“His father was a teacher here, in Barnett.”
“Before the accident,” Celeste explained, knowing I wasn’t going to read the full article. Not when my mind was reeling. “I knew of the Rovnik’s vaguely, and I remembered him as a teacher, so I cut out the article to keep. I felt the need to. No one ever talked about their child, though I remembered it said there was one who survived the crash. Terrible thing. It was so long ago. It was the accident that made them rebuild the bridge completely for safety reasons years ago, before you came.”
Celeste’s words settled over me. The bridge was rebuilt before I came to Barnett which meant that the Rovnik’s—Dom had been in Barnett before I ever even knew this place existed. He had grown up here.
There was a reason that he had stopped that night instead of just continuing on the highway to his destination last summer.
I nodded along to every word that ran through my head. It all made sense.
He never wanted to come back here.
Slapping the yearbook closed, I headed past Celeste for the narrow staircase.
“Ana?” Lu called out. “Don’t you dare make this worse!”
“Well, that is just a wonderful thing to say,” muttered Celeste.
“Better than make good choices,” argued Lu.
I wasn’t paying attention to the two of them. I was already halfway down to the kitchen, my footsteps resounding against each wooden step. I could hear the boys talking around the kitchen counter.
Ryan nodded proudly at Dom after something he must’ve said before I arrived at the edge of the hallway. “Plus, I just graduated with my amazing girlfriend. I have another interview at the end of the week. I’m basically on top of the world right now.”
“But you aren’t, like … practicing?” Dom stumbled over the words.
“Not really,” said Ryan, still smiling like an overexcited idiot. “I’m not an official coven member by any means. But it’s hard not to believe in magic once you’ve experienced it, you know?”
That was what he called what was between Lu and him. Their love for one another, fused together so messily yet so perfect in the past year.Magic.
I stared at Dom.
His eyes smiled first as he turned his head and beamed at me.
Taking a deep breath, I made my way in front of him, watching as his pleasure-filled expression fell with every step. “You’re from here. You grew up here in Barnett.”
For a long moment, Dom only stared at me. Slowly, Ryan scooted himself out of the kitchen, back toward the other room, to excuse himself from wherever this conversation was about to go.
Swiping his tongue over his lips, Dom nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”
A breath of air was knocked out of my lungs. I knew it was the truth, but hearing him say it was something I hadn’t expected to feel so hard.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
He shut his eyes and nodded again, visibly gathering himself. “Do you remember how you called me an out-of-towner that night?”
Yes, though it shocked me that he remembered, and I didn’t understand where he was going with this.
“You were wrong. I had grown up here. And I thought telling you about it all would come up naturally, eventually. Only it didn’t. Not exactly anyway,” Dom said. “That’s why Celeste pulled me aside the other day after graduation. She recognized me—or thought she did. Either way, once she brought it up, it was more than clear to her who I was. My father was a teacher up at the high school. When the accident happened, it was everywhere. I couldn’t escape it.”
I knew about it all now.
“That’s why people always say you look familiar,” I said. “But you always brush them off.”
He waited for my reaction.
The skin between my eyebrows pinched. “Where did you live in Barnett?”
“I grew up, up the hill, not far from the schools. Not by the water. After the accident and leaving, I honestly wasn’t sure I would ever come back here, but like I told you, when I was driving past, I saw the exit to Barnett. Instead of just going on, after all those years, I felt like I had to stop even though, in my head, I always hated it here. So, I did. I met you. One of the best decisions this place ever made for me … until … well …”
