Page 30 of Cursed Lifeline

Her eyelashes flutter, her mouth falls open, and she stutters, “Oh, I, uh...”

She expected me to kiss her. She’s wanted that for some time. Being able to read her thoughts has its advantages. The problem is, if I ever taste her lips, I’m worried I won’t be able to stop myself from taking more, from claiming her, changing her, and fulfilling the curse that’s been placed on our lives.

She picks up the rose I placed between the pages of her book and smells its breathtaking, sweet, floral fragrance before raising the book in question and showing me the title.

“Ah, a masterpiece of fiction,” I smile. “It’s a work of art I knew well. Do you like it?”

She shrugs. “It saddens me.”

Taking it from her hands, I flip through the pages while she brings the rose back to her nose and inhales another deep whiff.

I could recite this work from William by heart.

As my fingers flip quickly through the pages, I say, “I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not with their quantity of love make up my sum.”

“But he pushed her away,” Esme questions with such conflicting emotion it forces my gaze up to meet hers. “If he loved her, why did he push her away?”

My mouth grows dry as I try to think of the right answer.

To save her.

To protect her.

To shield her from his madness.

“Sometimes love makes you do stupid things,” I whisper.

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head.

“Men,” she huffs, causing me to grin. “Causes men to do stupid things. I guarantee if the roles were reversed and Ophelia found herself in the same position as Hamlet, she would have found a way to make things work that didn’t include both of them ending up in an early grave.”

I swallow hard as I try to disguise how her words make me feel. Sir William Shakespeare had a knack for tragedy, that’s for certain. His natural ability to write epic stories about star-crossed lovers that were doomed to fail will never be challenged. But as I stare into Esme’s inviting eyes, and feel our own curse crawling across my skin, I realize we’re just as damned as his unfortunate characters.

Closing the book, I look down and place it back in her lap. Before I can think better of it, I whisper, “The right woman holds the power to drive a man crazy.”

“Ophelia didn’t drive Hamlet crazy,” she chuckles with annoyance. “He drove himself mad.”

My gaze snaps up to meet hers. “When faced with making a decision between wrong and right, anybody can drive themselves mad if they’re not quick enough to choose. After all,there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

“How about you, Felix?” she taunts with a raised brow. “Have you chosen wisely?”

Leaning in, my gaze violently sharpens. “Like you, Esme, my path was chosen for me. I wasn’t granted the luxury of making my own choices.”

“And if you could choose differently?” she demands.

I cock my head to the side and study her closely. Leaning back, I take a moment before answering, close my eyes, and inhale deeply. My anger from a few moments ago softens as her smell perfumes my senses, drugs me, and oddly clears my thoughts.

When my eyes open, all I see, all I feel, all I sense - is the unorthodox thread tying me to her.

She consumes me.

Curse or not, something tells me she was destined to always have this power over me.

Giving in, I close the distance between us, wrap my arms around her waist, pull her close, and whisper, “You. I’d choose you. In a million ways. For infinite lifetimes. In life and death, nothing and no one could ever stop me. I’d. Always. Choose. You.”

She smiles sadly and places a kiss against my cheek before pulling away and rising from the bench. Surprised, my brow furrows as she tucks her book under her arm, raises my rose again to her nose, and stares off into the distance. After a moment, I look over my shoulder and trail her line of sight to a shadow that emerges through the misty fog.

Alfred.

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