Tomorrow's Lies (Promises #1) (2 page)

“No, I can’t make you. But you will
jump.”

I let out a scoffing noise, and press back into him.

His hands tightening at my waist, he says, “You want to know why I’m so sure you’ll go?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because, Jaynie.” I feel his chin against my head as he nods to the water. “It’s not ‘nothingness’ down there. That river is your way out.”

I almost jump, right there and then, but panic overcomes me. I spin away from Flynn’s grasp and come dangerously close to falling over the edge in the process. “Jaynie, Jesus,” I hear Flynn say.

Shaken up, I move away from him, insisting the whole while, “I’m good, I’m good.”

Yeah, right. I’m not anywhere near being okay.

As I back farther away from the cliff’s edge, my heels digging into the soft earth, I try reasoning. With myself, with Flynn, I don’t know. I guess with us both.

“I don’t think I can go, Flynn. I really don’t think I can.”

He sighs, and I can tell he’s gearing up to get me back to where I was. “Jaynie, come on.”

Dirt cooled by the shortened days of fall squishes up between my toes, reminding me how rushed we were tonight. Suddenly, I have the most brilliant idea.

With a flourish of my hands, gesturing to my bare feet, I say as evenly as I can, “I forgot to put on my shoes before we left. I can’t go without shoes, Flynn.”

Flynn steps toward me, carefully, the way someone might approach a spooked animal.

“Shoes would just weigh you down, Jaynie. Better you left them behind. Swimming will actually be a whole lot easier this way.”

I shake my head, the gravity of the situation we’re in fully catching up to me. “I don’t know, Flynn.” I cover my face with my hands. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”

But I do. The problem is I know too much. And that’s what’s killing me. This is the end—the end of my time with Flynn in this place, the end of easy smiles on warm summer days, the end of the family I cobbled together. But hardest of all to accept is this is the end of Flynn loving me. No one has ever loved me the way he has.

My heart breaks and I can almost see the shards of what’s left of me falling away in the darkness.

“How can you let me go?” I sob.

Flynn yanks me to him, and I struggle to break free. But in the end, he wins. Holding me to him tightly, he buries his face against my neck.

Suddenly, I am angrier with him than I’ve ever been in the past. I try to shove him away—to no avail.

“How can you let
us
go?” I want to know, breathless and panting.

When he doesn’t reply, I try to step back so he’ll have no choice but to look me in the eye.

Flynn is far stronger, though, and easily holds me in place. “Please…just…stop,” he whispers, voice cracking.

I stop struggling. This is hard on Flynn, too.

He squeezes my hip gently. “Be strong for both of us,” he whispers. “The past is behind you. Your future is away from here.” He finally lifts his head, eyes glistening with unshed tears as he nods to the river. “This is your chance to get away from all this bad.”

But it’s also me getting away from all that was good
, I long to say. Instead, I simply ask, “What about you?”

“I told you before I’ll be fine. I always am.”

“I love you, Flynn.”

A whir of wind kicks up and I fear my words are lost. Flynn hears me, as he always does. “I love you, too,” he replies.

Sliding his hands up from my hips—carefully, so as to avoid the areas where I’ve been bruised—he murmurs wistfully, “You always look so beautiful in this dress.”

“Even tonight?”

“Especially tonight.”

Strong hands trail over white cotton worn to sheer in some spots. Those are the places I feel Flynn’s warmth the best.

After a minute, he wraps his arms around me and we rock together. A slow back and forth, a final dance of sorts, one intended to soothe our broken souls.

Lips brushing over my ear, Flynn whispers, “Jaynie-bird. You’ll always be my Jaynie-bird.”

I smile. Flynn called me Jaynie-bird only once before. We were getting to know one another, and, ironically, we were standing in the same spot as we are now. I had told him if I had one wish it would be to fly away.
Away from this place, away from the pain
. Flynn promised me then that someday it would happen—I would fly away. But he was always supposed to go with me. This, this leaving without him was never an option, never a consideration. Not for me, at least. Doesn’t he realize I can’t do
this
—leave and possibly go live my life without him?

