by Tracy Clark
I wouldn’t put Finn in danger.
“I went to the redwoods.” He squinted curiously but didn’t push for more.
I bit my lip as he stroked my hair. Every once in a while, an unruly strand caught on his beaded bracelet and he’d gently slip it free. His eyes were so sincere, his aura clear of the sludge I’d come to associate with people’s ambivalence. Warmth and caring rolled off him and surrounded me. Like luxuriating in a patch of sun on a brisk day.
His fingers slipped from the top of my hair to weave through the curls at the nape of my neck. A conflicted look passed over his face. He was fighting the urge to pull my head to his. I got that. Even appreciated his restraint because it showed he cared about the state I was in. But I wanted him to kiss me. Desperately.
“It’s okay to kiss me, Finn.” I hooked my fingers on the pocket of his gray shirt and pulled. “You have to kiss me.”
“Good,” he said in a tight voice. “Because I need to.”
His fingers clutched tighter at my neck. He brought my lips to his, but he stopped short of a kiss. Our lips barely lit upon each other’s, so light it tickled. We stared hard into each other’s eyes. Our breathing swirled around our mouths, merging, our auras doing the same. We were trapped together in a bubble of pulsing energy.
Finn smiled against my mouth and teased his face away from mine, then gently tugged my head back and grazed my neck with his lips. He planted soft kisses down the slope of it. His spiked hair tickled my cheek, and I gasped when he sucked gently on my earlobe.
I tasted his neck, tasted the upper curve of the tattoo that had beckoned me since we first met, bit the firm pad of flesh where his neck and shoulder joined. Something about him made me feel primal and strong.
“Damn,” he groaned and pulled us face-to-face again. We still clutched the back of each other’s heads. “You are a force to be reckoned with.” As he leaned away from me, his bracelet caught in my hair and split apart. Crystalline orange drops rained down on us, slipping down my shoulders, into my shirt, onto the seat. Finn laughed.
I started to scoop them up, scavenge for them between the seats, but he waved me off. “It’s no big deal,” he said. “It’s just a bracelet.” I curled my fingers around a few beads. Their tiny facets dug into my palms as he started out of the parking lot.
“I don’t know how to pull off getting to Ireland to look for my mom. Saying it out loud makes it sound even more absurd. My father will be one hundred percent against it.” I clenched my hands together in my lap and sighed. “I want something impossible.”
Finn glanced at me with a wry smile. “So do I.”
I knew instinctively what he meant. Deep inside me, a girl twirled with happiness while tears flew from her cheeks. He lived in Ireland, yet he wanted…us. We drove a minute in silence while I tried to pull myself together. This day was too big. Too much of too much. I leaned my head back on the leather seat and closed my eyes.
“I hate to see you so low,” Finn said. He flicked the turn signal. “I know what you need.” The car pulled to a stop in a darkened parking lot.
I looked around, confused. “I need a fifteen-minute oil change?”
Finn flashed me a megawatt smile. He rummaged in the backseat for something, producing a bandanna from his guitar case. “I need to blindfold you.”
“Kinky much?”
A chuckle. “Do you trust me?”
The pause was, perhaps, extraordinarily long. “Okay. Not entirely. Um. Okay.” How strange that I’d come to rely on seeing auras so much that I was nervous about the ability being gone.
He folded the bandanna in a triangle and placed it gently over my eyes. “Hold this.” I pressed my fingers to my eyes while he tied the back. It smelled like him, like sun and leather and cloves.
We drove a bit more, turning this way and that, finally coming to a stop. I couldn’t see anything except that it seemed lighter than before. He got out and opened my door, then took my hand.
“I feel stupid.”
“Hush, vixen, and follow me.”
Finn led me through a chiming door. The luxurious scent of sugar assailed me. “Is that buttercream?”
“Sit here a moment. I’ll be right back.”
