Cursed

Chapter 23

I spent the entire next day in my room, trying to sketch, but I couldn’t commit anything to paper.

Everything I drew looked bleak and boring. By dinnertime, the floor of my bedroom was covered with crumpled balls of paper.

Mr. Cromwell insisted on family dinners. They were always awkward, but tonight, with everything that had happened, that hit an epic high. A thick tension clung to the entire table.

“Yuck.” Olivia pushed the peas around on her plate with her fork.

I sighed and wondered if blowing chunks across the table would get me excused. Olivia had been kept in the dark about last night’s events, which was the only thing Cromwell had done I could agree with. My chunky sweater covered the bandage around my arm.

“Peas are gross,” Gabe said.

“Gabriel,” Liz warned. “Peas are not gross, Olivia. They help you grow up to be big…”

I blocked her out at that point and tried to manage what I hoped would be an inconspicuous glance across the table. Except, when I did look, Hayden stared right back at me, slouched in his chair, jaw clenched. He hadn’t even touched his plate. Averting my gaze, I accidentally settled on Phoebe. Her hands clenched the edge of the table. I couldn’t believe that she still sat here, at dinner, after everything she’d done. Stupidly, a part of me felt bad for her, and I hoped someone would get her help.

Parker, as always, had his nose in a book. He hadn’t even looked up when Olivia knocked over her glass of milk when I tried to get her to not throw her peas.

I sank in my seat. This dinner couldn’t get any worse.

“Peas!” Olivia flicked a spoonful toward Gabe. In turn, Gabe threw a biscuit at her plate. She took a bite and erupted into giggles, chunks of bread falling from her mouth.

Cromwell lured Hayden into a discussion about which football teams would be playing on Thanksgiving Day while Olivia and Gabe continued their food play.

“Can we go like we did last year?” Phoebe asked Hayden. “We could leave Wednesday afternoon and stay over.”

My ears pricked up. They were talking about the parade in the city— the big one. Would Cromwell let her go after everything she’d done?

Hayden’s eyes flicked away from his plate. “I don’t know. I don’t really feel up to it this year.”

“Come on. It’ll be fun.” She pouted. “I could really get away.”

I tried to act like I wasn’t listening, but the moment I looked up, Hayden and I locked eyes. He was the first to look away.

Finally Cromwell seemed to hear what Phoebe was suggesting. “I do not believe that will be possible this year, Phoebe.”

Phoebe opened her mouth, then clamped it shut. Her gaze, full of accusation, drifted to me like I was the reason she was in trouble.

I wanted to throw my peas at her.

My stomach twisted as I poked a lump of meat around my plate, and I couldn’t sit here anymore.

Pressure built in my chest. Without looking at anyone, I pushed away from the table and headed out into the hallway. No one stopped me. I think, if anything, the stress around the table lessened. It was like I was the one who’d been doing crazy things, not Phoebe. It blew my mind.

Drawing in a deep breath and letting it out slowly, I stopped in the foyer outside one of the dark sitting rooms. No matter how many times I did this, the walls still closed in around me. Minutes ticked by. I just stood there, staring into nothing.

“Are you okay?” Hayden asked me. “Your arm?”

I closed my eyes. “Yeah, my arm is okay.”

“You didn’t eat anything.”

A snappy retort died on my lips when I faced him. He stood so close that I could smell his aftershave.

“You didn’t, either.”

Hayden shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing. You?”

“Nothing.” He nodded, then pulled his hands out of his pockets and ran one of them through his hair.

“Em?”

“Yes?”

A moment passed in silence, and then Hayden shook his head. A tight, tense smile appeared on his face. “Never mind, I’ll talk to you later.”

Then he was gone, and I stood there, wanting to cry.

“You need to stay away from him.”

Startled, I spun around. Kurt slouched against the wall, the strands of long blond hair practically obscuring his eyes. I had no idea how long he’d stood there. Obviously it’d been long enough. “Are you following me?”

“I’m not the one who’s been following you, and I think you know that.” Kurt pushed off the wall. “You need to leave Hayden alone. You’re not good for him.”