“I don’t think I can live without you, Flynn,” I confess, cramming all my fears into nine little words.

“You have to, baby, at least for a little while.”

“No, Flynn. I don’t like this one bit. What if things go wrong?”

“Just follow the original plan. Stop in the next town. Get yourself set up. Wait for me, okay? I’ll be along when I can. You’ll see. We’ll be back together in no time.”

“Yeah, that’s the plan,” I state flatly.

Disheartened doesn’t even begin to cover the way I feel. Plans are great and all, but Flynn and I both know the truth. He may never make it out of here. Not with what occurred earlier tonight.

I choke back a sob, and he reminds me, “There’s no other way, Jaynie. Not after—”

I press a finger to his lips. “Don’t say it, Flynn. Don’t say anything more.”

He doesn’t.

Eventually we join hands. Peering down at our solidarity, I am amazed that even in the black heart of a black night the bloodstains on our hands are still visible. Blood doesn’t wash off so easily, and the night doesn’t hide it so well. Maybe it shouldn’t.

I shudder. No, I can’t think about how those bloodstains led us here. So, instead, I focus on Flynn. Tall and strong, sandy brown hair as messy as ever, eyes as gray as the stormy day I met him.

“Jaynie,” Flynn says when he sees me drifting off to a past we can no longer dwell on. “It’s time to go. We can’t stay here forever.”

“I know.”

“One of us
has
to make it out of here. If not, everything that happened earlier will have been in vain.”

My heart constricts. “These things we’ve done and can’t undo.”

“Jaynie, don’t.”

I throw my arms around him and hold onto the love of my life one final time. I sob a good-bye I can’t fully articulate, but he gets it. When we rock back on our heels, Flynn wraps a long strand of my hair around his hand. Raising the auburn tress to his nose, he takes a whiff and closes his eyes.

Smiling around a sniffle, I ask, “What in the world are you doing?”

“Breathing you in,” he replies. “I’m making you a part of the air in my lungs.”

He’s also trying to lighten the mood to make this easier on me.

“There.” He lets go of my hair. “I think you’re in there pretty good now.”

“Stop,” I mutter.

Our eyes meet and smiles falter. We then literally fall into each other, sharing an embrace tinged with the desperation of knowing this will be our last night
ever
in this forest.

These woods have offered us refuge so many times in the past. This was a place to get away from all the bad down at the house. I’ll miss these woods where Flynn and I shared so much. Naked and bare, in more ways than one, nestled in the bosom of the land, secrets were spilled like blood across the forest floor. We’ve loved and healed up here, away from prying eyes. Secrets remain safe here. We could share what we did tonight, and the forest would never tell a soul.

We say nothing, though. There will be no confessions, not on this night.

What was it my mother, whom I haven’t seen in four years, used to say?
The times they are a-changin’, Jaynie
.

A shiver runs through me, and Flynn leans back so he can see my face. “What are you thinking about?” he asks.

“I’m thinking again that maybe I should stay.”

“No.” His voice is firm now. He’s tiring of this back-and-forth. “We agreed if it ever came down to only one of us getting out, it would be you. We agreed to save
you
, Jaynie.”

“But we never imagined—”

“No, we didn’t.”

“So—

“Jaynie,
no
. No more stalling, no more putting off the inevitable.”

Flynn moves farther away, giving himself more space. Still, it’s not enough and he can’t stop touching me.

Placing a calloused finger to my lips, he says, “We’re out of time, babe.”

I grab his hand and slide it up to my cheek. Memories of how Flynn’s fingers feel pressed to other places on my body come to mind. And then I am reminded it’s all about to end. “No,” I whisper.

With care, Flynn lifts a strand of my hair and tucks it behind my ear.

