Frost Bite

Chapter 38

Jack

Ryan looks like he's about to throw up. I take a precautionary step backwards. "You are taking her where?" he demands, and I'm surprised his voice doesn't climb an octave. But instead it stays steady, low and furious. Ryan reveals so much when he tries to hide things. He's an open book.

"The amazon," Josie supplies, glaring at him. I know what she's thinking: that Ryan's doing that thing again where he acts like she's not there, like she's not capable of making her own decisions and I'm brainwashing her.

If only Ryan knew.

Ryan glares at her. "I can't believe you're going along with this. You're smarter than that. We just go back home. How can you want to leave again?"

"Because I have to find the cure for Jack. I have to." The way she says it, with such finality, like it's a foregone conclusions, makes my chest tight.

Does she know how much that means? How much that terrifies me and thrills me at the same time? Does she know what she's saying when she says that?

"But what about your life?"

"This is how I want to spend it!" she shouts at him and both Ryan and I jump. It is so, so rare for Josie to yell. Even when I left, she didn't yell at me. She was calm and controlled.

It makes me wonder what this outburst says more about: her affection for me or her affection for Ryan.

Ryan shakes his head, all the anger has drained from his face and he just looks...tired. I wonder what it's been like, following Josie around for the last decade, trying to keep up and stay relevant. What toll must that take on him?

"Then I guess we're going to the amazon," he says without any excitement, just with a weary kind of heaviness that I can understand from a thousand years of carrying a burden harder than his.

He's so lucky to have such a finite amount of time.

"You don't have to go with us," Josie says softly, because she knows how hard it is for him to be away from his family, to see us together, to be around me. And she loves him enough that she would never ask that of him. "I just wanted you to know. So you would know that I'm coming back."

Ryan stares at her. "You think I would ever let you go without me?" he asks, his voice is rough and I know he's trying to hide hide his hurt.

"I would never ask you to," Josie says softly. "This isn't the life that you want. I know that."

"You're my best friend," he says. And I cringe at the way that he says it: with regret. "You're my best friend in the whole world, of course I'm going with you."

"You don't have to," she says.

Ryan looks at me and the muscles in his jaw feather out as he gnashes his teeth together. "Yeah," he says, "I do."

How noble. I resist the urge to glare at him, because kicking Ryan when he's down no longer holds any appeal for me. It was different when I thought we were both on the losing side. Now it would just feel like rubbing it in. And no matter what I think about Ryan, he's never once thrown his humanity in my face.

At least, not on purpose.

"Why?" Josie demands. "You think I can't take care of myself?" she demands and I know how it feels to be on the other end of that question and I sympathize with Ryan.

Except, he would never want to hear that.

"No," he says, "But you shouldn't have to."

Josie sighs. "I'm not going to force you to stay if you're insistent on coming. But I expect you to get along with Jack," she says. And then she turns to me. "I expect you to play nice, too," she informs me.