Chapter 8
OPHELIA
The water is warm, and Broderick’s hands are hot.
After that emotionally heavy hug, we found our way to one of the rooms with a saltwater pool.
Apparently, there are multiple, each one with a wall of windows, showing the beautiful expanse of Lake Galen.
We have the place to ourselves, which is nice because no one can witness me ogling the hot professor’s body in his fitted green swim trunks.
He’s tall and lithe, not rippling with muscle, but still has an air of athleticism.
Since I haven’t shared any of my past—other than that small detail about my father—Broderick has no way of knowing that this is the closest I’ve ever been to a man that I like.
All through the lesson, I keep bumping into the witch’s tantalizing body as he helps me float in the pool.
Despite the oddity of water lapping against my ears, I fight to keep my head tilted back and my body straight, lying flat on the surface as Broderick’s hands support me under my lower back and behind my thighs.
I trust him to keep me afloat.
I don’t trust me to keep me afloat.
“I’m going to step back now. Stay just like this.” Broderick uses a soothing voice, and I wonder if he perfected it on panicking students.
“Okay,” I squeak.
We’ve tried this twice before, and each of the other times, the moment he released me, I floundered.
But this round, chest tight with gasping breaths and hands making little flutter motions, I stay up. For a whole count of five.
Then, Broderick is back at my side, grinning down at me with his handsome face aglow, green eyes shining with approval. “You did it!”
Now that he’s close, I relax my body and make an awkward transition to standing. “I did!”
Pride fills me, knowing that I’ve made a step—even if it was a small one—toward a future where I have one less thing to be frightened of.
As joy flows through my veins in a heady rush, I give in to the urge to throw my arms around Broderick’s shoulders, claiming another hug that, apparently, he craves as much as I do.
He did say anytime, anywhere, for as long as I want.
I’m surprised that my small admission about my past—the kind of man my father was—has me feeling closer to this man rather than erecting a barrier, like I believed sharing painful memories might.
But all thoughts of my past seep away as I realize exactly what position I’ve put us in.
Soaking wet, me dressed in a single-piece swimsuit that leaves nothing to the imagination, pressed tight against the first person I’ve felt safe with in my entire life.
A man who also happens to have a very rigid part of himself sandwiched between us.
“Ophelia.” He croaks my name, and I find I love the vulnerability revealed in that creaky way his voice gets. “I’m sorry. My body is … a little too excited.”
When Broderick places his hands on my hips, I shiver. But then he pushes my body away enough so that I can’t feel his hardness anymore.
Disentangling my arms, I’m hit with a hot flare of embarrassment, the fire burning in my cheeks. “Sorry. That was my fault. For rubbing myself on you.”
I might lack practical experience with intimacy, but the internet has taught me plenty in the past few months.
Broderick shuts his eyes tight, as if in pain, and the fingers he still has resting on my hips flex. “Maybe we don’t talk about you rubbing me.”
I nod, but with his eyes closed, he can’t see the gesture.
“Can you show me how to hold my breath?” I offer, refocusing on my swimming lessons and the Gauntlet. “Do I just go down? I don’t think I’ll have a fast stroke, even with practice. But maybe if I can outlast others, that would help.”
Broderick grunts, releasing his hold on me to aggressively rub his hands over his face, and I get the sense I said something wrong.
“Are you okay?” I venture carefully.
Broderick drops his hands and gives me a strained smile. “Good. Yes. I’m good.” He clears his throat and takes a step back in the pool. “You want to learn to hold your breath underwater. Go down underwater. Last underwater.”
“You’re saying underwater a lot.”
Broderick nods. “I did. Let’s focus on that.”
For the next half hour, the professor affects an instructional air, showing me the basic way to hold my breath—by pinching my nose—but then also more helpful methods, like blowing a stream of bubbles.
I only snort water twice, which I count as a success.
Broderick also demonstrates some basic strokes, which he looks powerful and graceful doing.
Meanwhile, I flop through them like a half-dead fish.
By the end of our lesson, I’m exhausted, my airway is raw from partially inhaled saltwater, and overall, I’m exuberant.
I kind of know how to swim!
As I wrap myself in a large towel, I gaze out the windows at the sprawling lake. The stretch of water glimmers in the evening light, and I find the gentle waves enticing.
“Do you think I’m ready to swim off the dock?” I ask, eager to try my skills in a wilder setting.
Broderick rubs his own towel over his head, leaving his red tresses in a charming disarray.
“You were treading water at the end there, so, yeah, I think we can step it up.”
His confidence in my ability warms my blood in a delicious way. Broderick was supportive and careful with me all through the lesson, but I never felt coddled or stifled.
Never felt like he was trying to hold me back.
Memories of a time when that was my life threaten to rise. I almost push them away—like I’ve been doing for the past six months—but then I decide that I don’t want to hide them. I want to expel them from me like venom from a snake bite.
“My father was a human,” I blurt.
Broderick pauses in the act of toweling off his torso, his emerald eyes finding mine. In his open gaze, I see the willingness to listen.