My hands balled into fists. “I’m not bothering Hayden.”

“He loses sight of everything when he’s around you.”

I frowned as I rubbed the itchy skin around my stitches. “It doesn’t seem that way.”

Kurt tipped his head slightly. “You’ve been dealt an unfair hand in life. I can see that. Everyone can see that.” He stepped forward, clasping his hands behind his back. “But so have Hayden, Gabe and the twins. And so have I. The only difference is that we’ve been able to see past all of that. You haven’t.”

I opened my mouth, but he cut me off.

“What Phoebe did was wrong, but can you blame her for wanting you to leave? What you feel must choke her. And your presence has affected Hayden since he first laid eyes on you. If you cared about anyone—your sister—you’d leave here. Leave your sister so she can have a real chance at life, and leave Hayden before he does something that all of us will regret.”

His words struck a chord. Anger sparked and fired through me.

“And I think it would be best for you, too. You don’t trust us.” Kurt smiled. “We don’t trust you.”

“Where would I go?” I asked. “Live on the streets so I’m not your problem?”

If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. “I don’t care where you go. Money won’t be a problem. How much do you need?”

“Are you serious?” He couldn’t be, but the look on his face said he was. “You know what? I don’t care what you think or what you want. The only way I’m leaving without Olivia is if you drag me from here. And I’d like to see you try.”

Kurt opened his mouth, but closed it. I got the satisfaction of stunning him into silence. Spinning around on my heel, I left him standing in the foyer.

My run-in with Kurt empowered me. Instead of hiding in my room to sketch or forcing Olivia to entertain me, I started practicing with the plants on my own. Each night I crept downstairs once the house was silent and painstakingly carried a plant back to my bedroom. With my bum arm, I could only carry them one at a time. A garden of dead plants littered my room, serving as a painful reminder that I had yet to figure out how to control my touch.

If control was even possible.

The evening before Thanksgiving, I sat on the floor with a plant in front of me. Six withered plant corpses filled the pots in the corner. I stared down at the new one—the live one—then closed my eyes and tried to clear out my mind. Hayden had said it had to be one thought that triggered it. He’d tried to use Parker to get to that thought, but everything had turned to crap after that.

Parker—something Parker had said to me.

I wrinkled up my nose and held my breath. What had he said? Something about how we all coped with our gifts, everyone except Gabe. But it had nothing to do with Gabe, because he didn’t have to cope.

Neither did I, right? I didn’t cope with it because I always believed there was nothing I could do.

I couldn’t help what I did.

Like when Dustin had touched me in the grocery store parking lot. I couldn’t have helped what’d happened. I had no control over it. It wasn’t—

My eyes popped open and I exhaled. That was it—what Parker had said. I’d convinced myself that I had no control so that I didn’t have to deal or have any responsibility.

And oh shit, maybe Kurt had been right—kind of. I had wallowed in my self-pity for two long years. If wallowing were an art form, I’d be on a gallery wall.

I placed my hands on the cool ceramic. Could that really be it? Was control over my fingers of death really something as simple as actually believing I had control? Taking responsibility for it—for my gift?

No. I don’t have a gift. Olivia has one. Hayden has one. I don’t have—

“I’m doing it,” I said out loud. “I’m doing it right now.”

What about my self-revelation courtesy of Catcher in the Rye? I’d decided I didn’t want to be like those statues in the museum, but I was. My thoughts worked the same. My actions did, too. I’d tried everything except believing I wasn’t a freak of nature.

Because it wasn’t that I didn’t have a soul. I mean, there were minutes when I truly wondered—when I thought about what’d happened when I’d died and how I’d felt afterwards—but I didn’t want to hurt anyone. What’d happened to Dustin had been an accident. I hadn’t wanted to hurt him. I never wanted to hurt anyone—not really. I’d had moments when I’d entertained the idea, deep down, times when I’d felt threatened, but I didn’t want people to be afraid of me.

It was more than that.

