Chapter Nineteen #2
Laken carefully lowered my arm, as if it’d break if he dropped it. Or like he didn’t want to let go. His throat bobbed, then he cleared it. “You aren’t the only person who struggles with magic, Reece. Yours is temperamental like—”
“Like me.”
With a little smirk, he nodded. “It just needs calming, a kind of coping mechanism.”
I laughed. “Well, thank you.” His only response was a gentle nod, pulling his attention off me and to the fields.
I started toward the house, knowing to distance myself unless I wanted to lose control again.
“Would’ve been nice to know a long time ago, though!
” I joked because I always felt a need to break the tension.
But Laken didn’t joke in return.
“Reece?” he prompted, and I halted. “You haven’t really said much about the whole Wraith thing.”
I almost laughed but whirled around instead. “Did you expect me to?”
He stood there, seeming a bit nauseous with a sick expression. Worried eyes. “Well, kind of, yes.”
I bit my cheek and considered not asking, but this whole new world here, a new identity, a secret life…
I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I’d pushed it back this entire time because I didn’t want to hear why he left.
I didn’t want to know what he’d done—or who he’d done.
I’d rather leave it up to my silly little imagination, where I could pretend he’d been off on some life-changing journey, moping about how much he missed me, instead of hearing how he found love in some other kingdom while running down criminals and slaying people.
But I couldn’t live in ignorant bliss forever.
“Why did you do it? Why did you join?” Why did you leave me for this?
Laken cleared his throat, a nervous habit of his. “Mom got sick.” He scratched his head, folded his arms, unfolded his arms, raked a hand through his hair, and finally dropped them again. “Healing elixir isn’t free, and hers cost a lot of coin.”
Laken’s mother.
“And Reece—” His voice cracked, but he turned away. “I am really sorry for it. All of it.”
A dam broke somewhere in the darkest parts of me.
My own mother had passed long before I became a teenager.
As with many young girls, when my period had come, I spiraled, absolutely clueless about what the hell to do.
Because of the terrible luck always biting my ass, my period came at school.
Faye, Laken’s mother, taught there. Though many classes were held outside, we had a tower with three classrooms and a space where supplies were kept.
She talked me through the whole thing and made a care basket later that day with everything from chocolates to herbs for the cramps.
I think she talked to my father about it, too.
About certain things to avoid saying, to avoid acting weird around me.
“What? You never told me… I never heard about it?”
A shock ran through my skin, numbing my bones. Nothing happened in Honey Brooke without everybody knowing. Even then, Laken did not tell me. Which, he didn’t have to, but I would have thought…
“If I’d told you, you would have followed me.”
True.
“It would have compromised me and been dangerous for you. And I couldn’t say goodbye, so—”
“So you left,” I finished for him. “And wrote your mother the next week explaining everything, but not to tell anyone.”
I didn’t blame him. But his reasoning didn’t erase my feelings. It didn’t save the pillowcases I’d cried into.
I nearly rolled my eyes, little poor golden boy saving the day by sacrificing himself. Even all these years later, I couldn’t deny it was one of his characteristics that had hooked me in the first place. The snarky, strong, beautiful man hiding a heart of gold.
“That’s why I wasn’t there with you that morning. The morning the hellblazers burned the town center.”
Yeah. That checks out now. “How did you even get in?” One does not simply walk in and join the Wraiths. I’d expect a soul contract, perhaps a sacrificial goat and signing your name in blood.
“Dad.” His head tilted up.
Oh. “He’s…” I inclined my head forward, hoping he understood my question.
“Retired.” Laken clarified. “But yes, he was.”
It felt like puzzle pieces coming together. Laken’s father being randomly absent when we were kids. The secrecy and vagueness of where they’d moved here from, where the rest of their family lived.
“What exactly is your job? Your deal? What—why was that the path you chose?”
“I needed a lot of money really fast. It offered that.”
“And the deal? What is it you do?”
Laken’s lips quivered. His throat tightened, a muscle in his jaw feathered. “Don’t make me explain it.”
Got it. “You have to do this forever now?”
He wouldn’t meet my stare. “Til my debt is paid.” The words barely made it out of his mouth.
My chest squeezed at his trembling hands. It was so slight I’m not even sure he noticed himself. But I did. “So… your mother? How is she?”
A light smile flashed across his features, and I thought it could’ve cured all my problems. “She’s good, yeah. Made a total recovery after treatment and elixir and herbs for months.”
For too long, I stared at his heavy eyes, his full lips, and the way his cheeks warmed.
It wasn’t my past lover I saw, but an old friend.
My lifelong, lost friend. Talking nearly how we used to.
And it felt strange, a feeling clustering inside of my stomach.
The nostalgia baked with something honest.
Turned out, after three years of self-inflicted torture, I hadn’t pushed Laken away. He didn’t leave me to explore the coast and fall in love with some other woman.
There were a thousand people in this world capable of giving things like love, but the thing with Laken—he never thought he was deserving of it. I could’ve said something sarcastic, something witty, but I didn’t think he wanted to hear that.
