by Kat Colmer
“She kissed you last year?” The indignation pulsed off Beth in waves. I couldn’t tell which she was more pissed off about: that I’d just made a move on her best friend, or that Cora and I hadn’t told her what had gone down a year ago.
“Can we focus here?” I said. “I know I’ve screwed up, but I’m about to lose one of my best friends and there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t need your wrath right now.” My voice must have sounded sufficiently tortured because Beth reined in her temper and sat back down next to me.
We sat in silence for a while, staring ahead and seeing nothing, the downpour of rain the only sound daring to force its way into the funeral parlor-like stillness of the room.
“So what happened?”
I barely heard Beth’s whisper over the deluge outside. Did she mean now or back then?
I took an unsteady breath. “She came over the night her parents broke the news about the separation and Manhattan. You were out, I was here, she was upset, and it just…happened.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Beth’s face tilt toward me. “And?”
“And it scared the hell out of me.”
She frowned. “Because?”
“Because I’d never felt.”
“Never felt what?”
I looked at her. “I’d just never…felt.” As in, no one had ever touched me beneath my skin. Where it wasn’t so much about a kiss as it was about two beat-up souls looking for connection. No one until Cora, that is. Why was I telling her this? She’d do what Beth does and read too much into all of it and—
Too late.
Comprehension spread slowly across her features. First her eyes widened, then her mouth fell open. “Oh my God! Don’t tell me you’re—”
“Don’t say it!” I warned her.
“But it’s obvious you’re—”
“Nothing’s obvious! So don’t say it.”
Because saying it would give it life. And I was too scared to allow it to take shape, draw breath, and start growing.
I threw Beth one last warning glare, then lowered my head back into my palms and groaned, wishing for the puddle at my feet to keep expanding until there was enough water for me to drown myself in.
Sleep came in fits and starts that night. In my head, the scene in the gazebo played on a continual slow-motion loop. Each time I came close to sweet oblivion, the rain pummeled the roof in a monsoonal downpour, jolting me awake, hitting play, and starting the torturous shit-storm of emotion again.
In the morning I crawled out of bed feeling like I’d missed one too many tumble turns and slammed headfirst into the pool wall. Worse than the mother of all hangovers. When I slunk into the kitchen, Aunt Helena glanced up from her breakfast, coffee cup freezing midair. She looked me up and down and frowned.
“What time did you get in last night?”
“About ten.”
She kinked a brow. “You look like you partied till the early hours of the morning.”
Yeah, if only. Then I wouldn’t have been in the gazebo last night. I’d be nursing a real hangover rather than this…this…whatever this was.
Leo had tried hard to get my mind off demons and love curses last night. Within fifteen minutes at the nightclub we were on the dance floor with two leggy German backpackers. Their English wasn’t the best, but they had no problem communicating their intentions. It wasn’t long before Leo made a move. Seeing him making out with a total stranger in the middle of a bunch of sweating and heaving bodies was just wrong. Contrived. Pointless. Sure, I heard my own hypocrisy loud and clear; it was no different to what I’d done countless Saturday nights, but all I wanted was to get out of there.
Aunt Helena was still watching me.
“Didn’t sleep well.” I turned my back to her, slid two slices of bread in the toaster, and slammed the lever down with unhealthy force.
“Obviously.” There was no missing the raised eyebrow in her voice.
“Is Beth up yet?” My shift at the BeanStop started in an hour, but I wanted to catch her before I left. I needed to know if she’d managed to speak with Cora. I’d called and texted several times last night. No answer. Total silence. I swear, it was driving me demented. But I hung on to the hope Cora would want to talk to her best friend.
“She’s in the shower. She’s coming in early today to make up her Monday.”
I turned and found Aunt Helena eyeing me over the rim of her coffee cup. “Jonas, is there something you want to talk about?”
Even though it wasn’t ready, I ejected the toast and spread it with clumps of butter. I faced Aunt Helena again, slowly chewing the underdone bread while I decided how to respond to her question. A part of me desperately wanted to tell her about the Guardian letter, the curse, everything. I wanted the rational lawyer in her to take care of this mess for me, like she’d taken care of so many other messes when I was a kid. But if this curse was as real as I feared, telling her could put her in unnecessary danger.
“Why didn’t you ever marry?” I asked her instead.
The question surprised us both. Aunt Helena’s eyes flew open, and she expelled a short laugh. “I…well…I guess I never found the right person.”
“So you’re not against it, love, marriage, all that…” I trailed off, feeling stupid for having started this conversation.
She angled her head and gazed at me thoughtfully. “No. I’m not against it. I think sharing your life with someone in that way can be very fulfilling.”
“Even after seeing the carnage of divorce over and over in your practice?”
She sipped from her cup before answering. “For every marriage that fails, there’s at least one that succeeds.”
“Those aren’t exactly great odds.”
Her smile was slow and a little sad, and for a moment her expression hinted at a well of experience the depth of which I could only guess. “True. And you’ll find plenty who’ll say Lord Tennyson was selling us a lie when he said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Yeah, and they’d be dead right.
