20. Wilder
CHAPTER TWENTY
wilder
A fter helping River clean the kitchen and put away leftovers, I step onto the back patio and take a deep, cleansing breath.
The sun sits low in the sky, its golden light filtered by giant pines. A dog barks somewhere in the neighborhood, the sound muted and echoey. Closing my eyes, I focus on the familiar susurration of evergreen leaves and bare branches. The wind is cool, damp, and earthy in my nose.
I can’t remember the last time I felt this mentally exhausted, but it’s not the frazzled fatigue I’m used to. I feel calm. Almost peaceful.
“Beautiful evening, isn’t it?” asks Katherine.
I open my eyes and turn, finding her on a bench angled toward the sunset. Her eyes are closed, that familiar, enigmatic smile on her lips.
“It is,” I agree, making my way to her. She pats the bench and I settle beside her.
I’m still wary of whatever she has to tell me, but my initial apprehension has faded. Evangeline texted an hour ago to ask if I wanted to hang out and watch a movie tonight. I said yes, obviously, though all I plan to watch is her face when she comes.
No matter what Katherine says, it won’t change the fact Evangeline is finally mine. That she’s waiting for me right now. I can almost taste her. Smell her. My skin aches for the pinch of her nails, my ears for her strangled moans.
“I’m glad you and River were able to reconnect.”
Shifting in my seat, I glance at Katherine. Her eyes are still closed. It’s probably my imagination, but her smile looks different. Knowing. My neck heats. No way she knows what I was thinking about. Right?
I cough over my embarrassment. “Me too.”
River was smarmy and passive-aggressive toward me most of the afternoon, but at some point between hauling plates to the kitchen and loading the dishwasher, the friction smoothed. We had a long, animosity-free conversation about graffiti, tattoos, and music.
“He’s going to need you,” Katherine murmurs.
I stiffen, thoughts of Eva vanishing. “What does that mean? Is he okay?”
Her eyes find mine. “Right now, yes, but there will come a time when he isn’t. You’re not as dissimilar as you think you are. He has his own shadows.”
My chest burns. I suck in air, the reflex alone alerting me that I was holding my breath. A tremendous weight descends on my shoulders, like giant hands pressing me down. Making me smaller. Reminding me how powerless I am.
“Don’t worry,” Katherine continues, her gaze shifting to the tree line. “When the time comes, you’ll be ready.”
The vague reassurance doesn’t help, the spectral hands on my shoulders moving to my lungs and squeezing, squeezing . I can’t hear the wind in the trees anymore. I can’t hear anything but my heart pounding on my eardrums.
A soft hand covers the fingers clamped on my knee. “We need to talk about Evangeline.”
Shaking my head like the movement will dislodge the demon using my chest as a stress ball—it doesn’t—I force my eyes to Katherine. My mouth opens to say, Stop. No. Don’t tell me, but nothing emerges save for a harsh exhale.
I shouldn’t have come outside.
Katherine’s face sags slightly, her eyes losing focus. Tiny fires ignite all over my body as she begins to speak.
“Force and effort. One destroys harmony, one maintains it. What you cannot hold gently will be destroyed. To become who you’re meant to be, let go of who you think you are.”
She sucks in a breath, her eyes closing. Beneath fragile lids, her gaze darts back and forth. Whatever she sees brings a lattice of wrinkles to her forehead and makes her fingers twitch around mine.
“Ah, I understand now,” she murmurs. Her eyes open and look at me—no, look through me. Every hair on my body stands up. “If you’re both afraid of the dark, there will never be light. One cannot exist without the other. There must be balance. Be brave again. Dive into the dark and find the light inside you. For yourself and for her.”
An old memory rises and pops like a bubble, splashing me with sights and sounds from a multi-family camping trip when I was seven. Thin, cool air. A crackling fire. Itchy mosquito bites and sunburns. The sun falling fast over jagged mountain peaks. Adults panicking because no one could find Evangeline. An hour’s long search with flashlights.
My legs carrying me in a direction opposite everyone else. Crunching pine needles. Scratching brambles. My shaking hand on a cold metal tube, the glowing orb bouncing with my steps, my too-fast breaths.
A small body curled in a depression at the mossy base of a tree. Pale hair like a beacon.
“Fairy,” I whisper now, as I did then.
“She cannot survive in your dark,” Katherine murmurs.
Goosebumps roll up and down my body like sound waves on a loop. “Am I going to lose her?”
Not again. Not again.
Her mind back from whatever strange place it went, Katherine pats my hand. Wrinkles deepen around her eyes as she smiles softly. Sadly.
“She’s a woman, Wilder. Not an object to find, keep, or lose.”
“I know that.”
“You don’t. Not yet. But you will.”