Page 11 of Bound By Fury

“No,” he says, stepping back. “Don’t.”

“What?”

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he says gruffly, his eyes pained as he finally looks down at me. “You seem okay.”

I nod, and the lie comes easily.

He shakes his head. “But you can’t stay here. You should go back to Pine Grove. Tonight.”

I draw in a sharp breath. “But…”

I’m helplessly mesmerized by him. By the way the setting sun glows orange pink against his heat-flushed skin. The way the freckles on his face are like a road map to all our memories. I could trace them through the woods between our two properties, guide myself along the banks of the creek, between stalks of swaying cattails and sunbathing copperheads. I could follow them home with my eyes closed.

And yet there is something all wrong here. In the stretch of our shadows against the dirt-caked glass. In the flatness of his expression.

What deity must I make a Faustian bargain with to get my best friend back?

“Gigi’s gone,” he says. “There’s nothing left in Earnest for you now. No reason for you to stick around where you’re not wanted.”

Whatever pathetic, trembling hold I had on my resolve snaps. I don’t think. Not before my palm is connecting with his face, the sound ringing in my ears as I gasp, bringing my stinging hand to my mouth.

“Fuck!” Malachi grunts, turning his back to me and bending at the waist. “Fuck!”

“How fucking dare—I can’t believe—on the day of Gigi’s funeral—” I’m stumbling over my words, my mind roaring a mile a minute. A buzzing, deep and low, vibrates at the base of my skull. Tugs in the center of my chest. Burns at the nape of my neck. The increasingly familiar tingling shooting out from my core like dynamite.

When Malachi finally faces me again, he’s glowering, his countenance twisted into something nasty and dangerous. I want to vomit. Because the desecration of his beauty makes me sick.

“What—”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he yells, and I wince. His eyes don’t soften.

“I—I’m sorry—I don’t know what came over me, I—”

“You’re a monster,” he spits, voice shaking, his fists opening and closing as he glares down at me, teeth bared. “You don’t belong here, Harper. You need to pack your shit and go back home. Get the hell away from me, and get the hell out of Earnest.”

“You don’t get to dictate what I do with my life! Not after last summer. Not after what you did.”

He laughs bitterly. “After what I did? What about what you did?”

I shake my head. I don’t want to think about that. I’ve imagined this moment. Seeing his face again. Hearing his voice.

This is not how it’s supposed to go.

This isn’t us.

I reach for his arm mindlessly, maybe because some part of me is begging. Begging him to forgive me. Begging for none of this to be real. Maybe if I could turn back time to last summer, maybe if I say sorry enough, I can fix us.

“Don’t. Fucking. Touch. Me,” he growls, eyes ablaze with something hungry, something reckless and cruel.

His tongue skates over his teeth, and they glisten with the reflection of the porch light illuminating us in the dusk.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, and I reach for him again.

When my fingers brush along the length of his sleeve, he recoils and spins away, yanking his arm from my grasp.

“Sorry?” he says callously, his hands trembling as he curls his fingers around the throat of his hoodie and pulls. The edges of his hair are soaked, and his face is flushed and pinched as if in unimaginable pain. “Sorry doesn’t bring back the dead.”

Ice rushes down my spine at his words. I drop my gaze to the ground, pressing my stinging fingertips to my lips in shame.