I didn’t believe I was gifted, but maybe I was. Maybe my gift worked differently than the rest—like something had to trigger it to become active. That something had been dying. Who knows, maybe I would’ve come back anyway, even without Olivia. Dying could’ve been a part of the great plan or something.

“Okay, now I sound crazy,” I muttered, running my fingers over the rim of the pot. “Like I walked into a cheesy sci-fi movie, but it’s something. I think. I guess.”

I dragged the pot into my lap. Earlier, I’d changed into linen shorts and a long-sleeved shirt. Both were thin enough to sleep in, if I ever decided to go to bed. It was well into the early morning hours.

Everyone else had gone to bed hours ago…

And my brain was rambling again.

I made a face at the plant and sank my fingers into the rich, soft soil. Well-hydrated—Liz took good care of the plants here. I’d come to believe her other gift was a green thumb, because all of the plants grew so beautifully.

Until I killed them, that is.

“So I have a gift. A gift—not a curse—and the gift is the fingers of death, right?” I asked myself, feeling stupid when I waited for an answer. “Think about how badass that would be if I could control it.”

I stopped there. Thinking about that inevitably led to what could happen if I could control it.

Touching, holding hands, kissing… Hayden.

Not the most helpful train of thought.

I focused for hours on telling myself I did have a gift before I finally felt confident. Only then did I pull my dirt-stained fingers out and took a deep breath.

Now or never. I focused on the plant. It was dark green, and on the tall, slender stems there were marks much like the skin on a snake. It had become my favorite of all plants, because it looked so weird.

I took a deep breath and tried to speak in my most confident tone. “I have a gift.”

Slowly, I brushed my fingers over one smooth stem, then jerked my hand back and waited.

A few seconds went by, then maybe a minute. Then five, and holy crap, nothing happened.

I started to stand, but my legs gave out. “No,” I whispered, clutching the pot until it chafed my skin.

My heart sped up until a faint buzzing filled in my ears. This could’ve been a fluke. There was only one way to find out.

I needed to touch it again.

Calming down took a few minutes, but when my heart did beat somewhat normally, I touched the plant again. It moved under my fingers. It didn’t die. Not for ten minutes or twenty.

Around the twenty-five minute mark, I think I started crying. My cheeks were wet so, unless it’d rained inside, I guessed they were tears.

I had to share this with someone.

Jumping to my feet, I rushed across the room and yanked on the door with my good arm. In my excitement, I forgot I had locked it. My fingers were shaking so badly it took me a few tries to open it, but once I did, I raced down the hallway and prayed Hayden hadn’t locked his door.

His room was three down from mine, and I stopped in front of his door. What if he didn’t care? I’d be crushed. I turned the knob and it gave way. Breathing a sigh of relief, I eased it open and let my eyes adjust to the darkness.

I could barely make him out sprawled across the bed, but he was there. Remembering his last reaction when I woke him unexpectedly, I resisted the urge to pounce on him. I felt along the wall until I found the switch and flipped it. Bright light flooded the room. It didn’t faze Hayden, but it stole my breath. I stood there, unable to tear my eyes away from him.

The blanket twisted around his narrow hips, one muscled arm thrown over his head, and he was naked. Okay, at least from the navel up.

Snap out of it, I ordered myself. “Hayden? Wake up.” I inched closer, raising my voice. “Hayden!

Wake up.”

His arm dropped from his face and blinked several times. Slowly he eased himself up on his elbows, squinting.

“Good.” I swallowed and tried to smile. “You’re awake.”

Hayden frowned.

“You have to get up! I need you—” He threw the blanket aside, revealing that, in fact, he wasn’t completely naked. He wore flannel pajama bottoms. “What is it?” He came to his feet. “Are you okay?”

“I…” I could only stare. My memories of how he looked shirtless hadn’t been burned in my mind like I had thought. I had missed little details—the line running down his stomach, the muscles that popped near his hips.

“Ember, are you all right?”

“Yeah.” I closed my eyes and turned around. “I have to show you something.”

“Show me something? Ember, it’s almost morning. Can’t it wait?”