My heart aches at the reminder of how I was first touched by him. It seems so long ago. “Flynn—”

“Jaynie, go. Please. Just leave.”

I stare at him, taking him in one final time. Full lips, straight nose, the little crescent-shaped scar below one eye. I memorize it all. Placing my hands on his wide shoulders, I look up at a boy who became a man before my very eyes. Taller and stronger than the day I first met him, muscles more corded and defined, Flynn is formidable to someone like me. Next to him, I am a waif. And I am all too happy to break beneath him. I do so now, as I’ve done so many times before.

“I thought you were beautiful the day I met you,” I confess. “But you’re so much more than that.” I tap his chest. “Your most beautiful places are in here.” I choke back a sob. “You’ve helped me so much. Flynn. I was such a mess.”

Tucking another strand of unruly hair behind my ear, he smiles sadly. “Quit thinking about the past. No more looking back, okay?”

“What if I don’t make it, Flynn? I mean the fall, the water.”

Tears form in his eyes. “You will,” he whispers, like saying the words will make them come true.

I nod, because what else can I do? We don’t think the fall will kill me, but you never know. In case we’re wrong, I drink him in. His cheekbones are too sharp from not getting enough to eat—
never enough food, never enough of anything
—and the fine sprinkling of freckles across his nose are barely visible now that he’s practically a man.

“What are you doing, Jaynie?” he asks, smiling.

I lift my hand and trace his lips with tentative fingers. “I’m trying to memorize everything about you. I don’t want to forget a single thing.”

Flynn snorts, “Fuck that.”

His lips crash into mine, and I realize this is what I’ve wanted all along, to get lost, to forget everything. Losing myself with Flynn is always easy, especially when his lips are on mine. Hell, he sure doesn’t kiss like an eighteen-year-old guy. He kisses like a fully grown man, lips and tongue moving with a skill far beyond his years.

When he finally drops back, I grab hold of his shirt. “Promise me you’ll be all right. Swear to me this will all turn out okay.”

Tears flow down my cheeks unchecked, hot and burning. Not he, nor I, can stop them. Not tonight.

“I promise,” he says.

“Swear to me we’ll meet where we said we would, as soon as you can get away.”

“I swear.”

“Don’t you dare go and forget about me, Flynn O’Neill.”

“Like that would ever be possible,” he says, chuckling. But then he, too, is choking back tears. “I promise you, Jaynie Cumberland, I will
never
forget about you. You are burned in my soul.”

“Mine, too,” I say.

“We’ll meet, like we planned, as soon as things settle down. I promise you, a thousand times, okay?”

“Today’s promises are nothing but tomorrow’s lies. Isn’t that what you once told me?”

He looks stunned. “I didn’t mean for it to ever apply to us, Jaynie.”

“But it could. We can’t predict the future.”

“Stop it.”

His voice is a plea, and I back off.

“You’ll find me, then?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Say it again.”

“Jaynie, enough.”

Scrubbing his hands down his face, he tilts back his head and stares up at the starless night. His eyes are wet and glistening. Flynn is breaking right along with me. One last time, he tangles his hand in my hair, pulling and grasping, yanking me to him. This letting go is killing him, too.

“Nothing will
ever
keep me from you,” he hisses, forehead pressed to mine.

“But what about what I’ve done?”

He steps back, eyes flashing. “Don’t say it like that. It’s what
we’ve
done, not just you.”

“No, Flynn. I did it. It was all me.”

Sighing, he says, “It doesn’t matter. It was justice for what we lost.”

Something squeezes my heart, making me choke out, “Oh, Flynn—”

“Don’t think about it, Jaynie. Just go.”

He turns me to the water. There is no going back, not this time.

I close my eyes.

Then I jump.

…And I am falling…

…falling…

…falling…

…falling…

Flynn

(
Five years earlier)

“F
lynn O’Neill!” a deep voice bellows.

My dad, waking me from a dead sleep—a routine that sadly has become more common than not.