Chapter 31: Hopeless

Jamie had lied again.

He hadn't meant to. He wasn't quite sure why he hadn't told the truth. Such a ridiculous thing to lie about. Cora had asked him if he knew how much time they had left on this island, and he'd said no. He'd looked straight into the little lights reflected in her eyes and said he wasn't keeping track.

The truth? One week. Seven days and six nights.

Jamie had double-checked his mental tally with Cameron earlier today, making small talk while the camera operator changed a battery. Of course, Cameron had no idea that Jamie's question came from anything more than idle curiosity. None of the crew would guess.

For the past three weeks, he and Cora had followed an unspoken agreement to keep their true relationship off-screen, waiting until the cameras left for the evening before falling back into the easy intimacy that had taken hold between them. During the daylight, Jamie might put an arm around her shoulders as they lounged in their hammock, or Cora might hook his little finger with her own as they strolled along the cliffs above their beach. But nothing further. No kisses. No caresses. No talk of what went on after the sun set and the cameras faded to black.

Maybe it was this dichotomy that had proven Jamie's undoing. The constant back and forth like the pulsing of the tides. The person she pretended to be by day wouldn't have held his interest very long, but that was only her protective outer surface. By night, he met the real Cora, uncensored. Beautiful and sensual and free.

It left him burning all day long. Counting down the hours. Then drenching himself in her company all night. But never quite able to satiate himself. Never quite enough to last the grueling hours of daylight before the cameras left again.

Perhaps that explained how he'd ended up here with six nights to go, with a hollowness in his chest that never left him. Day in and day out, she dug a new hole in his core, like the moats children build for their sandcastles, letting the seawater well up inside. Until by twilight, he could barely stand it, and the salt burned with a sharp intensity that made him clench his teeth.

That must be it, he thought. Cora had warned him from the start. I don't want to fall in love with you by accident. She had whispered those words in the darkness, the first night she spent in his bed. He hadn't known whether to be insulted or to laugh, but she'd been serious. There's a hormone, she had warned.

Oxytocin, he'd supplied in his most bombastic voice, his best impression of an Oxford don. Oft-referred to as the love hormone. The pupil, so eager to impress his stern schoolmistress. He could still taste the bitter tang of her surprise. You know about oxytocin? She had pricked his pride with her dismissal, so he'd dismissed her in return. Ignored the wisdom of her warning and plowed full steam ahead.

That conversation took place three weeks ago, and he'd been swimming in oxytocin ever since.

Six nights left now. Perhaps Cora was better off not knowing. A gentlemanly lie, Jamie reassured himself. Sparing her the unpleasantness of foreknowledge.

But Jamie saw the ending coming. It hurtled toward them like the headlights of an on-coming car. Far too late for him to veer out of the way. At least Cora had taken pains to protect herself.

"I thought the hopeless crush was mutual," she had whispered to him just now, reciting lines from their first date. Hopeless indeed. An apt quotation, that. It summed up Jamie's predicament rather well. She had limited her emotional involvement to a crush. Nothing deeper.

Unlike him.

Cora shifted in his arms, and Jamie closed his eyes. Of all his many misadventures, he'd never botched one quite as thoroughly as this.

"Are you asleep?" she whispered.

"No," he answered truthfully for once. "Just drifting."

"What are you thinking about?" Her voice sounded dreamy and far away. She lay on her side before him, spooned in his arms, with the scent of her hair all around him.

"Nothing at all."

"Liar."

Jamie couldn't help but smile. If she only knew.

He had a hopeless dream that he might still tell her the truth. He might confess what was really in his thoughts just now, and she might reply that it wasn't hopeless after all.

Pure fantasy. Utter foolishness. It wouldn't go that way, he knew. She'd been very clear about her boundaries from the beginning. This arrangement between them would only exist while they were here in paradise. No chance of any overlap with their lives in the real world.

Still, she might relent. Unlikely, but not impossible. Why not give it a go? What did he have to lose at this point?

Six nights. That's what he had to lose. Six more nights of Cora in his bed, and Jamie wouldn't risk ruining them. Better to bite his tongue and enjoy the little time he had left before he lost her.

A wave of possessiveness swept over him, and Jamie's arms clenched. He had them looped around her waist, but he braced his palms against his elbow so that all the force  was applied to his own frame, and she felt nothing.

"What are you thinking about?" Jamie asked, hoping she wouldn't notice the strain in his voice.

"I'm trying to read your mind, since you refuse to give an honest answer."

She was a hopeless mindreader, luckily for him. "I'm thinking of how peaceful it is here," he lied. "Lingering like this. Not quite asleep. I think that's the bit I'll miss the most when this is over."

She sighed. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For giving me an honest answer."

Jamie didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

He had tried to tell her the truth in his way, although she hadn't realized it. He'd stopped himself just short. "So it's impossible," he had asked, "for someone to be uneducated but well-read?" He had ventured all the way to the line between fact and fiction and dipped a toe across the boundary to test the temperature.

