I push in through the back door and march down the hall. My heart is a twisted knot, my body is still razed with memories ofhim, and I peel away my clothes.
In the Goode family, love means destruction. It means pain.
I step into the shower and turn on the water as hot as it will go. I need to rid him from my body.I need him gone.I allowed myself to believe, foolishly, that maybe Oak wasn’t affected by the tulips. That he was drawn to me like any normal boy enchanted by any normal girl.
But now I know the truth.
I scrape at my skin. I tilt my head back and let the water stream down my face, mixing with the tears, washing me clean of the girl I used to be. But it’s no use.
I can still feel every place his hands pressed against me, his fingertips at my hip bone, his mouth beside my ear. I touch my lips, remembering the way it felt when he kissed me.And I want to feel it again.
No.
I am a girl who is cursed.
I can’t strip away my name—I can’t undo who I am. That part of me will never be washed down the drain.
I leave the shower and crawl into bed, knees pulled to my chest, naked, hoping that by morning I’ll forget who he is. I’ll forget a boy named Oak who once touched me like I was his gravity—the only thing keeping him from drifting away. From disappearing. A boy I still want just as badly as I did before I stepped into the shower.
The feeling has burrowed in deep.
An ache in my belly, a pulse behind my eyes.
A thing that’s hooked its claws into me and won’t let go.
TWELVE
Heartbreak should kill you.
But it doesn’t. It keeps its victims alive, tortures them until there’s nothing left but a hollow cavity beneath the ribs.
Is this how everyone else feels when they fall for a Goode? Is this the torment Archer and I—but mostly Archer—have been inflicting on others?
I wake to the scent of toast burning and the sound of Archer cursing in the kitchen.
I drag myself from under the comforting weight of the blankets, pull on a sweater and shorts, and pad down the hall—still feeling tangled up in Oak’s arms, in his betrayal. In the stilled way he looked at me as I backed away to the front door. And fled.
“Morning,” Archer says gently—his tone changed from last night.
The kitchen table is set with two glasses of orange juice, a plate of french toast—burned at the edges—and a mason jar of fresh maple syrup. “You made breakfast?” I can’t remember my brother ever making a meal for us.
He lifts a shoulder, setting two forks on the table. “We didn’t do anything for our birthday.”
I slide into one of the chairs, waiting for my brother to reveal his true intention—certain this is all some prank—but I fork a piece of french toast. “Where’d you get all this?”
“It was a gift,” he says with a wink.Of course it was.Some lovesick girl probably gathered a dozen eggs from her family’s chickens, then baked a loaf of bread, leaving it all on our front porch for Archer Goode.
But I don’t argue—maybe a meal will fill the hole left inside me where my crumpled heart once lived.
Archer sinks into the opposite chair, his mouth sloped. “I understand why you did it,” he says, voice earnest. “Why you tried to cut down the tulips.” He looks to the front window, a softness in his expression that wasn’t there last night. “We’ve always known that love is a slippery thing in our family. You have to be careful, Lark.”
Aslippery thing, as if it were as minor as a stubbed toe, a sliver in the finger. As if it weren’t a whole broken heart—a vital organ.
I press my tongue against my teeth, trying to keep the hurt from breaking against my eyelids. “It’s over now,” I say. “I won’t see him again.”
I don’t tell him about Oak’s father, about the photo of our mother beside a sailboat. Because maybe it doesn’t matter who she left with, only that she’s gone, abandoned us, and she’s likely never coming back.
My brother reaches out and touches my hand on the table, squeezing, and I feel several stray tears leak down my cheeks.
