Awful Curse: A High School Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (The Celestial Bodies Series Book 1)

by Elena Monroe

  No one wanted to be the needy one, the one who made the first confession, or the one who admitted something unreturned.

  Yet, here I was, in a tunnel during a game break, being a type of extra hated.

  “I'm not going to be anyone’s anything, Arianna. Stop trying to make me not hate you.”

  I knew the feeling.

  I wanted to hate him the same way I did when I met him, but now I hated him for not giving into me, his temperament, his ability to hate me, when I could return the favor.

  His voice didn't get louder until the word “hate.” That word felt more powerful, louder, exactly how it sounded. It ate at my soul.

  Why wouldn't he stop hating me? I was prepared to call a truce.

  I pushed past him, making sure my shoulder connected with his padding, which hurt me more than him. I wasn't going to stop hating him until he stopped hating me.

  I rolled my eyes for fun. I had just pissed off his mortal enemy without trying. I could hold a grudge.

  Back on the field, I kept my eyes anywhere he wasn't, even though I could feel the anger behind his orbs trying to burn me from afar. The only time his gaze sacrificed me was when he was on the field or arguing with Nyx.

  It wasn't hard to miss something was going on with Nyx every time Bolton’s hand pushed against his chest like he was holding him back.

  The curiosity had its claws deep in my motivation, and now I had to know what was happening.

  The whole game I was mouthing cheers and half-assing my way to the edge closest to the team, even though they were masters at low tones in their husky voices and keeping whatever it was private. It didn't stop me from trying.

  Kate barked my direction, “Arianna! Are you on cheer or the football team?”

  Bolton

  The dark gray sky airbrushed with smoky clouds opened up into a downpour. I could barely feel it until my glove slipped against the ball, and I had to readjust my grip, before I soared it to Nyx half a field away in a perfect spiral.

  I may not have felt it through my jersey and pads, but the field became softer than I was used to, and my vision became tainted by the sheet of rain.

  Every sense was paralyzed, and the home field advantage lost any real value when Caellum's team already beat us once this season.

  I was just living through the replay at this point.

  My muscles screamed with ache, the lack of morale felt heavy instead of light, and I wanted to give up. Giving up wasn't an option, it wasn't part of my make-up.

  I glanced up at the clock, draining down to seconds in the last quarter, and I rushed into the hoard of oversized defensive linebackers. The clash of my pads against theirs sounded like thunder without the lightning.

  No, my lightning was on the sidelines being the all-consuming distraction she knew she was.

  I was pushed down to the ground with one heavy shove, no matter how much I felt rooted into the ground.

  With the same force, I fell against the soaked field, rattling in my cage of pads, until my body went limp and somber.

  I stared right into the rain, watching the angry drops create some kind of illusion that I was still moving when I wasn’t.

  I knew the clock hadn’t run out of seconds, because everyone was still moving and the crowd was trying to motivate whoever had the ball on my team with their sheer screams.

  If that shit works for you. It doesn’t get my dick hard like purple hair. She wasn’t cheering.

  I knew she wasn’t cheering. My head dropped to my left side, and her expression, through the drops, was troubled—a kind of troubled I didn’t know she could conjure since she was always creating trouble in my life.

  For a split second, I thought of the edges of my organs, how far they’d expand, and what my kindness towards her could do to me. If she was the one, she would die, and if she wasn’t, she would still die.

  Loving her was a dooming fate that I wasn’t ready to accept, so until then, my heart was going to stay small and my kindness limited.

  I heard the buzzer go off, and I still felt unmotivated to get up, to be anything vertical. I pushed my helmet off and let my arm fall back down, not caring where the helmet went.

  We had lost for the second time in the season to Exeter, and our chances of being in the finale was slimmer than Kate’s waistline.

  Nyx offered his hand, dangling it lazily, unmotivated like me. We weren’t losers; we didn’t know how to lose gracefully.

  “They didn’t play by the rules. You should have let me break them too.”

  I could hear the anger in his voice. It wasn’t directed at me, so I didn’t care. The whole game, Nyx wanted to use the parts of him that weren’t human, the parts the circle hid, and the parts that were unexplainable. His strength wasn’t something that the crowd on both sides of us were going to overlook, but he was convinced the pounding we took was at the hands of Caellum’s abilities.

  “You know the rules. I’m not dealing with Alba’s shit.”

  I slapped his hand away, finally getting up, and when I did, my eyes locked on Arianna.

  Looking away wasn’t an option, she wasn’t some girl or a quick fuck.

  She was a queen that I hadn’t taken as my own yet, but she still demanded the respect of royalty.

  I wasn’t in the mood for the troubled expression she wore the whole game or the questions I knew she wanted to ask, but didn’t know how.

  Henry Jon’s journal begged more questions than answers, but at least it was historic and proved I wasn’t a crock of shit if she wasn’t going to believe me.

  I couldn’t believe how much control she was hosting in her rebellious tongue. She hadn’t asked me one stupid question or made one stupid remark. She was all intimacy, open wounds, and emotions that I wouldn’t understand in the same way people around me did.

  Instead of intimacy, I saw sex.

  Instead of open wounds, I saw fear.

