room,” Finn said.
“Seriously. Who do you think you are? Donovan and Violet?” Kenna said.
Their voices hovered somewhere beneath me, but they were far away and hard to reach because I was floating. Lifted clean off the ground and drifting on clouds. Something warm and liquid pulsed through me as Rafe kissed me with a tenderness that made all my muscles loose and my bones limber. His tongue gently swept against mine with just a hint of hesitancy. The kind of soft sweet kiss we might’ve had when we were kids if he had asked me out instead of Kyle.
The regret was nearly as visceral as my desire. My lower stomach trembled like I was on the edge of something new and scary and wonderful, and I didn’t want to touch it or look at it too closely for fear that I’d scare it away. My feet dangled and…
Wait. What?
I broke the kiss and looked down. I really was floating off the ground. But only a few inches. Rafe chuckled at my surprised gasp and lowered us to the ground. With a hell of a lot more finesse than last time.
I rubbed my fingers over his chest, still bare from when he’d taken that bloody and ruined T-shirt off. His skin was warm beneath my fingers and the little sparks of blue light dancing on my fingertips looked good against his tanned pecs. “What was that for?”
“I had to see something. An experiment.”
Finn rubbed his hands together. “My favorite kind.”
I gave Finn a look of confusion, but he only grinned back at me. I hated how smart and calculating he was beneath that goofy exterior. It made him harder to see coming.
“Come on.” Rafe took my hand, leading me toward the back of the property where the trees met the open grassy expanse of Kenna and Galen’s backyard. “We need to talk.”
“Is it safe here?” My eyes darted toward the woods.
A sense of longing rose up in me. I hadn’t set foot in those woods since I led the last tour group up to the cave right after the earthquake and discovered the cracked birthstones. Hiking had been a solace and an escape after Kyle died. Not only had I run the tours for the hotels, but I spent plenty of time out there on my own. There wasn’t one square foot of that forest I didn’t know like the back of my hand.
“The curse won’t come near Kenna and Galen’s property. They scare the shit out of it.” Noticing the touch of mourning in my expression, he reached for my hand. “You okay?”
I turned to him, my brows pinched together. I didn’t like experiments I wasn’t aware of beforehand. I had no problem working with Rafe. The island was depending on us to do our part and finish this nightmare, but we didn’t have to couple up just like everyone else had. Now that we’d cleared most of the air—the parts that kept us from speaking to each other, anyway—we could use our magic without the side effects.
So why was he trying to egg them on? Did he not want to trust me?
“Why did you kiss me?” I asked.
He lifted his hand and rubbed his thumb over my bottom lip, smiling as I shivered under his touch, so far removed from my magic, I had no choice but to admit this was all him. “I’m going to ask you a question, and if you lie to me, I’ll know.”
I crossed my arms. “You don’t know me anymore. I could tell you my favorite color is still ice-blue and you’d believe me.”
“Because it is.”
Okay, fine. That was too easy. “My favorite movie is Jaws.”
“Lie. You like Jaws 2 better.” He was smiling at me in a way that was a touch too smug, given that I wasn’t revealing anything of importance.
I crossed my arms. “My favorite candy is Peeps.”
“True, and I hate that for you, by the way.”
“My favorite hobby is knitting.”
“Lie. You still do it though. God knows why.”
What the hell? How did he know that? Maybe he caught a glimpse of the hat I’d been knitting for Kenna and realized that I was trying to make fetch happen. And I had all those old gothic romances on my shelf. It wasn’t hard to suss out my actual favorite hobby.
I tapped a finger to my lips. “My favorite scent is lilacs.”
“True.”
“My favorite beer is Zodiac Moon.”
“Also true.”
It didn’t surprise me that Rafe remembered all these things about me. While the last four years had felt like a lifetime, it really hadn’t been that long ago. “All this is proving is that you have a good memory, not that you still know me. Not in a way that counts, anyway.”
He gave me a sly grin. “Then why not try to make this hard for me?”
Ass. I tucked my bottom lip between my teeth and lifted my chin. “I haven’t missed you once since we quit talking.”
“Not only is that a lie”—he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and I shivered—“but it’s a pretty bold one, since I’m betting you thought about me every day.”
“Only when I was hatchet shopping.”
