couch and held my head in my hands. How could I have missed the way Kyle treated Jocelyn? Yes, he was possessive over her, but fuck, so was I. Not like that though, not to the point where it suffocated and silenced her.
He put his hands on her. Slapped her. If he was still alive, I’d fucking kill him.
Goddamn it. After everything I put her through, she still wore my shirt to bed. The one I’d given her the night we did our End of Tourist Season dip in the ocean. Because her clothes were burned and she was freezing and Kyle didn’t want to give up his sweatshirt.
I’d been pissed as hell at him that night. Had he always been like that and I just didn’t see it? I rubbed my hands over my face as I recalled those instances I’d set aside when Kyle died because it felt like I’d be dishonoring his memory if I thought of him as anything less than perfect once he was gone.
There were times he could be a real prick, though. Sometimes he’d use this voice with Jocelyn, like she was a dog he was trying to train. It used to set my teeth on edge. Or the way he’d always talk shit about Kenna just because she wouldn’t kiss his ass.
Everyone had loved Kyle. He was the quarterback golden boy who had grown up next door to his childhood sweetheart and never even looked at another girl. It had always been Kyle and Jocelyn. Meant to be and all that shit.
But sometimes…
Sometimes she looked scared and cornered. Trapped behind the designation of Kyle’s Girlfriend. And sometimes I thought my mind was just seeing what it wanted to see when she looked at me like she wanted to be free.
I should’ve been there for her.
Not just when Kyle died, but the whole time. I was so tangled up in my own bullshit, I couldn’t think straight. I was in love with my best friend’s girlfriend, had been in love with her since I was thirteen years old, and hadn’t been able to hold a proper conversation with her until she was fully off-limits. Because she made me feel things that had always been wrong and dirty in the world I’d come from. And because of my issues, the woman I cared about most in the world had been hurting alone. And I never saw it.
Hadn’t Kenna been saying the same to me for years? And I blew her off because Kenna was a hardass when it came to Jocelyn. She’d bite the face off anyone who looked at her sideways. But neither of them had bothered to tell me the truth…
And why the fuck not?
A hot spike of anger I had no business feeling surged up in me. Or maybe I did have a right. Who the hell knew anymore? Everything I thought I knew about the dissolution of Jocelyn and Kyle’s wedding was a lie. For the last four years I’d been parading around town on my high horse, while at the same time drowning in guilt that ran so deep, I could barely stand to be in my own skin. And all this time, it had never been about me. Had never been about that kiss.
Maybe she’d tried to tell me that day, but I hadn’t been willing to listen. My mind reeled back to those horrible moments after I’d found out Kyle had driven off the cliff, and the way I tore through the forest looking for Jocelyn.
I found her sitting with her back against the cave in the dead zone. The birthstones at the cave’s entrance glittered under the sun’s shimmery light. Almost like they were waving to me. My eyes rested on the pearl packed into the unyielding granite.
Shaking my head, I crossed the dead grass and looked down on Jocelyn, with her knees pulled up to her chest. The hem of her dress black with dirt from the forest floor. Her eyes were glazed over and unfeeling.
She didn’t know about Kyle yet, but would she even care?
She stared up at me, and a small smile tugged the corner of her lips. “How did I know you’d be the one to come find me?” She patted the grass beside her. “Come have a seat and tell me what a selfish bitch I am and how everyone hates me.”
The weightlessness to her voice sent a lance of fury through me. She sounded carefree and unconcerned while Kyle lay dead at the bottom of the cliffs. Who was this woman?
“Unbelievable,” I muttered under my breath.
Her expression turned solemn. “Ask me if I’m sorry. I’ll tell you the truth.”
“Kyle is dead.” The hollowness in my voice echoed in this barren place where life had ceased to exist. I couldn’t think of anywhere more fitting.
She scrambled to her feet. “What are you talking about?”
I hadn’t meant to tell her like that. I hadn’t meant to be so cold and callous about it, but seeing her sitting there, fully alive and well and not giving a single flying fuck that she’d ripped Kyle’s heart out had taken me out of my own body. I wanted to hurt her. Punish her.
It took everything in me to keep my voice calm and even. “When you ran out on him and left him standing at the altar alone, he went out to his car and downed an entire bottle of Jack on his own. Then he took off like a bat out of hell. I tried to stop him, but he said he needed to find you and apologize. He thought he’d fucked up and he wanted to do right by you. When you were the one who ran from the wedding. Please explain to me how the fuck that happened?”
“I…” Her face had gone sheet-white as she stared at me with eyes that had always been too big for her face. Especially when her emotions were riding high. “He’s dead?”
“He took a corner too fast on the east end of the island, lost control of his car and went right over the cliffs.” I didn’t try to sugarcoat it or make it easy for her to hear. I wanted her agony, her guilt, her utter fucking devastation. I wanted her to take everything I was feeling and multiply it until she couldn’t breathe. I wanted her to give a damn.
