Page 82 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
That finally makes me look up. “I’m not sweet,” I say, glaring.
His fingers move through my hair and then he’s cradling the side of my face. “Hmm,” he says, in that terrible way of his.
“Stop it. I’m not sweet.”
“This song is about following somebody into the dark. That’s very sweet.”
I close my eyes again. “It’s . . . honest, maybe. But not sweet.”
“Saint. Look at me.”
I look at him.
He’s very close to me now, so close that I can’t even see the white cord of the earbuds stretching between us, so close that I can make out the distinct green and brown striations in his eyes. “Is it so far gone between us that I’ll never get to earn you?”
That surprises me. “What? No! I mean—I don’t think so.”
He lets out a long breath, pressing his forehead to mine. “Then can you forgive me? For what I did to your mother?”
My throat hurts. “I don’t know,” I whisper. “Maybe.”
“Because I’m sorry,” he goes on. “Not a day goes by when I’m not fucking sorry. You were right when you said it was something my father would do, it was, it was exactly like him. When I found out he’d been giving her money—I already hated that you’d fucked off to America, hated it—and I just hurt so goddamn much and I wanted to hurt you like I was hurting and I lashed out.”
“You never lash, Auden. You plan and you strike. The thing that makes you strong is the same thing that makes you dangerous.”
Now it’s his turn to close his eyes. “Yes.”
We’re breathing together now, our sighs warm against each other’s mouths.
“How did you find out?” Auden asks, eyes still closed. “What I did?”
“When I came home and my mother realized I’d left school, she was livid. Ferocious. I’ve never seen her that angry about anything ever before, and she was yelling about how I’d thrown my whole future away just because you’d decided to be cruel, and she wouldn’t see my future threatened because of you, not again.”
Auden flinches at the reminder of the graveyard. “And what did you say?”
“I said that I didn’t care what Auden Guest did, I was done running away from Thorncombe. No matter how shitty the villagers have been to my mom or me, she loved it here. So do I. Now, at least.”
Auden’s hands drop to my back and fist in my T-shirt. “You belong here.”
“Yes.”
“With me.”
I let out a shuddering breath. “Yes.”
“Even though we’ve hurt each other? Badly?”
Is he offering to forgive me too? Are those six steps outside the graveyard walls as branded into his memory as they are into mine? I’m too scared to ask.
Once again the coward.
“Even though we’ve hurt each other,” I repeat in a whisper, and coward I may be, but I’m also very, very smart, because that answer earns me a fierce, searing kiss. It’s a kiss like the one we once shared in his walled garden, the kind of kiss that could draw blood if it goes on long enough—or if Auden’s mood changes.
As if remembering the same kiss, Auden turns me so that he can pin me against the wall, shoving his hips into mine with a grunt and asking, “I’m not scaring you away again?”
I can only tell him the truth. “You never scared me, Auden.”
He bites at my lip piercing, catching it in his teeth and tugging just hard enough to make me gasp. “Good.”