I swear my mouth actually watered. I tapped my fingers and smiled. It felt good to smile. I detected Finn’s approach before I heard him. His aura was unmistakable. There was always the familiar pull, the energy infused with warmth, sex appeal, and a sprinkling of trouble. He slid into the seat next to me. “Smell this.” Something delectable waved under my nose.
“Vanilla and…is it oranges?”
“You could work for search and rescue. Here, taste.”
His finger touched my lips. Rich vanilla frosting and tiny bits of candied orange peel swirled over my tongue. Heaven. He untied my blindfold. I blinked and looked around. We were in the biggest cupcake shop I had ever seen. I’d heard about the new place and really wanted to go but hadn’t made the time. My cupcake-loving soul was thrilled. In front of me sat six cute little miniature cupcakes lined up in a row. Each one different.
“I figured we should do a taste test to choose our favorite.”
I threw my arms around his neck and squeezed him. He couldn’t have picked a sweeter way to cheer me up, and obviously one can better formulate radical plans of running off to foreign countries when fueled by cupcakes.
I caught him looking at me strangely. “What?” I asked through a mouthful of chili-spiced chocolate.
“I don’t know,” he answered in a very non-answery way, studying me as if seeing me with new eyes.
“Okay. Let me have it.”
He cocked his head, blinked, and grinned. “You’re radiant, Cora. It’s the only word I can think of. You have a special light about you. People try so hard to shine. You do nothing, and you eclipse them all.”
I gasped. “You mean you see light—?”
“No. No. I can’t literally see it.” His brows pinched together. “I feel it. It’s something brilliant about you that draws me in. You gaze at me with those incredible eyes of yours, and it’s like a drug. I want another hit. And another.”
I kissed his sweet lips. I swear he gasped a little.
“Funny,” I said, peeling back the accordion paper of the pink-lemonade cupcake. “I’d say I’m the moth attracted to your light. I know at some point, I’ll get burned.”
“Burned?”
“I’ll fall for you. You’ll go home to Ireland, and even if I see you again when I go to look for my mother—because I will find a way to do that—I still have to come back to America. Fiery hole in my heart. Crash. Burn. That kind of thing.” I gulped. Geesh, I needed to put a restraining order on my mouth, or put another cupcake in it.
Finn blinked. “You could fall for me?” he asked in a reverent whisper.
The next words tumbled out in a cupcake-soaked garble that didn’t sound like the English language. “So hard.”
“I think I just swooned.”
“And look, you’re still manly.”
He took my hands in his. We sat that way for a few moments, marinating in affection and buttercream frosting. I watched our auras bleed into each other. Mine shooting off sparks of silver. His gold, brightening into a starlike glow. Together we became a comet, racing into the sun.
Sixteen
F
inn waved good-bye to me from the driveway. As I was poised to slide my key into the lock, the door opened and Janelle greeted me with an overly dramatic face. “He’s been waiting for you, honey. Better get in there and face the music.”
“Well, he’d better brace himself. I’ve got some music of my own to make.”
I walked into the living room and looked for Dad in his leather club chair but found it empty. The sound of ice clinked in a glass from the couch. Dad never sat on the couch, let alone reclined on it with a highball of amber liquid. Not on a weekday. His tie coiled on the floor like a waiting snake.
We stared at each other a moment, waitin
g to see who would strike the first drum.
“I can’t believe you—”
“I am very disappointed that—”
Our opening statements overlapped. The room reverberated with quiet again.
“What’s with the drink?”
“I’m an adult, Cora. I don’t need to justify my actions. You, however—”
“I’m seventeen, Dad. I’d be on my way to adulthood if you’d let me.”
“Where. Were. You? I had no idea where you were! You didn’t answer your phone. Something could have happened to you. You just—just disappeared.” He sounded more like a scared boy than my father.
Looking for the truth. Reading hidden letters. Crying over my mother. Digging in the forest for a possessed key. Freaking out. Falling in love. “What difference does it make where I went?”
“You cannot disappear like that!”
“Why? Because she did?”
Just tell me the truth. Tell me or I’ll never have faith in you again.
