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I gave her fingers a squeeze. “I’m going to let go at three, okay?”
“Okay.” Her voice shook, as if she already knew the curse was about to put her through it, but the hand that held mine was steady. I trusted her to use her powers well.
I counted down and on three, I broke our connection. “Now.”
Audrey stayed where she was, while I pushed my way through the heart of the black wall, hoping I wouldn’t run head first into a tree. The firmly packed earth under my feet let me know I remained on the trail as I sent bolts of lightning as thick as my arms pushing through the darkness. The smoke swirled, reforming as quickly as it recoiled from my magic. Voices reached out of the void, winding their way around me. Murmurs that started as static, but soon grew louder, until they were all around, burrowing into my head.
“I know everything and I have nothing more to say to you, Wes.”Audrey’s tearstained face from four years ago appeared in my mind, nearly vivid enough to touch. The memory almost doubled me over, the pain sharp enough to cut out my heart, as if it were happening all over again.
It was the curse fucking with me the same way it had fucked with Audrey, but knowing that didn’t stop me from feeling it all over again. I couldn’t breathe. Tight bands of pain circled my chest, digging in their sharp barbs. How had I survived this the first time around?
“I don’t want you to approach me, talk to me, or even think about me. If you see me coming down the street, I want you to cross to the other side.”She slammed the door in my face, shutting me out for the four longest years of my life.
Another memory filtered through the darkness that threatened to devour me. This one from about a year after the night we got drunk up on the cliffs and threw rocks into the ocean. Seth and Audrey were two years into their relationship. I was just waiting for him to propose and every family gathering had begun to feel like a slow death. Well before I knew how much worse it would be when she cut me out of her life completely.
At the Latham Fourth of July picnic, she’d been talking about magic and the curse again, so, being the ass that I was back then, I dared her to go up to the cave at night by herself. She never could resist a challenge. Knowing she’d do it just to rub it in my face, I waited by the trail behind her grandma’s house and planned to follow her up there. To make sure she didn’t get hurt. At least, that’s what I told myself at the time.
She caught me right away, but after telling me off for thinking she couldn’t make the hike by herself, she seemed pleased by my company. Something I tried not to let go to my head. Forgetting all about the alone part of the challenge, we took the trail up to the cave, then lay in the dead grass and talked for hours. We’d always been easy with each other when it was just the two of us, but this was the first time she’d opened up to me fully and completely, sharing things I was certain she’d never spoken about with anyone else.
Earning Audrey’s trust felt like a gift. Going all the way back to that first time when she took my hand and gave me one of her rare smiles at nine years old. I didn’t know why she decided to put her faith in me that day she ruined Paige’s jacket, she was always so suspicious of everyone. But even at twelve, I knew she’d given me something special. I would’ve cut out my own tongue before telling anyone what she had done.
Over the years, she continued to confide in me, bit by bit. She didn’t let many people in, but when she did, it was like standing in the sun after an endless winter. I never took her trust for granted, which made the loss of it nearly unbearable.
That night by the cave, she looked at me with stars in her eyes, like I was the only one she could see. I almost kissed her. I would’ve hated myself for it, and worse, she would’ve hated me too, but I almost did it anyway.
Sometimes, I still wished I had.
“She hates you.” The smoke hissed and spit as it swirled around me, spewing its poisonous lies. “She only cares about using her magic. Once she figures out how to do it without you, she’ll toss you aside, same as she did before. You’re nothing to her.”
“Wes!” Across the smoke and blur of memories, Audrey’s voice cut through the dark. She screamed my name, her voice catching on a sob. A torrent of rain washed over me. “Don’t listen to it. Fight back. You can do this.”
I lifted my head. I couldn’t see her, but her voice was enough to bring me back. Images flickered through my mind. The curse dragged more painful memories to the surface, but it had already burned through my worst one. The rest were nothing in comparison.
I gathered whatever strength I had left to push my lightning toward Audrey. She caught my power in one of those water funnels she’d learned how to make, dragging the smoke into a whirlpool of electric shocks that no sentient being could survive.
Golden green sparks shot into the air, marking our location, and probably alerting every house on the island that something was going down in the woods. The curse let out a final howl that raised the hair on my arms and stripped the leaves from nearby trees before breaking apart and disappearing altogether.
Out of breath and fully spent, I bent over with my palms on my thighs and focused all my remaining energy on staying up right. Audrey ran toward me, her face pale, her rain clouds racing to keep up in the air above her head. She threw her arms around me. I didn’t have the strength left to hold either of us up, so we tumbled to the ground. My back hit the mud with a loud splat. Once green leaves, now brown and dead, lined the trail around us.
“Never leave me like that again.” She rained kisses all over my face as she squeezed my cheeks between her hands. “I couldn’t find you. Your magic wasn’t responding to mine.”
“I got pulled into some dark shit. Bad memories.” I wrapped my arms around her, burying my face in the curve of her neck, breathing in her crisp apple scent that remained beneath my body wash. She was real. Here. Not a fragmented memory. “But then the curse showed me this other thing that wasn’t so bad. I’m not sure what it was playing at.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Remember the night I dared you to go up to the cave by yourself?”
She scrambled off of me and took two steps back. “Why would you ask me that?”
I leaned up on my elbows, my arms sinking into the mud that had already started to harden without Audrey’s rain. “It showed me that memory. Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know.” She pressed her fingers to her lips. “It showed me the same. Right after I’d gotten lost in the memories of that night at Seth’s.”
That’s what I’d suspected. I grimaced from the phantom pain that lingered. “It brought me to the day you told me you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore.”
She crouched beside me and rubbed her hands over my jaw. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too, baby.” How many times would we keep saying those words to each other before it would be enough? “Do you have any theories about why the curse brought us both back to that night by the cave? How does that benefit it?”
