Chapter Nine
I closed the bedroom door behind me and pressed my back into that ridiculous unicorn covered in glitter poster and closed my eyes. My head was killing me, so I tore out the hair tie that held my hair up in its pony tail. It fell free, curling around my shoulders. I stuck my hand through the hair tie, wearing it on my wrist like a bracelet. The wide, red headband followed along right after. My head immediately felt better.
That could have gone better. I could have handled the whole thing better. I knew I shouldn’t have snapped at Tyson like that, and not in front of an audience. If it had merely been the two of us and I hadn’t gotten hurt and lost my temper, he might have explained it to me. Instead, I’d lost my temper and stormed off on an angry huff. I would have to apologize to him later and I hated that. Not the apologizing, but the fact that I needed to in the first place, that I’d put myself into a situation where I needed to.
Would I never learn? I needed to learn. And quick.
“What’s wrong?” Addison asked, and I jumped.
I let out an unattractive squeak as my eyes flew open.
Addison sat up straight on my wicker loveseat. The stack of blankets and pillows had been moved to the floor beside the loveseat. Julian sat on the rug beside the bed with his back pressed into the frame and mattress. His knees were pulled up to his chest and his chin rested atop one of them. He had a look in his eyes that had me worried for him. He looked like a lost little boy. Someone had recently run over his puppy; his whole world had crumbled down to ash and rubble around him and he had no idea where to go from there.
What exactly had I been witness to down in that living room? I knew it had been serious, people don’t go around punching each other for no particular reason. Even less so when you’re family. And they were all family.
“Ariel,” Addison called my name.
I had to force myself to look away from Julian and in Addison’s direction.
“What’s wrong?” he repeated.
What was wrong, he had asked? Was he being serious right now? The list was endless. It went on and on and on. A brand-new thing got added to the list every single day. I didn’t mind rolling with the punches and I was used to it. But everyone had their breaking point and I feared mine was fast approaching.
I shook my head in answer. It was the only one he was going to get. If I opened my mouth and tried to explain all that was wrong in my world at the moment I would probably end up crying. I didn’t want to cry, not while I was trying to be a stronger, braver person.
I looked to Julian and quietly demanded, “What was that down stairs? Why would you attack Tyson like that? Yeah, he was being a jerk and he’d been needling you with his words, trying to push you. But that didn’t warrant your over the top reaction. I honestly don’t know what would warrant that kind of violent reaction.”
I rested my shoulders back against the door and the poster crinkled when my shoulders met with it. I folded my arms across my stomach and settled in, ready to wait for as long as I had to in order to get the answers I wanted. I would wait all day if it meant I got what I wanted; answers and a sense of understanding.
“Sometimes Tyson hates me,” Julian grumbled miserably. “He’s really good at hiding it, but I imagine with you being here and me spending time with you, it’s going to come out more and more.”
He stopped speaking so he could laugh humorlessly. When his shoulders stopped shaking, he shook his head with a small smile on his face.
“It’ll be worse for Damien now too,” he said. “Sometimes he hates us both, but it’s always me more so than Damien.”
I frowned at him, not getting where he was going with this.
“I don’t understand,” I said honestly.
Julian let out a big puff of breath causing his chest to deflate right in front of me. He looked utterly defeated and it made me sad to see it on him.
“Ty wanted Annabell for himself,” Julian mumbled. “I didn’t understand it and I paid no mind to what he wanted. We all grew up the same way, and she was just like us. She had magic and I honestly couldn’t seem to help myself where she was concerned. She gave off this… allure, a special light.” He glanced up at me from under long, honey colored lashes and he looked embarrassed. But that didn’t stop him from speaking. “You girls give off your own heat, you know? It’s the biggest temptation I had ever known. I couldn’t resist her. She knew it and she used my own weakness against me, to lure me in. I went willingly, and Damien came along right behind me.”
He swallowed thickly and looked down to the hands he now had gripped together on his knees.
“We weren’t raised around girls like us,” he said. “She was the first one I had ever met before. It didn’t seem fair to me that she wanted to be here and with our coven and Tyson wanted to keep her all for himself. We lie and say we never dreamed of having our own girl because we know the chances of that happening are basically non-existent. But it’s a damn lie. We all want one. It’s our deepest, darkest desire. Even if most of us will never admit it out loud because to say it out loud brings the dream to life and it hurts more when you don’t get what you want. Not everyone is strong enough to handle that crushing blow.”
I had to fight hard to keep my lip from curling up in disgust. I loved that he was sharing, truly, I did. But I didn’t like being lumped into a group of women who I had never met before and were looked at as desirable objects.
It stunk too much like Vivian.
I wasn’t anything like Vivian and I never would be.
“When Tyson tried to be selfish and told me he wanted me to stay away from her, I didn’t take that very well. She moved right in, getting close with as many of us as she could. I tried to hold myself back for Tyson’s sake, I tried, and I failed. Admittedly, I hadn’t put up much of a fight. She kept coming and coming. Damien and I both went down to her charms. I had never touched another female before her. I was saving it, saving myself, in hopes that we would find one with magic and she would want to join us, want to be with us. It was the only thing I ever really wanted. My mother was a witch and she spent her life happy and loved. I grew up thinking she was the most beautiful, precious soul in this world. She died in child birth and I had her and all that beauty and love ripped out of my life. I lost it. When it was gone, I knew I would never get that back in my life.”
I let my back slide down the wall until my butt hit the cool wooden floor. I didn’t want to sit on the bed with my box half full of messed-up letters that I couldn’t bring myself to read. The loveseat looked too small with Addison’s big body taking up half of it. It looked a little too inviting for me to sit in at the moment. I didn’t want to get cozy with Addison while Julian bared his soul for me to see.
