Chapter Twenty-Six Nora
Chapter Twenty-Six
Nora
The sun will rise. The tide will flow. Seasons change. If one thing is sure, nothing stays the same.
—Rules for Witches
She felt gritty and nearly demolished by the time she left the site of the fire.
Soraya had completely melted down, and who could blame her?
Her kids had been in danger, the entire church community was now going to be decimated, and even though Nora didn’t personally care about that, she .
. . she understood Soraya better now. She respected that it was genuine for her.
That even if that community had treated Soraya badly, she cared about them.
Nora also knew how complicated it was when your husband was a cheating dickbag but also still your husband.
Though she could genuinely say that looking at Ben in the hospital bed, she hadn’t felt bad. Yeah, the spell was out of control. Building. But it was karma. She hadn’t put him up on that mountain. He had put himself there.
Don’t start shit, and there won’t be shit.
Don’t climb a mountain, and you won’t fall down it.
Karma couldn’t work unless you deserved what rebounded on you.
That was how she felt about Jonathan and David.
Yes, it was terrible he cut his finger off. Kind of. But he was a jerk.
If David didn’t want men attacking him, then perhaps he shouldn’t sleep with their wives. And film it. And keep the film on his phone, which he then hooked up to the church’s projection system. It really wasn’t . . .
Yes, the spell might have gained momentum as it rolled downhill, an avalanche of karma, but it was still rooted in the men’s actions. Their own behavior was being doled out to them by the universe. That was exactly what she asked for. That they would feel the same pain they inflicted.
She drove past her house. She just wasn’t feeling like being by herself. Sam had driven her home earlier, and she wanted to see him again. He was the only thing that felt steady and stable in the middle of all this. She ignored what had happened at his place before she got the call.
Pushed that out of her mind. She had stopped it. So . . . that was all that mattered.
She got out of the car and walked up to his door, knocking on it.
Then she waited. It opened, and he was there, shirtless, wearing nothing but gray sweatpants.
Something inside her shifted, and she felt .
. . afraid. That she had made a very serious miscalculation.
She kept her eyes on his face, very deliberately didn’t look at his sculpted chest and abs, because she just didn’t need to focus on that.
He was Sam. The familiar shape of his features, the comforting sensation she felt when she looked into his eyes.
“I just didn’t want to be by myself.”
“Yeah.” He stepped away from the door.
“David’s house burned down. They arrested the pastor from their church. The one who . . . you know, the one whose wife he was banging.”
“Is everyone okay?”
“Yeah. Everyone’s fine. Soraya is catatonic. She thinks the spell we did caused all of this.”
“The spell?”
“Yes. It’s entirely possible that we did a little spell for justice and karma when Ben’s affair came out.”
“Right.”
“I just . . . They deserved it. You know?”
“No argument from me.”
He walked into the kitchen, and she followed him. He went to stand behind the island, his palms braced on it. The overhead light cast a dark shadow in the hard-cut groove of his biceps, drawing her focus more intently to his shoulders, his muscles.
“Do you want anything?” he asked.
“A drink, maybe. I might . . . I might need to crash on your couch.”
His eyes clashed with hers and held. He didn’t have to say it. She could read it in his eyes. His couch?
What about his bed?
“Sam. Please . . . I don’t want to do this.” She took a step back. “I can’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“But before . . .” She didn’t really want to address it, and in fact, she would much rather ignore it, but there was this tension between them, and she needed it to go away.
She just couldn’t have everything with him changing on top of her marriage collapsing.
She needed him to be Sam. Stable, easy Sam.
“Before the phone call, I was going to kiss you,” he said.
God. Dammit.
She swallowed hard. “Okay. But I just need to table that right now. Please.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
The spike of fury that lanced her was almost a shock. She was never this angry at Sam. But how dare he? Why was he doing this now?
“But I need you to. Because . . . this is absurd. The timing of all of this is absurd. We’ve been friends forever. Forever. We’ve never even almost kissed.”
“That you know of,” he said.
Her whole mind went blank, and she chose not to entertain that. Chose not to go deeper with it. “My marriage is dissolving. It’s a ridiculous time to try and introduce physical attraction to our relationship.”
He lifted his hands and scrubbed his face. “Introduce it. Introduce it? Are you for real, Nora?”
“Yes, Sam, I’m for real. We’ve had a wonderful, platonic relationship—”
“Get over yourself. We don’t. We never have.
I’m your goddamned husband with no benefits.
Because who fixes your electricity? Who do you go to when you need to talk about something you feel is just a little bit too intimate for anyone else?
It’s me. It’s not him. It never has been.
You play a character for him.” He let out a hard breath.
