Page 85 of Bring Me Your Midnight

“She said to stay away from her,” my mother says, putting her arm around my shoulders and guiding me inside.

“I’m not talking to you!” Wolfe yells, moving after us. Galen comes up beside him and grips his shoulder, keeping him in place.

“Let her go, son,” he says.

“No!” I hear Wolfe struggle against his dad’s hold. “Tana!” he shouts, and I pause, the first time I’ve ever heard my nickname in his mouth. It sounds so beautiful, like I’ve never really heard it before this moment, like it was only ever meant to be spoken by him. But then my mother pulls me forward, and I start walking again, far away from here. I keep my head down to avoid the eyes that follow us, the witches watching from dark corners and the top of the staircase.

“Bye, Mortana,” Lily calls from behind her mother’s legs, and it takes all my strength not to break down right here.

“I’m sorry we never got to color together,” I say, and then my mother leads me to the door, and I let her.

“Tana!” Another breath. “Dad, let me go,” Wolfe pleads, and I can hear the tears in his voice. “Tana!” he shouts again.

Then the door closes behind us, and all I hear is the windthrough the trees and the waves on the shore and all the words he never said.

When we get to the road, I don’t turn to look at the manor, because magic or not, I know that it’s gone.

Gone—nothing more than a memory. A bitter, heartbreaking memory I will spend my life trying to forget.

My mother doesn’t speak to me as we walk home, but she keeps her arm around my shoulders, a tight, firm grip that lets me know she’s here. Even after everything, after I used dark magic and ran away, she’s here. And I can’t bring myself to pull back from her, to set her lies in the space between us, because I don’t think I could handle the distance they’d create. There’s already so much of that between me and the people I love most. Too much.

When we turn onto our street, my dad is standing in front of the house, waiting. I remember him thrashing in the water, coming after me, desperate to keep me safe, and I can’t hold myself together anymore.

I run to him, and he opens his arms wide. He envelops me, tells me it will be okay, tells me that he loves me.

I sob against his chest and repeat the wordsI’m sorryover and over again.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

I never thought I was perfect, but I thought I was better thanthis. Better than turning my back on my family, my coven, my magic. Better than falling for a boy I can never have. My heart is broken, but so is everything else. Bodybroken. Soulbroken.

My dad leads me inside and pours me some tea, sitting with me as I cry. My mom covers me in a blanket and kisses my head and tells me nothing has changed.

We don’t ever have to speak of what happened tonight.

We can move forward. I can accept the consequences of practicing dark magic, marry Landon, and everything will be right again.

I want to make everything right again.

Wolfe’s manor is not the only place that held a lie. This home has them, too, lies so big I’m shocked they even fit. But without Wolfe, without Ivy, without my parents, where would I go?

I finish my tea and get ready for bed. I brush my teeth and wash my face and think about how just hours ago I was in Wolfe’s bathroom in front of his mirror, marveling at how I had changed the entire trajectory of my life.

Marveling because I’d fallen in love with someone who saw me for everything except what I was supposed to be.

Marveling because I couldn’t hear all the words he wasn’t saying.

I crawl into bed. The cold metal of the necklace he gave me presses into my skin, and I rip it off and throw it across the room. There’s a soft knock on the door, and my mother steps inside. She comes and pulls the covers up to my chin, then sits down on the edge of the bed.

“How long have you known?” I ask, my voice quiet and unsteady.

“About you and Wolfe?”

I nod.

“I didn’t put everything together until earlier tonight, when I saw him in the water,” she says. “Then I knew.”