Childers Grove

I stood atop of the bluff above the sea. The mist rolled off the ocean mixing with the smoke from the wildfires. None of the rays from the setting sun seemed to penetrate its wall. The sky was turning an eerie orange. What should’ve been a hot August evening was growing cold and a chill set in on my skin as I watched the mist and smoke curling.

Closing my eyes, I listened to the pulsing white noise of the waves. I could feel the thick air settling in my chest, but it was my name on the wind that had me standing straighter, constricting my arms around myself tighter, as if I could protect myself here. Opening my eyes, I knew full well there would be no one around me. The voice was echoing in my mind with each wave that crashed below. No good could come from listening to that voice.

I walked back inside my little cottage that had been waiting for me. A thick layer of dust had collected since I’d decided never to return to Childers Grove. Look how that turned out, I thought to myself. Grabbing my keys from the seashell-shaped dish sitting on the entryway table, I pulled my thick green sweater on before heading out to the town where I would quell the rumors about my return.

When I’d made my way back into town earlier today, only stopping briefly at the little supermarket in town – the only supermarket in town – I’d started hearing the whispers. They did double-takes when I passed them by.

Wine. Crackers. A loaf of bread. Cheese. Ham. Eggs. Coffee. Half & half. Some toilet paper. I recited my shopping list in my head as I made my way down the few short aisles. I was staring between the only two toilet bowl cleaners on the shelf when I heard a voice over my shoulder that made me jump out of my skin.

“A third one’s not going to pop up on the shelf the longer you stare at it, honey.” A short, older woman stood with stooped shoulders directly behind me. The old woman looked even more frightened than I was when she realized who she’d spoken to. Quirking her tattooed brow she mumbled, “Then again, you might just make that happen.” She stepped back to her shopping cart and ambled back down the aisle, muttering my least favorite word on the planet. Witch. I rolled my eyes and grabbed the toilet bowl cleaner off the shelf without looking.

At the market I’d seen the flyer for the First Flame festival. I can’t believe it’s still happening. Then again, nothing ever changed in Childers Grove. Especially people’s prejudices. It wasn’t so much a festival as it was a huge bonfire on the beach to signify entering the fall harvest season. In reality, the date marked the town’s darker history when they burned women on the beach merely for being different. When I was in high school, it was a chance to sneak off with boys. Well, one boy.

I was driving around the curving two-lane road that took me down to the beach. Why am I going to this stupid festival? I couldn’t answer my own question. I kept feeling that tug on my skin, like it was drawing me to the beach. The irony was not lost on me that I had come back into town on the exact night this town thought it had rid itself of witches nearly a hundred years ago – and then again, a decade ago when I left, the last of the Ashwell women. My heart ached at the thought. The last.

I pulled my Ford Bronco into a parking stall but hesitated before getting out. I knew the whispers were inevitable, but I couldn’t ignore the pull to be here. Not everyone in this town disliked me. I had had friends here once, I tried to remind myself. Be brave, Sera. Blowing out a deep breath, I exited my car, wrapping the sweater around me tighter.

Walking unevenly across the sand, I approached the massive bonfire as it raged, warming my bones. Why this town insisted on this ridiculous pyre in the middle of a burn ban was beyond my comprehension, but traditions and all that.

People were milling about, talking and laughing with each other. Music was playing from somewhere in the distance, mixing with the waves crashing on the shore.

“Seraphine?!” I’d recognize that voice anywhere. I turned to see a woman with tan olive skin and bright amber brown eyes approaching me from around the bonfire. She had her dark brown hair in two braids reaching down to her waist. She’d aged by ten years, and there were laugh lines around her eyes as she squealed and rushed towards me.

“Emily!” I embraced my old friend as she gripped me hard around the shoulders with one arm, her other holding a bottle of beer.

“Is that really you?” Emily pulled away, holding me at arms’ length and scanned me from head to toe twice.

“You look older,” I said bluntly. Emily cackled and embraced me again, harder this time.

“You bitch. When did you get back? Why are you back? I was resigned to only see you again at your funeral.” We both laughed

“You wish you’d be invited to my funeral,” I said.

Emily shook her head, her shoulders shaking with laughter. “Don’t avoid the question.”

I scanned the crowd quickly, noting the stares. “Oh, you know. I had to finally come take care of the cottage.” I trailed off, realizing I hadn’t come up with a good story for why I was truly back.

Emily eyed me warily, but she let it go. She looped her arm through mine and started pulling me towards the crowd. People parted for us, but Emily didn’t seem to notice. Em never noticed that stuff. That was why she’d been my best friend.