“Yes! Dammit!”
I flinched. He actually admitted it. I was too stunned to reply. I wanted to yell at him, to accuse and force-feed him the poison of his secrets, but he looked so devastated. I could see it etched in the lines of his face. He’d carried it for so long. He’d lied to me, but he’d lost her, too.
Dad swirled the cubes in his glass. The melting ice left trails of crystalline liquid in the heavy alcohol. Despite my sympathy, I was about to light into him with all my questions. Tell him everything I knew, show him the key he’d buried under the ghost, when he said softly, a lone tear streaming down his unshaven cheek, “You remind me so much of her, Cora.”
“How?” I whispered. I felt like I did as a little girl when a butterfly landed on my arm, and I held my breath so it wouldn’t fly away.
“There’s something different about you that draws people to you. Grace was like that.” He glanced up at me, then quickly back down at his glass. “It’s always been this way. When you were little, it was animals. Any stray thing would follow you home. No sooner would I take you to a park than a bunch of kids would be trailing after you. Even adults, they’d stare. It always made me—”
“Proud?” There was too much hope in my chest. It hurt.
“Uncomfortable.”
I swallowed hard. He couldn’t be proud of who or what I was or trust me because I was too different, too much like her. “What you said before was wrong,” I told him. “I think you do need to justify your actions.”
He shook his head but didn’t reply, except to take a large gulp of his drink. Finally he spoke in a choked voice. “I loved her very much. That doesn’t go away even though…even though she did. I love you, too, sweetheart. I don’t want to lose you.”
“Then talk to me, Dad. This is your chance.” I ventured out a little on the ledge, unsure of what to reveal. How much tighter would the chains get if he knew what I knew? I had to find a way to get to Ireland. “I—I know you’re keeping things from me. If we can’t trust each other—”
“There is no one you can trust more. If there are things I’ve kept from you, it’s only been for your own good.” The hairs stood up on my arms. He let me believe my own mother didn’t want me. That was for my own good? He kept the truth of her from me. There was something strange and different about me, and he’d known it my whole life.
He kept me from me!
My anger flared anew. I clenched my jaw and spoke through gritted teeth. “I’ll go to Ireland, and I will find her. Maybe she’ll tell me what you won’t.”
Dad’s eyes flared, wild and bullish. “You will not step foot on that island as long as I live.”
“Someday what I do won’t be up to you!”
“Someday is bullshit! It’s a wish your heart makes when you want things to be different than they are!” Dad’s red anger muted, and his voice softened. “I believed in someday for a long time, too. Hate me if you want, Cora, but Ireland is forever out of the question.”
Seventeen
S
omeday is a wish your heart makes when you want things to be different than they are.
That was the truest thing my dad had ever told me. And the saddest.
I showered the forest mud from my skin and hair, but the key and the clover ring would never wash off. These two marks were permanent, and so upsetting. I didn’t even wear makeup, and suddenly I’m tattoo girl? If this was going to keep happening to me, how was I supposed to hide it?
I swallowed my misery and dialed Finn’s number, hoping he didn’t mind me calling so late.
“I was hoping we could talk,” I said through the lump in my throat. “I just had the worst fight I’ve ever had with my dad.”
“I was about to call you,” he told me. “Can I see you again, Cora? I miss you already. I’ll come by for just a few minutes, and we can talk in person.”
I hesitated. My father would freak out if he caught Finn at the house.
“Please don’t say no. I’ve got to see you again. It’s like an ache,” he said. “I’ll give you a quick kiss, you can tell me your troubles, and I’ll be gone. I promise.”
“You can’t keep that promise.”
“What? Beg your pardon?” I could hear his smile under his insulted voice.
“’Cause I don’t think I can. Okay, come on by, but be stealth about it. Dad and I are at war. My window is the first one on the left side of the house.”
Fifteen minutes later, I heard a light tap on my window. I kneeled on my bed and slid the window open, poking my head out into the cool night air. Finn reached up and ran his hand down the length of one of my long curls.
