Page 36 of Once Charmed, Twice Cursed
He scowls. “There’s no point.”
My nails bite into my palms. Joy and frustration war within me, the clash threatening to tear me apart. “Yes. There is. Say it.”
“Why?” He steps back. “So you can smile at me the way everyone else does? Like you pity me? So I’ll know for sure that the thing I fooled myself into believing was never real?”
My breath speeds, a chaotic whirl in my lungs. “No. So I can say it back.”
He freezes, and for once, the anger drains from his features. They’re no less harsh for it, no less unforgiving, butthey’re softened in some faint way by surprise. Haloed with disbelief.
Something inside me cries his name. I can’t believe he doesn’t realize. I can’t believe he believes a single word of the nonsense he just spouted.
Only...I understand why. Life, in all its relentless cruelty, has divested him of his ability to hope.
But maybe I can give him a reason. If he can give me one, too.
“Just say it,” I plead.
His throat works. He blinks a few times, hard and fast. “Fine. If you’re so desperate to know, then here it is: I’ve been cursed twice in my life. Once when I was born. And again when I met you.”
A vast ache opens inside me. Something is coming, so hard and fast I’ll never be the same. I’m standing in front of the avalanche as it comes careening down the mountain. In another moment, it will engulf me.
“Because...” Weston swallows hard. “You have to know, Birdie. There’s no way you don’t realize I’ve been horribly, wretchedly, agonizingly in love with you since the day we met. Ever since I was fifteen.”
I close my eyes. I wanted to believe it, and yet I couldn’t, not really. Not until this moment. Now radiance pours into me, a physical force, like rivers of light spilling through my veins. I become a star, burning away the dark. I’m incandescent.
When I look again, he’s halfway across the room. Halfway out the door.
“Weston.” It’s all I can manage. A broken whisper. An answered prayer.
He pauses mid-flight.
“I was fourteen,” I say.
His shoulders tense. “I know how old you were when we met.”
“No, I don’t mean when we met. I mean when I fell in love. I was fourteen when I fell in love.”
The tense set of his posture loosens. He pivots more slowly than I knew a man could.
“With you,” I add. Just to be sure. “And I’ve loved you ever since. Every moment.” Even when I didn’t want to.
His whole body slackens, his lips parting. “What?”
“You.” My voice stabilizes. “Are all I’ve ever wanted.”
He blinks, long and hard. “You...want my Mark, you mean. You want me to touch you. Totakefrom you. You want to be rid of your luck.”
“No.” I grab fistfuls of my nightgown to keep from running to him. My palms burn for him, to touch him, but I can’t. Not if I want him to understand. “I mean, yes, of course I want you to touch me. But the important part is that I don’t want you to stop, once you do. Not ever.”
He stares, his breaths piling atop one another, a mess of sharp intakes and shaky exhales. I swear I see each of my words land. He blinks twice, then hauls a hand through his hair, leaving it disheveled. “That’s...”
“The truth,” I say. “No one’s ever treated me like you have. Like a normal person. Like I’m a real live woman with thoughts and feelings. No one’s everrespectedme like you do.”
He doesn’t blink. Or move.
“You must realize I’m horribly, wretchedly, agonizingly in love with you, too. And it’s not because of your Mark. It’sbecause of the books you’ve brought me. And the milk. And the bones you’ve broken. And?—”
All at once, he’s crossing the room with long strides. When he reaches me, he takes my face in gloved hands and hauls it up to within a hairsbreadth of his. He stares into my eyes, his mouth an inch from mine.
