Beautiful Creatures(53)

Ethan.

It’s true.

I touched her cheek, and said quietly, “I don’t know how I know. I just do.”

“I know you believe that, but you can’t know. I don’t even know what’s going to happen to me.”

“That’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard.” It was like everything else tonight; I hadn’t meant to say it, at least not out loud, but I was glad I did.

“What?”

“All that destiny garbage. Nobody can decide what happens to you. Nobody but you.”

“Not if you’re a Duchannes, Ethan. Other Casters, they can choose, but not us, not my family. When we’re Claimed at sixteen, we become Light or Dark. There is no free will.”

I lifted her chin with my hand. “So you’re a Natural. What’s wrong with that?”

I looked into her eyes, and I knew I was going to kiss her, and I knew there was nothing to worry about, as long as we stayed together. And I believed, for that one second, we always would.

I stopped thinking about the Jackson basketball playbook and finally let her see how I felt, what was in my mind. What I was about to do, and how long it had taken me to get up the nerve to do it.

Oh.

Her eyes widened, bigger and greener, if that was even possible.

Ethan—I don’t know—

I leaned down and kissed her mouth. It tasted salty, like her tears. This time, not warmth, but electricity, shot from my mouth to my toes. I could feel tingling in my fingertips. It was like shoving a pen into an electrical outlet, which Link had dared me to do when I was eight years old. She closed her eyes and pulled me in to her, and for a minute, everything was perfect. She kissed me, her lips smiling beneath mine, and I knew she had been waiting for me, maybe just as long as I had been waiting for her. But then, as quickly as she had opened herself up to me, she shut me out. Or more accurately, pushed me back.

Ethan, we can’t do this.

Why? I thought we felt the same way about each other.

Or maybe we didn’t. Maybe she didn’t.

I was staring at her, from the end of her outstretched hands that were still resting on my chest. She could probably feel how fast my heart was beating.

It’s not that….

She started to turn away, and I was sure she was about to run away like she had the day we found the locket at Greenbrier, like the night she left me standing on my porch. I put my hand on her wrist, and instantly felt the heat. “Then what is it?”

She stared back at me, and I tried to hear her thoughts, but I had nothing. “I know you think I have a choice about what’s going to happen to me, but I don’t. And what Ridley did tonight, that was nothing.

She could’ve killed you, and maybe she would have if I hadn’t stopped her.” She took a deep breath, her eyes glistening. “That’s what I could turn into—a monster—whether you believe it or not.”

I slid my arms back around her neck, ignoring her. But she went on. “I don’t want you to see me like that.”

“I don’t care.” I kissed her cheek.

She climbed off the bed, sliding her arm out of my hand.

“You don’t get it.” She held up her hand. 122. One hundred and twenty-two more days, smeared in blue ink, as if that was all we had.

“I get it. You’re scared. But we’ll figure something out. We’re supposed to be together.”

“We’re not. You’re a Mortal. You can’t understand. I don’t want to see you get hurt, and that’s what will happen if you get too close to me.”

“Too late.”

I’d heard every word she had said, but I only knew one thing.

I was all in.

10.09

The Greats

It had made sense when a beautiful girl was saying it. Now that I was back home, alone, and in my own bed, I was finally losing it. Even Link wouldn’t believe any of this. I tried to think about how the conversation would go—the girl I like, whose real name I don’t know, is a witch—-excuse me, a Caster, from a whole family of Casters, and in five months she’s going to find out essentially if she’s good or evil. And she can cause hurricanes indoors and break the glass out of windows. And I can see into the past when I touch the crazy locket Amma and Macon Ravenwood, who isn’t actually a shut-in at all, want me to bury. A locket that materialized on the neck of a woman in a painting at Ravenwood, which by the way, is not a haunted mansion, but a perfectly restored house that changes completely every time I go there, to see a girl who burns me and shocks me and shatters me with a single touch.

And I kissed her. And she kissed me back.

It was too unbelievable, even for me. I rolled over.

Tearing.

The wind was tearing at my body.

I held onto the tree as it pounded me, the sound of its scream piercing my ears. All around me, the winds swirled, fighting each other, their speed and force multiplying by the second. The hail rained down like Heaven itself had opened up. I had to get out of here.

But there was nowhere to go.

“Let me go, Ethan. Save yourself!”

I couldn’t see her. The wind was too strong, but I could feel her. I was holding her wrist so tightly, I was sure it would break. But I didn’t care, I wouldn’t let go. The wind changed direction, lifting me off the ground. I held the tree tighter, held her wrist tighter. But I could feel the strength of the wind ripping us apart.