“No.” Her hand flew to her throat as she dropped back down and hugged her knees. “Oh, God. Kyle, what did you do?”
Tears welled in her eyes, but she didn’t cry. Why the fuck wasn’t she crying? I’d just told her that her fiancé, her best fucking friend since she was a baby, was dead.
I clenched my fists at my sides to keep from shaking her. “Why did you do it? Why did you run out on your wedding? Were your last-minute jitters worth his life? Was it…?” I choked on the words, not wanting to say them out loud, but needing to know. “Was it the kiss?”
She stared at me for a long time. Too long. Just sitting there on the dead grass in her filthy dress, looking at me like she wanted to say something, but didn’t know how. Finally, after a small eternity, she opened her mouth. And gave me nothing.
“No. I just didn’t want to marry him.” She stared at her fingers twisted together in her lap. “I didn’t know he was going to take it that bad.”
All that yelling I’d been trying not to do exploded out of me. “Is that all you have to say for yourself? What the fuck?”
She flinched. Fucking flinched. Like I was the asshole. “I don’t know what else to say.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Say you care, say you fucked up, say you didn’t mean to leave him standing alone in front of the entire fucking town.”
Her gaze returned to her lap. “I can’t say any of those things right now.”
“Then I can’t say anything to you.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but I held up a hand to stop her. I swear to God, if she’d mentioned that kiss between us right then, I’d have lost my fucking shit. A sickness, deeper and darker than I’d ever known, coated my mind and killed any part of me that had ever felt alive.
My throat felt raw and hollowed out as I said the words that would sever any ties we might’ve had left. “Never speak to me again. If you see me on the street, pretend like I’m not even there. You’re as dead to me as Kyle.”
Tears filled her eyes again, but she willed them back before they could fall. “Okay.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Maybe I hadn’t been in a good place to hear her that day, but she’d had the last four years. Why the hell hadn’t she said anything to me in all that time?
I paced Jocelyn’s living room, eating up what little tread remained on her thinly threaded rug. The only thing that stopped me from going into her room and having it out was the fact that those soft sobs she hadn’t muffled as well as she thought were breaking my heart all over again. I knew I’d walk in there and see her tear-stained eyes, wearing my old T-shirt, and I’d lose myself to her. More completely than I ever had when I was a kid.
Then I’d never get the answers I needed.
I couldn’t approach her in anger, but I needed to approach her. Not only did I deserve to know why she’d kept all this from me for so long, but we needed to see what this did to our magic. Because while everything in me wanted to spend days combing over every bit of the past, turning over every rock I’d left untouched for years, until I knew exactly where we stood, we didn’t have that kind of time.
The island was still very much in danger and counting on us to get our shit together to save it. Clenching my fists and holding back the fight and resolution I desperately wanted to have, I marched toward her room. But before I could reach the door, the walls began shaking.
I gripped the door frame as the remaining pictures I hadn’t levitated off the walls fell from their nails and shattered on the floor. Jocelyn sat up, her fists gripping her comforter as her bed rumbled beneath her. Her tears had dried on her pale blush cheeks and fear widened her eyes to giant hazel orbs that swallowed up half her face.
It didn’t take Galen’s level of genius to figure out what was going on here. We were losing more land, and since the hotel sat right on the edge of where the curse stopped last time, this building was about five minutes away from crumbling into the ocean.
“We need to go, buttercup.” I held out my hand, keeping my voice light and steady. Panicking right now wouldn’t do either one of us a bit of good.
Donovan banged on the door. “The whole fucking place is coming down. I’m coming back with Wes to get you out of there.”
“Don’t bother,” I hollered back. “We’ll go out the patio.”
“Fuck off, Rafe. You can’t make that jump. It’s too high.” Donovan thumped an angry fist against the door. “Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”
“I can levitate us.” The walls shook some more, bits of plaster rained down on me as the ceiling began to crack and break apart. There was no time to find Wes and get him up here. “I’ve got telekinesis. Go. Get everyone else out of here.”
A loud thump echoed from the lower half of the door. “Fine. But if you die, then we’re all dying, and I swear to God I will use the rest of my eternity to haunt your ass until the last star blinks out.”
I turned around to find Jocelyn standing in the living room, still in my shirt, with her hands tucked behind her back. She’d pulled on her cotton shorts, but she still looked so fucking edible, my cock twitched. I licked my lips, remembering the taste of her there.
The walls were coming down around us and I still couldn’t manage to get my dick in check. I was fucking hopeless.
“You’re going to levitate us off the balcony?” Her voice was full of skepticism, and with good reason. We hadn’t gotten the chance to do much with our magic yet, and so far all I’d managed to was break a few lamps and tear apart some old books.
“We don’t have a choice. There isn’t enough time to get Wes or Audrey up here when they need to focus on getting everyone else out.” This next ask would be the hardest, it still felt too soon, but another crack broke open in the ceiling. Wide enough to expose the stars. “I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”
Her hazel eyes clouded with hesitancy, but her back straightened and the fire that ran through her blood wouldn’t allow her to show fear. There was the woman who should’ve always been mine. She’d been hurt, but no one could break her. Not even me.