“I’ve never understood it. I have never understood it.
Why do you think I didn’t go to your wedding?
Because I couldn’t stand that. You were trying to be some quirky Stepford wife.
For that guy. For what? What did he ever give you? ”
“Ben gave me love,” she said. “A beautiful life. He gave me—”
“He gave you a script to his play. The one you’ve been so devoted to ever since you met him.
Because you had this idea in your head that you wanted something normal, and you had an idea of what that was, of what it meant.
But it has always required you to pretend you were something you’re not, Nora.
Whenever you needed a break from that, you came to me.
Whenever you needed something real, you came to me.
You’re here now because you need someone to listen to you.
Because you need somebody to make you feel like it’s going to be okay, so you’re here with me. You’re not with your fucking husband.”
“Well, I’m divorcing him.” She sounded small, she felt small. And angry. Sam was supposed to be safe. He was taking that from her at the worst possible time. “It’s just not fair of you to do this right now because—”
“The hell it’s not,” he growled. “I’ve been there for you.
Endlessly. I haven’t asked for a goddamn thing, but you use me.
” His voice was rough, fractured. Pained, and she hated it.
“You use me as a security blanket, and it never gives me anything back. You’re not a safe space for me, Nora Clarke, you are hell.
You are constantly teasing me with a look into a future that we could have, but you won’t give it to us because you would rather have a spineless dentist just because he has two parents and grew up in a cul-de-sac.
I’m not walking you through a divorce. I hit my limit. ”
“Sam . . .”
“No. I can’t do it. You know it’s not him. You know that’s not real. You know he sucks, and you still don’t see this. I can’t wait for you anymore. You looked at me, and you asked me why I haven’t had a relationship, and I . . .” He shook his head. “Get out.”
“Are you throwing me out?”
“Yes. I am. Because you won’t even listen.”
“I . . . I’m listening,” she said. “I’m listening, but you have to admit that the timing is psychotic.”
“It isn’t to me, it’s all the same. I have been living in the hell of not having you for all this time. And I’m . . . facing the fact I’m still not going to have you. Because you are never going to—”
“So you’re going to cut off our friendship because I won’t fuck you? Is that it? We’ve known each other our whole lives and you’ll just end this because I won’t sleep with you right now?”
“That’s unfair,” he said. “It doesn’t even surprise me, because that’s you. Backed into a corner and you try your damnedest to hurt someone so you don’t get wounded.”
“Like you don’t do that.”
“You’re right. I do. With pretty much everyone but you, but you can’t even give me that.
I’ve known all this time I couldn’t tell you how I feel.
Not ever. You compartmentalize your feelings into these little pieces, so you never have to be honest. Because it is never going to be a good time for me to talk about mine because you want to use me as a crutch rather than see me as a person.
Ben told you that you were emotionally unavailable, and he was right, Nora.
You aren’t honest with any one person, including yourself.
He got the housewife, he got to sleep with you, he got your marriage vows. I get your trauma. I’m over it.”
What you did to me, be returned but times three. Head to toe. Skin and bone. It is time for fate to reverse. It is time to feel the pain you inflicted on me.
He wasn’t going to be there for her anymore. He was abandoning her. Taking this shelter away from her. This thing she needed so, so badly.
Pain wrenched her.
She had tried, all this time, not to disturb her relationship with Sam. He was breaking it apart now. Even though she had never given in to temptation. Even though she had never . . .
“I never said anything, I never did anything.” She knew it didn’t make sense to him. But it did to her. She had kept it the same. He wasn’t honoring that. He wasn’t . . .
“I’m not a security blanket.”
She wasn’t entirely sure how she walked out of Sam’s house.
She didn’t fully come back to herself until she was in her driveway, holding the steering wheel of the car.
Her heart was thundering hard. It hurt. Had she really been using him all this time?
She hadn’t meant to. She loved him. She loved Sam, but she needed to keep herself safe and . . .
His words were like poison darts, and everywhere they’d hit, she felt stung. She was . . .
Selfish.
And he was right.
She didn’t like talking about herself, not because she cared about other people so much, but because she never wanted to be vulnerable.
She hadn’t called Ben when she found out he was cheating on her because she couldn’t stand the idea of crying in front of the man who cheated on her, and as Soraya had pointed out, if you couldn’t even cry then, when could you?
Was her relationship with Sam really a one-way friendship?
She thought of all the times he had come over and turned her lights on. Dropped everything and been there for her.
She got out of the car and went upstairs and lay down in bed in the room that probably wouldn’t be hers for much longer. In the house she would have to leave.
She couldn’t sleep. So she started making a plan instead.