Page 71 of Too Hexed to Handle

Nothing bad is happening. I pull him closer, my mouth parting intuitively. My tongue flicks out, but all I can taste is silk and a trace of perfume. Astin grunts in frustration, palming my breast as the glide of his mouth turns more forceful, bruising in its intensity, and I whine against him, hating the barrier between us, needing it gone, needing –

The dress is ripped away. Astin mutters something about a stupid fucking thing. He tosses it to the floor, dipping his head low, no barrier between us now, just warm skin and mingled breaths and his lips parting above mine –

‘Stop!’ I push him off and scramble to the far wall, a shroud of horror descending over me.

Astin’s eyes widen. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. But we don’t have to stop, we can –’

‘Yes, we do!’ I might have controlled the Souleater side of me tonight, but I’ll never control my hex. There’s no getting away from it. Wiping tears from my eyes, I thrust the black x on my arm towards him and let out what I suspect is a fairly unattractive half sob, half gargle. ‘We can’t do this. I could have killed you.’

‘Of course we can,’ Astin insists. ‘Remember what I said when we were dancing? There are lots of things we can do that don’t involve kissing.’

The heat in his eyes has parts of me turning to liquid – as if they weren’t already – but I’ve spent the last two years ignoring those parts and the ensuing drought has yet to kill me. This. Cannot. Happen. That near-miss was the wake-up call I needed.

I shake my head. ‘Say I manage to avoid it tonight. Do you think I wouldn’t have an accident someday? That I wouldn’t be so consumed by how much I l— like you, one day my body wouldn’t move on instinct, that the rush I feel when we’re close wouldn’t make me surge towards you and shower you in affection? I don’t know the rules; I don’t know if kissing you on the cheek would kill you, and I’m terrified to find out. I can’t risk it. I can’t lose someone else. I can’t be the reason I lose someone else. And I don’t want some half-life where I don’t get to experience every part of being with someone. I want all or nothing.’

He flinches, frowning. I suspect he’s going to argue I can control it, and I don’t want to hear it, don’t want him to try to convince me to risk his life, so I force a smile and say, ‘But it’s okay. I resigned myself to this a long time ago. We’ll . . . go back to being friends, and forget we . . . It’ll be fine.’ My voice is growing squeaky. ‘It’ll be fine.’

His frown hasn’t diminished. That wasn’t my most convincing this is fine speech, so I try to smile wider, although my chin wobbles in protest.

Astin sighs. ‘You’re right. This was a mistake. I’m sorry, I – I let myself lose control. It won’t happen again.’

Oh. His lack of argument is a shard of glass slicing through my chest. The one time he decides to agree with me, and it’s the one time I wish he wouldn’t. He could, at the very least, pretend to be upset. I’m witnessing his shields go up in real-time, one after the other, until his expression is guarded and the fire in his eyes has frozen to ice, turning him into the Astin who barely speaks to me.

‘Well. Good.’ I fold my arms.

‘I’m sorry.’ He tugs my arms apart, before pulling at the hem of the blanket. I waver, my heart warring with my brain. My brain wins. I slide out of reach, and he sighs again, raking his hand through his hair before saying, ‘What you said just now? About . . . wanting it all. You deserve that. And you deserve someone who can feel those things too. It would never be like that between us.’

I cock my head. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean . . . I can’t give you what you want.’

None of what he’s saying is making any sense. I am fully aware he can’t cure me of my hex or fix my Souleater ways.

You deserve someone who can feel those things too.

My temple pounds. My vision blurs. What do I want, more than anything?

‘I want to be in love,’ I say. ‘I want someone to love me.’

A pause. ‘Exactly.’

The shard of glass pierces deeper until a part of me cracks open. I clutch the blanket like it’ll protect me from the barrage of words he’s throwing at me – except it’s one word, over and over, repeating in my mind, matter-of-fact and logical, exactly, and he sounds so sure it’ll never happen and –

‘But . . . you said . . .’ He said I’m beautiful. That he’s attracted to me. But wanting me isn’t the same as loving me. My breaths are rapid and sharp.

I leap from the bed, leaving him exposed, but somehow I’m the one torn in two. ‘You can’t go around telling me that I confuse you and make you feel things and touch me the way you did, only to tell me you don’t . . . that you’ll never . . .’

Will anyone, ever?

‘It isn’t like that,’ he huffs. ‘You’re not the only one who’s hexed, remember?’

This makes me pause. ‘What does that have to do with anything? What is your hex?’

Currently, I’m wondering if it’s an inability to think before he speaks. I’d already told him this couldn’t happen, and yet he poured salt in the wound anyway. Once again, I try to remember Eira’s riddle about his hex, and come up short. Something about empty places, but what that’s got to do with him rejecting me, I fear I’ll never know.

He grinds his teeth, and his silence is answer enough. His hex is irrelevant. I’m the problem.

‘It’s because I’m a Souleater, isn’t it? You can close your eyes and pretend I’m not, but –’