open. Cream walls. A light lemon scent in the air. Framed, digitally colorized photos of 1920s circuses. Mid-century modern end tables. A green velvet chair with my dream girl and worst nightmare perched on the edge, watching me with cautious hazel eyes. More golden than green. Which meant she was anxious, annoyed, or guilty.
Maybe all three.
I’d never been inside Jocelyn’s little one-bedroom apartment, even back when we were friends. She’d been careful about keeping this space her own. As far as I knew, the only person who’d ever been welcome here was Kenna.
Looking around now, I could see how well it suited her. There were little touches that reminded me of her and her varied tastes. Her interest in old-time circuses, a collection of perfume bottles that probably reminded her of her grandma, a glass of water that was always half-full and within easy reach, knitting supplies for the hobby she was absolutely awful at but too stubborn to give up, the velvet furniture that appealed to her quirky sense of décor and melted against my skin like butter.
All of it perfectly Jocelyn. And for reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom, it pleased me to see that some part of the girl I’d fallen so hard for as a kid still existed, at least on the surface. Not that I had expected her apartment to be a dungeon full of nail beds and spiked ball flails. And not that it would’ve been any of my business or concern if it had.
I sat up and touched the back of my head, which throbbed like a motherfucker. I’d have a nice goose egg there, but at least there was no blood. Small blessings and whatnot.
Vague pictures of what had happened before the lights went out flashed through my mind. Getting tossed into this room by my now former buddy Cole. Frozen in here by Wes. A beach appearing in the middle of the fucking living room. Objects floating in the air. Magic pulsing through me in a rush of blood that went straight to my cock.
Kissing Jocelyn. The heat that flared in her eyes. The same heat I was certain had also been present in mine. Not wanting to close my eyes because I needed to see exactly how bad she wanted me. Like a drug. A bag of bricks that dragged me down, drowning in her emerald irises that had gone full green with desire.
Fuck me.
I rubbed my hands over my face. What the fuck had I been thinking?
I hadn’t. That was the problem. Magic had taken over every bit of decency and common sense I had left and tossed them out the open patio door. I kissed the woman I hated almost as much as I hated myself. My best friend’s fiancée. The reason why he was dead.
Another sharp pain lanced the back of my head, and I pressed my palm against the lump. Maybe I could use this as a medical emergency to get out of this room. I’d ask Finn to come in and heal me. He’d be easy enough to overpower, then I could make my escape.
“Don’t even think about it.” Jocelyn’s quiet, but fierce voice pulled me from my plans. “I’m not taking responsibility for this, too.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, buttercup.”
Hurt flashed in her eyes. “Don’t call me that.”
I pinched my lips together wanting to stuff that nickname back down my throat. A massive slip-up on my part. I’d never intended to call her by that name ever again, but I’d never intended on having some fated magical connection with her either. Shit changed.
In high school, we used to sit on the rock wall that separated the beach from Stardust Parkway while we waited for Kyle to finish football practice. We’d eat corn dogs and kick our feet against the ancient stones and make up goofy stories about whatever tourists happened to be passing by. One day, out of the blue, she asked me why it had taken us so long to become friends. A fair question, since things were so easy between us.
I told her about the neighbor lady who lived next door to one of my foster homes. How she’d always look out the window at us with disdain, but when she noticed red fingers in the winter, she’d hand out mittens, or if one of the kids was getting too skinny, she’d give them a cup of butter and make them eat it with a spoon in front of her.
None of the kids wanted to do it. It was a cup of raw butter, for fuck’s sake. But every single kid who was too scared to tell her no ended up stronger, fuller, and better off than the kids who had refused.
She was mean and lonely and didn’t necessarily want to give a shit about any of us, but if we were ever in need, she was always there in her own way.
Jocelyn’s golden-green eyes had danced with amusement. “Are you saying you’re the mean old neighbor in this scenario?”
“Nope.” I tapped the end of her pert little nose. “I’m saying you’re my cup of butter.”
A stunning light touched Jocelyn’s eyes for the briefest of moments before she blew it off and acted as if I was pulling her leg. But the fact of the matter was, before I’d come to the island, I’d been starving. In all the ways a teenage boy could starve.
Until I met her. I didn’t know girls could be soft and kind, and that wanting to be with them didn’t have to be dirty. She gave me something I’d been in desperate need of, filled me up in a way that made me whole for the first time in my life. And she had no idea.
The memory sent a fresh flood of guilt churning in my gut. I kept my gaze carefully trained on anything but her gorgeous face that had always managed to bring me to my knees without even trying. What was I doing, dragging that shit up again?
My best friend—the man who had been just as much a brother to me as Finn and Galen—was dead because of the woman before me. A tragedy that I played no small part in. But at the end of the day, I’d done the right thing. I didn’t try to change her mind about marrying Kyle. Even though it killed me.
