Chapter 33

33

As I walk out of the gallery, I am completely struck by the intensity of this earth. I can feel so much —the way the water inside the trees is the same water gathering in the clouds above us. The way the streetlamps, making everything look a little bit brassy and gold, are a speck of what lightning is, which is a speck of what the sun is. How we are all made up of light and water, sun, stars, oceans.

"Is this what it's like?" I breathe, looking up, up, up. The sky is nearly black, but the last rays of sun illumine the clouds in a dirty apricot glow. I take a breath and more clouds come. I exhale and they push away. I raise my hand and rain flicks onto it, and when I drop it, the air clears of water entirely.

"Yes," Sage says, smiling. "Like you can feel how everything intertwines and touches each other. And how you're a part of that, too."

"How could she take this from me?" I ask again, though there isn't really an answer. It doesn't matter. Because what was lost has now returned.

She returned. I returned.

"I don't mean to interrupt your revelations," Sky says to me. "But isn't that Abuela Erika over there?"

I turn, and at the back of a restaurant, at one of the tables under a sea of fairy lights, sits a woman who is indeed Erika. She's glowering at me as though I'd just struck her with lightning. I laugh—I can't help it. Nothing will ruin this for me. I'm no longer broken, like she said. I'm no longer unlovable.

"Ready to go?" Sage asks, wrapping an arm around me.

I nod, and we make our way toward the car. But before we get there, someone stops us, hissing, "Flores brujas!"

I roll my eyes when I see it's Erika walking up. "You." She points at me. Behind her, her dinner companions—older women, probably friends or something—stare wide-eyed. "You think you can keep my grandson from me, and my great-grandchildren and get away with it?"

"Didn't Carter tell you what would happen if you disrespected me again?" I say, and she flinches. I want to feel bad for her, but he set those boundaries. He said he'd never speak to her if she verbally abused me again.

"You got in his head!" she declares. "Why else would he say such horrible things to his grandmother? You and Eugenio." She shakes her head. "I kept that money from him as long as I could. Money and women"—she looks over me and my sisters—"Flores women, especially, make men weak!"

"Ma'am, with all due respect, I think you need to get laid." Sky says it so seriously that Erika just blinks at her for a few seconds, speechless, while Sage bursts into laughter.

But I'm stuck on something. "What do you mean, you gave Carter the money? That's the whole reason why—" I break off. That's why he married me , I don't say.

"What is this? Now you've messed up my grandson's memory and sense of reason?" Erika gives me another nasty glare. "I waited a whole week. Begging him the whole while to get an annulment. But he kept saying, No, no, Abuela, I need the inheritance for my new life now . All that money at once would make him stupid, make him do stupid things like stay married to you !"

I blink at her and then I look at Sage. "Carter already has the money? Like, for real? You're not just babbling here?"

"I can't believe he did this to me!" Erika is howling. I'm not even sure she's heard the question.

"She's had a lot to drink." One of her dinner companions has walked up, putting her arm on Erika's shoulder. "Come on, Erika. Let's finish our salmon, no?"

I'm being taken away, too, by both Sky and Sage, who help me into the car. I stare out the window when Sky starts the engine, my mind going over the series of events that have happened since Erika came over to us, rambling like reality had escaped her long ago. Carter, saying his grandmother won't give him the money till he's married. Him letting her walk all over me and me thinking it was because he didn't want to endanger his money.

"Carter already has the money." I tap my fingers against the car door, my heart oddly feeling like it's being ripped apart. "He told me we would just stay married till he got it. And then that would be it. The marriage would be done." I close my eyes tight, cursing under my breath because I think they may be stinging. "We can go our separate ways now. It'll be like we were never married to begin with, I guess."

"Is that really what you want?" Sky asks.

It's immature, but I can only shrug in response. Because no…it's not what I want. It's kind of the opposite of what I want, but I'm too scared to be honest in this moment. It feels like there's too much at stake.

Sage breaks my thoughts with her own opinion on the subject. "Teal. I think it's obvious to all of us that you're falling for him. You don't have to end the marriage right now. You can, you know—"

"—stay married to your best friend," Sky finishes.

Stay married to my best friend. I run a hand over my chest. Those words make the whole area feel less like it's breaking and more like everything is actually…okay. "I mean. Yeah, that makes sense. Carter told me…" My breath catches. Did Carter tell me he loves me back? When I first said those words to him?

I think to that moment. Me being brave and so proud of that bravery in the movie theater. He said I told myself I wouldn't make love to you until you fell in love with me and I tried so hard to resist you, Teal, but I never could . But he didn't exactly say the words I love you in return. "He shared that he had feelings for me, too," I finish lamely.

But, honestly…did he? It's one thing for him to say he couldn't resist me. That he wouldn't "make love" to me until he knew it wasn't just a fuck to me.

But what about love ? Is Carter capable of it? Specifically with me ? Teal Flores. Bad temper. Probable shopping addiction. Runs way too much.

Yes, I've gotten my soul back, so there isn't a danger of me attracting tornadoes and hail to Cranberry at the drop of a hat, but…ultimately, I'm still me . What if Erika is right? That no matter what, I'm irreparably broken?

No one else would ever want you. At the exact worst time, these ugly words bounce into my head, gripping too tight. Not letting go no matter how much I will them to.

"Do you want to go back to, uh, his place?" Sky asks.

Just three minutes ago, before I realized Carter never said he loved me…I would've said yes. I would've gone to Carter's place—which I've begun to think of as our place, our home—and told him I knew about the money. And talked it out, confident enough that he would want this. To stay married to me.

But now, even with just those series of insecure thoughts and feelings and memories, I'm so unsure. I feel about as balanced on a skinny fallen tree trunk over a wide, roaring river. All I want is something deeply familiar—a home full of painted glass windows and a sunflower yellow kitchen and an attic filled with the howls of wind-ghosts.

"No," I finally say. "Take me to Nadia's, please."