“I love you too, Maeve.”
I hung up and told Arthur what Kelly said. “So if we’ve got the whole night to kill, should I find us a hotel?” he pulled out his phone. “We could splash out and get something fancy, with a spa bath and a butler named Jeeves.”
“No hotel, but we do need to rent a car.”
“A car?”
“Yes.” I pushed the rest of my dinner away and wrapped up my untouched brownie cake into a napkin. “There’s something I have to do.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
ARTHUR
Irecognized the grim determination on Maeve’s face when she emerged from the diner. It was a mirror of my own emotions when I told Corbin that I’d live with him at Briarwood and learn how to use my magic.
It was the look of total acceptance that you knew you had to do a scary thing, but it was exactly the thing that had to happen.
What I didn’t know was why she looked like that, or what she was going to do.
But what Maeve wished, I would deliver. I rented us a car (a classic 1962 Corvette, because damned if I was going to drive in America in some shitty Honda), added some cheap blankets and cushions from Target to the boot, plugged my old Discman into the cigarette lighter, rolled down the hood, and with Blood Lust blaring and the sun setting behind us, we left Phoenix and the horrible hospital smell in our dust.
Maeve laughed as the wind whipped her hair around her face. “I’ve never been in a convertible before!” she yelled over the roar of the music, earning herself a mouthful of hair for her efforts.
My beard streamed out on either side of my face like some kind of deranged monk. My hair whipped across my eyes. I cursed myself for not remembering to tie my hair back. I wanted to stop and put the hood back up, but no way would I do that when Maeve was smiling like she was.
I hated the circumstances around our visit, but I loved spending time with Maeve alone, away from Briarwood and all the crazy fae and the sex that made my cock burn with envy. I love that she loved my music, that shegotit, the way she seemed to get everything about me.
I wished more than anything that she could be mine.
“Turn off up here,” Maeve yelled over the roar of the music.
I did. As the Corvette’s headlights illuminated the sign that read WELCOME TO COOPERSVILLE, POPULATION 4,589, I got a stabbing feeling in my gut that this might be a bad idea.
I’d been here once before, of course. After Corbin’s parents walked out of Briarwood, we had to take over duties as Maeve’s guardian. I did a year-long stint, watching Maeve from a distance as a janitor at her high school. I bumped into her once in the library and asked to borrow a pencil, but she was so engrossed in the latest Neil Degrasse Tyson book that she barely looked up. It was no surprise she didn’t remember me the way she did Flynn, who was a student in her year and made a million friends and interfered with everything and caused chaos and mayhem as only Flynn could.
Driving back into the familiar town with her at my side felt surreal, like I was watching a movie of my own life instead of living it. But that determined look hadn’t left her face, and I knew that she was here because of her sister, because something happened here that made Kelly feel as though there was no way out. And Maeve wanted to even the score.
The fresh scar on my forearm throbbed, shooting a jolt of shame through my body. I was glad Maeve hadn’t asked me to gointo that room to see her sister. I would have gone if she wanted me to, but then I’d be forced to confront something I wasn’t ready for.
Corbin did that to me when he caught me cutting at Briarwood. He took me to meet people at a local self-harm support group, and then he took me to his brother’s grave and told me that he wasn’t going to let another person fade away on his watch. It wasn’t so much the hollow, weakened faces of the people in the group that got to me as it was the searing pain in Corbin’s fierce eyes. Even though I didn’t want to stop – it was the one thing that seemed to contain the rage inside me – I couldn’t be the source of that pain for him.
So I stopped. Only I didn’t, not really. I may not have been cutting my skin any longer, but if I felt the rage bubbling inside me I’d punch something hard over and over until my knuckles bled, or burn the skin between my thighs with one of my flames. Anything to jolt me out of the dark place and be in control again.
As I’d sat in that hospital chair, thinking about Maeve in there with her sister, I realised I didn’t have any control at all.I’m getting worse.Maeve’s presence was sending me into a spiral of rage and pain and guilt and desire. I didn’t know how to stop, if I could really, truly stop. But I vowed to try. If I couldn’t stop for Corbin, maybe I could stop for her?
“Pull over,” Maeve said, directing me in front of her house. It was a small clapboard ranch-style house similar to the others on the street, save that the shutters were painted red. A small wooden cross was glued to the front door, and an American flag hung limply from a pole in the front garden.
I turned off the engine.
“This is my home.” Maeve eyes darted across the front porch. Her expression was unreadable.
“I know.”
I was treading on eggshells.
Maeve frowned. “That’s right, you used to stalk me. I usually try to forget about that. Anyway, I guess I should say itwasmy home. Now Pastor Tim lives here with his dorky sweaters and his stationary bike.”
“Do you hate him?”
