My palm slaps against the wooden door. “I’ve been doing nothing but reading, and if I’m not reading, I’m fighting for my fucking life. I can promise you, Felix, everything I’m reading is the truth.”
He shakes his head. “Bullshit.”
“I’m telling the truth!” I shout at him.
He doesn’t believe me. I can see it in his face. “How do you know it was her?”
“She left a note, Felix. She killed herself in The Room of Atonement, put a curse on this entire town! She’s the reason the sky is red. She’s the reason the old town is abandoned! Rowena is the reason for everything!”
“I thought you said that woman from the asylum, or her parents, or someone else started the curse?” He cocks his head to the side, like he caught me in a lie.
“Curses on top of curses. You wipe away one and you find another. There’s no way to rid the evil here, Felix. You know it, I know it. The dead never sleep in Castle Pointe. We live on land that is filled with so much evil, there’s no one person that caused this. It’s all of them. But what we opened, what we did to the school, that was turning on a switch to the worst witch of them all. Rowena.”
He shoves away from me, his hand running through his hair. His shoulder blades slide across his back, the muscles in his skin flexing as he moves. Suddenly, he spins around, spearing me with a glare. “Let’s say my fucking great-grandmother did create this curse. How do we stop it?”
I stare at him, blinking. “I don’t know.”
His lips curl over his teeth as he sneers. “You never fucking know, Hazel. It’s nice of you to have story time and read about this place, but you don’t know how to fix the actual fucking problem we’re having.” He points to the windows, the glowing red that shines through. “I’ve been hearing nothing but screams and shrieks of horror all damn day. They’re crossing the bridge, Hazel. The evil isn’t in the old town anymore. It’s here. Looks like you’ve run out of time.”
I whip my head back and forth. “I almost have it. I know it. I just need a little more time!” I shout at him, squeezing my hands into fists.
He stalks toward me, his palms slapping the front door on either side of me. “There’s no more fucking time!” he roars in my face. Sliding in close, his naked chest brushes against me, and warmth floods my veins.
My breath catches in my throat, and I lift my eyes to his, watching his chocolate gaze darken, rolling between anger and lust. His hands slide closer to me, his fingers brushing my hair.
He begins to lean down, and just as his lips are about to brush mine, it slips past my lips.
“I need to tell you something,” I whisper.
He narrows his eyes, leaning back. “What is it?”
I want to sob into his chest, not really understanding when I started having feelings for him, but knowing that whatever momentary blip we had will forever change when I tell him.
I want him. A piece of me hates him, but a piece of me wants him so damn bad.
But he has to know.
“We’re related,” I whisper, tears forming and making my vision blurry.
His nostrils flare as he cocks his head to the side. “Come again?” His words are lethal, deadly, too quiet.
“We’re related. I’m related to the Alastairs, and you are related to the Kiplings. They are cousins.Weare cousins.”
Coolness seeps between us as he steps back, and it feels like my spine digs into the wooden door behind me as despair rolls through my bones.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
The tears fall over the edge, tumbling down my cheeks. “We’re cousins! Distant fucking cousins. I don’t know, but we share the same blood!”
He snarls at me, disgust in his voice. “You’re lying.”
I shake my head, wiping away the tears as I step toward him. His body freezes, and it causes me to pause, my feet gluing to the floor. “I’m not lying,” I say on a broken whisper.
“But I don’t care!” I say suddenly, not believing the words are true until they come out of my mouth. I think I’m right; I don’t care, not really. Whatever is in my chest feels as if it’s shredding down the center, and I want to piece it back together.
I want him to piece it back together for me.
“It’s so distant it doesn’t even matter,” I whine. “Forget I said anything.”