Spells for Forgetting(83)

It wasn’t a surprise, but I knew it drove the betrayal deeper for him. August had looked up to Jake, seen him as a kind of father. But when Jake had to choose between the two of us, he’d chosen me.

“You should really sleep,” he finally said.

“I can’t.”

August’s eyes ran over my face. “Why not?”

I hugged my knees to my chest. “I’ve been having these nightmares every night. I used to get them a long time ago, after what happened, and they came back last week.”

“What kind of nightmares?”

I clenched my teeth, trying to push the images away before they could fully form in my mind. But they were still there. They were always there. “I’m at the beach, standing in the water.” I swallowed. “It’s dark, almost completely black, and I can hear screaming.”

August leaned forward, listening. I’d never told anyone what I saw in those dreams.

“It’s so loud that it hurts my ears and it won’t stop, just going on and on. Then I look down”—I breathed—“and I’m holding someone under the surface. My hands are numb and tangled in her hair. She’s trying to come up and I keep pushing her back down.” I pinched my eyes closed.

“It’s just a dream, Emery. Lily—”

“It’s not Lily. It’s me. And it doesn’t feel like it’s just a dream.”

August’s expression turned wary. “What are you saying?”

“Sometimes”—I hesitated—“sometimes I wonder if I’m misremembering something from that night…I mean, it’s all so incomplete now—the memories. That night, the next day. What if—”

“Emery.” August’s voice rose, more seriously. “You weren’t there.”

I shook my head. “I feel like I’m going crazy. Like I don’t know what was real and what wasn’t. I mean, there are things that I think I imagined or that maybe weren’t the way I remember them.”

“Like us?”

I blinked, surprised. But August looked right at me, his gaze unwavering. “Yeah,” I admitted.

He ran a hand through his hair, his face turning back to the fire. “I do that, too. Try to make sense of it or spin it out into something it wasn’t. It would have made things a lot easier if it wasn’t real.”

But it was real. So real that it had become a relentless, barbed vine. No matter how many times I ripped it from the earth, it kept growing back.

“Then why did you leave?” The heartbreak I felt was heavy between us. I couldn’t help it.

August measured his words carefully. “I felt like I ruined everything, including us. I couldn’t bear to tell you what I did, so when my mom said she thought we should leave and start over somewhere else, I didn’t argue. I felt like it was the only way to make all of it stop.”

“Did it stop?”

“No.” August smirked, but he looked sad. “I know you feel like I left you here, but you followed me everywhere I went.”

“Is that true?” I whispered, feeling the prick of tears at the corners of my eyes. I wanted it to be true.

“I wish it wasn’t,” he said, softly. “Sometimes I think you’re the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

The raw feeling inside me was like an open wound when he said it. But I couldn’t even be angry, because I’d thought that, too. More than once.

I caught the tear at the corner of my eye with the heel of my hand. There was no point crying about it now. “Didn’t you ever find anyone?”

“I’ve never been able to really be with someone. I’ve had hookups and people I’ve dated, but I always knew I would never spend my life with any of them. It was never on the table.”

“Why not?”

He leveled his gaze at me, as if trying to decide on his answer. “You sure you want to go there?”

“I think we’re there whether we want to be or not.”

“It’s going to sound crazy.”

“That’s okay.”

He let out a long breath. “Because I’m somehow still connected to you. Like a part of me isn’t there if you’re not there. For years, I thought that would go away. It didn’t.”

I stared at him, speechless. I’d known what he was going to say but I hadn’t expected him to say it like that.

“It shouldn’t be like this.” He paused, “Right? I mean, we were kids.” He was looking past me again, his jaw clenching. “How long were you looking for me?” he asked.

“Too long.”

Another silence. I let my head fall back and I watched the light dance over the ceiling.

“I still have the tickets.” I sighed.

“The ferry tickets?”

I nodded, not looking at him. I wanted to laugh at myself. I also wanted to cry.

The burn of his eyes moved over my skin, but it was a long moment before he finally spoke. “I’m sorry. For not telling you the truth.”

I swallowed against the ache in my throat. For the first time, it felt like us. The real us. Like the ocean that existed between him and me was just…gone. And the last bit of will I had to keep myself from touching him vanished into thin air.