His lack of interest stung, but I persisted. “No. Just come on. Then you can go back to bed. Okay?”

Hayden muttered something as he grabbed a shirt off the floor and tugged it over his head. Silently, he followed me back to my bedroom. I shut the door behind us and led him to the other side of the bed.

“You wanted to show me your bedroom floor?”

I exhaled slowly. “No. I wanted to show you this.” Without looking at him, I sat down and pulled the plant into my lap. “You ready?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Ember, why are there a bunch of dead…”

Realization dawned across his expression, and in that pause, he looked sad—disappointed. Not what I expected.

“Hayden?”

“I haven’t been working with you,” he said.

“I know, but—”

“You’ve kept up on it.”

“Well, not until recently.”

“Em, I’m sorry. I’ve let my own problems—my own mixed-up feelings—get in the way.”

I stared at him, growing impatient. “Hayden, it’s okay. All is forgiven, but can you just look—”

“It’s not okay.” He dropped his arms over his bent knees. “You’ve been at this all alone and why?

Because of… well, whatever.”

“Hayden.” I leaned forward and wrapped my hand around the closest thing I could reach—his calf.

He stiffened, but didn’t move, although I think his body gave off more heat than normal. “It’s not your responsibility to fix me. I’m not your science fair project. You don’t owe me an explanation.”

“Em, I don’t think of you as an experiment. I don’t think of you like that at all.”

I wondered how he did think of me. “Okay, fine. But can you just watch me for a second? I have something I want to show you.”

Hayden nodded.

I let go of his leg and closed my eyes. Concentrating with him in the room proved harder than I’d thought. When I felt sure I had that “I have control” mantra on repeat, I cupped the slender stem and ran my hand up it.

Hayden’s startled gasp caused my eyes to flutter open. The snakelike plant remained whole and healthy.

“Em.” He dropped to his knees beside me, eyes wide. “Did you see that?”

I grinned. “Yes.”

“How—how did you do that?”

“I’ve been practicing, but it hadn’t worked till tonight.”

“Okay.” He picked up the pot and placed it aside. “Touch me.”

“What? I don’t think that’s the next logical step, Hayden. This is the first time I haven’t killed a plant.

Let me soak in that victory for a bit, first.”

He smiled, momentarily stunning me. It had been ages since I’d seen him really smile, the one that showed those dimples. “What did you do differently this time?”

A hot flush spread over my cheeks. “It was something Parker said, actually. That I’d made myself believe… the whole soulless thing so I didn’t have any responsibility or control, but it’s more than that.”

Hayden shifted closer. “What?”

I swallowed. “I told myself. I had a gift… I’m not cursed, you know?”

“I know—I’ve always known that. I guess you just had to believe that.”

My eyes fell to where his hands rested. Out of everything to ask and be concerned about, I went with the entirely ridiculous. “Why have we been mad at each other?”

“Mad at you?” Hayden rocked back. Three counts went by before he spoke again. “I haven’t been mad at you, Em.”

There was no turning back now. I was probably going to regret this. “But you haven’t really talked to me or… spent any time with me. Not since that night in the cabin when I told you that my parents knew about Olivia’s gift… and I thought, after what you said when I woke you up… well, I don’t know what I thought.”

He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s been hard. I didn’t want to believe that anyone I knew was behind the stuff in the locker, and you were right, but it’s more than that. I just need— needed some time to sort it all out.”

I came to my feet, wiping my hands over my shorts. I felt his gaze inching over me. I realized then, he’d probably never seen my legs before. He didn’t say anything as he stood. “What is it?”

He looked like he was about to retreat, shut back down. Watching the war of emotions battle across his face, I had a burst of courage. “I’m not mad that you didn’t believe me when I said it was one of your family members doing that stuff. Okay, I was mad, but not anymore. It’s done now.”

“I should’ve believed you, though. The evidence was pointing at one of them. I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

But he’d had reason to doubt me. They were his family and Phoebe was important to him. If the situation had been flipped, I’d have had a hard time accepting what was in front of my face, too. “Can’t we just move past this?”

