Page 15 of Cursed Love
“Why are you helping me? Why do you care?” Brandy asked and paced the small space between her kitchen and living room.
Ryan walked to the couch and sat. He scrubbed his face before looking at her. “Am I right in saying things got weird for you a couple weeks ago?”
She mentally counted the days and nodded. “Yeah, since my birthday.”
He looked her up and down. The first swipe of his eyes was calculating, but the second was like a caress. “Twenty-first?” The number came out thick before his eyes moved to his linked hands.
Brandy stopped a few feet from him. “Yeah, how did you know that?”
“It’s a popular age for receiving powers when they’ve been bound.”
She thought of her mother’s letter and needed to sit down.
She moved to the farthest end from Ryan and pulled her legs to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. It was her turn to get lost in thought as they sat in a comfortable silence, only feet from each other.
“Look,” Ryan said after a while. “You wanted to know why?”
She nodded and put her chin on her arms wrapped around her knees.
“A couple weeks ago, this neighborhood was different. I’d see something occasionally, but since you got your powers… It’s like you’re drawing them in.”
Her head popped up. “I’m not doing anything! I never asked for any of this!” Her heart raced, and the curtains started opening and closing again.
“Brandy! You need to control it. You may not have asked for it—neither did I—but you have it.”
“I don’t know how!” she snapped, and tears stung her eyes. Squeezing them shut, she listened as the cabinets joined in the chaos happening around her. “I tried! I really tried, but I don’t know how to control this. I’m a freak!”
The couch shifted a little, and she sensed Ryan as he walked around. “Wow… you’re unbelievable,” he whispered. She lifted her head and looked at him at the sound of awe in his voice.
“Unbelievably awful at being a witch? Yes, I agree…” she told him and laid her head back down. Emotions swirled around her, and thousands of bolts of electricity wrapped themselves around her skin. The current was the strongest she’d felt since it started happening. Then again, this was the most upset she had been.
Ryan sat on the couch, closer this time by the shift in weight, and she squeezed her eyes tightly.
Pop!
“Holy shit,” Ryan said.
Curious at what else she was doing, she lifted her head. He sat about a foot from her with one hand in the air between them as he stared at his other palm.
“What?”
He glanced from his hand to her a few times. “I can’t touch you.”
“What?” she asked and placed a hand on his shoulder. A spark of static electricity zapped her fingers when she pressed on his jacket. “I’m touching you just fine. What are you talking about now?”
“I’ve never seen this happen before. It’s like there was this force field around you. That pop you heard?”
“Yeah?”
He pointed at his hand still in the air. “That happened right about here. I…” His cheeks flushed, and his eyes darted downward. Ryan cleared his throat and continued. “I was going to put my arm around your shoulders to comfort you. Only, I couldn’t.”
Her brows pulled together as she processed his words. He studied her, and it made her feel like more of a freak. “I can’t even do the weird, out-of-control witchy things right.”
Brandy was scared and defeated. He was the only person who knew anything about what she was going through, and she surprised even him.
The noises in the room became louder, and Ryan put his hand on her knee and yelped. “Stop!”
She wanted to scream, howl at him. She had been given no instructions, and the more agitated and scared she became, the worse it got. She was like the silly gift of a can of worms. Someone had removed her lid, and she couldn’t figure out how to put it all back in.
