“As soon as I turned eighteen, she told me she wanted to travel, so she was selling the house, and I’d better find a job and a place to rent.”
My heart felt like a rusted hinge. Like a creaky door opening a crack. “And she didn’t keep in touch?”
“We were talking aboutyou.” He poked me in the chest. “Fae missed you. Why didn’t you pop in from time to time?”
The dark felt like a confessional. “I did at first, but it got hard. We all changed, but we still wrote to the old versions of ourselves. Every correspondence was a reminder of how little we knew each other anymore. It made me feel lonelier than I already was.”
“You couldn’t visit?”
“I didn’t want to risk it. Plus, I never found talking to people easy. It would have been even harder, knowing I could never go back for good.”
Kessian moved closer, his cheek pillowed against the back of his wrist. I felt like we were kids at a sleepover, confessing who we had a crush on.
You, I’d have to say.I have a stupid crush on you.
“I never would have guessed you found talking to people hard,” Kessian said.
“Because with you, it’s not.”
In the dark, I could just make out the shining midnight of his eyes and the curve of one starry cheekbone catching the moonlight. I couldn’t see the subtleties of his expression, and between the two of us, he was better at reading people.
But I thought, over the sound of crickets and frogs chirping outside, I heard his breath catch. “Are you saying you think I’m easy?” Kessian said, tone melodic and teasing.
“That’s not what I meant at all!”
“Because for you, I can be,” Kessian finished.
His hand splayed against my chest, hot as a brand, and he had to feel my heart speed up. I grabbed his wrist. “We shouldn’t.”
“You know … talk like that might give a guy the impression you’re no longer interested in that rain check.”
“I think you know it’s not for lack of interest.” My voice came out rougher than intended.
“Then what is it?”
“You know the answer to that, too. The people I get close to get hurt. It’s dangerous.” And I was afraid of getting hurt, too.
“Maybe I’m a thrill seeker,” he said, leaning in close, closer, until the next words might as well have been a kiss. “Maybe I want you more than I fear what might happen.”
“Kessian.”
The mattress shifted. He put an arm around me, carding his fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck. All I had to do was lean in.
I wanted to. All the early mistrust of the night had molded into something new while throwing that pot in my studio and peeling open our vulnerabilities.
But the visions from the spring still plagued me, the future too mercurial to let myself slip a step further into Kessian’s orbit, and he’d said himself that he’d rather be free to fuck who he wanted. I couldn’t afford to catch feelings.
Tomorrow I would either be dragged back into the dangers of Shearwater again, or I would stay in Coill Darragh, safe from the wraith but miles away from Kessian, and I had no reassurance that his heart was tripping as quickly as mine.
Yet I still leaned into his hand where it cupped my jaw. Still couldn’t bring myself to push him back.
Something curled over his shoulder around his neck. At first I thought it was a lock of his hair, but he’d tied it up in a knot to sleep, and it wastoodark, like a slice of pitch.
I jerked back in time to see the long, clawed finger retract, and then the darkness seemed bright around the lightless creature. It hunkered behind Kessian, spooning him like a lover, and though its face was only a collection of shadows, I thought it was grinning.
Chapter 13
Kessian’s eyes widened as he turned to see what had me so spooked, while I reached blindly behind me for the amulet on my bedside.