“The trouble is, Jonas, we seem to be wired for it.”
“Wired for lies?”
“No.” Another smile. One that almost reached her eyes this time. “Wired for love. Even though it can cause great pain, we can’t help but seek it out. And I think it’s because it coaxes us outside ourselves, outside our own circle of importance, and places someone else there. Such otherness is empowering, Jonas. It strengthens us, helps us be the best we can be. And when reciprocated, well, such togetherness… It’s beautiful.”
Beautiful. A pair of glinting hazel eyes hijacked my brain at Aunt Helena’s words and flooded my body with an unnerving heat. Beautiful—until it drove you to ram your car into the trunk of a tree, catapulting those relying on you right out of any circle of importance.
I bit into my now cold, as well as underdone, toast in an attempt to calm the nausea licking at the insides of my gut.
“You don’t look convinced,” Aunt Helena said over the rim of her cup of coffee.
“Can’t say I’m sold on the argument.”
She tapped a finger against her cup. “You know, I’m no expert, but I think it may have something to do with the person you choose to share the journey with you.”
Choices. Everywhere I turned for answers it came back to choices. The problem was, I may have just run out of mine.
Aunt Helena’s eyes clouded with concern. “Has this got anything to do with your parents, Jonas? With your father?”
I shrugged, avoiding a direct answer. I heard my out when the shower stopped upstairs.
“I’ve got to talk to Beth. I’ll see you later.” I headed for the door, throwing the barely eaten toast in the bin on the way. Guilt made me stop and turn around. Aunt Helena was worried but trying hard not to press the issue. I coul
dn’t tell her what was going on, but I didn’t have to be a total dick about it, either.
In two strides I was beside her and planted a kiss on her cheek. “I’m fine, really. This is just something I need to sort out for myself.” For her sake, I attempted a smile.
She nodded. “All right. But I’m here if you need me.”
“I know.”
And, unlike my father, I knew she would be.
I took the stairs up two at a time. Beth’s room was opposite mine at the end of the hallway. I knocked. “Beth? You decent?”
A muffled “yeah” came from the other side of the door. I swung it open and found Beth toweling her wet hair with one hand, mobile phone pressed to her ear with the other.
“Anything?” I closed the door behind me.
“No. Still not answering.” Beth tossed the phone on her bed and gave her hair another once over with the towel before hanging the terrycloth up over the back of her chair. “I get that she’s got the craps with you, but why isn’t she talking to me?” Her face scrunched up in a scowl. She was dressed in what she called her “legal dulls”—gray knee-length skirt and tailored white shirt. The emerald pendant I’d given her for our birthday was the only splash of color to her outfit.
I sank down on her bed, ran both hands over my face. “I’ve really screwed this up.”
“Royally.” Beth didn’t need to add more, the look she gave me said it loud and clear, in several languages: I was an A-class idiot. She picked up a hairbrush from her bedside table and tugged it through her damp hair, then stopped and faced me. “Look, as much as the thought makes me want to smack you, is there any chance you two…you know, that maybe there could be something…”
I choked on the thought. “I said I’m not going there.”
That was when she did smack me. Thwack! Hand to the side of my head.
“Hey!”
Hands on hips, she rounded on me. “Listen, it’s not like the idea of the two of you as something other than friends isn’t grossing me out. I mean Cora’s like a sister.” She threw me a disgusted glare. “But it’s got to be better than her wanting to puke at the mere sight of you. I don’t want two of the most important people in my life unable to be in the same room together. So man up for once in your life.” Her eyes knifed me. “Well?”
My dread was physical. I circled the possibility of something other than friendship between Cora and me like it was a sleeping beast, petrified I’d wake it. Or maybe petrified that once awake, it would curl up in my lap instead of eating me alive. In that moment I hated Beth for making me poke and prod the animal.
“Shit, Beth, I don’t know!” I threw myself back on her bed.
“You are such a coward.”
No point denying it; she’d see right through me anyway. I focused on the cobweb hanging off the downlight above her bed. Sometimes it sucked being a twin. Royally.
“What about Cora? If she made a move a year ago, there might still be something there, right?”
I risked meeting Beth’s eyes. “I wouldn’t count on it. She called it a massive lapse of judgment.” And let’s not forget the deviant impulse.
Beth pulled a face. “What about last night?”
“What about it?”
She huffed. “God, you’re thick sometimes. How did she react when you mauled her?”
“I didn’t maul her.” I threw an arm over my eyes, not liking where this was going.
“Did she shove you away? Pull one of her fancy black belt moves on you?”
She hadn’t. She’d pushed her hands into my hair, run her tongue along my lips, tattooed her name onto my soul. I swallowed; I could still taste her breath on my tongue. And see the look of horror on her face just before she bolted from the gazebo.
Ah shit.
“Jonas?”
I shifted, the bed suddenly uncomfortable. “No.” It was a whisper.
“No?”
“You heard me.”