And while she was right in her earlier assessment, that she wasn’t responsible for my actions, she was sure as shit responsible for the choices she made afterward.
At least, that’s what I’d try to tell myself on the nights I couldn’t sleep. Which had become more and more frequent as Galen and Finn kept getting in my face about what I had to do and my duty to this island that had given all of us a home.
Not that I’d had much peace in the last four years. I didn’t go out, I didn’t date, even though I was allegedly in my prime and I liked people. I liked being social. But I was pissing away my life because I’d never fully gotten over the hard-on I had for my best friend’s girlfriend.
Before all this curse bullshit started, I could keep thoughts of her contained. At least while I was awake. But I’d never learned how to control the dreams that still haunted me nightly.
“You’re not that hard to read, Rafe. I know you want to get out of this room and think you can use Finn to do it.” Jocelyn unfolded her long, gazelle-like legs out from under her and stood over me. “But you’re not that injured, and I’m not the one who hurt you.”
We both knew how untrue that last statement was, but I wasn’t about to drag us through the past again when we had very real problems in our present.
“How do I know you didn’t toss that lamp at me?” I could hear the assholery rolling off my tongue, but I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
She paused. Assessing me with more than a little trepidation. She was the only person who’d been able to make me feel anything since Kyle died. Granted, most of the time it was anger, annoyance, or guilt, mixed with a healthy dose of need that shamed me to my fucking core, but it beat the hell out of feeling nothing at all.
“I’m not the one with air magic,” she said, still eying me like I was a plaster volcano and she’d just poured in the baking soda. “I’m the one who weaves illusions.”
“And what do illusions have to do with fire?” I had no idea why I was pushing this, other than arguing with her released some of my pent-up tension. There were probably better ways to go about it, but I was a Gemini and sometimes we were just like this.
“People used to tell stories around fires. Some thought it helped expand the mind. Those were the first form of illusions, before printing presses and photographs and movies.” She lifted her hands then let them drop in her lap. “At least, that’s my guess. I don’t know for sure, I just know telekinesis isn’t mine.”
As much as I hated to concede the point, she was right about our powers. I could feel my magic intertwining with hers. The weightless sensation of floating that flowed through me. The hot rush of wind. The twisted funnels of lust. The way my air stoked her fire.
Plus, I’d felt it. It was more than floating things into the air. There was an urge to see objects in motion. To move them wherever I pleased. To bend them to my will. I didn’t like that one bit. I’d read Carrie in high school and it didn’t end too well for the prom queen.
But on top of all that, the thing that really sealed the truth of it for me was that her magic never would’ve hurt me. I’d felt that more than anything. Her bone-deep desire to protect me, even when I hadn’t spoken a single word to her in four years. My own magic though? It knew I was a stubborn asshole and had no problem with knocking a little sense into me.
Except for…
“What the hell kind of trick did you pull with the door?” I rubbed the front of my head where I’d smacked into the door, though that didn’t hurt nearly as much as my pride.
She rolled her eyes. “Please. I didn’t do it on purpose.” She sat back down on her green velvet chair with a huff. “I wanted an escape, and it just… disappeared. You’re the dumbass who walked into it. You can’t make me take the blame for this one.”
She said that as though I’d been asking her to take the blame for fucking everything that went wrong in my life. Which only served to raise my defenses. “It was still your magic.”
“Fine.” She threw her hands into the air. “I’m sorry I accidentally made the door look like it was open even though it was my first time using magic and I have no clue what the hell I’m doing. Are you satisfied? Or should I grovel a little more?”
Goddamn it. She would not make me smile. I fucking refused. Even as I felt the corner of my mouth twitching. “No, I think that was a sufficient apology.”
She sniffed. As if to say, “fuck off.” And because I seemed to get some kind of perverse pleasure out of sparring with her, I had even more regret for the years I’d spent ignoring her rather than arguing with her at every turn. But I didn’t want to lose sight of why we’d been locked up like this in the first place. So I brought things back around to working on our magic.
“Can you just will things to happen by thinking about them?” It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her to bring Kyle back, then, even though I knew that was impossible, and it would be too cruel to ask, even for me.
“I don’t will anything.” Her full bottom lip puffed out. “It’s an illusion. That’s what my magic does. It projects whatever pictures are playing in my mind.”
“Don’t let your bosses see what you’ve got going on inside your head. They might not take too kindly to your sweet little visions of them.” I meant for it to come off like a joke, but fuck. Her magic was dangerous. Possibly the most dangerous magic of all.