Hayden stared, eyes darkening to a shade of night.

Frustrated, my arms dropped to my sides. “Don’t you like me anymore?”

“Yes,” he said immediately. “Of course I do.”

“Then can’t we be friends?”

Hayden moved his hand to his chest, rubbing a spot by his heart. “Em, it’s hard being friends with you.”

My stomach dropped. Not a pleasant feeling. I thought of my effect on Phoebe and winced. What had Kurt said? I was getting to Hayden, too. “I… well, wow. I have no idea how to respond to that.”

“I don’t mean it the way you’re taking it.” He glanced around the room, sighing. “Look, I’m not explaining this right. Aren’t you tired?”

I shook my head. “Are you?”

His dark eyes flicked to my face, impossible to read. “I’m wide awake now.”

I admitted to myself right there, I had no idea where this conversation was going. “Um, you can stay—

if you want to.”

He stared at me in silence, and then headed over to the balcony doors. Somewhat mystified, I watched him draw the shades over the door. There was a barely there smile on his face when he locked the bedroom door.

“I doubt anyone will check on you, but better be safe than sorry.” He gestured at the bed. A faint blush tinged the tips of his cheekbones. “You first?”

I hurried to the bed and scooted to the far right side, suddenly nervous. My eyes felt impossibly wide as I watched him come back to the bed. “Do you want to practice with the plant some more?”

Hayden made his way to the side I’d escaped to and sat on the bed beside me. “No.”

“Oh.” I bit my lip, racking my brain for something to say. I came up empty.

“There are a couple of things I want to clear up.” His eyes found mine and held them. “Phoebe and I aren’t seeing each other. In fact, there’s never been anything romantic between us.”

A ridiculous amount of elation swelled in my chest, but I pushed it down. “But I’ve seen the way she looks at you. And the night of the arrow accident, I… saw you two together in the living room.”

“Phoebe may’ve had a… crush on me at one time, but she knows I’m not available.” He leaned over me, placing one hand on the bed beside my hip. We were so close I could feel the heat rolling off of him.

Shifting closer, he picked a strand of hair off my shoulder and wrapped the thick curl around his finger. I froze. “And you misinterpreted what you saw. Her gift… well, you know it’s been getting to her. I was draining some of it so she wasn’t feeling everything. I’ve done it for years.”

“But you guys were so close…”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t what you thought.” His lips formed a crooked smile. “She’s not the one I want to be close to.”

I sucked in a deep breath. Confused, I pressed my hands against his stomach. I wanted him… to touch me like he had in the cabin, but he’d said it was hard to even be friends with me. How was this making it easier? But I couldn’t—didn’t want to stop him. Hayden’s warm breath danced over my cheek and his eyes held a lot of depth. I thought I could probably get lost in them if I wanted to.

“And it’s been hard being just friends with you when I want to be more than that. Seeing you every day, wanting to touch you…” He stopped, looking thoughtful.

“What are you thinking?” I breathed.

“Well,” he drawled. “I’m thinking something really crazy right now.”

“What?” I moved my lips closer to his. I’m not even sure if I was aware of doing it.

“I’m thinking about kissing you,” he said, “and touching you. It’s all I can think about. It’s why it’s been so hard being around you.”

My heart jumped in my chest, and then sped up erratically. The thick tension hit a new all-time high.

Surprisingly, I found that I still had the ability to speak. “That’s really crazy.”

“Yeah.” He dropped my hair. “Crazy stuff.”

“You should really think about something else,” I advised, even as I moved my hand up the front of his shirt, stopping over his heart.

Hayden placed his hand on the small of my back. That touch wiped away the logical part of my brain.

“What are you thinking about?”

He was close, way too close. The scent of soap and spice filled my senses. I let my eyes drift shut.

“Kissing you,” I admitted in a low voice.

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” he said, unbelievably still.

“I know, but you started it.” I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. “We shouldn’t do this. I don’t know if I can.”

“You didn’t kill the plant, Ember.”

“But that’s just a plant. It’s different. I can’t—” Hayden kissed me.