Page 36 of Hallowed Bones

I wonder if the old scriptures and records are true. Does being with a female witch change you? Does a priestess’s blessing make anything different? She’s going to be one of us—she already is. She just doesn’t know it.

Slowly, Haven pivots on her heel and turns around to face me with a furrow in her brow. “Cameron?” She pulls her books closer to her chest as if she means to use them as a barrier. I smile at that. Soon, there will be no more barriers between us at all.

“Off to class?” I ask.

She stares back at me, lips parted as if she isn’t sure she should answer. Her gaze darts down the corridor, and I know she’s going to make an excuse to get away. Fuck that.

I stride toward her. “We need to talk.” She needs to know the truth before her powers rage out of control. The closer I draw to her, the more I can feel it. An insistent buzz of energy that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. As if we’re a second away from a lightning strike.

Haven blows out a breath, and the action sends the single strand of silver in her hair flying up off her face for a moment before it falls back down. My fingers itch to touch it, to stroke it back and tuck it behind her ear. When her lips part, I focus on them.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Cameron.” She shifts awkwardly on her feet, looking first to the books in her arms, to me, and then behind her again. “I’m running late for—”

“If not now, then later,” I say, stepping closer until she has no other recourse but to come back to me. To look only at me. “Soon,” I insist, dropping my voice. “Come over this weekend?”

Ezra might not accept her, but the rest of us do. We want her, but even if we didn’t—our choices are no longer our own. Haven needs us, whether she realizes it or not, especially in the coming months. After we tell her the truth, as we teach her, hold her, care for her. Our miracle. Our salvation. Our answer.

Haven huffs out a laugh and shakes her head. “You can’t be serious,” she mutters, and it sounds as if she’s speaking more to herself than to me.

“I am,” I answer her regardless. Dead serious.

She purses her lips, and her face creases again as if she’s thinking unpleasant thoughts. I rack my brain for a way to convince her. Before I can come up with something, she sighs and speaks again.

“I can’t,” she says. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to a party this weekend.” She lifts the books up in a gesture of See? as she continues. “I’m trying to get all my schoolwork done early so that I can go. Elodie seems to need it after the whole Jonah thing.”

My stomach drops. “A party? What party?” I move closer, and though she doesn’t back away, her body does stiffen. I stop immediately. Is she … scared of me? Her eyes don’t meet mine even as I duck my head to force the issue.

“The lacrosse team is throwing a party,” she says. “I thought it was a little weird since Jonah’s death was announced last week, but I guess grief does weird things to people, and Elodie really wants to go. I’m not going to let her go alone.”

No, of course not. Because Haven’s the type of person who mourns a stranger, who values life. She’s not the kind of person to let a friend grieve alone if she can help it.

My hands clamp into fists at my side. I grit my teeth against my own frustration, and though I told myself I wouldn’t mention it, I can’t help but ask the question on my mind. “Are you upset about the kiss in the library?”

Haven’s head whips up, and her eyes widen. “What?” She gapes at me. “No.” She shakes her head and repeats the word. “No. Cameron, it’s not—” With a curse, she cuts herself off and adjusts her hold on the thick books in her arms. They look heavy, and I want to reach out and take them from her, so I do.

“Let me take some of that.”

“That’s not—” I give her no choice as I lift a little over half of her stack out of her arms. Haven stares at me for a moment. Dark lashes lower and raise in startled disbelief. “Why don’t I carry these for you?” I say. “And we can talk on the way.”

Still, she says nothing. So I nudge her slightly to turn her in the direction she’d been heading before I stopped her. She goes willingly, and we start walking. After a beat, she speaks again.

“It’s not about the kiss,” she finally says. “It was nice, but maybe now isn’t the best time to start a relationship. I didn’t mean to give you the wrong impression.”

She hadn’t given me the wrong impression at all because she hadn’t exactly been the one to start the kiss. I’m sure she thinks she was. She was the first to bend toward me, to brush her mouth with mine. But I had been the one unintentionally summoning thoughts of what it would be like to kiss her, to hold her, to touch her the whole time we’d been talking. I had sent the thoughts out to her even as my mouth had kept silent, and when she’d initiated the first touch of our lips, I’d frozen.

I’d influenced her to make the move, and I should have stopped her. I didn’t. Instead, I’d let my hands rove over her body. I’d felt her breasts against my chest. I’d smelled the tart, wet heat of her even through her clothes. I’d invaded her mouth with my tongue and taken more than I was ever supposed to have. It’s on the tip of my tongue to apologize, but at this point, she won’t know what I’m apologizing for.

“It’s not about the kiss,” I tell her honestly. I wish it were. “It’s about your legacy—”

Her shoulders stiffen at the word legacy, and she responds before I’m finished. “Reyes told me about my dad’s photo in the display in the greenhouse,” she says. “I saw it.”

“You did?” Reyes told me that she hadn’t wanted to go, had refused him. I eye her. She must have gone by herself at some point. I wish she’d done so with him, or even me. No doubt seeing her dad had brought back all sorts of memories.

Just thinking about her and her father reminds me of mine. I look up to the curved ceilings over the corridors as I remember the last time I’d seen him.

You have nothing to worry about, he’d said. We’re going to visit someone. We’ll be back soon. He was smiling. Excited. It was as if he held a secret inside of him so wonderful that he was practically bursting at the seams to tell me, but he couldn’t. Not yet.

Then he’d never had the chance.