The innocent, dewy expression in her eyes made me want to believe she had no idea what she was capable of. But by the way she worried her teeth against her lips, I had no doubt she was beginning to understand. She could lead anyone anywhere. Make them do anything to themselves if she played her visions right.
It was what the curse had been using against everyone else. How it had lured Brooke Hudson away from Cole and almost spelled her death.
Jocelyn wouldn’t do that though. She didn’t hurt people on purpose…
My gut clenched and I hated tripping over second guesses. Kyle had been gone for four years. I should’ve let this shit go by now. But every time I thought I could get past blaming her for what happened, something would stop me. An intrusive thought about how it had always been the two of them until I tagged along. A caboose on an already sleek and well-oiled train.
Their lives had been mapped out well before I ever came to town, but with one kiss the night before her wedding, everything that had been bubbling under the surface erupted.
And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to stop punishing her for the guilt that I still carried. It wasn’t fair or right, but I’d never claimed to be either of those things.
“I can’t use my magic against you,” she said quietly. “If that’s what’s got you in knots right now, know you’re safe from me. It won’t let me hurt you.”
I knew that, but I didn’t know she knew that. My head snapped up. “Is this your way of saying you tried?”
She sighed and her shoulders sloped in an elegant way that made me think of angels at rest. But the slight shade of purple under her eyes let me know that maybe she’d been sleeping about as well as I had the last few months. The smooth skin around her lips made me want to draw a smile from her, just to see the crease in her skin where there should’ve been laugh lines.
How was it possible to want to kiss and throttle someone so much at the same time?
“I know how your mind works.” She rested her chin on her clasped hands. “I know the conclusions you jump to about me. I’m not making a huge leap here.”
Was I ever going to stop thinking the worst of her, and in turn, myself? I doubted it. “I need some air.”
I stepped outside. The perpetual night cast an eerie glow over the still dark waters that churned six floors beneath me. Moonlight rippled against the endless black night, almost as if it was mocking me. Clouds gathered over a black rock in the distance, what was probably the black rock separating the hotel’s beach from the rest of the cove.
Those weren’t normal clouds, though. They rolled with an energy I could feel from here. The urge to antagonize the curse squeezed me from the inside, but it paid me no attention. Probably because it knew my abilities were a joke and fucking me up was a waste of time, considering I was out here doing a bang-up job of that all on my own.
We’d been trapped here for weeks, but this was the first time that it felt like the sea was closing in on me. Part of being a Gemini meant that I accepted change as inevitable. The downside of that in our current situation was things that should’ve shaken my core often didn’t. The barrier going up, losing the sun, the streetlamps going out, none of that spurred me into the action I knew I needed to take with Jocelyn.
Because of the one thing I couldn’t let go. Admittedly, a big thing, but we had to work together. We’d reached the end of the timetable that had been set in motion by fate years before we’d ever been born, and we didn’t have a choice anymore.
My brothers thought I didn’t understand what was at stake, but I understood perfectly fine. The whole damn island was depending on my ability to forgive and trust Jocelyn.
Like I didn’t want to. Like I hadn’t been trying to. For years.
Wanting her, hating her, blaming her—all of it was so wrapped up together, I didn’t know where to begin untangling the knots. Especially not now that we were inside a pressure cooker.
Not to mention that Kyle’s mom was staying in the hotel with his sisters. I’d been taking care of them since Kyle died. What would they say if they saw me with Jocelyn? How could I put her before them when the last time I’d done so had cost them so much?
Without meaning to, my mind reeled back to that day. Like it often did on restless nights.
I shoved a box labeled “books” into the corner of the living room of my first home. The small two-bedroom, seven-hundred-square-foot box cost me triple what a similar place on the mainland would’ve, but this tourist island was home. I couldn’t see myself living anywhere else.
This should’ve been a proud moment for me, but the space felt inauspiciously empty. No amount of stuff could fill it when I already knew what was missing.
Tomorrow, Jocelyn—the woman I’d loved for as long as I’d had a firm grasp on what that word meant—would be marrying my best friend. And I’d be standing on the sidelines, front row seat as best man, hoping to hell I’d figure out how to look happy about it.
Not that I’d ever believed Jocelyn could be mine in this lifetime. Kyle had set his sights on her long before I’d ever come to Zodiac Cove. He only allowed me into their twosome because I was virtually the only person on the island who had no desire to get near her. She used to shine with a light so bright, it was like looking at the sun. While she drew others in, she’d scared the ever-living shit out of me.
But once those vows were spoken, I’d have to let go of the fantasies I indulged in way more often than was healthy. Jocelyn would be someone else’s wife. No longer with a temporary designation of girlfriend or fiancée.
