Bone Island: Book of Danvers (Tales of Weeping Hollow, #2)

by Nicole Fiorina

And for a stolen second, I could pretend, if nothing else, that the very thing buried deep within her was the very thing buried deep within me.

“It’s only fair that I confess that you’ve done something to me no one has ever done,” he whispered. “You make me feel wanted.”

“Time is not something we catch but something we create.”

breaking. “What if I told you that centuries were supposed to separate us, that time was designed to stand in our way? What if I told you that every second together is measured by the impossible because the chance of you and me was never supposed to happen?” He paused. He breathed in. He breathed out. “We were never supposed to find each other, but we did. You found me, and then you saw me, and it seems you’ve somehow made these two words entirely different.”

And there was never a fear so deep as the thought of being erased altogether. Never was there a terror so cruel as being forgotten by her.

And these cries weren’t soft or subtle but piercing and spilling with anguish. It was a cry that could break hearts. The fierce grief of losing a lover. Cutthroat mourning. The harshness of it all.

And I finally knew what it should have felt like to be accepted by a mother.

I didn’t know much about literature or writers, but I knew enough about those who mattered. The ones who didn’t write for money or fame but simply because the story became them, living in their flesh, their blood, their bones, bloating until it burned up inside. And the only way to be free of it was to break themselves open to let it go, cut their veins to bleed themselves dry.

I’d read how she was disgusted with the way her father worked himself to death, and how her imagination often tempted her to want the kind of sex she could feel deeper than flesh. She knew of her beauty but loathed being complimented for it and cherished the touch of silk on her skin. I’d read on as her years passed by, her confessions turning darker. How she refused to let anyone see her cry.

“He loved her, with no end and no beginning, with no birth or expiration. He loved, eternally, and it broke him.”

“It means a lingering sadness and sense of Nostalgia following the last chapter of a Great love story.”

Stone only had two settings: desperate and quiet. And sex was his battle cry.

“Wistoragic,” I blurted, unable to stop shivering as Mom’s book dawned on me. “Sadness following a great story. This is what it means, and maybe I’ve always known, and that’s why I’ve been writing it in my sleep. This is the last chapter of our story, and it hurts because it’s ending, and there is nothing we can do about it.”

“You were never mine, but you were never even yours. You will always belong to all the things that haunt you, and there was never space for someone like me, was there? Only a momentary escape.”

“But I still fucked you, Circe. For a forsaken month, I fucked you harder than both your head and that town has been fucking you, and you cannot erase it or pretend it never happened.” His chest caved, and he took a step closer, looming over me. “I fucked you, my darling siren, and there is no escaping that.”

“I hate you.” Undisturbed by it, he grinned. “No, you don’t. You hate yourself.”

“I can break you, Stone,” I said, pressing my thumb into the scar in his palm to remind ourselves of where our story began. “Maybe you won’t feel it tomorrow, or even the day after that, but it will hit you when you least expect it. Because while you were spending those few forsaken weeks fucking me, I was loving you,” I admitted, my chin trembling. “I was loving you, and that’s something that breaks you from the inside out.”

Remember me, miss me, come back to me, my past screamed.

And I wondered if time would cause this ache to fade, too.

“It’s you, and it scared the fuck out of me because I knew if I ever allowed myself to love you in that way, I would love you more than anything. And if I ever lost you, it would ruin me,”

Here was Cyrus, willing to make love to me during the day and under the light of the sun if I asked him. Here was Cyrus, willing to fall to his knees for me if I asked him. And here was Cyrus, ready to confess his love for me if I let him. But all I could think about was Stone, who wouldn’t do any of these things. A man who wasn’t even here.

I had not known true torment until I was forced to exist with his face in memories alone with no hope of creating new ones.

“You were supposed to leave,” I whispered. “I was okay until you came here.” And I didn’t know whether it was a lie, but I could’ve pretended to be okay long enough until I believed it. “You weren’t supposed to come here and make this harder for me.” At

“We’re not over, and you know it,” I whispered, stiff and aching from holding myself together. “I will see you again.”

And I may spend my nights with him, but you are my only thought in those dark hours. I swear to you, I only think of you.” She pulled him to her until her spine met brick, and he melted into her. “I’m yours,” she whispered against his lips. “I’m eternally yours.”

First, I was a monster. Then I was hers. Now I was nothing.

For all I knew, the Heathens could have killed him already. If this were the case, it should make my life easier. Because if he were dead, I would no longer sink into fantasies or drown in a world where we could be together. If he were dead, I could return to the girl I’d been all along.

