“What?”
“Maybe they were Dark, and I’m going to go Dark, too.”
“You’re not.”
“How do you know?”
“How can I have the same dreams you have? How do I know when I walk into a room whether or not you’ve been there?”
Ethan.
It’s true.
I touched her cheek, and said quietly, “I don’t know how I know. I just do.”
“I know you believe that, but you can’t know. I don’t even know what’s going to happen to me.”
“That’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard.” It was like everything else tonight; I hadn’t meant to say it, at least not out loud, but I was glad I did.
“What?”
“All that destiny garbage. Nobody can decide what happens to you. Nobody but you.”
“Not if you’re a Duchannes, Ethan. Other Casters, they can choose, but not us, not my family. When we’re Claimed at sixteen, we become Light or Dark. There is no free will.”
I lifted her chin with my hand. “So you’re a Natural. What’s wrong with that?”
I looked into her eyes, and I knew I was going to kiss her, and I knew there was nothing to worry about, as long as we stayed together. And I believed, for that one second, we always would.
I stopped thinking about the Jackson basketball playbook and finally let her see how I felt, what was in my mind. What I was about to do, and how long it had taken me to get up the nerve to do it.
Oh.
Her eyes widened, bigger and greener, if that was even possible.
Ethan—I don’t know—
I leaned down and kissed her mouth. It tasted salty, like her tears. This time, not warmth, but electricity, shot from my mouth to my toes. I could feel tingling in my fingertips. It was like shoving a pen into an electrical outlet, which Link had dared me to do when I was eight years old. She closed her eyes and pulled me in to her, and for a minute, everything was perfect. She kissed me, her lips smiling beneath mine, and I knew she had been waiting for me, maybe just as long as I had been waiting for her. But then, as quickly as she had opened herself up to me, she shut me out. Or more accurately, pushed me back.
Ethan, we can’t do this.
Why? I thought we felt the same way about each other.
Or maybe we didn’t. Maybe she didn’t.
I was staring at her, from the end of her outstretched hands that were still resting on my chest. She could probably feel how fast my heart was beating.
It’s not that….
She started to turn away, and I was sure she was about to run away like she had the day we found the locket at Greenbrier, like the night she left me standing on my porch. I put my hand on her wrist, and instantly felt the heat. “Then what is it?”
She stared back at me, and I tried to hear her thoughts, but I had nothing. “I know you think I have a choice about what’s going to happen to me, but I don’t. And what Ridley did tonight, that was nothing. She could’ve killed you, and maybe she would have if I hadn’t stopped her.” She took a deep breath, her eyes glistening. “That’s what I could turn into—a monster—whether you believe it or not.”
I slid my arms back around her neck, ignoring her. But she went on. “I don’t want you to see me like that.”
“I don’t care.” I kissed her cheek.
She climbed off the bed, sliding her arm out of my hand.