what the hell had shot out of my hand. It looked like the outline of a woman who trailed a line of golden stardust behind her, but it could’ve just as easily been a shapeless blob of light and my mind was playing tricks on me. But I hadn’t imagined that song. My bones ached with loss and longing as the final notes died on the air.
When it came down to it, though, my subconscious had created an illusion in front of the curse. It now knew we were using our magic, and considering that we were the last pair who needed to get our shit together, it would either hit us harder or it would concentrate more of its energy on sinking the island before we got too far.
My money was on the latter. If it really thought we were a threat, it would’ve sent a whole lot more than a little mindfuck smoke at us. I didn’t even have that good a grip on my magic yet, and I managed to chase it away.
“We can’t keep doing this,” I said to Rafe’s back. “I don’t want to fight with you anymore. I don’t have anything left for it.”
The guilt of questioning Rafe’s dedication to the island weighed me down more than the brunt of what we were up against with the curse. It was a shitty thing for me to do. Even when he’d hurt my feelings, it wasn’t like me to lash out that way. And while we hadn’t been friends in a very long time and I couldn’t say I really knew him anymore, I did know how much the island meant to him and the kind of life he’d lived before he got here.
I was one of the few people who knew. It didn’t matter that I was tired and angry and hurt. I should’ve been the bigger person. It was one of the few things I had left.
“I’m sorry.” I rested a hand on his back, and the muscles tensed, but he didn’t shake me off. “I crossed a line. It was inexcusable.”
He nodded, accepting my apology as well as he could without saying the words he didn’t owe me. Giving him the space he clearly wanted, I went inside and made both of us something to eat. Eventually, he came back in and eyed me warily.
“I think we should practice again. No funny business. No insults.” He bit into his sandwich and closed his eyes as he chewed. I’d soaked roasted chicken breast in a rosemary sauce and topped it with leafy spinach and cranberry meringue. “This is amazing.”
“Thanks. I’ve been experimenting with cooking, since my other hobbies haven’t been panning out the way I wanted.” I stared mournfully at my knitting basket that still held the misshapen hat I couldn’t dare give Kenna.
The muscles in his neck and shoulders relaxed when it became clear I wasn’t going to bicker with him or bring up what had happened when our magic had pushed our hormones too far. This was a new page in our tenuous relationship. Hopefully we could get something done.
That hope was short-lived.
Once we started practicing it became clear that polite indifference would be our new modus operandi. Neither one of us wanted to risk getting naked or pissing each other off again, and without those two things, there wasn’t much left over for our current partnership. We didn’t have trust or honesty or the ease that had once wrapped around us like a weighted blanket.
We were “should’ve been” lovers turned present-day strangers with a shared fate. And there were few things in this world sadder than that.
After several hours of lukewarm practicing that resulted in the blandest magic ever seen on this island (I created a file cabinet, a tin can, a pile of bricks, and a square of grass that we watched grow for five minutes), we finally gave up and went to our separate corners. I attempted to knit while Rafe leafed through one of my books on the legend. We didn’t fight. It was fine. Everything was perfectly fine.
Finally, having had enough of the quiet that made me want to scream, I stood and stretched my arms over my head. The way Rafe’s gaze tracked the sliver of skin that peeked out from under my tank top was the most sign of life he’d shown in hours.
“It’s been a long day for both of us.” I headed to my bedroom without looking back. “You can use the same pillow and blanket tonight. Sorry I don’t have anything nicer.”
He didn’t say anything, just turned his head toward the balcony and stared out at the silent sea. If the curse came back, he was on his own for now. It would serve the other ten right for locking us in here together like children in the first place.
Just because I understood why they’d done it, didn’t mean I had to like it.
I took a shower, then handed Rafe a towel so he could do the same. I didn’t have laundry in my room, so he’d just have to keep wearing those fucking sweatpants. It would’ve been nice if Cole had tossed some of his clothes in here too.
In my room, I put on my usual sleep shirt. The long sleeve Zodiac High shirt that had once belonged to Rafe. It didn’t smell like him anymore, but it had become a security blanket over the years, and the careful distance he’d kept from me while we practiced our magic earlier had left me feeling lonely and vulnerable. I needed the old comfort, if only to feel like the old me again for a minute.
As soon as I slipped the worn cotton over my head, the memory of the night he’d given it to me came flooding back. The first weekend in November, Kyle, Rafe, and I always went down to the beach and dove into the waves. A celebration of tourist season being over and the island belonging to us again. The water was bitterly cold, but we were kids who got off on being wild and reckless in a way that was mostly harmless.
We’d stripped down to our underwear by the bonfire and stood at the edge of the waves.
“Ready when you are.” Rafe winked at me. His eyes dipped to my chest, where the cold air had peaked my nipples. His cheeks flushed and he averted his gaze. “Let’s go.”