“You’re still you, Laken. That didn’t change.” And it never would. He’d be Laken, I’d be Reece, and I wasn’t sure there’d ever be versions of our lives that weren’t intertwined. I didn’t know if I wanted there to be.
Nodding, he didn’t dare to pry further, for either his own good or mine. He hesitated. “I’ve always wondered, why did you leave?”
I shouldn’t have. I knew I shouldn’t have.
But I laughed. I laughed and I shifted and I crossed my arms over my chest. Why did it matter?
This was supposed to be about him. I looked over the field of green, its grass blowing like a wave in the wind.
I remembered the circles he’d traced on my skin, the calming sensation reaching my bones.
Even if I didn’t want to answer, I would. Because Laken had that effect, something I couldn’t explain.
“Me? Why did I leave?” He waited for my response.
“Oh… well, um.” Why did I leave? My palms were sweating.
“After the town center burned, and with you gone, everyone looked at me like some brokenhearted girl—which I was, but… I don’t know.
It didn’t feel like home anymore, I felt lost. I thought I’d find something out there.
A job, a different life, a new life, maybe.
Honestly, I don’t know what I was looking for.
” I sighed. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t find it there. ”
I loved the flower shop, I truly did. I loved working with Maggie and having steady income and a secure job…
but I never loved making bouquets. I never loved clipping stems and watering plants.
I never found a passion in it like at the sanctuary with the creatures.
I never grew to love Old Ashton, a town too big for its own good.
It wasn’t where I was supposed to be. It wasn’t home.
“Anyway, I’m back here again, so.” I tossed my hands up.
“What did you find out there, then?”
A grin split my lips. “Friendship. Better clothes. And a lot of flowers.”
From my side, I watched him watch me, standing with his hands in his pockets like always. “Doesn’t sound like a total waste.”
Oh. “Gods, no, I loved it,” I explained. “I just… I thought I’d figure it out.”
“And what? Your methods of winging everything didn’t pan out?”
Asshole. “Oh, because you know me so well?”
“I used to.”
“That was a long time ago. And we’re adults now.”
“That may be true, but you’re still you, McCarthen.” Damn my own words. “You still dump cheese on your potatoes?”
“No.” Yes. “Yes.” I liked to consider myself a cheese enthusiast. It belonged on everything.
“Does it still make you sick? Are you still afraid of the dark?”
“Funny, funny,” I mimicked. Unfortunately, my gut did not reciprocate my love for cheese. I typically ended up in the bathroom hours later, but without regret. I offered no excuses. The heart wants what the heart wants. As for the dark, I’d always been terrified. “You made your silly point.”
The air hummed between us, rich with a bond of what once was. Little chuckles, our memories branded onto parts of our bodies, I felt it in the silence. He remembered, too.
“You’ll figure it out, you know. Whatever you think you’re missing. You’re too stubborn not to, and I know that hasn’t changed because it never will.” He smiled wide, and my cheeks blushed.
Maybe, just maybe, he’d be right about that, at least.
Staying close to my side, his hand brushed mine and my legs went rigid. Every now and then I’d feel the dagger on his thigh bumping into me. “Can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
I hated myself for this. “Why were you with Eliza that night?”
He busted into a shameless grin, and he shook his head. “She got into some trouble, and while she didn’t know I was an assassin, she knew I worked somewhere along the lines. She asked for some help and—”
“And you couldn’t say no,” I finished. “You never could.” That made so much more sense than what my mind had tried to get me to believe.
Laken chuckled, and I guessed he felt it as well, the air shifting between us. “I’m surprised you offered to help Mr. Wilson this morning. Very nice of you.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Are you feeling well?”
Funny, funny. And fair; I wasn’t the type to throw myself into things like that. “I feel fine,” I snapped. “You must be rubbing off on me or something.”
Laken nodded, faking a thinking expression. “Ah, perhaps we should spend more time apart.”
My eyes rolled. “As if that’d be something you want.”
“You wouldn’t survive without me anyway.”
Gawking at him, my jaw dropped. “I’d survive fine without seeing you every day. I did it for three years, didn’t I?”
“Did you want to, though?”
“Did I want to what?”
“See me every day.”
He waited for my answer. If he knew the amount of times I’d stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of a young man of approximately the same height with dirty-blond hair. If only he knew…
“Sometimes.” I paused. “Some days I wanted to see you because I missed you. And some days I wished you’d walk into my store so I could strangle you and rip the heart from your chest.”
“And,” he dragged on, “there she is.”
My cheeks burned from the smile he’d brought to them.
Something in me felt good when he talked to me like he once did.
The light painted him in a golden hue, and like Mr. Wilson’s painting, I wished I could bottle it up.
His glowing hair, kissed by the sun, appeared a shade lighter.
More than that, I wanted to capture the way the rays shattered in his deep-blue eyes when he looked at me, like the sun over the sea.
I silently cursed myself and simultaneously prayed I would forget the sound of his voice saying there she is by the morning.
But if his voice hadn’t left my mind for three years, I doubted it would overnight.