“I spent so long wanting you, Cella, and now you pick this moment? You left without a word. Hell, you tried everything you could to tear yourself away from me. You didn’t give a shit then, so what makes it different now?”
Was it really some great mystery to him why I’d left? I walked over to him and put my hands against the metal railing. “You slept with someone else.”
He kicked the ground. Rocks scattered and clattered down into the canyon below. “I seem to remember quite clearly you telling me we should just be friends, that getting closer would ‘interfere’ with the Magic. Mind you, this was after we’d slept together three times. How do you think that made me feel?”
“Well, I—”
“I was in love with you, Cel. You have to know that. And then you just left me behind. Vanished. Poof, like that. You’re always leaving me behind. And, you know, I think I finally understand why it all feels so goddamn familiar, why you care so much about saving Dani. The similarities are so blinding I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. The unbinding, all that time you spent with Jamie and the others. You hated being a dimidium so much that you were in exactly the same place as Dani—willing to try whatever experimental spell, in whatever book you could get your hands on, to separate yourself from me. I can’t help but think you’d be right here in Dani’s shoes if you were at school now.”
“I wanted to separate myself from your Magic,” I said quietly. “Not from you.”
He shook his head. “I see no difference. You had to know how it would’ve made me feel, or you wouldn’t have been doing it in secret. Jesus, I was in love with a girl who hated being my dimidium so much that she nearly killed herself to get rid of me. Can you imagine how pathetic that feels?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. Tears stung my eyes, and I wiped them with the back of my hand. “But is it so wrong to want something on my own for once? I was sick of living in the shadow of the great Max Middlemore, of having every one of my accomplishments tied to you. Especially when you didn’t give a shit about Magic to begin with.”
“Of course I cared about Magic! Why would I have studied it for years and years? But whatever you could use to justify moving a thousand miles away without a thought as to what it’d do to me, you did. You didn’t give a shit about how it would affect me when you took my Magic away, too. All I ever had was Magic. I didn’t know how else to help my family, and you went and took it away. Dad can’t work anymore, and Mama’s sick to death taking care of him all the time.”
“They only ever needed you, Max, not your Magic.” I took a breath. “And I didn’t want to be your dimidium, but that didn’t mean I didn’t care for you because I did. I do.”
My voice broke, and the sky opened up at last. Rain drenched our clothes, our hair. It washed all the sweat and makeup from my skin.
“I wanted you, Cella. Every messy, gritty, wonderful part of you. And I’ve been beating my brains out this whole time trying to make you believe that I’m not some anchor tying you down, holding you back from uncovering the mysteries of the world. I didn’t want to be the anchor, I wanted to be right there on that ship with you. Can you really say you wanted that, too? Have you ever wanted that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and the rain and my tears were mixing in my eyes. For a second, my vision blurred as my contact slid out of place, and I could barely see him. Maybe that was good; it all hurt too much.
“I was young and hurt,” I said. “I was stupid.”
I was supposed to be like Ellendale, with a score of books published under my name, the next great Magical theorem discovered, spells and research and accolades. But after Aaron died, I couldn’t even look at myself anymore without thinking of all the things I’d missed as I tried to become great. After he died, I ran so far from Magic that I could barely feel it anymore. Since I’d left, my life had been a study in shades of gray.
And now I was back here, where life was a burst of red, the cherry-red of Max’s cheeks when he laughed too hard, the rust-colored hills, the apples in the orchard, the clay and sand and dust over the buttes and mesas. The colors all melding together like the blood of the earth, and the Magic underneath its warm, beating heart.
“You’ve never been stupid in your life, Cel,” he murmured.
And I knew he was right, that I’d made this decision. I’d made it years ago and had stuck by it every day since. As we looked at each other, we both knew it.
There was no Magic to make us work, to fix all the things that were broken between us.
I opened my mouth once, twice, and he waited for my reply, always waiting on me, but that was it. His eyes left mine. I saw it in the way his shoulders turned away from me. He was tired of waiting.
He opened the door to his truck and turned the ignition, and I slid down to the ground and held myself, trying to keep it all in. Trying to hold myself like a bandage so I didn’t fall apart.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Idon’t know how long I sat there at the edge of the cliff, trying to hold it all in. The rain had soaked me to the bone, leaving me shivering and drenched.
A group of girls got out of their car and crossed the lot whispering among themselves. One of them hit the other when she saw me. I didn’t want anyone seeing me like this. I just wanted to get back to my room, curl up in a blanket, and never come out again.
I was close to the door of House Torlaine when a voice yelled my name. For a second, I considered pretending I didn’t hear it. My nerves felt like exposed live wires, ready to hit the nearest passersby with an electric jolt.
“Cella!” the voice called, more anxious this time. Footsteps pounded the ground behind me.
I turned and saw Maritza, face pale. “Maritza? What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She swallowed hard. “They’ve found another one. Another person like Dani and Luce.”
Another? My stomach dropped. I thought I had more time for the binding spell—more time to confront the brothers. Hell, I thought I’d at least have until morning. “Who’s the student?”
Maritza averted her eyes. “I just want you to know that he’s stable, for now. The worst of the thrashing seems to have stopped, but there are some concerns about his heart, given his age—”
