Of course, whoever is here isn’t the Jake from our past. He’s been dead and gone for twenty years.
Yet in the last six months, since Brett came up with the idea for this event, Jake’s phantom has hovered over us all, casting a shadow across our collective memories. We’ve talked about him more in these last months than we have in all the years he’s been gone.
June’s smile has faded, replaced by a look of concern. Emily’s gaze is fixed on me, her blue eyes full of curiosity andsurprise. Sienna’s eyes seem to have a wisp of sadness in them.
And me?
My throat feels dry.
A staff member rushes to clean up the broken glass and spilled bourbon.
“Sorry,” I mumble to her.
“Not a problem, Mr. Tate. It’s my job.” She—I don’t know her name—gives me a smile.
Emily lightly touches my arm. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just I knew a guy named Jake. A long time ago.”
“Right,” she says. “And he was supposed to be dead. That’s what Brett said when he saw him. But this Jake is very much alive, and?—”
I can’t breathe.
I know longer hear Emily.
The words sit in my head, heavy and impossible. They don’t make sense. They don’t belong in reality.
Jake is alive?
I run the sentence through my mind again, but it still refuses to land. It clatters around, crashing against everything I know, everything I’ve believed for years.
Jake is alive.
I feel dizzy, like the ground isn’t solid anymore, like my entire world just tilted on its axis. My pulse pounds in my ears, my fingers numb as I press them against my temples. My body feels disconnected, like I’m outside of myself, floating in the space between shock and something worse—something raw and ragged that I don’t have a name for.
Because this isn’t possible.
I grieved him. I carried his death like a weight strapped tomy chest, like a scar that never fully healed. I replayed my last moments with him in my head so many times, they’re burned into me. The what-ifs, the guilt, the unbearable absence of him—it became part of who I am. Part of every song I sang.
And now, just like that, it was all a lie?
I exhale sharply and press a hand to my ribs to ease the pressure building there. My thoughts are racing too fast, slamming into each other, colliding in a mess of disbelief and anger and something I’m afraid to call hope.
Where has he been? Why now? Why did I have to hear it like this, secondhand, like some casual piece of news?
I squeeze my eyes shut, but it doesn’t help. The past collides with the present, the version of Jake I buried colliding with the possibility of him still out there, still breathing.
And if he’s alive…then everything I thought I knew about the past is a lie.
“Sebastian?” Emily’s voice.
I ignore her and brush past through the French doors to the front of the mansion.
The door stands open. My heart is racing. “Brett! Riv!” I yell as I run outside.
In the distance, near the concrete walkway to the beach, I see them.
River, standing, running his fingers through his disheveled hair.
