Chapter 10
“For God’s sake,” Marcus said, settling in the chair next to Cooper, whose heart was pounding hard, his hands still shaking. And not because Marcus had just come outside. “I leave town intermittently for a decade, and you start screwing my sister.”
Cooper shook his head. “What?”
“Are you going to try to tell me that you’re not?”
“No,” he said slowly. “But don’t be crude like that when you talk about her.”
“Oh. It’s like that. You’re in love with my sister.”
Yeah. He was. That was the reality of it.
And he had a feeling that Eliana had known exactly what he was going to say, and that was why she had run away.
He hadn’t realized he was going to do this.
He had only just been comforting himself a couple of weeks ago with the fact that Eliana’s deep belief in her own curse made it so he didn’t have to deal with his own issues.
But over the last few weeks, his resolve had weakened.
Because he couldn’t imagine life without her.
He couldn’t imagine a time when it wouldn’t be magic.
“I told you. She’s–”
“She’s told me. A hundred times. Curse. Guess what, I don’t care.”
“Big talk, but you know, things tend to go badly with this family.”
“Isn’t that just life, Marcus? It’s hard, we lose people we love. You know, if you walk around telling yourself that you’re cursed, maybe that tends to sabotage relationships.”
“My dad didn’t die because my mom thought she was cursed.”
“No. But sometimes bad shit just happens.”
Marcus reached into the candy bowl and stole another handful of candy. “Obviously, my sister disagrees.”
“Yeah. She does.”
“So, what are you going to do about it?”
“Depends. Are you going to… challenge me to a duel or anything?”
“Me? Shit no. First of all, I don’t have any grounds to talk to anybody about their sexual activities. Which is not directed at you, but Eliana. I do whatever I want, so she can do whatever she wants. But also, you’ve always loved my sister.”
He looked at Marcus. “What?”
“Some have said I have a deep knowing, Cooper.”
His friend’s uncanny golden eyes suddenly seemed a little different than they usually did. “Huh. Well, Eliana doesn’t think you do.”
Marcus winked. “Eliana doesn’t know everything about me. And in any case, what are you going to do about all this?”
“There’s nothing I can do. Eliana is convinced that this is going to basically take us both to hell. So…”
He paused. Because he had told her that he was going to break the curse. And by God, he was. Because he suddenly realized that it had to start with his own curses. Yeah, what had happened to his dad was a terrible accident. Same with Eliana’s dad. It was a terrible accident.
“I want to go talk to her.” He shoved the bowl into Marcus’s lap. “Watch for trick-or-treaters.”
“Wow. Okay.”
“Be nice to me. If everything goes well, I’m going to be your brother-in-law.”
“I shouldn’t have come home.” But he ignored him, as he closed the front door behind him and walked into the house. Eliana’s mom and grandmother were perched on the stairs, staring. “She’s up in her room,” her mom said.
“Well, I’m going to go up there.”
“She’s got to pull the ladder down. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“You could take the fire escape.”
Well. He was about to test the curse big time.
“All right. I’ll do that.”
Eliana was sitting on the bed, looking down at a handful of crystals, when a knock at the window just about sent her sailing. She looked up and saw Cooper. On the precarious, terrible fire escape, looking at her window in the dark, his face practically pressed to the glass.
“Holy shit,” she said.
She hurriedly opened the window. “What are you doing?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“You didn’t think about texting me?”
“No. Can I come in?”
“Please do. Don’t break your neck.”
“I don’t plan on it. I told you, Eliana,” he said, stepping into the room, his broad frame filling up the space.
“I intend to break the curse. But I realized that first I needed to break my own curse. I’ve been telling myself for years that I didn’t want a family.
That I didn’t want love. Because what I didn’t want was more lost. But honestly?
That was all fear. It’s fear, it’s not having a sixth sense, it’s not a curse, it’s not anything other than being afraid.
And I will not let tragedy decide how happy I get to be now.
Maybe she did curse your family, Eliana, because if nothing else, she made you feel cursed.
Made everything feel like it had a time limit on it, made happiness feel like it was a premium.
But we get to decide. Because you and I are magic.
So when we cast our own spell, why don’t we decide who we get to be? ”
“Cooper… I just… what if I lose you?”
“Life is scary,” he said. “And often messed up. But with this? We have to take the chance. Because living without you, that’s the curse. If I get to have you, if I get to love you, then my life is going to be good. And I… I believe that we are magic. I believe we are blessed.”
He reached into his pocket, and took out the crystals, not just the ones that she had given him the other day, but the ones that she had given him in high school.
The one she’d slipped to him before his football game.
And he put them in her hand. “You’ve been protecting me, caring for me, loving me all this time. I believe in that. I believe in us.”
Her lip trembled. “Oh, Cooper. I really, really love you.”
“I really love you.”
A breeze blew through the open window, a swirl of leaves coming in on the night air, wrapping itself around them, and he cupped her chin and kissed her.
There was nothing sinister or chilling about the wind.
It was bright and fresh. A promise. “You have utterly charmed me,” he said, his mouth pressed to hers. “Body and soul.”
She smiled. “You’ve done the same for me.”
He was about to kiss her again when they heard a loud squawking sound, and they both turned. And there was Edgar. On the fire escape. “Don’t you dare fly into my bedroom,” Eliana said.
But Cooper just laughed. And laughed and laughed.
“What?”
“The goddamn seagull. You don’t think he… You don’t think he was conspiring to help us get together.”
Eliana’s mouth dropped open. “I… I never considered that awful bird might have been a sign from the universe. And I believe that any animal can be a sign.”
“Now you have to get a seagull tattoo.”
“I will not.”
“Well, okay. I can accept that. As long as you agree to marry me and live happily ever after.” She thought about saying a spell, pulling a tarot card, something. But she knew the answer. Finally, that deep knowing… She knew herself. What she wanted. What she was going to say.
“Yes. I will.”
And they lived very happily, forever after, without a curse in sight.