On three we dove into the water, gasping and laughing as we came up for air. We’d only gone under for a second, but all of my muscles locked up, and it took significant effort to pull myself out of the water. Shaking and stuttering, the three of us stumbled back to the bonfire.
“Shit. No.” I dropped to my knees in front of my leggings and hoodie that I’d accidentally thrown halfway into the fire. My teeth chattered as I pulled them out of the fire, but they were ruined. Burnt to a crisp. “Give me your shirt, Kyle.”
“Hell no.” He rubbed his hands in front of the fire. “I’m freezing.”
“Come on, please.” I hated that I had to beg him, and I hated seeing that cruel glint in his eyes, knowing that was exactly what he wanted. He didn’t really care about keeping his sweatshirt, he just wanted to keep it from me because it was something I wanted.
He smirked. “Your fault, sweetheart.”
“Here.” Rafe shook the sand off his long sleeve Zodiac High shirt and roughly pulled it over my head. “Get closer to the fire. Your lips are turning blue.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled, embarrassment making the words thick on my tongue. Rafe was the strongest person I knew and I hated looking so weak in front of him.
Kyle shot Rafe a dirty look. “What the hell, man?”
“I’m not the one being an asshole right now.” Rafe held Kyle’s gaze. The two of them seemed to be locked in a battle of wills that I’d been shut out of. It ended with Kyle shaking his head and giving us both an easy grin.
The tension in Rafe’s posture loosened when Kyle reached into the cooler and handed both of us beers while he launched into a vivid description about how much his balls had shriveled up once they hit the water. And the rest of the night passed without incident. Despite the concerned looks Rafe shot me when he didn’t think I was looking.
Kyle never did end up giving me his sweatshirt. The memory faded as I snuggled deeper into my covers and let myself drift off to sleep.
I twisted the ripped veil in my hands. “Kyle. We need to talk…”
“If this is about the cake, I already apologized and made it right for you. Not everyone likes chocolate, you know. It’s not just about you today.”
It wasn’t about me at all. It never had been. I was allergic to almonds, but it was Kyle’s favorite frosting. So he ordered the cake he wanted and told me he’d get me a slice of chocolate to have at my table. Like he’d gone out of his way to be considerate.
I couldn’t even eat my own wedding cake.
I shook my head. “I can’t do this.”
He stopped adjusting his tie and glared at me like I was a puppy who’d just pissed on the carpet. Like he was about two seconds away from swatting me with a newspaper. “It’s a little late to protest now. The cake is already set up in the reception hall. I got you a piece of chocolate. What more do you want from me?”
“No.” I twisted the veil tighter in my hands. “I can’t marry you.”
All the warmth in the room was suctioned out as his face hardened. “Excuse me?”
I flinched and backed up until the tiny buttons along the spine of my dress dug into the wall. “I can’t marry you. And I don’t think you want to marry me either. I think you just want to marry the idea of who you think I am.”
Fury contorted his features. The temper that I’d sometimes catch glimpses of below the surface came bubbling up with a force that would’ve knocked me down if the wall hadn’t been supporting me. “Where the fuck is this coming from?”
“I let myself get swept away by this whole thing, and I’m sorry. I really am. I know the timing is awful and I should’ve said something sooner. But I’m not ready to get married. I don’t want to have kids right now or cut my cousin out of my—”
Before I could finish my sentence, his hand closed around my throat and he slammed my head into the wall. Stars burst behind my eyelids as shock froze me in place. There were times, too many times, that Kyle could be arrogant, condescending, controlling, and mean. But he’d never put his hands on me before. What was happening?
It didn’t feel real. I watched in slow motion, from somewhere outside my body, as he raised his hand and smacked me once, twice, across the face. My cheek stung and my eyes watered. His lip curled as I trembled in front of him, speechless.
He swept a hand down the front of his tux, as if I was some filthy business he needed to clean up before his big moment. “Pull yourself together and meet me at the altar. We’re getting married. You are not going to make a fool out of me in front of this entire town.”
He turned around and left the dressing room, closing the door behind him with a quiet click, so sure I’d come as he commanded.
“Shh, it’s okay. I’ve got you.” Strong, warm arms wrapped around me and an even stronger voice, so achingly familiar, soothed me as I began to sob in earnest. Gentle hands glowing with a bright white light brushed my hair back from my face. “It was just a nightmare.”
My magic flowed from my hands, casting an eerie blue glow in my dark room. A figure appeared behind Rafe. It stared down at me with pure rage twisting its face, turning a handsome golden boy into a monster. Kyle. I opened my mouth to release the scream trapped in my throat, but no sound came out. That illusion was mine. I did that. I made him appear.
Rafe peered behind him, but quickly returned his focus to me. His face had significantly paled, but his voice was steady and calm. “Let him go, buttercup. He’s not really here.”
