Spells for Forgetting(85)

August’s mouth pressed to my throat as he leaned his weight into me and he groaned, that same sound of need deep in the resonance of it. More tears streamed from the corners of my eyes, disappearing into my hair.

For fourteen years, it felt like I’d been counting down the minutes, the seconds, to a moment that I thought would never come. He was an ache inside of me that would never be soothed. And it was a pain I didn’t even want to be freed from.

The cadence of the woods drifted through the open window, where the wind in the trees sounded like a thousand whispers. But I could hear only him. The broken drag of breath in his throat, the helpless moan that escaped my lips.

I was drunk with it. Teetering on the edge of something shadowed.

I’d been in love with August Salt since before I knew what the words meant. I don’t know when it happened—the narrow space between seconds, when a spark like the birth of a hundred stars found a home in my blood. Since then, every day had been colored with the glittering light of it dragging me in its wake, pulling me beneath its surface. And I didn’t care. If this was what it was like to drown, then for the rest of my life, I didn’t want to take another sip of air.





Fifty


    AUGUST


The buzz of my phone woke me from the calmest sleep I could remember.

I opened my eyes to glaring sunlight coming through the window. It filled the bedroom with specks of white scattering on the walls. Beside me, Emery was under the blankets, her dark hair spilling over the pale-yellow pillowcase.

I exhaled, giving it a few seconds before I would let myself believe it. I’d thought about it so many times. I’d dreamed it. And now Emery Blackwood was so close that I could touch her. I slipped one arm around her waist, fitting myself against the line of her body, and her feet moved to touch mine. She smelled like sun and the drying herbs that hung in the tea shop. She felt like home.

“Hi,” she whispered.

She was so beautiful that I could hardly stand to look at her. It physically hurt to feel her skin under my fingertips. “Hi.”

One hand came out of the blanket and she pushed down the covers, turning over in my arms. The light hit every curve of her. Her shoulder. Her breast. Her bare hip. I’d been with other women since her, and they were always hiding. Always drawing away from sight. But Emery wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met, and I’d never felt with anyone the way I felt lying beside her.

“What is that?” she said.

I glanced down, following the line of her gaze to my arm, where the seven-pointed star was tattooed on the inside of my right biceps.

She touched it, her eyes narrowing. “I saw it last night.” Her finger traced the asymmetrical shape “What is it?”

“It’s nothing.”

“You tattooed nothing on your arm?” She arched an eyebrow. “Just tell me.”

I waited a long moment before reaching up between us. She watched as my hand drifted closer to her and my thumb brushed along her cheekbone, below her left eye. The emerald green star in her iris was aglow in the morning light, blooming against the crystal blue.

I’d drawn it on a torn piece of paper and given it to a tattoo artist in Portland years ago. It hurt every time I looked at it, but I hurt anyway.

She looked up at me through her lashes, her lips pressing together.

“I missed you, too,” I said.

The phone buzzed on the table and I reached over her, reading the screen. “Shit. Eric called. He must have left a message.”

My phone had barely worked since I got to the island, and the cottage didn’t have Wi-Fi. There was no telling what my email inbox looked like, much less my voicemail.

I sat up, finding my pants on the floor, and stood, tugging them on.

Emery propped herself up on one elbow, watching me. “You might be able to get a couple of bars on the porch.”

I followed the hallway to the front door and tapped the screen, finding Eric’s number. The outside air was cold and damp, but it was the first morning since I’d been back that it wasn’t raining.

It took three tries to get the phone to ring, but when it finally did, Eric answered right away. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying you since last night.”

“Sorry, the reception is shit here.” When he said nothing, I pulled the phone away to check that the call wasn’t dropped. “Eric?”

“Yeah.” He paused. “I got the documents from the county. It’s definitely not good news.”

“Tell me.”

“You’re the owner, August. The orchard was left to you.”

I leaned into the post at the corner of the porch, letting the words sink in. That was the last thing I wanted to hear.

“Hold on.” Eric covered the phone, and his voice was muffled as he talked to someone else in the office.

My eyes focused beyond the window, to the kitchen. Emery stood at the counter filling the coffeepot with water in a buttoned-up flannel shirt that swallowed her. I traced the line of her bare legs beneath its hem, that heavy feeling returning to my stomach.

“August?”

I blinked, turning away from the window. “Sorry, what?”

“I said, if your signature is on the deed and you didn’t sign it, then someone else did.”

An engine rumbled somewhere in the trees and the screech of brakes sounded just before a truck appeared, the same red truck that had been in the woods the other night.