“Another lie.” He reached up and rubbed his finger down my nose. “Even if you didn’t get that little scrunch right here when you’re lying, I’d have known that wasn’t true.”
My throat went dry as he leaned in closer. I didn’t like where this was going, but at the same time, I was helpless to stop it. “What makes you think I’m lying?”
“Because you don’t kiss like someone who wants to bury a hatchet in my back.”
A quick lick of heat surged inside me. “That’s just the magic.”
“Lie.” His lips hovered over mine, so close to tasting me again that my knees went weak. But he didn’t touch me. No spark of light burst between us. It was just him and me and the moonlight. “Are you ready for my question?”
“If I say no will you ask me anyway?”
He grinned. “How did you look at me before that accidental kiss four years ago?”
I swallowed. Hard. “I’m not sure what you mean. How could I see how I looked at you if I was the one doing the looking?”
He brushed his finger down my nose, over the swell of my lips, and under my chin, tilting it upward. “Lie. But I see your loophole, so how about this? How did you feel when you looked at me, before that accidental kiss?”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I did not want to answer this question. All those things I’d been so careful to hide would come to light. I didn’t want to talk about this.
Because I couldn’t just say I was attracted to him, or I thought he was the best person in the world, or that I thought about him the way I should’ve been thinking about my fiancé, because that would open all the floodgates, and he didn’t want that from me. He’d never wanted that from me, and I didn’t want to give into that just because we were partnered up.
It had taken me four years to learn how to live without my other half. I couldn’t stand it if I lost the little bit of him I’d been able to get back.
Hugging myself against the chilly breeze leaking out of the forest, I turned away from him. “Don’t ask me things you don’t want the answers to.”
He gripped my shoulders and spun me around to face him. His ice-blue eyes stripped me down, leaving me naked and vulnerable. “What are you scared of, buttercup?”
What a loaded question. My bottom lip trembled. “Everything.”
He wrapped his arms around me, holding me against his chest. And once again, my traitorous pulse tripped over itself like it used to when he’d been my best friend. Back when I thought my feelings were about chasing the forbidden fruit. Wanting to feel something exciting and dangerous. And just like then, every part of me ached for every part of him.
“Is it easier when you don’t have to look at me?” he asked.
“No,” I mumbled against his chest, my fingers gently swiping against his hard-packed muscle all on their own. “It might be easier if you put a shirt on though.”
He laughed. “I’m afraid I have no interest in making this easy on you.”
The warm, comforting cocoon of his arms suddenly grew cold as my stomach bottomed out. Fear lashed at my insides as all my old insecurities came back to haunt me. Too many negative emotions clawed their way up my throat. I couldn’t hold them, they spewed out of my mouth, determined to hurt and maim everything in their path.
I backed away from Rafe, from the tenderness in his eyes that Past Me—the hurt and lonely girl who’d had every bit of her self-confidence stripped away—had misinterpreted. “You know what? Fuck you. Haven’t things been easy enough for you?”
“You got me.” He gave me a dead-eyed stare. “It’s been all butterflies and rainbows.”
I shoved him, but he didn’t move an inch. Why was I doing this? Why was I so angry? Rafe hadn’t been the one to do this to me, so why was I taking it out on him? I couldn’t stop the word-vomit from bubbling up, though; it was poisoning me. “You won, okay? Whatever kind of war you’re playing with me, you won a long time ago. I give up.”
I spun around to march away from him, but he grabbed my wrist and a hot pulse of magic sparked and burned between us. A frenzied, out-of-control lust punched me in the gut, nearly doubling me over. The urge to climb him and grind myself against his thick hard cock clouded all my other senses. Brightly colored butterflies and swirling rainbows burst into the air.
“Oh, that’s cute,” he said. He dropped my wrist and the illusions died. The last to fade was the faint outline of a golden woman with stardust hair. There and then gone in a blink. She gained more of a shape the more illusions I cast. “If that’s what you do when you’re pissed at me, I might have to rile you up before every child’s birthday party on the island.”
“I can’t control it. Whatever I pictured last in my mind is what appears.”
He stepped toward me, running his hands down my arms and keeping his voice calm and steady. “I think if you learn to trust me, you’ll be able to control it.”
