Enflame (Insight #6)(30)
“We have no choice but to look back now,” was the near hallow response he gave me.
“What are you saying?”
“Willow before this…before this I was balancing what two dimension expected of us. I was fighting a curse to bring down one ghost. Now, I understand how massive this, how long and hard our path has been.” His eyes drifted into mine. “I want to give you the peace you want. It’s all I want. I want to be ignorant to all of this…but I can’t be. So many people are expecting different things from us.” He let out a shuttering breath as his eyes glided across my face. “To end Donalt we have to work through this curse, and the spells I weaved in my past to stop him. He has twisted us, he has turned us against one another. I can’t even fully perceive how wickedly he has done that.”
“Who has he turned against one another? Phoenix has you back. I think him and I are cool. You and Drake are not fighting. Whatever conflicts Donalt set in place can be resolved with simple conversations.”
He winched as if he knew conversations would not hinder the onslaught of emotions he saw charging at us. “This spell...it’s more complicated than we can ever imagine. It will take more than me and you to break it—to survive it.”
“It’s more than the planets?” I asked timidly.
His jaw tightened. “Yeah.”
“How much more?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see everything in my past, and I definitely can’t see the pasts of others. Even if I could, I would miss a detail, a detail that only the one that lived it would know.”
“We’ll just take this step by step, fight what is in front of us.”
Every muscle in his body flexed. “Willow, it took you months to get over seeing me with an illusion of you.” He swallowed once. “How are you ever going to handle working with someone that I held in a dark past on my loneliest nights?”
I now had a name for the taste of harsh crimson that was flooding into my mouth: blood. I could swear blood was in my mouth and that I was choking on it. I clenched my fist, searching for another sensation, another taste: lemon. In my mind, I said that flavor over and over again until I found my balance.
“Who?” My voice trembled with anger.
“She belongs to someone else. She knows that. We both knew where we belonged The distance we were from our soul mates created an ache we both tried to ease.” His voice was husky, full of regret.
The lingering silence was burning into both of us. “Like what I did with Drake.” I finally said letting my head fall. This was karma in its raw form. “I told you I would pay for what I’d done to you, that karma would have its turn with me.”
Sharply, his stare found mine. “You did nothing wrong. Ever.”
“Neither did you.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I don’t? How many fights have we had about Drake? In this life? How many times as he found a way to get to me.”
“How many times did you tell him that you loved me? How many times did you walk away from him and into my arms.” His eyes glided over me. “Every time. You worried about him because you thought we were missing souls. You were right about that. All along you knew deep down what took me this long to figure out.”
“I didn’t know anything beyond the fact that he belonged with us, but he didn’t deserve to be there alone.”
He was astonished. He could not believe that I was not enraged. I couln’t either, really. Maybe I was just tired. Maybe my emotions were in a cage. Bottom line. In this life, in these last nineteen years he was faithful to me. I wasn’t always so innocent. I was more mad at myself that him.
“Willow, I did look for you the moment I became a Phoenix. I never stopped. You lingered behind every thought, but the gap of time was painfully lonely and at times I lost my way…for all I know that is half the reason we have so much hell to pay today.”
“Landen, I can forgive you a thousand times over, but that’s not going to matter unless you forgive yourself. This just feels new because your eyes were opened. It was lifetimes ago. We were not together. You didn’t betray me.”
He leaned forward and stole a kiss from my lips before he looked down. “The one that held me has been trapped. I was able to move on and find you. She couldn't. She sacrificed finding her soul mate so I could find you. I’m in her debt.”
“Skylynn?” I asked with a shaky voice.
The automatic flinching of his jaw told me I was right. “We never loved each other. We had a common disdain. The ones we wanted to be with were divided by space and time.” He let out a shuttering breath. “I told her once I found you, that you’d lead us to who she belonged with. That everyone would come to one source.” He glanced at me. “I’m not sure if that was a lie or not. I’m not the person I was then. Or maybe I am…I just know I was desperate. I was aching for you. I would have given anything to have you in my arms once more. To not see the destruction you and Drake brought to one another, the horrible dark, twisted lives you endured.”
I glanced away, wondering if that was part of the reason that Saige hated me so much. I was the ‘other woman’ her daughter had to contend with.
I kept thinking the word ‘lemon’ over and over again, holding that taste in my mouth, holding my calm. Saying that it was hard is an understatement—it was excruciating. The raging storm deep inside me wanted to break free and make everyone and everything around me pay for the pain my heart was enduring.