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PROLOGUE
Seven Years Ago
CARTER
Angela Burns looks betterthan she ever has before.
Maybe it’s the glow of the firelight dancing around her features, or the way the short white dress she’s wearing flows around her body. But I actually think it’s her hair. She normally has it up, but tonight, the curls are loose down her back and the wind is picking them up and playing with them, blowing them around her face like it can’t resist touching her.
I’m at a Memorial Day beach party at Huddle’s Point, and even though I came here with my friends Hunter and Jamie, we’ve quickly split up. Hunter is down by the water trying to woo Cassidy Smith, and Jamie is currently chasing his best friend Cat around the bonfire like they’re still ten.
I head closer towards the fire where Angela is standing, and take a swig from my beer. I watch the flames flicker and dance, the coals glowing bright and sharp in the night. I’ve spent the last nine years with a pathetic, desperate crush on this girl, andtonight, I’m finally going to do something about it. I take another step, now only a few paces from her, and stop.
“Mustering up the courage?” she says without turning around to look at me. Her blonde hair is cast in reds and golds from the flames. I want to reach out and touch it, loop my fingers through one of the perfect ringlets and see how soft it is.
“How’d you know it was me standing here?” I ask instead.
She turns now to face me, meeting my gaze and giving me a grin. “I’m a witch.”
“Now that I can believe,” I say, warmth suffusing me and my nerves vanishing. “Angela Burns, Harborview’s very own ergot-riddled witch.”
“Oh my god, onlyyouwould take something fun and make it about rotting wheat.” She rolls her eyes at me, but I can tell that she’s happy to see me.
“We learned about it in my bio class this year,” I tell her.
“And I learned about it in history.”
“We make a perfect pair. We should coauthor a paper about it,” I quip.
“In your dreams, Steel.”
We both laugh and then just stand there for a moment, basking in the mirth and absorbing one another’s presence. I can’t help it—I love being around this girl, and have for years. Everything she is calls out to me, lights me up inside. And hearing her laugh makes me feel like it’s possible she could feel the same way.
“So,” I start to say.
“Why has it taken you all these years?” she interrupts and asks. “To approach me, I mean.”
I don’t deny what I’m doing; she’d never buy it.
“I have the courage now where I didn’t before,” I say simply.
“Funny, that’s what I was thinking about myself, too,” she says, her smile bright and sharp in the firelight. “This is the first summer I haven’t felt like a kid.”
“We’re barely twenty.”
“Feels an age away from nineteen, though.”
“I haven’t felt like I was a kid since I was twelve,” I say, giving her a goofy smile, even though I mean it. My parents are always busy with my sister or with their own things, and there were definitely moments where I raised myself as a child.
“An old soul to your core, Carter,” she says.
“Something like that.”
We turn and watch the party unfold together. Hunter and Cassidy are sitting down near the fire and it seems his wooing was successful because she’s leaning into his side. And Jamie and Cat have taken to running down the beach after one another.
“Those two are definitely still kids,” Angela murmurs.
“Forever,” I agree.