She held out her hand, and the moment my rough palm slid against her soft one, she shivered. God, how I wanted to see that under different circumstances. Bright white light sparked against brilliant blue. My pearl to her tanzanite.
As we stepped out onto the patio, it became clear that the hotel wouldn’t survive the night. It might not even survive the next fifteen minutes. Rolling black waves that smoked like fire slammed against the outer wall, shaking the foundation and sending another series of plaster chunks crashing to the living room floor behind us.
The walls screamed in protest as wood splintered and metal rods snapped in half. More of the roof caved in. The cement balcony began to crack and a large chunk broke off under the constant pressure and rumble of the earth.
Below us, the veranda had already been swallowed by the black sea. Farther out, beyond a tangle of swaying green vines, a series of shark fins glowed under the silvery light of the moon. As if they were just waiting.
I hoped to God I didn’t levitate us out that way. Or drop us into the punishing, smoking waves below that were anything but natural.
Between the hotel and the green vines, on a solitary black rock, stood a man with swirling black mist in his eyes and a forked tongue that licked rotting lips. He pointed a finger at us. Under the roar of water pummeling the hotel and the rest of the remaining shoreline, the sound of crunching leaves rose above the din.
A thick dark cloud that buzzed louder than Brooke’s beehives formed a funnel pointed straight for us. Knowing what had happened to Brooke at the festival grounds not too long ago, I wasn’t waiting around for the wasps to reach us.
I grabbed Jocelyn and jumped over the railing.
She screamed as her arms hugged my neck tight enough to choke off my air. Blue light flared and whatever illusion she’d cast sent the wasps diving into the water, drowning themselves to get away from whatever she showed them.
I couldn’t see what she’d done. My focus was wholly tuned into my magic. Jocelyn pushed more of her power into me, and I held onto her as I pointed one hand toward the ground, willing the air to catch me as my stomach slammed into my throat with the velocity of our fall.
Nothing was happening. I couldn’t catch the air. The water was getting closer, any second now we’d smack into the dark waves and be dragged out to sea. I could feel the mouth of the ocean, hungrily anticipating our fall, wanting to sink its cold teeth into us. I flung my white light helplessly at the ground, but I didn’t have a fucking clue what I was doing.
Jocelyn dug her nails into my neck, but her lips against the shell of my ear were soft. “I trust you, Rafe. I know you can do this.”
My light flared hotter and brighter and just as my foot skimmed the tallest wave, my magic caught us and lifted us into the air. Jocelyn’s entire body sagged in my arms with relief. Her breath tickled my neck as she buried her face against me. I’d done it.
The reprieve was short-lived though.
While I had us firmly above the water now, I still didn’t know how to control my magic or move us with any kind of purpose. So we hovered in the air, swaying back and forth above the water that was becoming blacker and deeper as it eroded the land beneath the hotel.
Pushing my hand outward, I sort of glided us on the air. Like a kite without strings to guide it. I was at the mercy of the currents. But this was my element, I was supposed to have as much control over it as my magic. They should’ve worked together.
Little by little, I pushed us closer and closer to Stardust Parkway. People spilled out of the hotel like ants, crawling over each other in fear and panic. The back half of the hotel broke off and crumbled into the water. It would’ve crushed us if I’d been even a minute slower in getting us out of harm’s way. The impact sent a lashing spray into the air, and the ground rolled all the way up to the forest.
All around us, businesses on the beach side of the main road fell and succumbed to the water. The wax museum, the curiosity shop, and the fresh fish market were all gone. When the rumbling finally began to slow, half the residents were huddled up against the retaining wall that separated the forest from town. Their wide-eyed panic squeezed at my chest.
My fault that it had gotten this far. I should’ve set my issues aside from go, from the moment I discovered that I had magic. Hell, I should’ve set my shit aside years ago. Then again, fate worked on its own time that wasn’t always convenient for the rest of us.
I finally pushed us to a place where it would be safe to land, but then my eyes caught on the frowning brown eyes of the woman who had been like a second mother to me. The caramel color of her irises was the same shade as Kyle’s. Hurt and disappointment flashed in her expression as her gaze drifted from me to the woman in my arms. The woman she believed to be responsible for her son’s death.
And I lost the hold I had on my magic.
Before Jocelyn understood what was happening, I turned her to cushion her against the fall, but I couldn’t control my direction anymore. And when a large wooden spike poking out of the ruined fish market grew larger the further I fell, I didn’t have time to process what was about to happen. My only concern was keeping Jocelyn safe.
At the last second, I tossed her into a patch of bushes that grew next to what remained of the wax museum. Her nails dug into my neck, ripping away my skin, as she tried to hang on. But my desire to keep her safe was stronger.
So I let her go and let the dark in, as the wooden spike went through my chest.
