The words land like a punch.
“When?” My voice sounds thin and fragile, nothing like the person who stood in the kitchen just now telling Riley I’d made my choice.
“A few minutes ago. I saw her out the window, crossing the yard.”
The breath leaves my lungs in a rush.
I whirl around, thunder down the steps, and burst out the front door.
“Julia!”
The morning air is cold against my skin, raising goosebumps on my bare arms.
I head for the forest where I surrendered to her. That’s where I left her cloak, so maybe she went to get it. Branches catch at my clothes and hair as I run, but I don’t care. I need to find her. I need to see her one more time and—
What? What do I need?
I don’t know. But this ache in my chest is unbearable.
The oak tree looms ahead, ancient and indifferent to my pain. The memory of what we did here crashes over me—her fingers inside me, her body pressing me against the tree and into the earth, the exquisite edge between pleasure and pain and something darker.
Her cloak is gone. She’s already collected it and left.
“Julia!” I scream it this time, my voice ragged.
The trees absorb the sound, giving nothing back. Even the birds are silent.
She’s really gone.
I sink to my knees. The ground is still disturbed from what we did here.
I press my hands against the cold dirt, feeling for some trace of her magic, some lingering warmth, some proof that tonight was real.
There’s nothing.
My chest heaves. What did I expect? A formal goodbye? A tender morning after? An exchange of phone numbers like this was a normal hookup?
The laugh that escapes me is half hysterical. Julia doesn’t do normal. Julia is a century-old witch who just broke free from a curse that bound her to me, and of course she ran.
Just because she showed vulnerability doesn’t mean she’s changed her fundamental nature, and just because she made me feel seen doesn’t mean she wanted to keep looking.
I should be relieved. This is for the best, and deep down, I know that. I have to go back to real life now: go to work, where I’ll shelve books and recommend cozy mysteries to cheerful customers, and pay bills I can barely keep up with, and set up coffee dates with friends who will surely notice I’ve changed. In time, my body will recover, and the marks will fade, and…
Well, I know the memory of her never will. The feeling of surrendering to her, of craving that dangerous edge between pleasure and destruction, is carved into my soul now.
I touch the tender bruises on my throat where she grabbed me early in the night. Beyond these marks, she’s changed something in me that I can’t reverse.
And then she left.
Like everyone in my life seems to do.
It’s time to accept that this brief and intense part of my life is over. Julia is gone, and I have to live with that.
It’s time to go home.
My house looks the same as when I left it. Same overgrown grass, same empty driveway, same firepit with disturbed ash blown across the backyard. But I’m not the same person who lit that bonfire yesterday.
God, was it really just yesterday?
