Between the Spark and the Burn (Between, #2)

by April Genevieve Tucholke

world. But then, the Devil once told me that it’s easier to forgive someone for scaring you than for making you cry.

The problem with River West Redding was that he’d done both to me.

I could barely remember the smell of his skin. Or the way his eyes lit up when he lied. And lied. And lied.

I knew Will Redding would be beautiful. He was pretty at fifteen, prettier than me. But then he grew, and his soft angles sharpened. And now looking at him . . . I almost hate him, he’s so damn breathtaking.

What will happen if he doesn’t stop? If we don’t stop? But then he kisses me, and I stop caring. Even when he’s done kissing me, sometimes I still don’t care, not for hours. Or days.

I gave myself up to three Aviations before the gin took hold and I fell into the pool. Lucas rescued me, but it was Will who helped me out of my wet clothes and into bed. I loved him. God help me, I loved him more than a girl has ever loved a boy. More than anyone has ever loved anyone.

River, I’m leaving the sea. Can you even picture me without the ocean nearby?

We’re going to Virginia. Maybe you’re there right now. Maybe you’re glowing up all of Inn’s End even though you promised not to. We’ll find you in a cemetery, making a group of kids see dragons or witches or madmen, and then Neely and you will get into a fight and then me and you will get into a fight . . . But then we’ll both forgive

you because we always do. You’ll make espresso and tell me some lie about how you own an island in the middle of the ocean where children run wild and live on nothing but coffee beans and I’ll half believe you and then you’ll lean ...

There was a long silence. I leaned back into the sofa behind me and my shoulder brushed by Neely’s knee. He didn’t move for a second . . . and then I felt his fingers reach through my long hair and stroke my neck. Just the once.

My heart broke. Right down the middle. And the color went out of the world

“Violet?” My door opened. I stood and turned and he was already halfway across the room. He put his hand on my chest. Right in the middle. Fingers spread wide. He guided me back, gently, until my body touched the wall between the windows and the dresser. I closed my eyes and pictured the wild horses. River’s brother kissed me in the darkest hour of the night at the darkest time of the year, but what I felt when his lips touched mine wasn’t darkness. It was clear warm bursts of yellow high noon sunshine. I kissed him back.

Neely whispered sorry, sorry in between the kisses, but I didn’t know if he was saying it to me or to River . . . and then I was crying again, though I didn’t know why because I was so damn happy, I was about to burst out of my skin, and Neely brushed the tears off my face with his thumb. He kissed me, and I kissed him back, on and on, and the tears ran down my cheeks, though I didn’t understand them and didn’t want them there, and they slipped down my neck, damp and warm and unwelcome.

Neely’s lips went to the soft spot behind my left ear. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since the first second I saw you,” he whispered, “since the first second I saw you curled up in my brother’s arms.”

“You,” River said, ignoring Neely and looking at me. He tilted his head and pointed a finger at my face. “I think I almost loved you once.”

River raised his eyebrows. “Or maybe it wasn’t you. I loved a blond-haired girl by the sea, though, once upon a time. It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea, that Annabel Lee lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me.” River paused. “No, that’s not right. Annabel belonged to someone else. You’re Violet. And I did love you once. I did. I think I did.”

River, River, I don’t care what you’ve done, I don’t care how mad you are, it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault . . .

River drank the rest of his joe in one long swallow. He leaned toward me, smooth, his too-long hair falling across his forehead. His arms snapped out and wrapped around my waist. He pulled me into his lap. My body folded into his like it had a mind of its own, my hip into the curve of his elbow, my face into his neck, my cold nose into the warmth of his bruised chin.

“Violet,” he whispered into the top of my head, “would you sleep next to me tonight?”

And he held me, tight, his lean arms crisscrossing my back and his long brown hair sliding between my blond and it was just like before. I tried to see the wild horses in my head but I couldn’t remember what they looked like and then River’s hands moved under blankets and under clothes and my breath sped up and so did his and suddenly the cold wind couldn’t touch me, I was that warm . . .

I strip naked in the cemetery and hold him in the dark between the stones.

There was something so much . . . more, to sharing a hotel room with River instead of a tent. But he just followed me down the hall, and we didn’t have enough money for another room anyway. And if Neely looked at me over his shoulder in the hallway and if I looked at him over mine, well, what difference did it make.

I dreamed River was kissing the hollow of my throat in the middle of a blizzard. And when I woke up, he was. He was warm as summer rain. Smooth as the sea, and twice as deep. “Where did you get this necklace?” River asked. He moved the jade beads out of the way so he could reach the skin underneath.

“I’m back,” River whispered. His arms went around me and he squeezed me up and he smelled like coffee and midnight again and not the sea, not the sea, not the sea. “I missed you, Violet. I missed you so damn much.” “What do you remember?” I asked, my body tight to his and his hands on my hips and my face against his shoulder. “Bits and pieces. Enough.” He paused. “Violet, can you ever forgive me?” I didn’t think about it, not even for a second. “No,” I whispered. “I’ll never forgive you.” But then we were kissing again, and oh, I was so happy, I couldn’t help it,

River crawled back into my arms, and he didn’t seem rascally or sly anymore. He just seemed . . . naked, and wide-open, and scared. “It’s going to be all right,” I said. My hands pressed into his skin, trying to stop his shaking. “It’s going to be all right,” I said, again and again, though I didn’t think it would. Not a bit. Not at all.

“The Devil is holding your hand, girl,” she said. “Did you know?” I froze. A dark cloud passed overhead.

Neely was leaving. I stared at the white flour that covered my blue cooking dress and then I closed my eyes and Neely put his arms around me and I let him. He whispered I wish it had turned out differently in my ear. And I felt the choking thing you feel, the one that comes even if you’re not a crier.

Later that night, I went to him. I walked right past River’s door and went to Neely’s. “I thought you’d never come,” he said, and his long arms were around me, pulling me down to him, down onto the bed. His lips went to my neck and his hands to my waist. Just for a few seconds, and then just a few more. I thought of the horses.

I reached up and wove my fingers into the roots of Neely’s blond hair and gripped it tight and pulled his face down to mine and . . . . . . and then I was on the beach, running like the horses, my heart screaming with the joy of it all, and I was alive, I was so damn alive, not afraid, not glowed up, not confused, just alive, alive, alive . . . “What is it, Vi?” Neely asked, later, a lot later. After I’d stopped turning my head so he could reach another part of my neck, stopped gripping his naked lower back, stopped moving my hips with his. “Neely, I need you to do something for me.” “Anything.” My insides sang out at the yearning I heard behind his voice. “Come back,” I said. “Come back to Citizen Kane. No matter what.”

“I will. I promise.” Neely kept his promises, unlike River. So I trusted him. So I let him go.