So, I keep going. “He knew what I was. Knew what my mother was. Apparently, he called her an angel.” I shake my head with a frown. “That seems so impossible to me. That he would have said something like that. Because he hated what I was.”
Broderick straightens and steps closer. But I’m too busy seeping the poison of my past to hug him.
“My mother passed away when I was six. She was giving birth to my brother. Something went wrong, and neither of them made it. My father said if being a mythic was good, then she would have lived.”
There was no logic to the hatred that grew in him, and I just wanted my mother back.
“My aunt visited when I was younger. I remember that. But she didn’t come back after my mom passed.
Maybe because losing her sister was so sad.
Or …” I swallow and tug on my damp hair.
“Or maybe my father didn’t let her see me again.
All I know is, he demanded I hide that part of myself.
Suppress it. And he mostly kept me away from people. ”
So much loneliness. I used to wander around the acres of land we lived on and pretend the forest animals were my friends.
“I was homeschooled, and I couldn’t leave our property, except to go to church.” Those Sunday mornings where I felt the preacher’s judging eyes on me. Apparently, my father had told him I had a demon in me. Gone was his talk of angels.
“And there were times I couldn’t contain the fire. Trying to stifle it only made things worse. At night, I would sneak off and change in the woods. Just for a short time. I never flew anywhere.” Even standing in a clearing, allowing my other half to breathe, was euphoric.
“But I was a grown woman, and my father’s tight reins had been chafing for years.
So, I told him I was leaving.” Even though I had no idea how to exist anywhere other than our homestead and had no money of my own.
All I knew was that staying there felt like dying.
“He refused. Swore that he would stop me. And my temper exploded out of me. That heat …” I stare down at my fingers, flexing them, feeling the phantom of flaming feathers.
Finally allowing my firebird side out in front of him was glorious at the start.
But when I realized the damage I’d done, I was terrified.
“If we’d been arguing inside, I might’ve burned our house down. ”
As it was, I melted his old truck until it was a puddle in the gravel driveway.
I thought maybe my father was right about me having a demon in me. His words were starting to blot out the firebird fairy tales my mother and aunt had told me.
“Soon after, he brought a man to our house. The stranger was kind, and I was excited to meet someone new. To talk to someone who wasn’t my father.
” How naive I was, thinking my life was at its lowest point.
“He said he could help me get rid of the fire.” At this, a sob sneaks out of my throat.
Shame overwhelms me at the memory. “I begged him to. Because I thought if I wasn’t a firebird, then I could finally live in the world. ”
Broderick stands in front of me now, his face stark.
He’s moved as close as possible without taking me into his arms. Waiting for my permission.
I make the final move, gathering him close, pressing my cheek against his bare chest, hard enough to hear his heartbeat.
The scent of salt and warm herbs fills my nose.
Broderick strokes my wet hair, and I feel the pressure of his lips on the top of my head.
“The man said if I went with him, he could take all the magic from me,” I whisper.
The stranger wasn’t lying.
“Your father agreed? To let him take you?” Broderick’s words are a rasp.
“If my father ever loved me, it was gone by then.” I see that now.
“He saw me as a duty. A danger he had to protect the world from. Not his daughter.” I swallow hard.
“So, I left. Happily. And the first night, the man who was supposed to be my savior had me stand in the middle of a spell circle. And I did. As meek as the rabbit as he turned me into.”
The witch continues to pet my hair, which helps ease the edge of anxiety that squeezes my lungs.
“How long ago?” he asks.
I tighten my hold. “Three years. I was twenty-three when he came for me. A grown woman still living under the thumb of her father who hated her.”
I wasn’t brave. I was timid. Submissive. Letting his words and teachings become my truth.
Forgetting the stories the women of my family had taught me. The love I’d experienced in the first few years of my life became a hazy fiction.
And then I was an animal, only partly aware of the world around me, but sure I was more trapped than I had ever been. Weaker than I’d ever realized I could be.
When I came back to myself in that forest clearing under the full moon, my body naked and overheated from the suppressed magic within me, the first emotion I felt was fury.
And I knew I never wanted to feel so vulnerable again.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how to live these past few months,” I confess. “Live as a firebird, but also as a human in the world. Even Folk Haven seems big to me, though I know it’s small compared to cities.”
“You’re doing amazing. Much better than I would have.” Broderick twines a strand of my hair around his finger. “I hate that you’ve been hurt so many times by people you trusted.”
When he puts it like that, maybe I should consider not trusting people anymore.
But with Broderick, it’s not even a conscious decision.
His hands cup my cheeks, tilting my face up so my eyes meet his concerned gaze. “I didn’t live a dream childhood either. With loving, supportive parents. Mine were self-centered. Sometimes cruel, but they mostly forgot about us.”
His confession, painful though it must be, comforts me in a way. I don’t like that Broderick suffered, but I feel closer to him, knowing my experience isn’t unfathomable.
“Still, I had my brother and sisters.” His thumbs stroke the shape of my cheeks, the movement soothing. “You were alone. I wish I could have found you then.”
“You’re with me now.” I close my eyes and inhale salt and herbs.
“That’s all I want.” He murmurs the words so low that I almost don’t hear them. “For you to keep me close.”