“If you want me to trust you, quit pushing me.” When he didn’t immediately argue with me, his way of conceding without having to admit he was wrong, I blew out a breath. Rafe wasn’t Kyle. He’d never been Kyle. He wasn’t trying to control me. I closed my eyes and repeated that mantra to myself until the bands around my chest loosened. “What’s with all the questioning? I thought we’d settled all this before the hotel collapsed?”
“You settled your piece.” His lips tightened. “I still have questions. Like why Maybell Ketner seems to think you used to look at me a certain way when you were dating Kyle.”
I rolled my eyes. “That woman hates me. She probably blames me for the permanent sunset and the slow winter season too.”
“Yeah, I thought the same thing. At first.” He rubbed his jaw. “But the thing is, when I kissed you by accident that time… why did you kiss me back?”
The blood drained from my face. Nope. I was not going there with him right now. He already understood that I didn’t run out on my wedding because of that kiss, but if I told him everything, would he still believe that? “I was caught off guard.”
“You used to watch me a lot. Before you and Kyle started dating.”
“You were an oddity. Why do people look at car accidents or babies with two heads?” Oh, God, he was standing really close again. Too close. And he smelled like polished wood and expensive cologne and wasn’t wearing a shirt. How was I supposed to guard myself against this?
“I wasn’t all that odd. A little shy. Definitely messed up. But you didn’t look at me like I was a two-headed car wreck.” His arm slipped around my waist, bringing me against him.
My magic wanted to flare and claim him, but I backed it down. I had no idea how I was doing that. I licked my lips. “You know you’re attractive. You don’t need me to stroke your ego.”
“You didn’t look at me like I was attractive either. I know what girls who want a snack look like.” He splayed his fingers wide against my back. “No. You looked at me like you wanted inside me. Like you wanted to peel back all my layers and make every one of them yours.”
“That’s pretty morbid.” My knees weakened. Why did he have to smell so good and look like that? “I’m glad to see you took my hatchet comment seriously.”
“But here’s the thing you don’t know.” He pushed my hair over my shoulder. His warm breath tickled my neck as his lips traced the shell of my ear. “I used to look at you the same way. But I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to do a damn thing about it. Until you were with the one person I’d never try to steal you from. How fucked up is that?”
Oh, God. Was this happening? Did I want this to happen? What if it was a trick? Why was I so messed up? I didn’t need to answer that last question. I already knew why.
My heart raced so hard, it pushed against my chest. My entire frame shook, rattling my bones against each other. “You’re lying. You’re just saying that because you’re trying to get me to let my guard down and tell you I was in love with you.”
“Were you?”
“You first,” I breathed.
“Since I’m willing to give this honesty thing a try if you are…” He rested his forehead against mine and closed his eyes. “I loved you from the moment I first saw you in the woods. Since before I knew that real love wasn’t ugly or inconvenient. I loved you so much that I didn’t even know how to breathe right around you.”
“Rafe.” I was falling. Sliding right out of my own body. I gripped his hair and tried to hang on in this moment. “I’m…” A single tear slipped out, but I stopped myself before I let any more go. I’d cried enough tonight. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know how.” He swallowed. “You once asked me my biggest regret. Do you remember?”
Of course I remembered. I remembered everything about Rafe.
The bonfire had started to die. We’d be graduating soon, and then what? Would it still be the three of us? Or would Kyle start to ease me away from everyone else, like he had when we were kids? He snored lightly beside me, his golden hair falling over his forehead.
I wanted to love him. So much. It would be so much easier if I did. But looking down at his handsome, sleeping face, all I felt was affection. Not passion or want or need of any kind. When I told him I wasn’t sure about dating, he said all those things would come later. He said we were meant to be, everyone knew it, and it was past time for me to give up my childish crush on a guy who wouldn’t even talk to me.
I was still waiting for that later to come.
Rafe leaned up, propping himself on his elbows. Both of us were a little buzzed, but Kyle had drunk most of the beer and passed out about ten minutes ago. Rafe turned his gaze to the waves rolling against the sand, leaving a dark stain behind as the water receded into the ocean. I liked those times when he looked away from me. It allowed me to study him without notice.
He turned to me then, the hint of a smile lifting one side of his mouth, like I’d just been busted staring. “Are you ready for graduation, buttercup?”
“I guess.” How did anyone prepare to become an official adult? It’s not like they handed out manuals with our diplomas. “Why are you asking me yearbook committee questions? Are you too drunk to think of anything else to say?”
