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He promised me he’d protect me.
“No! You mustn’t be alone with her,” Elisi begs, clinging to him for dear life. “She is death. She is evil. She wants to harm you!”
“You’re being silly, Elisi, it’s Willow, Lilith’s sister… you love Lilith,” he tries, looking at me sadly. “Please try to heal her…”
“No,” the old woman snarls and spits at my feet. “The sooner this one dies, the better.”
“Elisi,” Nokosi gasps and so does the woman by her side. He says something else in his own tongue and then turns to me after prying her from his body. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
The woman shrieks after us but his aunt guides her away, soothing her with kind-sounding words and a soft tone. But the despair and panic that I can hear in the old woman’s voice is genuine fear. She really is magic. She was so right about everything she said.
Maybe she could have healed me if I were a better person.
Maybe I do need to die. Maybe she does for speaking to me like that.
He guides me back to his truck, both of us visibly shaken, and helps me inside. He even leans across me to strap me in and I get a strong whiff of his hair. It smells like coconut and pineapple. So sweet.
“I am so sorry; I don’t know what came over her. She has never done that before.”
I don’t reply, I just want him to drive us home so I can forget this ever happened. He drives and we sit in the dark silence for a while, not even the radio crackles in the background.
“Maybe… I mean… I don’t know,” he stammers for the right thing to say but at this point, what can be said? “I wish I’d never taken you. I should have left it all alone and just taken flowers to your funeral like a normal person.”
Despite my racing heart and confusion, I laugh because that was a bit funny. I love dry humor and Nokosi comes with barrels of it.
His hand closes over mine on my thigh and my skin beneath it quivers and tightens at his touch. I remain impassive, trying to deny the fact that his hands can make me feel anything.
I hate men.
I hate him.
He pulls over at the side of the dirt road we’re on, the headlights highlight the trees and I see the eyes of animals in the far distance, glowing like the tiny demons I feared back at his grandmother’s house. Really, I’m the scariest thing in these woods, and both I and the old lady know it.
“I’m really sorry, Willow,” he whispers, squeezing my hand tighter. “I feel… I’m not one to feel bad usually but I feel fucking awful right now.”
I turn to look at him in the truck, chewing on the corner of my mouth.
“I know you are,” I breathe and place my hand over his, holding him in place. “Old people are crazy… but… maybe your grandmother was right.”
His light brown eyes scan my face in the darkness, and I wonder what he sees in the shadows of my profile.
“I’ve done bad things, Nokosi, when I die I know I’m not going to heaven and I’ve made my peace with that.” My voice is but a whisper in the silence.
“I’m sure you did what you had to do, Willow.”
I shake my head sadly. “I didn’t. I did a lot that I never had to do.”
“Maybe you can redeem yourself before… before you go?” His hand is still on mine, on my thigh, and I’m still coiling inside. I’ve never felt like this before.
I shift in my seat and feel his fingertips brush my inner thigh. My entire body shivers, my soul lights a fire that hasn’t burned for so long.
This isn’t okay. I don’t want to feel this way. Not about him, not about anybody.
He has his hooks in my sister, but not me. No…
I could do it now. I could end him and take my sister away forever… but she’d never forgive me, would she?
Because I’m finally starting to understand what she sees in him.
“There’s no redeeming me…”
He wets his lips gently, eyes still on mine. “Was she right?”
“About?”
“About you wanting to hurt me?”
I laugh lightly and look ahead again. The silence stretches between us endlessly. “Do you love my sister?”
“I—”
“Do you love her?” I demand, my lips a flat line. “Would you protect her with your life?”
He takes a moment and clicks his tongue against his palate, then he sighs and rubs his face with both hands, releasing my thigh to do so, making me feel cold and alone again. “Love is… not something I understand… or something I ever understood. I get familial love for my sibling and father. I get loss love for the mother I never knew but even that’s shadowed by guilt over the fact I killed her as she birthed me. But soppy love between two people that hardly know each other, it’s not something I ever believed in or wanted. When I met your sister I thought…”