“Let’s get you a drink. You still drink, right?” She questioned me, as if she’d be disappointed if I said no.

“Yes, Em. I still drink. I’ll have what you’re having.” Whatever nondescript beer they must sell at the grocery.

Emily walked us over to a line of coolers at the edge of the beach and handed me the cold bottle. We clinked the beers, and each took a swig. Em smiled at me over the beer and we both laughed.

“You look good, Sera. A little tired, maybe, but good.” Emily said.

“Yeah. I’ve only been back a few hours and it’s already starting to weigh on me.”

“Oh, just ignore everyone.” She said with a wink. “I do.” I barked out a laugh. Emily always knew her worth and dared anyone to argue with her.

“Okay, tell me the key players.” We’d done this for years. Emily had a knack for finding out everything about everyone.

“Well, Danny and Kasey got married a few years ago and have a baby girl. Lance can’t hold down a job, let alone a girlfriend.” Emily walked me around the outskirts of the crowd surrounding the bonfire, arm and arm, while she pointed subtly at some of the people she mentioned. “Oh, and Liz married that girl that worked at the Bait & Tackle in the next town – you remember. Everyone knew they’d end up together, being the only lesbians in a twenty-mile radius. It was only a matter of time. Then, suddenly they were moving in together – and Boom – married. Lesbians move quick.” She said with a shake of her head and another swig of beer.

Emily finished listing most of our graduating class. Glaringly, she’d left one name off that list. Emily had fetched us more beer, and she extended a fresh, cold bottle to me now. As if reading my mind, she started, “As for you-know-who-”

“Nope. Don’t. Please.” I said. I didn’t want to hear what he’d been up to, what he’d made of himself since I left. Or rather, who he’d ended up with.

Emily looked nervous – nervous! It was a strange emotion to see on her as she took a swig of her beer.

“What?” I said. But as soon as the words left my mouth, I could feel it. The air was charged and thicker. The crowd had quieted. What happened to the music?

I felt my chest constricting. That familiar, incessant pull tugging from inside of me to someone standing behind me.

“Sera?” His voice hit me like a lightning bolt. Electric. Sharp. So painful. It was a whisper and a shout all at once. It sounded like the ocean. And I could feel his eyes on my back.

Emily, shooting wide-eyed glances from my face to the face I knew from memory, sipped her beer audibly. Inhaling, I turned around to look up into dark blue eyes that looked so much like the churning sea behind us. His straight nose, the barely-there dimple that would deepen when he smiled. His ashy blond hair was longer and shaggier than the last time I’d seen him. His frame larger and more – just more.

“Everett Graves.” I nodded to him, trying to maintain any semblance of chill. He stared as if he didn’t believe I was truly standing here. Trust me, no one is as shocked as me, I thought to myself. Everett audibly swallowed.

“Well, I’m just gonna go. Over here. And, just, find someone else to not talk to, while you both, not talk,” Emily rambled and before I could grab her arm to make her stay, she’d shot off to a cluster of people apparently eavesdropping.

I mentally scolded her in my mind as I stood before him. “Em’s still the worst.” I tried to say, lightheartedly. At the same time, Everett said, “What are you doing here?”

I never imagined running into Everett again. I never imagined he’d be so cold. He just stared at me, his eyes growing darker. The waves sounded like they were crashing even harder now. What happened to the damn music?

“I had things to take care of. Here. In person. The cottage. My mother’s things.” Was I rambling? Everett started walking towards me. He was too close. When he was a hair’s breadth away, I struggled to find anything else to say. I struggled to breathe.

“Hmm” was all he said. He just kept staring at me. His eyes – Goddess help me – his eyes were the deepest blue. I thought my dreams did them justice, but they were the raging sea. They were the push and pull that had kept me rolling in his current for as long as I could remember. They always felt like drowning. They felt like my salvation too. Beautiful and terrible.

“You have a beard now,” was all I managed to say. The urge to reach my hand up and touch his jaw, to feel the scratchiness. I didn’t realize my hand had moved on its own until I touched his face and that electricity snapped us both out of our reverie. I blinked and Everett’s hand was clasped around mine – the one still holding his cheek. His hand had callouses that scratched against my hand. I wanted to feel them elsewhere and immediately tried to shake that image away.

“Let’s go.” Everett said and turned back the way he came, with me in tow.

“What?” I squeaked. “Go where? Everett! Stop.” I tried to yank my hand out of his, but he gripped my hand tighter.

“We’re talking.” He grunted. I yanked my hand, trying to make this brute of a man to stop dragging me across the beach.

“This-” I emphasized him pulling me along by shaking the hand he still held, “- is not talking. It’s kidnapping.”