She might have guessed his secret then. She'd caught on that he was speaking about himself. But then, she never had believed him on those rare occasions when he was being truthful. Too far-fetched, she had pronounced. You're already too much as it is.

And all Jamie heard was the echo of a different schoolteacher from somewhere in his past. "You saw the word list on my desk before class. Tell the truth..."

The truth was that no one believed him, whether he gave an honest answer or not. Too far-fetched, they always said. Too implausible. He'd learned to go along with it. Not lie so much as swallow the truth so as not to make anyone uncomfortable.

"Cheating will not be tolerated." So his teacher had professed. How was he supposed to tell the truth in the face of her all-knowing certainty? What would he have told her? I have no idea what that word means, but I know how to spell it. I can see it in my head...

"Wait." Jamie's forehead furrowed for a moment. "What was that word again?" He spoke aloud, unsure which schoolteacher he was addressing.

"Which word?"

"That word you used earlier. The one that meant a photographic memory."

"Eidetic," Cora said.

Another word Jamie didn't know. But he must have seen it in print somewhere. He could picture that word too. Jamie read off the letters from the mental image. "E-I-D-E-T-I-C."

"Very good." She patted his arm approvingly. "Should we have a spelling bee?"

Jamie's heart was thrumming inside him, but he kept his voice unbothered. "Is that uncommon, eidetic memory?"

"Extremely rare," Cora said. "Almost unheard of in adults. There are stories though. Myths, really."

"I like stories."

"More than spelling bees?"

He gave her a little jostle. "Tell me."

She hummed to herself for a moment. "They say C.S. Lewis had an eidetic memory. He could remember every word he ever read and heard. He could recite whole passages on command from his favorite books."

"But did he remember the name of Mr. Bingley's house from Pride and Prejudice?"

Cora elbowed him in the ribs. "Turns out you were doing a C.S. Lewis impression this whole time."

"Hardly." Jamie forced a dry laugh. "Do you think that's true though? Or just a myth?"

"I'm sure there's a kernel of truth. Some difference in the way his memory was wired."

Normally, this would be Jamie's cue to make some reference to the Chronicles of Narnia. But not now. He wouldn't allow himself to be distracted from this line of questioning. It seemed urgent all of a sudden, drowning out all the other meaningless detritus in his head. "So what if, hypothetically, C.S. Lewis hadn't gone to Oxford and become some great author? What if no one had ever noticed anything noteworthy about him, and he never finished his formal education because he needed to get a job?"

"Um, I'm pretty sure his parents would've noticed."

"If he didn't have any parents though?" Jamie's voice grew more insistent. "What if he had no family, and no one ever bothered to look at him beyond the surface?"

"What? Like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights?"

Jamie rested his chin on her shoulder, and spoke directly into her ear. "Yes, a poor imitation of Heathcliff, written by a total hack." He squeezed her gently. "It wouldn't be completely beyond the bounds of possibility, would it?"

Cora rolled over to face him. She ran a hand up his chest to his cheek. "Why are you so interested in this?"

He turned his head and pressed his lips into her palm. "No reason. Idle curiosity."

Her eyes were shuttered for a moment. In the darkness, Jamie couldn't tell if they were open or closed. She was silent, and he waited. He had no idea what he was hoping to hear. He only sensed that he'd been waiting his whole life for the answer to his question.

He'd been waiting his whole life to know what question to ask.

"No," she said slowly. "Not impossible. I guess I can imagine how no one would pick up on it. People would assume some more commonplace explanation—"

"Like that he was cheating in some way?" Jamie supplied.

"Right. Exactly. But only because the truth was so spectacularly rare."

Jamie cupped her face between his hands. Silently, he cursed her shoddy night-vision. He wanted her to look at him. To see him. But it was hopeless. Even  if she could see his face, she'd never believe him now. Not with the truth all twisted and turned, braided together with so many lies.

Cora looped her arms around his neck. "Now I answered all your questions. It's my turn. Truth or Dare for Cowards, Round... six million and seventy-two."

Were they still playing that?

"Go on," he murmured. "I'm an open book."

Cora laughed. "OK, Mr. Open Book. Tell me one real thing about yourself. Not some make believe. One verifiable fact that I don't already know."

This was Jamie's chance. He would never get a better opening. All he had to do was speak.

But tell her what exactly?

That he didn't know what the word meant, but he could picture it in his head? That he remembered... well, not every word he'd ever read or heard, but enough to do a fair impersonation of an educated person? That he hid this thing about himself, the same way she hid her truth behind a protective outer surface, because it eased his way through the world?That he'd been alive for 27 years, and somehow he still had no idea who he was?

Jamie opened his mouth to tell her all these things at once. "I think I might be..."

He began with the best of intentions. But she had her arms around his neck. Her fingers teased his hair. Her fragrance swirled and eddied all around him, and he got lost in the sensation. A different truth slipped out instead.

"I think I might be in love with you," he whispered.

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