I sit down on my bed with a bowl of soup, and just as I’m about to start eating, there’s a knock at the door. I almost don’t answer it, but with the window open and music playing, it would be obvious I’m ignoring whoever it is.
I set my soup on my nightstand and open the door. I’m surprised to see Paige on the other side, mouth set in a straight line, hair smoothed back into a ponytail. She steps inside but doesn’t say anything.
“Hi,” I say, walking back to my bed and picking up my soup. “I was just eating lunch.”
Paige looks around the cabin, and I turn off my music. The floor creaks as she moves through the small room.
“I can’t stop thinking about the blizzard,” she finally says.
“I know. I’m still surprised we were able to dissipate it.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not what I mean. I can’t stop thinking about the way it felt.” She sounds angry, but I can tell she’s embarrassed, the way she was when she asked me to kiss her almost two years ago.
I know what she means, though.
“The first time it happened, it felt like I was falling in love, but instead of taking months or years, it was compressed into a single moment.” I say it as if it’s normal, but the truth is that I haven’t stopped thinking about that first time with Sang, even though I’ve practiced this magic dozens of times now.
Untangling my legs from his, standing up, breaking eye contact—it all felt insurmountable, as though I’d have to die right there in that field because I’d never work up the strength to leave.
“With Sang?” Paige’s voice brings me back to the present.
I nod.
“Did you—” She shakes her head and abandons her question.
“Did I feel it with you?”
She’s still standing in the middle of my cabin, but she looks in my direction, waiting for me to answer.
“It was different. It seems to magnify any intimacy there is between me and the other person. When I demonstrated on Ms. Suntile, it didn’t feel like there was a special connection between us. It just magnified the relationship that was already there, so it was cold and impersonal. Same with Mr. Burrows. But with Sang, and you, my magic recognizes the connection we have, and it feels intense and visceral as a result.”
I pause and take a sip of water. Paige doesn’t say anything, so I keep going. “I think it’s part feeling and part intuition. I can tell when my magic doesn’t trust the person we’re pulling from. I wish I could have done this with Mr. Burrows right when he arrived; I would have known he was bad from the beginning.”
“But then we would have missed out on seeing you punch him, which would have been a shame.” She says it seriously, and I can’t help but laugh.
“I’m never going to live that down,” I say.
“Never.”
I set my soup on the nightstand again and shift on the bed. “It felt like remembering,” I finally say.
“What?”
“When we stopped the blizzard together. It felt like remembering. Remembering when we were close friends, remembering when our friendship gave way to sleepless nights. Remembering all the things I loved about you, and remembering all the hurt and fighting and pain. It felt like our entire relationship played out over the course of one storm.”
Paige breathes out as if she’s relieved. “It was like that for me too. I wish I could get it out of my head.”
She pauses and looks down, and I can tell she wants to say something else. “Tell me if I’m out of line, but I got a very strong sense that you think I blame you for Nikki’s death.”
It’s not what I’m expecting, and my throat gets tight. “Don’t you?” My words are so quiet, I’m not sure if I actually said them out loud.
For the first time since she got here, Paige looks me straight in the eye. “I have never blamed you for Nikki’s death.”
As soon as she says it, something inside me breaks free. My eyes burn, and I try to hold back the tears threatening to spill over.
Paige sits down on the bed next to me. “I blame you for a lot of things, but what happened to Nikki has never been one of them.” Her voice isn’t soft or sweet, because she isn’t trying to make me feel better. That’s not her way. But she never says anything she doesn’t mean, and I’m overwhelmed by the weight of her words. It feels as if I locked myself in a cage when Nikki died, and after years of being trapped inside, Paige has just opened the door for me.
“Why not?”
“Because all you did was love her.” She says it so simply, and when tears slip down my cheeks, I hurry to wipe them away.
“It was my fault,” I say, my body shaking with the memory of it.
“It was an accident. You didn’t know what would happen,” Paige says, her voice almost annoyed, as if she’s speaking the most obvious of truths. “You have to stop blaming yourself.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Well, figure it out, because you deserve some peace.”
I look at her then. “Mr. Hart said the same thing to me once.”
“He was a wonderful person.”
“The best.”
Paige stands and walks to my door, bends over to pet Nox. “You seem to attract the best,” she says, her eyes drifting to one of Sang’s illustrations on the wall.
“He’s really special,” I say.
“I was talking about me,” she says, rolling her eyes. “But yeah, he’s all right.”
I barely register the way her mouth tugs up on one side before she pushes through the door, letting it swing shut behind her.
Chapter Thirty-One
“You’re allowed to love yourself.”
—A Season for Everything
The Spring Fling has been perfect, everything I could have hoped for in a season-end celebration. It’s just winding down, the huge
