Chapter Forty-Three
FORTY-THREE
I’M SO ENTRANCED BY THE impossibility of what I’m seeing that my question starts out slow. “Wha—”
He yanks his arm from beneath my touch before I can get the whole word out.
I whip my head up in confusion, and he closes his eyes, pain creasing his brow before he opens them. I reach for his face, unsure of what’s happening, when he grasps my wrist and pulls my hands away.
“I—We can’t do this,” he mutters, any openness that had been on his face now completely shuttered before he turns and stalks out of the gym. The door slams behind him, and I stand there for a second, unsure if I should follow.
What the fuck?
My heart is beating overly fast, and I cough, choking on my saliva.
I can’t shake the feeling that I’m teetering on a precipice. That I am about to free-fall. Infinitely.
Indignant, I hurry after him.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Sam calls as I pass them, grabbing my arm to stop me. “What’s going on?”
The words are out of my mouth before I can catch them. “Malachi! His—his tattoos! They were moving! I saw them! They moved with my finger like… like they were following me or something, and I—”
“Wait,” they say, glancing around confusedly. “What are you talking about? What tattoos?”
“What do you mean, what tattoos?”
“Harper, please, maybe you’ve had too much to drink. Let’s get out of here, and we can find something to—”
“No!” I say, pulling away from them, ripping the flask from my bra and shoving it to their chest. “You don’t understand. I’m fine. I’ll go splash some water on my face or something. But I know what I saw!”
“Hey!” Daisy comes to stand beside Sam. “Chill the fuck out!”
I look at them both. Friends. They’re supposed to be my friends, and I’ve done nothing but push them away from the moment I met them. And now they probably think I’m insane, and I deserve it.
But it doesn’t matter, it’s too late now.
I turn on my heel, ignoring the sound of my name as I run toward the exit.
Gone is the little girl with a sketch pad and graphite staining her hands. Gone is the girl who wished on one of those falling stars that she would be able to love this boy forever. In her place is Harper, Zodiac Witch, and I’m gonna kick his fucking ass.
I slam through the doors to the outside, and it’s a torrential downpour. Because of course it is. I turn in a circle, hoping that he hasn’t gone too far already, and find Malachi standing against the brick wall of the building, only half shielded from the rain.
I stomp over to him, blinking through the water streaming down my face. It’s freezing, but he must be on fire because steam rolls off him in waves. His throat bobs up and down as he eyes me.
“Your tattoos!” I say, pointing at his arms. “What—how—” The alcohol is intensifying my feelings, darkening my words. “Who the fuck are you?” I ask, near sobbing. “When did you—why would you—” For some reason on the run over here, I thought my argument was going to be a lot more coherent.
Instead I can’t keep a thought long enough to articulate it.
“You watch me,” I say. “And don’t lie and say you’re protecting me or some bullshit like that!
Because I know better now. I know there are things going on in the world that are bigger than us.
I know that I’m different, that I—but… are you…
I know what I saw. I know you’re different, too. ”
He’s vibrating in front of me, the muscles in his jaw working, his hands opening and closing as he peels himself off the wall and prowls toward me, the look in his eyes making static accumulate at my fingertips.
The necklace against my throat burns the skin beneath it.
A swirling tempest of emotion engulfs his eyes until they’re all pupil. Widening black threatening to devour me whole. “You’re an idiot,” he says, circling me as he speaks. “Can’t you see what you do to me?
“Can’t you see,” he closes his eyes against some invisible pain, “that you fill me with a need so depraved, so disgusting that it makes me wish you’d never come back here? Can’t you see why I wish we’d never met? Why I wish I’d never laid eyes on you? That I never—that we never—”
“What? That we never what?” I scream over the howling wind. “Just say it! For once in your life, just say what you really mean! How you really feel!”
His auburn lashes are blood red in the rain, his cheeks a deep, painful pink beneath my gaze.
“You really wanna know how I feel?” he laughs bitterly, throwing his hands up. “Fine! Fiona is gone, Harper. She’s not the first. She won’t be the last. You were nearly killed in the hedge maze. How is that not enough for you? What else has to happen to get you to leave?!”
He ticks his next words off on his fingers.
“You’re snooping around where you don’t belong, you’re always asking dangerous questions, you’re careless, you’re reckless, you’re impulsive, and you’re too emotional, you have boundary issues, and you never take no for an answer.
” His chest heaves as he speaks, and I have to fight to not react to the waver in his voice. To still my own chin.
“I always thought you were magic. I thought you were the answer to every question I had about the world. But now I know different. I see you so much clearer. You don’t have the answers, Harper.
And you never have. You aren’t magic. You’re an infuriating,” he steps closer, “insufferable,” his face is mere inches from my own, “mess.”
“You’re wrong,” I growl, baring my teeth at him.
“Am I?” He grins, his eyes darkening. “Or do you have a death wish? Is that it?”
He wraps his arm around my waist, his fingers fisting the rain-dampened dress at my lower back as he pulls me flush against him, his other hand tilting my head, his nose grazing up my throat.
I dig my nails into the backs of his arms, and he hisses, his next words grinding out like gravel. “Because trust me, I’ve imagined it.”
His touch trails up my spine, and his fingers sink into the depths of my hair, the pressure forcing my eyes to meet his. “If that’s what you really want, you can tell me,” he says it softly. Tenderly. And his twisted words sing to something shamefully dark buried deep inside my core.
Something I want to dig out and crush beneath my foot.
For the first time in a long time, his lips pull back into a wide smile, but it’s all wrong.
“I don’t want to die,” I whisper as I struggle to steady myself despite the raging power coursing through me. Begging me to release it. To give in to the fury. To make a mess of us right here, right now.
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” he laughs, his eyes crazed and hungry.
Ravenous as he stares down at me. He looks at me like he’ll eat me alive if I let him.
I am so tired of feeling hunted. Haunted.
Chased by the past—both mine and my ancestors’.
I’m tired of feeling confused. Of wanting to make everything better again. Of wanting to fix us.
There is no fixing us.
After everything, I finally snap.
“You know me better than that,” I say, finally pushing him away.
“I have never been a damsel in distress. I am not weak. I am not in need of saving. And I am not afraid of you!” I pant, my mind swirling as I speak, layers of whispers disorienting me, trying to tell me something I can’t quite hear over the violent beat of my heart, the screaming rain slamming against me, the howling wind freezing me everywhere our bodies don’t touch.
“You say you wish you never met me? Well, I’ve let you blame me for too long.
I blamed myself for too long. But I didn’t turn you into this.
This isn’t on me. You ruined us,” I yell, throwing up my hands and pacing away when he doesn’t respond to me.
“So you know what? I’m done!” I turn around, dizzy.
Frustrated at the look on his face, his silent mouth bent into a frown, his bottom lip crushed between his teeth.
“Well? Don’t you have anything to say for yourself? Don’t you want—”
His fingers wrap around my arm and tug, a snarl ripping from his chest.
Thunder crashes in the distance.
“You talk too fucking much,” he growls.
And then his mouth is on mine.