  Instead of emotions, I saw annoyance.

  I was, in essence, in a teenage body made of things that didn’t belong here.

  I pushed right by Arianna, leaving her wanting things I couldn’t give her—not on my highest high or even this crippling fucking low.

  I heard her voice beg for attention: “Bolton, are you—”

  It was smart of her to cut herself off from finishing that sentence. The answer wouldn’t have been pleasant.

  I didn’t shower until everyone left the locker room, wearing our loss longer than anyone else. I threw my pads in the bin in the corner on top of the pile and let my jersey pollute the floor, just like I would have in my room.

  My body was covered in moisture, rain, and sweat dancing on my skin, as I walked to the showers naked. I wasn’t shy. My body was a temple, a host, and one I took pride in.

  Perfect was a way to be as close to my true form as possible.

  Twisting the knob all the way to the right, I didn't even wait for it to heat up when I pushed myself under its unforgiving spray. It lashed my skin in a punishing way that I let myself deserve—not for long, just enough to get a grip and move on.

  There was nothing I could do now. None of us controlled time.

  As soon as I twisted the water off, the dripping showerhead echoed against someone else in the room. Shaking my head, I pushed my palms back squeezing the excess moisture from my hair.

  It was a locker room—no locks, no privacy. Whoever was there wasn't going to possibly make my mood worse… unless you had purple hair, pretended to hate me, and was now making risky decisions in order to please me.

  She was bowing to me as king, and if we hadn’t just lost, I would have been laughing at her subordinate behavior.

  I rounded the corner, leaving the shower stalls behind me, when I saw Arianna straddling the long bench taking up the only space between the rows of lockers. Her legs were as wide apart as could be and her arms straight with her palms flat against the wood, the only thing blocking the view of her panties.

  “Can I help you?”

&nb
sp; I had to pretend to not care she was there or that I was now thinking of her panties.

  “I wanted to check on you.”

  She was looking down the whole time the sentence fell out of her mouth, like she wouldn't admit to worrying about me. When she finally looked up, her cheeks turned a deep red, like she had just ran a mile in under seven minutes, when she realized that I was only in a towel.

  “Checked on. Done. Anything else, Arianna? I kind of need to change.”

  She didn't move, except for her eyes, which looked down again. My once tough-as-nails, firecracker, queen material looked a lot like average instead.

  She had questions floating around in her head, so many I could clearly sense them battling for space.

  “I dreamed you killed me.”

  She stood up slowly, still trying to not make eye contact after staring at me for two hours straight on the field.

  “Did you learn anything from Henry Jon?”

  I wasn't waiting for her to leave to tug my towel off and change. I had been naked and in a towel long enough.

  I was done wearing the loss. I stayed facing my locker, trying to be modest, as I stood there completely naked in front of an already blushing girl. I pulled my boxers on first, making sure I didn't kill her here and now.

  “A lot of useless things. Things that don't explain you… or us.”

  I pushed past, her zipping up my black hoodie and pulling the hood up to cover my still wet hair. “That book is us.”

  I could tell by the look on her face that I was confusing her, and she didn't like being toyed with that way.

  “What does that mean? Why can't you ever just say what you mean? I don't need a riddle.”

  I walked past her enough to lean over and let my low tone hit her ear, “What's the fun in dying, if I tell you when and where?”

  Leaving her there to ponder more riddles was an asshole move, I know. I should just come clean, but I already said enough—enough to get me in trouble with the wrong people, like the circle.

  I wanted to tell her everything: about the ritual, about the circle, explain Henry Jon was our love story’s first documentation, and explain this probably wouldn't be the last time she forgot and I had to force her to remember.

  Luckily, everyone else in the circle got a turn, so I didn't have to repeat our history being reenacted over and over each year.

  I was always prepared, but I wasn't expecting to relive her anytime soon. Once Rosalia, Clementine, Isabella, Florence… she had had many different names, but only one person was brave enough to transcribe our encounters: Henry Jon.

  It took me years to find that book and to have something to hold onto in her absence.

  There was no pizza after this game, not that I would be caught dead rewarding myself with anything after a game like that. Even the wins, I would celebrate alone in my room, contemplating how many more times I'd be forced to do senior year over.

  The good didn't outweigh the bad in this scenario.

  The circle had their annual Wednesday meeting to discuss Arianna and the ritual. I should be whatever version of excited I could manage, but anyone discussing her meant discussing her death—her sacrifice. I wasn't 100% positive she was my Rosalia reborn without her memories or simply my loneliness finally catching up to me.

  Nyx was outside, smoking off the loss, when I crept up the stairs to the faculty building. “How much did you tell her?”

  He didn't shift his eyes to me in a violent way that I would have expected, when he finally asked me the question. Nyx didn't play by the rules any more than I did, yet his tone was all judgment and no rebellion.

  “Enough.”

  We had slipped right into the role of best friends when he transferred into Arcadia, but this was a two way street.

  If you wanted information, then you had to give it.

  Everyone was already there when we walked downstairs to the candlelit basement where we kept our secrets. Some of us were forced to wear them instead, like me—the curse of being an awful king. I had to protect us, put the circle first, while everyone acted “normal” for the fourteenth time.

