Wanderlust (Filling Spaces #1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

and
just shrugged it off.  So the year he did lose the keys, it took him
hours to convince her he wasn’t just playing around.”  He laughed a little in
the dark.  “Before Mom went to the hospital for the last time, she hid his
extra set on purpose.  He didn’t find them until weeks after the funeral, and
said it was her way of trying to make him smile even when he was sad.  I guess
I’ve inherited their sense of humor, too…”
    And so he spoke: about
his mother and the heart problem that took her life, the loss of his father,
his sister Kady and her fiancé in New York, his struggles in grad school, his
quiet and small apartment.  Jamie listened rapt, imagining the faces and places
to flesh out the words, hearing in the stories more heart—and maybe more
loneliness—than Shea might have imagined.  He didn’t know how much time passed
as he lay there listening; it was only after Shea had been silent for a few
moments that he stirred. 
    “Mm?” he asked without
opening his eyes.  “Why’d you stop?”
    He could feel the
weight of Shea’s sleepy gaze.  “You’re letting me go on and on about myself,”
he murmured, “but you haven’t said anything about you .  What about you? 
What about your life?”
    “Boring,” Jamie replied
lightly, but he opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on the ceiling.  “Nothing
worth speaking of, really.” 
    “But—”
    “If Sleeping Beauty
isn’t tired,” Jamie said archly before his companion could argue, “then I’ll be happy to take his sleeping bag and leave him in the bedroom to sort out
his thoughts.”
    Shea sighed, but
accepted the pointed comment and did not protest.  “I’ll stay here, thanks,” he
said dryly.   The sleeping bag rustled more as he settled down more
comfortably. “Jamie?”
    “Mm?”
    Shea reached out
blindly with one hand, caught Jamie by the shoulder, and squeezed.  Jamie’s
gray eyes widened and his heart, thrown into riot by the unexpected gesture,
thumped rebelliously in his chest.  “Thanks,” Shea said simply. “For being
kinder than you needed to be.”  The warmth of his touch vanished as he rolled
over and scrunched himself up like a caterpillar in the sleeping bag. 
“G’night,” he mumbled.
    “Goodnight,” Jamie
muttered mechanically.  He wasn’t kind; he knew better than that.  He
preferred being alone.  He hated people who coasted by on privilege, cared
little to understand the way the world worked, and wanted to live forever in
the safety of their cozy little lives.  And he wanted to say all of
those things suddenly, to make them vehemently clear, but he couldn’t open his
mouth to spit out the words because at least right now, at least with Shea,
they weren’t true .  Shea was fundamentally different from most people Jamie
knew—naïve but disarmingly shrewd, open and thoughtful in his manner, sweet
even in his melancholy—and Jamie chose to be kind to him because…
    …because…
    Sleep took him before
he could find a satisfactory answer.

 
     
    III.
    Shea woke for no reason
at all.
    He could see nothing in
the heavy darkness and, momentarily disoriented, reached blindly for the lamp
on the nearby nightstand before he remembered that he wasn’t at home. After
that, he simply stilled and listened uncomfortably to the myriad sounds
outside: the chirp of insects, the warble of frogs, strange scratches and
rustlings he couldn’t identify.   Animals?  Bugs?  He thought of the
spiders undoubtedly crawling on the bed in the other room and shivered, batting
frantically at a tickle on his cheek until he realized it was a stray hair.
    Unnerved, he closed his
eyes tightly shut and tried to focus on the sound of his own breathing.   Sleep
didn’t return as easily as he’d hoped, though, and his muscles tightened with
anxiety as the sounds grew ever louder outside.  With a frustrated sigh, he
opened his eyes again to gaze at the ceiling and pushed away thoughts of crawling
insects and