The only thing was, I no longer wanted to see the innerworkings of Julian’s soul. I didn’t want to sit over there on the floor beside him when I felt responsible for this pain. Because of me, he’d brought it to the surface for me to see.
I seemed to cause everyone around me pain.
I didn’t mean to cause them unnecessary pain. I didn’t want to cause them any amount of pain whether it be large or small.
“The joke was on me though, wasn’t it?” Julian spat out angrily. “She turned out to be a horrible person who was only using me because I’m rich and apparently so desperate for a female witch that she thought she could use me and make me her pet. Now, I’m paying for that mistake. Tyson still hates me, he’ll probably always hate me, and I’ve only got myself to blame for it. Because, in the end, it had been me who’d been selfish, not Tyson. And I wish I had never gotten anywhere near her.”
I felt for him. Annabell had snowballed them all. She’d even gone so far as to use magic on some of the covens she’d tried to infiltrate. Using magic on another witch was forbidden and the only reason she hadn’t been punished when found out had been because she was female. If she had been male it would have been another story entirely. Who knew the kind of punishment the Council would dream up for someone who broke one of their most sacred of rules. I didn’t think I wanted to know and the thought scared me.
“If the roles were reversed,” Julian said, “I would hold no animosity towards Tyson. It wouldn’t have been a competition until the last man was left standing and they were given the prize. It would not have been like that for me at all. It would have made me happy to share her with the others because I know my brothers and they would have all been capable of making her incredibly happy. I know because they made me happy, to be a part of this family would have made her the same way. Or, at least, I was happy at that point in time. Then, I’d gone and messed everything up by doing exactly what I had been raised to do. We were working towards healing that breach, finally. But then you came along, and old wounds suddenly feel like fresh ones again.”
My breath caught in my throat at what his words implicated. Was he trying to blame me for the animosity between Tyson and himself? I certainly hoped not.
“Are you,” I had to stop to swallow back down the emotion threatening to climb up my throat. “Are you trying to blame me for you and Ty not having been able to heal your friendship? When it was broken before you ever even met me?”
I shook my head, suddenly enraged. How dare he!
The ceiling light flickered off then back on. Once, then another time before it flickered out with a pop.
I surged to my feet in one quick, angry movement.
“How dare you?” I yelled at him. “Everyone keeps telling me they want this,” I struck my hand out and jerkily waved it around between the three of us. “Whatever this is supposed to be. And now you’re blaming me for past discrepancies? What is the matter with you?”
Their mouths fell open as their eyes widened, making them look cartoonish and ridiculous.
A current of energy rode through the air, warm and not unpleasant in the least. It had the hair on my arms and the back of my neck rising as if I had been jolted by electricity.
Behind me, the door blew inwards. Someone on the other side had twisted the knob so fast that I hadn’t caught it in time before the door was shoved open from the outside.
The heavy wooden door nailed me in the back and I flew forward. I tripped on my own stupid feet and my legs buckled. My knees hit the floor with a thump and I made a low, whiney noise in the back of my throat. Shock shot up from my knees, firing up my thighs. My torso teetered forward, and my palms slapped against the shiny hard wood.
My lower back throbbed from where the doorknob had nailed me. My palms stung but I could tell there was no bleeding from either my palms or my knees, thankfully.
My hair hung down in front of my face and all around me. I couldn’t see past my ash blonde locks. My hair had grown out several inches in the last few months and I was desperately in need of a haircut. It might be a strange thought to have at a time like this, but with it hanging in my face and my mind blanked of everything else, what else was there to think of.
“Don’t even think to look at me like that,” Julian warned hotly. “You’re the one who hit her with the door and knocked her over. Granted, she wasn’t exactly doing alright before you burst in here. But…”
His voice trailed off. Probably at a loss for how to even begin to describe my epic outburst. I couldn’t blame him, I didn’t know how to explain it either. I sat up on my knees and buried my face in my hands, with my hair hanging in front of my eyes and everything. I pressed my hair into my closed eyes with the palms of my hands. I didn’t mind that it didn’t feel good to have my messy hair rubbed into my closed eyelids. I didn’t care about anything outside of controlling my emotions.
“What in the hell is going on around here?” Quinton growled, and I couldn’t stop the flinch that jerked my body at the sound of his voice.
Damn it.
Of course, it was Scary Uncle Quint who burst into the room and hit me with the door. He had a really bad habit of bursting into rooms without knocking beforehand. I didn’t think he’d actually knocked someone down before with his invasive entrance techniques.
I wasn’t excited and filled with joy at being his first at something.
I didn’t feel anything save for pain in my knees and embarrassment at, yet again, another outburst on my part. Why did I keep yelling at people, people who cared about me? Why did I keep exploding and letting my emotions get the better of me? I didn’t know, and I absolutely did not understand, and this frightened me. I had gone seventeen years of my life without so much as raising my voice at another person when I had every reason to scream from the top of my lungs in an outraged sort of horror. But I’d done no such thing. Somehow, I had managed to keep it all inside. Until Vivian’s death. Her death had been the catalyst for me. Her death had set my emotions free and, never having had to really deal with them before, I didn’t know how to deal with them now.
I was entirely out of control and I absolutely hated it.
In that moment, I realized something new about myself that I had never known before.
I liked being in control. Especially when it came to my own life. Probably because I had never really had any kind of control before when it came to the things that had happened to me and around me.
I wanted that control. A small part of me even craved it.
I wished I knew what to do with that craving.
I had no idea.