“I knew better than to come here, because I had finally figured out how to appease my curse back in L.A., but then I got selfish and decided to try and be a part of my nephew’s life. I accepted this stupid gift to come to Ravenwood, and now I won’t even be able to meet him.” Each word starts coming out faster and louder than the last. “I willneverbe able to hold my nephew in my arms or be there to help my brother settle into fatherhood, because I am cursed, Cameron, and that is never going to change.”
He reaches out for me, but I duck under his arm and head towards the kitchen to find his keys since he just said he would let me borrow his car. He gets to them before I do, though, so I growl and turn my attention to my open can of Dr Pepper and shake it upside down violently to empty it down the drain. I curse it, and the chocolate-covered strawberry lattes, and everyother thing that I allowed myself to indulge in this weekend that I shouldn’t have.
Once it is empty, I throw the can in the trash, and he watches curiously as I spin in place in search of something to take my frustration out on. I go to the refrigerator to grab the rest of the mini sodas and open them up one by one to pour the contents down the drain, smashing the empty cans in my palm. The pain in my thumb returns with brutal force, and by the time I am done with the last one, I check the bandage to see if blood is soaking through, and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if I reopened my cut while dispelling only a small fraction of the pent-up anger that I have towards myself right now. I set my eyes on the snacks we left on the counter next.
“Drew, stop.” Cameron follows my movements like a dog trying to herd a lost sheep.
“I can’t, I will always be bad luck,” I say, even though I know that’s not what he meant. “If you knew what was good for you, you would leave right now before something terrible happens to you too.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Get out of my way,” I say through gritted teeth.
He moves aside immediately, but before I can grab something else to throw away he says, “You don’t need to keep punishing yourself like this. Especially not for Delaney’s death. What happened to her wasn’t your fault.”
I whip around, furiously, and throw all my hurt and anger at my curse behind the glare I send in his direction. “You want to sit here and argue that you know me, and yetthat’swhat you choose to say to me right now? That it wasn’t my fault?” I laugh cruelly. “What’s next? I did everything that I could, and I should just move on with my life because she would want me to be happy? Or that Delaney died for a reason, and we just don’t know what it is yet?”
He flinches at my words, but continues, his voice barely audible above the blood roaring in my ears. “No. I would never, ever say those things, and you know that. What I will say, though, despite how mad it might make you with me, is that you’ve suffered enough, Drew. You have paid your penance for what happened to your parents and then some, so you don’t need to keep punishing yourself into eternity for it. You can leave and never speak to me again, but only if you truly don’t want to be with me, and not because you think you have to give up what we have as some sort of cosmic retribution.”
I stand there, stunned. He once again hit the nail on the head and somehow put words to what has been plaguing me my entire life after knowing me for only a fewdays.
He sees that he has my attention and takes a few tentative steps forward. “You’ve suffered enough, Drew.”
I shake my head as my eyes sting with tears. I will my body to move so that I can escape this conversation, but I can’t get my limbs to cooperate.
“You’ve suffered enough, Drew.” He stops in front of me, so close that I can smell his deliciously warm scent, but he leaves a whisper of space between us.
“You don’t have to do this alone. I see your bad luck, or your curse as you call it, and I’m not afraid. I want to fight it alongside you, because now that we’ve met, I can’t imagine my life without you in it, and I would face any challenge and slay every monster if it meant getting to keep you by my side. Please, from one wretched person to another, hear me when I say this again. You have suffered enough. You don’t need to keep sacrificing every part of yourself until there is nothing left.”
I look into his eyes, the ones that I have grown so attached to, and say the words that are my last defense. “The monsters in my life are too big to slay, Cameron. No one can overcome them, not even you.”
He puts his hands on either side of my face and wipes my cheeks dry with a gentle swipe. “No. I can’t do it alone, and neither can you. But together . . .” He speaks with such certainty that it cuts right through to the deepest parts of me. “Together we can face any challenge. And when the monsters try to overtake us, then we’ll just have to make sure we find a couple of really big swords to fight them off with.”
I shake my head at his analogy, but it doesn’t matter what he said. It was thewayhe said it that resurfaced that small beacon of hope that flickered in me back when I first got on the plane; the hope that there could be a different future for me if I was just willing to fight hard enough for it.
These may be our final moments together before I am arrested for Delaney’s murder, and the last thing I want to do with this precious time is fight with him.
The regret of staying away from him these past two days, when I won’t be able to be in my nephew’s life anyway, pushes me down even further. I want to believe that we can fight this together, and that he can somehow still save the day. But what I want even more than all that is the bliss of being completely lost in him.
So while I still have time, I pull him down as hard as I can and kiss him with everything I have left in me to give.
Chapter forty-nine
MY WEAKNESS
Hepullsbackfromthe kiss, stunned, and tries to remove my hands from around his neck. “Wait.”
“No.” I tighten my grip on the back of his head to pull him down again, but he stands up straight, using our height difference to his advantage so that I have no choice but to let go. “Drew, stop. We need to talk about this.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Well, I do, and as much as I’ve been dying to kiss you again, I’m not going to let that derail us from finishing our conversation. It’s too important to me.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I’m done talking. There’s nothing else to say. I just want to forget about everything for a second, because there is a good chance that my print is going to match the one they recovered from the scene, and even if it doesn’t, they still have more than enough to get me for probable cause.”
When he doesn’t disagree, I continue, “Jalen was a jerk earlier, but he was right about one thing. You really shouldn’t take responsibility for how sideways this case is going. It’s not your fault that the evidence is stacked against me; it’s mine for coming out here in the first place, and there’s nothing that you could have done to stop it. My curse is just too powerful. You’ve already done so much for me. More than I—” I stop before finishing the sentence.
“More than what? More than you deserve?” he guesses correctly.
