I sob against his chest and repeat the words I’m sorry over and over again.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I never thought I was perfect, but I thought I was better than this. Better than turning my back on my family, my coven, my magic. Better than falling for a boy I can never have. My heart is broken, but so is everything else. Bodybroken. Soulbroken.
My dad leads me inside and pours me some tea, sitting with me as I cry. My mom covers me in a blanket and kisses my head and tells me nothing has changed.
We don’t ever have to speak of what happened tonight.
We can move forward. I can accept the consequences of practicing dark magic, marry Landon, and everything will be right again.
I want to make everything right again.
Wolfe’s manor is not the only place that held a lie. This home has them, too, lies so big I’m shocked they even fit. But without Wolfe, without Ivy, without my parents, where would I go?
I finish my tea and get ready for bed. I brush my teeth and wash my face and think about how just hours ago I was in Wolfe’s bathroom in front of his mirror, marveling at how I had changed the entire trajectory of my life.
Marveling because I’d fallen in love with someone who saw me for everything except what I was supposed to be.
Marveling because I couldn’t hear all the words he wasn’t saying.
I crawl into bed. The cold metal of the necklace he gave me presses into my skin, and I rip it off and throw it across the room. There’s a soft knock on the door, and my mother steps inside. She comes and pulls the covers up to my chin, then sits down on the edge of the bed.
“How long have you known?” I ask, my voice quiet and unsteady.
“About you and Wolfe?”
I nod.
“I didn’t put everything together until earlier tonight, when I saw him in the water,” she says. “Then I knew.”
My mind is overwhelmed with all the lies, Wolfe’s and my mother’s and mine.
“I left Wolfe because he lied to me. And you’ve lied to me, too. If you want me to stay here and continue down this path, you have to tell me all the things you’ve been keeping from me. You have to, Mom.” My head is throbbing, and my eyes beg for sleep. “Tonight, I need to rest. But soon.”
“Deal,” she says, stroking the quilt over my arm. She kisses my forehead, then stands. Landon’s sea glass sits on my bedside table, shiny now from all the hours I’ve worked it in my fingers. She picks it up and hands it to me.
“Not all love hurts,” she says, turning off my bedside lamp. But I wonder if that’s true, because what I felt for Wolfe was a physical ache I carried in my chest even before I knew he had used me to get to my mother. And it hurt not because it was bad but because my happiness was no longer my own.
It was dependent upon the survival of another person.
My lungs and my heart had to shift, rearrange themselves to make space for all the love, and even then, it was more than I could hold, a constant pressure against my ribs.
Still, I nod and take the sea glass, roll it around between my fingers. The door clicks behind my mother when she leaves.
Landon is the only one who hasn’t lied to me. The only one who has given me the truth and trusted me to handle it, even if it hurt. A life with him won’t be so bad. Maybe it will be a relief to be with someone and not have that ache in my chest. Maybe it will be a relief to not feel so much.
I don’t know when my hand stills and the sea glass falls onto my quilt, when my mind finally gives up the day and falls into darkness.
But even in sleep, I remember the way Wolfe’s voice sounded as he called out for me. I remember the way he struggled against his father to get to me. I remember the anguish in his tone when he said it was impossible not to fall in love with me, like it was the worst thing he’d ever done.
Even in sleep, I remember.
twenty-nine
When I wake up, Ivy is sitting at the bay window that looks out over the Passage. The day is clear and cold, and condensation has beaded on the glass. The oaks and maples are starting to drop their leaves, bare, spindly branches reaching toward the sky. I wipe my eyes and slowly sit up.
“You’re here,” I say.
“I’m here.” She doesn’t look at me.
I want to tell her I’m sorry, to fix what I broke between us, but I’m so glad she’s here, so relieved. And I can’t apologize for what I did, because I’d do it over and over again if it meant waking up to her staring out my bedroom window, angry and hurt.
“I’m so happy to see you.” I say it because it’s true, and after last night, the truth is all that matters.