Cutler 01 - Dawn

drinking—"
    "Then he wouldn't have been as careful, and he would surely have been heard."
    Jimmy nodded.
    "You don't believe he would do such a thing, either, do you, Jimmy? Not deep down in your heart."
    "He confessed. They had him cold, Dawn. And he didn't try to deny it to us." He lowered his eyes sadly. "I guess I should be getting on my way."
    My heart stopped, my thoughts taking frantic flight, wanting to go off with Jimmy and escape this prison. I felt trapped and needed to seek out the wind so it could fan my hair and sting my skin and make me feel free and alive again.
    "But, Jimmy, you were going to stay here a few days and rest up."
    "I'll just get caught here and make trouble for you and Philip."
    "No, you won't!" I cried. "I don't want you to go yet, Jimmy. Please stay." He lifted his eyes to gaze into mine. Swelling up in both of us was a turmoil of whirling emotions.
    "Sometimes," Jimmy said in the softest, warmest voice I ever heard him speak, "I used to wish you weren't my sister."
    "Why?" I said and held my breath.
    "I . . . thought you were so pretty, I wished you could be my girlfriend," he confessed. "You were always after me to choose this friend of yours or that to be my girlfriend, but I didn't want anybody else but you." He looked away. "That's why I was so jealous and angry when you started getting interested in Philip."
    For a moment I didn't know what to say. My first impulse was to put my arms around him and lavish a million kisses on his face. I wanted to draw his head down against my breast and cuddle it there.
    "Oh, Jimmy," I said, my eyes tearing something awful again, "it just isn't fair. All this mix-up. It's not right."
    "I know," he said. "But when I learned that you were not really my sister, I couldn't help feeling happy as well as sad. Of course, I was unhappy about your being taken away, but what I was hoping . . . aw, I shouldn't hope," he added quickly and looked away again.
    "No, Jimmy. You can hope. What do you hope? Please tell me." He looked down, his face red. "I won't laugh."
    "I know you wouldn't laugh, Dawn. You would never laugh at me; I just can't help feeling ashamed thinking it, much less saying it."
    "Say it, Jimmy. I want you to say it," I replied in a much more demanding tone. He turned and looked at me, his gaze moving up and down my face as if he wanted to capture me in his mind forever and ever.
    "I was hoping that if I ran away and stayed away long enough, you would stop thinking of me as your brother, and someday I would come back and you might think of me as . . . as a boyfriend," he said, all in one breath.
    For a moment it was as if the world had stopped on its axis, as if every sound in the universe had died, as if birds were frozen in midair, and cars and people. There was no wind; the ocean became like glass, the waves up and ready to fall, the tide stuck just at the shore. Everything waited on us.
    Jimmy had uttered the words that had lingered unspoken in both our hearts for years and years, for our hearts knew the truth long before we did, and kept feeding us feelings we thought were unclean and forbidden.
    Could I ever do what he dreamt I would: look into his face and not see him as my brother, not see every touch, every kiss as a sin?
    "You can see now why I have to get going," he said sternly and stood up.
    "No, Jimmy." I reached out and seized his wrist. "I don't know whether or not I can ever do what you hope, but we're not going to find out if we're apart. We're just going to always wonder and wonder until the wondering becomes too much and we stop caring."
    He shook his head.
    "I'll never stop caring about you, Dawn," he said with such firmness, it washed away any shred of doubt. "No matter how far away I am or how much time passes. Never."
    "Don't run off, Jimmy," I pleaded. I held on to his wrist, and his body finally relaxed. He lowered himself back to the bunk, and we sat there beside each other, neither speaking, me holding his wrist, him staring ahead, his chest lifting and falling with his own excitement.
    "My heart's pounding so much," I whispered and lowered my forehead against his shoulder. Now, whenever we touched, it sent a streak of warmth through my body. I felt feverish.
    "Mine, too," he said. I brought my palm to his chest and pressed it against his heart to feel the thumping; and then I lifted his hand and brought it to my breast so he could feel mine.
    The moment his fingers were pressed to my bosom, he closed his eyes