breathe. Was that...? Had he really felt...?
Had that been wishful thinking? Had he wanted it badly enough to hallucinate?
Or had he really felt-
Then a thought came to him, unbidden: everything in its own time.
It wasn't his thought. It hadn't come from his head. But the moment he thought it, he knew what the words meant: he'd taken all this time to mourn her, and to come to terms with what she'd said in that voicemail, and all this time had been necessary because it had brought him here, to say these words he'd just said out loud. And now ... now what?
Now there was something he needed to realize and understand.
And with that, the thoughts that weren't his, and the sensation of her touch, were gone. And he was alone.
He stayed sitting still like that, long after the buzz from the whiskey started to fade, waiting, wishing. Begging. Please God. Please. Let her come back. Give her back. Please. The sun rose to high over his head. The waves rolled in and out. Finally, he moved: he eased pressure off the balls of his feet. When he did, the last strains of the old La Huerta magic finally shattered.
And he felt them go.
He was alone. And she was gone. Completely, totally, absolutely, and without question. Gone.
He began to weep. Quiet sobbing. He ran a hand through his hair, clung to the bottle, and wept. Gradually, the tears stopped, and the silence came back. And now ... He knew it now, and it was a thought from his own head, not someone else's, and it was completely clear.
She wasn't coming back. He couldn't get her back. It was over. This was how it was going to stay. No matter how much he punished himself for losing her. No matter how much he dreamed of looking for her. No matter how far he was willing to go. This was what she had done for him. This was the choice she had made. This was what she'd wanted.
And he was wasting it.
The buzz from the whiskey was pretty much gone. The only sound was the sound of the waves. He could hear the rocks rolling in the surf. Hear the seagulls overhead. He could feel the weight of all the years that had formed La Huerta, and the weight of the loneliness around him now.
He set down the empty bottle.
"All right," he said. To the air. To no one. To himself. To history. To her memory. "Okay. I can't accept you're gone, but I can accept the choice you made. And I do. I swear I do. I'll listen. I'll live."
He got up. Sand clung to him. The salt air clung to his skin. The island felt like a part of him, and he felt like a part of it.
"I love you. Rest of my life. Every goddamn day. I'm in your heart and you're in mine. Always. And thank you. All right? Thank you. For my life."
The waves rolled in and out. The seagulls swooped. The clouds drifted, white and fluffy, across the sky. He nodded. All right.
He turned away. He left the beach. He returned to the hotel, to the other survivors. Less than twenty-four hours later, he went back home.
Six months later, he took up flying again. Leaving the earth. And there was joy in it.
A few months after that, he opened back up to Rebecca, then Mike, then the survivors - Sean, Diego, Quinn, Michelle, Grace, Raj, Estella, Varyyn, Craig, Zahra, even Alister. He stopped running from their love - and they were waiting, all of them, ready, with their arms wide open. They understood why he'd needed that time to grieve, because they themselves knew what she had been, and what she had done for them. For all of them.
He lived his life among friends and family. And while he let go of the idea of getting her back, she remained the deepest, most important part of him, for the rest of his remaining time on earth.