“I-I don’t know how.” I had no control over my magic; whatever thought or feeling floated through my mind manifested itself as images that had only ever haunted my imagination before.
“Look at me.” His gaze bored into me, piercing and dominant. “Think of me.”
Helpless to do anything other than what he asked, I focused on him. From the Rafe I knew growing up, who had been so distant and reserved, to the one who’d become my closest friend in the years when I’d been with Kyle, to the stranger he was now who still had the power to light up my body the way no other man ever could.
Kyle disappeared and was replaced by fairy lights overhead. Soft, glowing, romantic pulses of light that made me feel safe in a perpetually dark world.
He pinched his lips together as if he was trying not to laugh. “Is this how you view me?”
“My light in the dark,” I whispered.
If I hadn’t been vulnerable from just waking up, I never would’ve said those words out loud to him. His lips parted as he took me in, his icy-blue eyes intense and searching. I wanted to close my eyes and bury myself under the covers, but we were past that point. Even when I hated him, I’d never been able to hide myself from Rafe.
“Hey.” He tugged on the hem of my shirt. “You still have this?”
Oh, God. My face flamed eighteen different shades of red. Maybe wearing his shirt to bed when he was sleeping twenty feet from me wasn’t the brightest idea, but I hadn’t expected him to come into my bedroom.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He chuckled. “Okay. I’ll let you keep your dirty little secret for now.” I moved to shove him, but he grabbed my wrist and rested his forehead against mine, breathing me in. “But we are going to talk about this nightmare. Why were you screaming at Kyle to stop? Stop what?”
“You said you didn’t want to talk about it.” I swallowed hard, my throat scraping against itself like sandpaper. I could only imagine the things I’d said in my sleep. Rarely a week went by where I didn’t find myself back in that dressing room, or walking down the aisle and saying yes instead of running.
“I want to talk about it now.” Rafe’s expression told me that he’d heard enough.
“Are you certain?” I clenched my fists to keep from reaching out to him. “I need you to be a hundred percent sure you want to hear this, because once you do, there is no going back.”
He let out a deep sigh, his broad chest rising and falling from the effort. He frowned with deep concentration, like he was putting pieces together in his mind and he didn’t like the picture they were forming. Memories trickled through. Kyle hadn’t always been so careful with his insults. Sometimes he’d let them slip in front of Rafe because Rafe was always there. It was inevitable.
But the thing about death was that it made saints out of sinners. The flaws you didn’t want to see while they were alive became damn near invisible once they were gone.
“I think…” He paused, choosing his words carefully, as if Kyle really was in the room with us instead of the thin illusion I’d carved from my nightmares. “I don’t think I have a choice, do I?” His thumbs brushed away the tears that still clung to my lower lashes. “What have I missed all this time? Why was that illusion looking at you like he wanted to hurt you?”
I hated that look on Rafe’s face. The look that said he should’ve seen it. He should’ve done something. And in those moments when I was feeling petty and small, I wanted to believe he should’ve too. But I also didn’t want him to hurt this way.
I’d sacrificed everything for Rafe.
Kyle was gone. It didn’t matter what kind of man he’d been. I didn’t care that his family hated me. Nothing would change what had happened. And because the only other person who could be blamed was dead, there would be no settling the score.
“Are you sure you want to hear this?” I asked again.
I needed to tell him what I’d tried to tell him yesterday. There would be no moving on in the present if we didn’t settle the past. But I also knew how many choices had been taken from Rafe early on, and how precious and valuable the right to choose was after what he’d lived through as a child. A part of him would always be that haunted, beautiful boy I’d seen playing by himself in the woods. The one who looked at me like I was his light. And because of him, for the first time in my life, I’d known what it felt like to shine.
He nodded his head. The movement stilted, like he wasn’t fully sure, but couldn’t back out now. Not when he’d heard me screaming who knew what from the night terrors that still woke me from time to time and left me feeling weak and alone.
“Okay.” I laid my hand over his. “It started way back when we were kids. Before you’d ever come to town and it was just the two of us.”
And I proceeded to tell him everything. How Kyle acted like I belonged to him. When we were kids, everyone thought it was cute. I tried to make other friends and he’d warn them away. The only person he hadn’t been able to get rid of was Kenna because she was meaner than him. It was one of the things about her that I loved best.
He backed off after Kenna threatened to kick his ass in front of all the boys at school, but it should’ve been my first red flag. He never did like her.
I was too young to understand red flags, though. So I continued to be Kyle’s best friend by virtue of proximity. We lived right next door to each other. I couldn’t pinpoint when the jokes and nudges the adults around us would make had started—about us already being married, and how cute we were as little boyfriend and girlfriend. Those comments had gone so far back, I couldn’t remember a time in my life when people didn’t make them.