“No one on this beach is going to stop me.” He had a point. I shot a glance over my shoulder back at Emily, who had a knowing smirk on her face. I narrowed my eyes back, letting her know I will kick your ass before the darkness engulfed me the further we walked away from the bonfire.

“Everett – would you just. Ev, stop!” He stilled when I called him Ev. But he still clutched my hand. I could tell he was breathing heavily from the rapid rise and fall of his chest. His large, muscled chest. Goddess, he’s gotten bigger in ten years. I snapped my focus back to what was happening.

“Why.” It wasn’t a question. It was a demand. Why I’d left? Why I’d come back? There were too many possibilities that I just stared back at him.

“Why what?” I asked hesitantly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ah. That why. “Seraphine.” Everett turned to face me again, this time, our chests practically touched, and I could feel his barely contained trembling. Or was that me?

“I – I didn’t know how, I couldn’t… How did you find out?”

“Does it matter? You should have told me. You just left!”

“What difference would it have made?” I challenged. “Nothing’s changed.”

Everett looked like I’d slapped him. Then he drew his thick, dark eyebrows together. “Nothing’s changed? Nothing’s changed! Sera – you’re back. Everything’s changed.” Everett spread his arms wide, dropping my hand. I felt the absence of his heat immediately.

“It doesn’t change anything. I’m signing the papers on my mother’s cottage on Monday and then I’ll be gone. You’ll never see me again, and we won’t have to worry about this stupid-”

“You can’t be serious.” He looked at me as if I’d just said the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. He laughed. A guttural, deep laugh that shook my bones. He stepped back, scrubbing his hand against his beard.

“I’m signing the papers on Monday, and I’ll be gone. End of story.”

“If you think I’m letting you leave again, you’re more insane than I thought.” I gaped at him. I opened and closed my mouth as though I was truly drowning now. The wind kicked up and his shaggy hair was whipping into his eyes. My auburn hair escaped from its bun, whipping in the wind.

“What did you say?” I asked.

Everett closed the distance between us again. This time, engulfing the sides of my face with his hands. Impossibly close. We hadn’t been this close since-

“I said, I’m not letting you go again, Seraphine Ashwell. Curse be damned. I’m never letting you walk out of my life again. Do you understand?” That’s when I saw it. The wind hadn’t just kicked up. There was a storm rolling in. Just like I knew it would, being so close. Lightning struck out in the ocean.

“Everett–” I tried to protest but his proximity was robbing me of any cohesive thoughts. Everett moved one of his hands to my beating heart, grabbing my hand and placing it on his chest.

“It’s the same, Seraphine. We’re the same.” I stared into the raging storm in Everett’s eyes. The one forming around us couldn’t compare. He had me. I nodded.

He brought his brow down to touch mine. He was taller than I remember. Then again, he was more everything than I remembered. The wind howled, but I just felt – and heard – our pulses beating at the same frantic beat.

After a pause, I said, “So, Emily told you everything?” I needed to know what he knew but it had to come from him. The words wouldn’t come out of my throat – that was the curse’s effect. I couldn’t tell the one person it mattered to most.

“Yes. She finally told me about four years after you left. I was a mess, Seraphine. I didn’t understand how you could just leave.”

“I need to hear you say it.” He nodded, breathing in.

“You’re an Ashwell. I’m a Graves. My family took part in – were the instigators,” he corrected, “in burning your ancestors at the stake on this beach, on this very night. My great-great-grandfather betrayed your ancestors. We’re meant to fall in love but never be together because this stupid curse makes all hell break loose.” Everett motioned in the direction of the raging sea. “But your lineage could never tell mine that the curse existed. We were meant to find each other and never fully be together.”

Tears escaped my eyes now. The words had been on my lips since that summer ten years ago. When we’d tried to escape fate and ignore the consequences. The consequences had been my last living family – my mother.

“Look at me, Sera.” His voice was a dangerous caress. I opened my tear-filled eyes. He had to say the words. I know Emily told him for this very moment.

“I, Everett Graves, accept you, Seraphine Ashwell, as you truly are. I will protect and defend you at all costs and will love you with my dying breath.”

On cue, thunder crashed, the sky lit up with veins of lightning. I could feel the tether binding us together, thicker than ever. And as if the sea itself was holding its breath, Everett’s mouth came crashing onto mine in a melding of lips and tongues. His breath was my oxygen. The inferno in me met the thunderous waves in him in a clash of heat and water – love and pain.

But this time… this time, it could last.

And maybe – just maybe – there wouldn’t be any consequences.

And if there were?

Well, I’d survived once.