He looked down and snorted. “Maybe. What’s your biggest regret?”
I lay back and pillowed my arms under my head, staring up at the stars. “I wish I’d done that student exchange program.”
I took four years of French when everyone else took Spanish because there was an exchange program you could be a part of if you were fluent enough by senior year. It would’ve been three months in Paris. The city I’d dreamed of visiting since I’d first learned there was a whole world outside the island. The Sagittarius in me wanted adventure and travel, and Paris had always been first on my list.
But Kyle guilted me out of it. Then he got everyone else to guilt me out of it, until my parents changed their minds about letting me go, and that was that. No Paris for me.
Rafe didn’t respond. He’d been the only one who wanted me to go, who told me to find a way without my parents’ approval, but I was still seventeen, and I didn’t have a choice.
I poked his side. “What about you? What’s your biggest regret?”
His gaze dropped to my lips, tracing the shape of them with his icy-blue eyes. I held my breath. I felt the weight of his stare in my gut and my heart and in the tingle of my toes. This was the passion, need, and want I was missing with my actual boyfriend.
Guess I was still waiting to give up that childish crush too.
Finally, Rafe looked away, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “I should’ve joined the football team. It probably would’ve helped with scholarships.”
He was lying. I knew he was lying. But I didn’t want to push him if he didn’t want to tell me the truth. He wasn’t my boyfriend and he was more than entitled to his secrets.
“I knew you were bullshitting me,” I said. “I thought it had to do with something personal, and I didn’t want to push you if you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“You know all my personal. I never hid anything from you.”
“Except maybe the biggest thing.”
“Yeah.” His eyes turned far away, taking him to a different time that we’d never be able to get back. “I got the feeling that the accidental kiss was an off-limits topic…”
I gave him a wry grin. “I think we’re past off-limits topics here.”
His chuckle was low and deep and made his exquisite chest rumble. “Well, here’s a little more honesty for you. Since you have it in your mind that we’re in some kind of war, I’m handing you all the weapons. That kiss was no accident for me. I wanted to taste you, just once, before you became another man’s wife.”
Those tears I’d worked so hard to hold back threatened to make an encore appearance. “Is that why you never pushed me to tell you why I left Kyle at the altar?”
He tilted his head toward the sky and blew out a breath. “I was afraid you were going to tell me you’d called off the wedding for me. And if you’d said that, if you’d told me you wanted me, there wasn’t a damn thing that could’ve stopped me from claiming you.”
My heart hurt. The kind of guilt he must’ve been carrying around because of that. Why was I continuing to keep vital pieces of the truth from him when he’d been nothing but honest with me since he learned the truth about Kyle? I already knew Rafe wouldn’t try to snuff out my fire. He’d only ever brought out the best version of myself.
So what the hell was I so afraid of?
“Do you know why I didn’t tell you the truth about Kyle when you found me up at the dead zone?” Here went nothing. All my cards on the table. “Because you were going to lose me either way. Either to guilt or to blame. I chose blame, so you wouldn’t lose Kyle too.”
He rubbed his hands over his face, the look in his eyes reminiscent of the first time I saw him in the woods by himself, a haunted thirteen-year-old boy. “I don’t understand.”
“What would you have said if I’d told you what Kyle had done to me in that dressing room?”
His face hardened. “I would’ve wanted to kill him all over again.”
I swallowed the thick wad of emotion blocking my windpipe. “And what would you have said if I’d told you that kiss hadn’t been an accident for me either?”
“I would’ve told you that I was in love with you.” Understanding finally dawned in his eyes. As much he talked about nothing stopping him from claiming me back then, we both knew he wouldn’t have been able to. Guilt would’ve eaten him alive. Kyle’s memory would’ve been ruined. Instead, I let him blame me, so he wouldn’t blame himself. “We couldn’t have been together. Not back then. It would’ve hurt too many people.”
“And now?” I rubbed my hand over his jaw, bringing his gaze back to me.
“Now? I’m tired of missing you. I’m tired of living with the things I should’ve said or done when I was a messed-up kid who didn’t know my head from my ass. But most of all, I’m tired of living even a minute longer without you.”
Unable to hold myself back from him any longer, I threw myself into his arms and kissed him like I’d wanted to every day for the past fifteen years.