The bed dipped. Beth gripped my ankle. “You know what I think? I think you don’t know which scares you more: that Cora will gag at the sight of you…or that she won’t.” Silence. Beth’s fingers were a tight shackle on my ankle. “I’m right, aren’t I?” Surprisingly, there was no malice in her words. Just the gut-tightening truth. She was taking all this way too well.
“Leave me alone.” Right then, I hated being her twin.
Beth’s consoling pat on my leg only made me feel worse. The bed dipped some more when she reached across me for her phone. “Well, we won’t know one way or the other until the girl picks up. Or you could just walk over there and get your answer that way?”
And experience Cora’s potential rejection face-to-face? No way in hell. I lifted my arm and gave Beth my best “piss off” look.
Beth sighed. “Or not.”
Then it hit me. “The coil!” I leaped off the bed.
Beth frowned.
“On the letter. The last coil.”
The Guardian penny dropped.
The next second we were out of her room and racing for mine. I pulled the letter from my desk drawer, quickly unfolded the parchment, and we stared at the watermark.
“Oh wow. What does that mean?” Beth asked.
I ran a shaky hand over my face. “The professor said the coil would either fade or the other two would return. He didn’t say anything about this.”
The third coil was still there, alone, no sign of fading. Instead, it glistened, a rippling quicksilver snake on the parchment. I swallowed past the sudden dryness in my mouth. So much for the prof’s theory of disappearing ink.
Chapter Eighteen
Cora
The low seat of the sun told me it was somewhere around six. And I wasn’t anywhere near enough exhausted. I’d hoped an all-day training marathon would be plenty to bring about some sort of mental oblivion.
It hadn’t been.
My muscles ached and every rib protested as I heaved my workout bag over my shoulder, but last night was still glycerin-clear in my mind.
Curse you, Jonas! For having made such a stupid mistake. For having undone all my hard work in trying to forget that night last December.
Avoiding the puddles all over the deserted parking lot behind the martial arts school, I slowly made my way to the Beetle. Last night’s storm had drenched the city and brought the mercury down. I inhaled the washed air, a failed attempt to drive the scent of him from my mind, but nothing short of passing out would help me rid myself of it. What was wrong with me? This was Jonas, darn it. Week-long, use-by-date Jonas. How on earth did I get myself to a point where I actually wanted his tongue in my mouth?
I needed to hit something again. Hard.
Somewhere in my bag my phone chimed. I dug it out and glanced at the screen:
Just landed. Will call after first lot of rounds.
Dad. This morning he’d picked up straight away that something was wrong. He left it alone over breakfast. But once we were in the car on the way to the airport I had nowhere to hide. He assumed it had something to do with Markus. I let him. It was easier that way.
After I hugged him good-bye and reassured him one last time I’d be okay, I drove straight to the martial arts complex, where I could punish myself for being even more stupid than Jonas. For allowing myself to add fuel to an attraction that I should have smothered the moment my lips tasted his startled ones that night a year ago.
Dad’s wasn’t the only message:
Call me!!! Now!!! Please!!!
I groaned. Beth’s calls and texts had been coming all day. They didn’t spell it out, but it was clear she knew about last night. I rubbed a tired eye with the heel of my hand. I couldn’t avoid talking to her forever. She would have lost it when she found out. Big time. I half wished I’d been there when she tore strips off her brother for crossing the line. But then I’d have had t
o explain my part in it all and that petrified me to the point of convulsions. So I hung on to my anger, deluding myself into thinking if I focused on that one emotion there wouldn’t be room for any other: such as repulsion.
Or something else.
I stopped mid stride. Stilled. And, like I’d done more times than I could count that day, gave myself a mental frisking for any signs that Love’s Mortal Coil had come into effect. Nothing. No scorn. No shunning. Just anger.
Then a debilitating fear that I might actually—
No! Curse or no bloody curse, that wasn’t an option. Not with Jonas. Never with Jonas. His brand of heat would leave me with third degree burns.
Halfway across the parking lot my phone went off again. The mobile was still in my hand. Instinctively, I lifted it to look:
Am a block away. Don’t you DARE leave!!! Need to talk!!!
I stared at Beth’s message. Great, now the uncomfortable conversation I did not want to have was literally around the corner. Resigned, I adjusted the strap of my workout bag on my shoulder and stepped over the next puddle on the way to the car.
The crunch of footsteps on gravel came a split-second before a cold hand clamped down on my mouth. An arm coiled around my waist and yanked me back against a solid mass. My bag fell off my shoulder, landed with a thud in a puddle next to my feet.
My mind blanked. Raw fear wiped all ability to think. Only one thing penetrated the petrifying haze keeping me immobile—an icy chill coming off the body behind me.
Then training kicked in. Instinct took over.
I shifted my hips behind his, swung an arm across his chest, unbalanced him. Surprise was on my side; he broke his choke hold, fell backward, grunted as his bulk hit the gravel.
Run!
No matter how good my training, I knew I was at a disadvantage against someone bigger. And by the feel of this guy’s boa constrictor arms, he was definitely bigger.
I scrambled to grab my bag—the car keys were in it. I lost my footing and slid in a muddy pool of water. A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed this guy was not only bigger, he was also fast.