“This is very Romeo of you,” I said.
He clasped his hand to my cheek and whispered, “O’ she doth teach the torches to burn bright.”
I stared at his smiling honey-brown eyes. A corona of light flared around his body and extended toward me, sweeping through me. After he returned to Ireland, would I ever feel his warmth again? I wanted to stay with the boy who convinced me that what made me different was what made me beautiful.
I threw down my kisses, one after the other, onto Finn’s waiting lips. Somehow, as we kissed, he slowly climbed halfway through my window, crawled over me, fell into my room, and onto my bed, knocking my pillow into the lamp, which thudded onto the carpet. He wound me in the embrace of his arms and legs. He woke every sleeping want in me.
I loved him. I could waste time wondering how or why this improbable, beautiful emotion had gripped me so quickly, but why? I knew I loved him. And I’d have probably said it if his sweet mouth wasn’t covering mine with deep kisses that made my body achy and hungry. Instead, I did something I had read about in Faye’s books. I sent Finn love. Pure, loving energy. Right from my heart to his. I imagined my light pouring into him, around him. Without words, I declared my devotion. I was powerful and weak all at the same time.
Finn gasped. “Cora, there’s something I have to tell you—”
A burst of white light blinded me.
The light in my room blinked on. My father stood in the doorway.
Eighteen
S
panish is a lovely language, but not so much when it comes in the form of profanities. Finn scrambled off me and onto his feet, but strangely he didn’t look at my father. He stared at me through heavy-lidded eyes that gleamed as if he were drugged. His aura pulsed with every color in the rainbow, the green being especially vibrant and, surrounding it all, a halo of gorgeous white light. He stepped toward me but stopped when my dad’s voice seemed to penetrate his fog.
“This is the trust you asked for, Cora? See it? It’s on the floor. Smashed! And you!” Dad pointed at Finn. Finn’s head snapped to my dad. He looked confused, like he’d just remembered that my dad was in the room. His hands shook slightly. What was wrong with him?
My dad continued his tirade. “You have to know that climbing into my daughter’s bedroom window is the epitome of disrespect to this household. To her! Did you think abou
t that?”
“It wasn’t my intention—”
“I know all about your intentions, kid. I was your age once, too. Get out!”
“Dad!”
My father pointed his finger. Brownish-red flowed from his hand toward me, like he was trying to cast a spell, and I could do nothing to deflect it. He threw his fury at me like filthy garbage. I recoiled.
Finn held up his quivering hands. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. All of this is my fault. Please don’t yell at her.”
My dad strode over to him. Right up in his face. “You keep your Irish ass away from my little girl, you hear me? I don’t want you anywhere near her! Ever!”
“Stop it, Dad! Finn, just go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Go.”
Finn held a shaky hand up to touch my arm. But it fell to his side. His eyes were tortured as he left. I wanted to run after him. To comfort him. Screw my father and his heavy anger, his smashed trust. His controlling. It hurt me to see Finn’s defeated colors, to feel his pain. He looked positively tormented.
My feet moved me toward the door, but Dad stopped me. “You are not to leave this house. I will lock you in, Cora. I swear I will.”
Meanness like I’d never known burst out of my body. “No wonder she left you!”
Dad shuddered and I knew, true or not, my strike had hit its target. We stared at each other. His body went as rigid as steel. He left my room and, a few seconds later, I heard the car screech out of the garage, leaving me with more rage than I knew what to do with. I wanted to get it out of me and had nowhere to direct it. So I did what I always did when I was upset. I ate. And every bite was like swallowing my own venom.
Nineteen
I
didn’t sleep at all and sneaked out of the house at six in the morning, taking my gloom to a coffee shop I’d never been to before and where no one would find me. Bits of the day before still clung to me. Remnants of mud under my nails and humiliation in my gut. I had left a note for Dad, telling him that he was unreasonable and unfair. I was going to school, and he’d either have to send the police or come himself to get me.