I stood and wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my arm. This would be good for me. Making a home where memories of Jocelyn couldn’t follow. I’d leave them at the door and figure out a way to build a life that didn’t include her. She’d probably be hurt when I pulled away from her. I hated the idea of doing it, but I needed to start building a life of my own. One that didn’t include a dependency on two people who I could never be fully honest with.
There was a light tap on my door, and I smiled in spite of myself, unable to keep my reaction to Jocelyn being near under control. She always did have a distinctive knock. But I’d paid a lot of money to have a space that wouldn’t hold memories of her, so when I answered, I led us around the back of the house to my porch, rather than let her inside.
I offered her a drink, which she declined, then leaned against the railing. She stood by my side, mimicking my posture. She wore a light blue dress with tiny white owls dotting the surface. Her long strawberry blonde hair was pulled into a high ponytail, with a few loose wisps trailing down the back her long, delicate neck. God, she was gorgeous. More so in the moonlight, where her soft skin seemed to glow.
Her lemon scent surrounded me and my fingers itched to touch her, but I curled them against my palm. “What brings you by? It’s a little late to be prowling the streets the night before your wedding, buttercup.”
She gave me a wistful smile at the familiar nickname and twisted her fingers together. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing? Marrying Kyle?”
“What’s this? Last-minute jitters?”
She shrugged. “Something like that.”
Time stood still for a moment as I hovered on the edge of something larger than myself. A fork with two paths. The easy, paved path would be telling her she was absolutely doing the right thing. Marry Kyle, make the babies, live the life you’ve been locked into since birth.
Then there was the dark, pothole-covered path, shrouded in a thick blanket of fog and lined with dead, leafless trees. The one where I told her the truth. That I’d been in love with her for eleven years, since we were thirteen-year-old kids and she’d once looked at me like a one-way ticket to experience the world.
But the first half of my life had been nothing but dark and dangerous roads. It made me a cautious teen and a gutless adult. So I lied. I told her she was doing the right thing by marrying Kyle, even though saying so killed a key piece of my heart that only beat because of her.
“You’ve always belonged with Kyle.” And that wasn’t a lie. It had always been Jocelyn and Kyle. It never occurred to anyone to see them as individuals.
“You’re right. I guess I’ve always belonged to him.” She smiled, but it was strained around the edges and didn’t come close to touching her eyes. Jitters. That was all. “You always know exactly what to say. I should’ve come to you about this months ago.”
Fuck. She’d been having doubts for months? That felt like a hell of a lot more than pre-wedding jitters. But what the fuck was I supposed to do with that? Tell her to ditch Kyle? Run away with me? This wasn’t some fairy tale. This was real life with real consequences, and any chance I’d had at taking the other path had been closed off years ago.
“That’s me. Always the voice of reason.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice.
She chuckled and pushed up on her toes to kiss my cheek, but I’d turned my head at the exact wrong (or right?) moment, and her lips landed firmly on mine. Neither of us moved or blinked. Her lips were so soft, so warm against mine. She wasn’t even kissing me. Just holding still right there, but my cock stirred from this minuscule contact.
She chuckled against my lips and moved to step back, but I caught her before she could move. One taste. That was all I wanted. Then maybe I’d finally be able to let her go. Gripping the back of her neck, I pulled her flush against me and kissed the hell out of her.
It was a punishing kiss with just an edge of mean in it. I wanted her to want me, and I wanted her to regret it. Most of all, I wanted her to walk away from me and never look back.
But when she let out a low, needy whimper as she tangled her fingers in my hair, all that bullshit went right out the window. And I just wanted.
I dragged her harder against me. I was lost. Drowning in eleven years’ worth of carefully masked, bone-deep love for this woman. All of my walls came down as she kissed me back, revealing the last lingering pieces of myself I’d tried to hide. I dug my fingers into her hips, rubbing her against my rock-hard cock, knowing how soaked her panties would be. My mouth watered at the thought of getting my tongue on her pussy and making her scream my name.
Her mouth tasted like pure heaven. She was so perfect and pliant in my arms. Everything I ever wanted was right here. How could I let her go now?
My fingers trailed beneath the hem of her dress, over smooth, soft skin I was dying to sink my teeth into, but before I could reach the place I wanted to touch more than I wanted to breathe, one of my neighbors slammed their back door.
I had a fenced-in yard, we weren’t in danger of being seen, but it knocked us out of the temporary haze we’d gotten lost in. We jumped back from each other. Jocelyn stumbled a bit, her slim legs trembling like a newborn deer. She gazed up at me, her eyes widening with horror as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
The spell was broken. We’d crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed. Betrayed our best friend. Without another word, she turned away from me and ran.
I peered behind me, to where Jocelyn rested her head on the knees she had hugged to her chest. Looking so soft and beautiful and everything I could never have.
How the fuck was I supposed to save this island without losing my soul?
