I felt disconnected from myself, a calmness sweeping through me while my mind took me to a place I’d never been before. Memories that couldn’t have been mine.
The first thing I saw was his face and how his hair bounced off his sun-kissed forehead each time he looked up at me from across the square. The memory was like a faded pastime, and it caused my pulse to race.
There were flashes of him. A man I’d never met but somehow knew.
His striking eyes took advantage of every second with me, leaving me feeling sick. Not as I would feel after drinking too much wine, but as if the wine were a vessel sailing through a raging, unpredictable storm. Motion sickness, perhaps.
Wind tickled windchimes as the sun reflected off the colorful hanging sea glass. It sent bluish-green stars dancing about the market, blinding me and stealing him away.
My body jerked forward.Where did he go?
Before I could make sense of what was happening, my head broke through the surface.
I gasped for air, the water in the tub rocking against my shoulders.
When I opened my eyes wide, a flame’s soft amber glow haloed Ivy’s sullen face. Her shadow shivered on the Cedar wall behind her.
“Almost thirteen minutes.” Her tone was low and hushed as she sat on the wooden chair beside the tub with a glass of pinot noir dangling from her fingertips. “You’re getting better. Almost as good as me. Imagine what you could do come February.”
My shoulders shook at the memory that had invaded me. I slid across the tub to hide it and laid my head atop my crossed arms. I peered out the window and into the darkness that lay ahead.
From here, I could see the unfinished harbor, where the unprotected boats swayed against the docks. My breathing calmed, and the lighthouse’s beam circled Weeping Hollow again.
“I thought I had everything figured out,” I said, feeling her intense gaze on me. I closed my eyes. Nothing I could say would make this go away or make things right. Perhaps if I squeezed my eyes harder, I could manifest a different future for us. One where she was with Cyrus, not me. “I never wanted this. You must know that. It was supposed to be Kane. I’ve always wanted it to be Kane.”
Ivy’s lashes fluttered, and pinot noir swirled in her glass as she circled her tiny, agile wrist. When her eyes fell over me once more, mistrust spoiled her beauty. “You and Cyrus have always been close...”
She blamed me. I should have known. “You think I asked for it?”
“With the two of you together all the time, I’m sure it planted the idea in someone’s head. Look at yourself in the mirror.” She lifted her chin, and I caught my reflection in the French vintage mirror on the wall behind her. “Adora, you’re the embodiment of perfection, and you’ve always been drawn to beautiful things. Have you ever seen a man as beautiful as Cyrus? Two perfect people who make the perfect couple. In their eyes, you two belong together.”
She saw perfection, I saw something entirely different.
I couldn’t stand the sight of the girl in the mirror anymore, so I tore my eyes away. “Cyrus is just a friend, just like you and Maverick are friends. Like we’re all friends, Ivy. I would never do this to you.”
“If you keep telling yourself something, eventually you’ll believe it to be true,” she started to say, standing from the chair, “but it still doesn’t change the facts. I love him, and you took the only man I’ve ever loved away from me.”
I wrapped my fingers around the edge of the tub. “I’m not marrying—”
“You will because Augustine ordered it. What’s done is done, and what’s worse is I can’t leave. I’ve spent my whole life protecting you, and now I’m forced to watch you spend the rest of your life with someone who invades all my thoughts.” In her eyes, I saw the deep ache filling her as she took a full breath. “There’s no one else for me, Adora. At this point, I just need to decide whether to live in this pain you caused or continue fucking your fiancé to dull it.”
Ivy spilled what was left in her glass into the tub.
And upon her exit, she took the steam with her.
The deep-red pinot noir from the Cantini’s wine cellar swirled in the bath water, the threat bleeding all around me.
Anger climbed my spine.
It always did.
CHAPTER 5
STONE
age fifteen
Night of the Crimson Eclipse