Still, we stayed best friends. Until Rafe came to town. Then our twosome became three. Galen and Finn joined us sometimes too, but Finn was tight with Wes Latham and Galen mostly liked his own company, so it was usually just us three having adventures in the woods.
Kyle didn’t trust Rafe at first, but once it became clear that Rafe had no interest in me and only tolerated me because of Kyle, he loosened up. Red flag number two. Looking back on it as an adult, it was so easy to see. But I’d been a mostly sheltered kid who didn’t know that certain boys had all kinds of tricks for dehumanizing people they viewed as possessions.
“Jocelyn.” The cracked syllables of my name ripped out what fractured pieces of my heart were left. “I’m so sorry I didn’t see it, didn’t say something.”
I laid my hand over his and squeezed. “I’m not telling you this because I want anything from you, least of all an apology. I could’ve told you this four years ago.”
“I was so angry with you, I wouldn’t have listened—”
“I didn’t try hard enough. Let that go. Please.” I squeezed his hand harder, willing him to understand. This rift between us over the last four years was both our fault, and it was time for me to own up to my part.
We’d already hurt each other so much. Maybe if it was just the two of us in this room, with no fate or magic between us, we could’ve gone on hurting each other for the rest of our lives. But there was so much more at stake now.
We had the island to think about, all those lives that hung in the balance. And I was tired of hurting. From the dark circles under his eyes, I gathered that he was tired of blaming both of us for a death neither of us deserved to take responsibility for.
“Let me just say my piece, then you can beg for my forgiveness if you still feel the need,” I said. “But I think we’re both ready to move on.”
I went on to tell him how Kyle had become more and more controlling when Rafe and I grew closer. How much he put me down in an effort to hold me in a place that made him comfortable. And how I blamed myself for the longest time for being weak. How he chipped away my confidence in such imperceptible slivers, I didn’t notice until there was nothing of the old me left. I didn’t tell Rafe the guilt I felt, how easy it had been to take that blame. Because then I would’ve had to admit I was in love with him, and I wasn’t ready to share all that. The truth about my wedding day would be enough for now.
When Kyle asked me out, I never should’ve said yes. Honestly, the only reason I did was because I thought my hopeless crush on Rafe was a lost cause. Kyle told me it was time to grow up, get over it, the two of us were meant to be, and everyone knew it.
It was the last time in my life I’d ever given a shit about what everyone else thought. I learned the hard way what the cost was of not thinking for myself.
But at the end of the day, I would have never done anything to put his friendship with Rafe in jeopardy. Despite Kyle’s many flaws, I cared a great deal about him. I didn’t love him, but I didn’t know that at the time. Between Kyle’s lifelong mission to break me down and make me dependent on him, and everyone in town saying they knew we’d end up together and planning our wedding before we’d even been potty trained, it was hard to know what real love was supposed to look like.
I thought my feelings for Rafe were just a crush. The yearnings of a silly girl who’d never been off the island falling for the gorgeous boy with ice-blue eyes who had seen far too much. I thought he was worldly and sophisticated.
When I learned the truth many years later, once we became close friends, it only made me love him more. He let me see all of him, and while he expected me to be horrified, there wasn’t one part of him I didn’t love. And every day leading up to the wedding I’d never even been asked if I wanted to have, another piece of me died inside.
When I told Kyle I didn’t want to get married, I was scared and unsure. I wanted the friend I’d known my whole life to comfort me. If he’d given me one shred of hope for the life we were about to have, I would’ve swallowed my misery and married him anyway. It would’ve ended badly and I would’ve hated myself for it, but I would’ve done it for him.
But instead, he slapped me for thinking about humiliating him in front of the whole town. That’s when I saw my future, clear as day, and I ran for my life.
I hadn’t regretted it a single day since then.
I sucked in a deep breath, preparing for the hardest part of all. Why I didn’t tell Rafe the truth when he found me in the woods.
After Kyle had left the church in a rage once he’d heard that I’d run out on him. After he’d sat in his car and polished off a bottle of whiskey, then decided to drive around the island looking for me. After he’d lost control of his car and driven it off the cliffs on the east end of the island, plummeting to his death.
But before I could get a chance to go over all that, Rafe stood and tipped my chin up. “I’m not leaving you here alone with this, and I’m not abandoning you right now, but I need a minute. Can you give me a minute?”
“Yeah. Take all the time you need.” I gestured half-heartedly in the direction of my front door. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He rubbed his thumb over my bottom lip and I leaned into his touch. Our lights glowed softly, but the magic wasn’t taking over. Not during this. Our magic seemed to sense that we needed this time to sort ourselves out and it backed off.
And as Rafe turned away from me and headed out to the living room, I buried my face in my pillow and silently released the rest of the tears I’d been holding back for the last four years.
