Page 64 of Cold Foot Curse

He released her hand, and it was broke. Her entire hand was crushed, and a sob escaped her as she tried to release the stupid ceremonial knife from her grasp. She couldn’t.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Tawk yelled, shoving Connor back.

There was so much yelling around her, and thatbum, bum, bumof her locket was deafening. A roaring sound consumed her, and her skin caught fire.

Slowly, she looked up at Connor’s sneering face across the room where Tawk was yelling at him, and she hated him. In this moment, she’d never hated another more.

Jess inhaled deeply, and screamed, and the smile faded from Connor’s face as he was blasted backward. He went straight through the wall, brick and all.

She could see daylight through the wall, and could see Connor getting up in the yard, and her skin was burning, and her hair was standing on end, and every inch of her body ached for…something.

She slid off the table and bolted for the hole in the wall, hunting instinct on Connor.

“Jess, don’t!” Tawk yelled.

It was the only words that made it through the fog of her anger.

Just those two.Jess, don’t.

But no one in Sister’s Edge would ever tell her what to do again. Not ever.

Numbness crept through her as the world went dark.

Chapter Sixteen

“Hey.”

“Fuck,” Kade murmured, turning away from Cash. He’d just wanted to be alone out here by his firepit.

“I told the guys you’re busy today. King can operate the excavator.”

Kade nodded, head turned away from Cash. He rolled his eyes closed and muttered a curse as he heard the chair next to him creak. “I need some time, man.”

“Is it Jess?”

Kade nodded.

“What’s going on?”

How could he explain that she’d ripped the insides out of him? How did he explain he was going to have to figure out how to walk the damn earth pretending to be alive when he died the second he’d finished reading her letter? How did he explain that he had bonded to her and didn’t know how to take it back?

How did he explain he wasn’t enough?

“It’s been a couple days since you’ve seen her,” Cash said.

“Are you watching me?”

“Yeah. I am. That’s what friends do.”

Kade made a tick sound behind his teeth and shook his head, keeping his damn animal eyes aimed at the woods.

“She left. She wants to be Promised to someone else.”

Cash went silent, and still. The quiet lasted so long that Kade thought perhaps he’d left. He looked over at the chair, and Cash was still here, elbows resting on his knees, eyes on Kade. He looked like he was about to cry.

Kade sat up and shook his head, angry. “Don’t fucking do it, man. I’m barely hanging on here.”

“That hurts,” Cash said low.

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