“You hurt me more than anyone, and I hate you for it, but I’m still calling out to you to let you know I’m all right.”

“He was hurt. I was hurt. It hurts. But that’s how it’s been with us. We rip each other apart as punishment for feeling things because it’s easier than facing them. Or we punish each other for feeling things because it’s ripping us apart. And it hurts.”

The only thing more devastating than losing him was losing him all over again.

“Nethermind feels like you’re already dead, but your soul forgot to leave. Almost lethal. Like unrequited love.”

“On behalf of 1864, I can assure you we don’t know what the hell that is!” he shouted, and I blindly grabbed something from the desk and tossed it at him. He dodged the paperweight and looked up at me. “Excellent. Now, would you mind throwing yourself at me next?”

“Whether they’re hurting me or pleasing me, they belong on me.”

He was here, and I had done all I could to stay away and fight it and pretend I didn’t care. But he was here, not giving me or my grief a place to hide. So, I couldn’t anymore. My chest buckled, my lungs opened up, and heartache burst from me.

“How dare you come here and make jokes when I can barely hold it together,” I shouted, not caring if it pierced through the walls. “After everything, how are you okay right now?!”

And at this moment, he could see that I was not only the angry daughter motivated by vengeance, or the mermaid who refused to drown in her tears, or the tough woman who put on a brave face each time her heart was raped by injury, or the seamstress who did her best to hold her family together, or the villain who hid her hurt with pain, or the girl who lived in a fairytale because it was easier to tell stories on occasions when reality proved to be too difficult. At this moment, he could see the truth. I was a girl in love with a Heathen.

“Stone,” I cried, my voice losing substance. “You’re a fucking Heathen.” “No, Adora,” he scraped out, gutted, squinting an eye and pointing at me. “No, I’m fucking yours.”

He stepped aside, gesturing at the door. “You have two seconds to wake your bore of a fiancé and bring him here to kill me,” he said, his voice rising with a blue vein popping in his neck. “If those two seconds pass, and you’re still standing there looking like you’re mine, I will throw you against his wall, rip off your clothes, and claim you in ways your deprived little mind, body, and soul could not even imagine.” His chest was heaving, and my eyes were darting from him to the door. “The only restraints I have right now are respect and decorum, Adora, and both are two seconds from being abandoned.”

When I opened my eyes, his were drenched in despair and longing. He looked at me like I was a girl who’d stepped off a page in his sketchbook, and he wasn’t about to let me go. He looked at me like I was a girl who belonged only to him. He looked at me like he loved me.

“You’ve hurt me repeatedly,” he confessed, his words spilling onto my lips as he pinned my wrists behind my back in one of his hands. “You’ve hurt me, you’ve lied to me, and you’ve let me go, and it’s pathetic how I spend every waking moment thinking of only you.”

I missed him. I missed this. I missed us. The difficulty. The drunkenness. The desperation of it all.

“This is going to kill me,” I cried in a whisper, my nails sinking into his skin. “I can’t keep doing this and wake up tomorrow and not think of you. I can’t keep doing this then go on without you.”

“If he was truly your soulmate, why am I here right now and not him? Why am I the one who makes you feel like this?”

But I could never confess that I knew I was deeply, madly and passionately in love with him. In the end, it wouldn’t do either one of us any good.

“You are the man I love, Alec. I’m eternally yours, no matter how long it takes until we’re together again.”

“I’ll wait for you,” Alec said, fingers intertwined, never wanting to part. “I’ll wait at the top of the tower with your beam on for an eternity if that’s what it takes.” A promise. An oath. A vow. “Every night when you see the light, think of me.” And these were the last words Alec had spoken to Circe. In fact, these were the last words Alec had spoken at all.

“I call it love. You call it obsession. It’s all the same.”

After all, this was how the greatest stories were born. Unexpected. Sudden. Cosmic. But that was all we would ever be, wouldn’t it? A story. A memory. Dust in the lighthouse.

And the song was playing, and all I could think of was how this song would always be that song. The one that would haunt me for the rest of my life. The one that was the background to our love story, from the moment we first arrived at the lighthouse, and he was watching me from the dusty floor as I swayed, until the moment we said goodbye.

“You’re the author. I’m just the blank pages you whisper your secrets to, then the thing you crumble and toss to the side. I’m the book in the palm of your hands. In the end, this story is yours. You can write it whichever way you want.”