  I didn't bother sitting; I knew I wasn't staying long enough to hear any bullshit. Arianna had just poked the bear; we just lost another game to Caellum's team; and now I had to hear everyone plan to sacrifice Arianna during the ritual.

  Cheyanne dropped a Ziplock bag on the table, like it spoke for itself when witchcraft wasn't any of our native tongues. It was the connection to home for her—focusing on the abilities that no one else had in contrast to the mortals surrounding us here.

  With a huge sigh, she sat back and explained, “I did the spell. It's her. I nearly set fire to the dorms.”

  Cheyanne did some kind of spell with the few strands of hair I managed to steal. I was helping them kill her. I didn't have much choice.

  Kate was the first to react. “Seriously? Are you sure?”

  She was used to life semi-human. She enjoyed it, actually. Going home wasn't on her priority list. She had Austin, and that's all she needed.

  Human emotions came with the body: hormones, loneliness, jealousy, belonging, or in Kate’s case, love.

  In this form, the emotions were like thunder rumbling through your bones, demanding every ounce of your damn attention and bleeding into everything else with ease.

  “It means she can do the ritual, Kate. Keep up.”

  I spoke to her without even looking in her direction, while I thumbed Arianna’s file sitting between books in a stack.

  Why was it down here? What was Alba planning? What was in the basically empty file before he knew I was going to thumb through student files?

  I wasn't in the habit of asking pointless questions without answers, which meant I better figure it out.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I watched them all enthusiastically entranced with a possible way out of this.

  A graduation from this purgatory.

  That was all I needed. Enough hope created a flame, and everyone was drawn to the flame. Rolling up the bulkier file, I shoved it under my shirt and halfway down my pants, trying to conceal what I was going to take without permission.

  She was mine, so by extension, her file was mine too. Now all I needed was a quick getaway.

  Creeping out of the room was easy, except when it came to Nyx. I glanced over the group one last time before I climbed the stairs, and his eyes were trying to pierce through me, tacking me to the wall and demanding answers. I didn't have any. I didn't know why I was protecting Arianna in one breath and serving her up to the circle in the next. My heart and head were in a constant battle.

  One was going to win—either the knife of logic or my bleeding heart.

  My body couldn't keep up with my desire to get back to my dorm room to crack open whatever news was in her file.

  This was a time I really wished for abilities, but wishing didn't make some bullshit abilities suddenly appear.

  I was the only one cursed with even more normalcy.

  Bolton

  I was still in the hallway on the wrong side of my door, when I opened the file and thumbed through the information, including a police report and restraining order marked with McAllen, Texas Police Department at the top of both.

  I really couldn't be surprised someone else felt like Arianna wasn't their cup of tea either, but to this degree? Police and restraining orders?

  I guess she had as many secrets as I did.

  Now I didn't feel as bad for being an asshole to protect mine.

  I read the report more closely, even though the information just gave case numbers and files to reference beyond this sheet. This was a placeholder stating she was a minor, and it was sealed up for her own protection.

  This world separates mistakes as an adult and adolescent like it will determine your character. They can’t send you off into the adult world already stained.

  In my world, all mistakes are punishable, and the severity depended which god you pissed off.

&nbs
p; Zeus was the one you didn't piss off… ever.

  I should know. He was my king, and I was one of his subjects. We all were. We were created from anger, honor, lust, desperation, need, respect, despair… all written in the stars for a reason.

  I was immortalized for saving a family when Zeus honored my sacrifice with a constellation forever in the sky. That was my first death I outlived. I thought that it would be the only death.

  Our essences, who we truly were, are immortalized, reborn with each death. And when lost, only the circle could take us home, at least that's what the legends have told us before our gods died.

  Now, I was pretty sure the magic of them was going to die with us too.

  The file gave me enough to go on without any real facts. The rest would be easy to pry from Arianna. At first, her hate was real; now, it was her playing pretend. I was pretending too—not to protect my heart like she was, but to protect her from a certain death.

  If it meant going home, then the circle would do whatever that took. Fourteen people came before and died, just for us to see the desperation in our eyes while they bled out, and we were still stuck here like some bad joke.

  Clearly, we didn’t learn our lesson. We convinced each other it was a fluke and not the right person, even after carefully vetting them.

  I had fourteen different people’s blood on my hands—blood I couldn’t wash away. I fell from honor and grace, pretty quickly.

  I was going to hide the file in my room before I decided to use it against Arianna when I pushed her for the missing answers.

  I texted her, while I still stood in my hallway on the wrong side of my door.

  Me: Meet me in the library. Come alone.

  Arianna: Why, so you can blow me off again? I’m not in the mood to be Nancy Drew tonight. Role play with someone else.

  Me: Truce?

  It was the only way I could justify gaining her answers, by giving her something in return: a truce. I knew she wouldn’t let that slip by her. Henry Jon was teasing her with every page, and there was no real conclusion in sight. He went crazy, leading every witch hunt and losing everyone’s trust, trying to find Rosalia. No one believed him, and all he had were the pages of his journal, hoping to save someone’s favorite.