Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

PRESLEY

Brock is right that I have a lot of time on my hands right now, and I’m taking advantage of it. When training camp starts in July, my busy football season schedule will start along with it, so I’m enjoying the weeks I have where things are chill. As a training staff, we do have some players coming in over their time off for us to keep tabs on older injuries. For example, right now we have a wide receiver who had ankle surgery at the end of last season, and we’re rehabbing him and hoping he’s going to be back by the time we have our first regular season game in September.

The point is that I’m already halfway through the first book and I just barely suggested this to Brock yesterday. I’d feel weird about maybe getting into this more than him except he texted me fifteen minutes ago with a quote that tells me he’s not far behind.

My back is starting to cramp from lying on my bed half the day reading this book, so I set it aside, confident I can still stay ahead of Brock, and go in search of book two from my old collection. I love the idea of rereading with Brock, and okay, maybe I have this notion of us falling in love through our mutual obsession with this series, and I’m hoping to kick-start that with reading it together. But part of the reason I’m reading my old copy is for Aunt Shannon. I miss her so much, and something about reading the book she gave me helps me feel close to her. I can picture her face when she handed me the book, all hopeful, and the grin when my eyes widened at the cover. It has this dreamy look to it—Lyra with big doe eyes and a creamy complexion whited out by an orbed light in her hands, her brown hair swirling around her with some unknown, magical wind. And Kael, dark haired and brooding in the background. Thirteen-year-old me had a crush on him before I even cracked the already cracked spine. I judged that book by its cover, obviously, and fell in love with the story before I even read a word.

Aunt Shannon read the book that summer, right after I did, and promised me it was the best thing she’d ever read. Looking back, I remember that gleam in her eyes and the crooked smile, and I can interpret how she agreed with me because I was her favorite niece. (Okay, yeah, her only niece.) And we were buddies. She got me. Despite being close to my mom, I had a bond with Aunt Shannon that was a “just us girls” kind of thing.

Right up to the day she died, I told her all about all my crushes, about every guy I thought was cute, and every detail about my relationships, long or short, including the kissing. She probably relayed all of it to Mom, but it didn’t matter. She was my bestie.

I’m rooting around the top shelf of my closet, looking for book two, which is mysteriously not with the rest of my collection on a bookcase in my room, when my gaze lands on the small, shoebox-size storage container Aunt Shannon left me when she died. It’s been almost a year, and I haven’t been able to look into it yet. I grab it and step down from the step stool, holding it carefully in both hands as I walk to my bed. Tears immediately well in my eyes, and I almost take it back, but what happened with Brock last week has given me new courage. I think Aunt Shannon would have been disappointed that I’ve been this scared to open it.

“It’s not that, Shan,” I say out loud. My voice cracks. I swipe a tissue from the nightstand next to my bed. “Once I open this, that’s it. There’s nothing more.” And she’s gone. Forever. As long as the stuff in this box stays there, I still have things about Aunt Shannon to discover. Once I open it, they’re just memories, like everything else I have left of her.

I stare down at the box, telling myself I’m gonna do it. I’m going to open the box.

Aunt Shannon had ALS, and it took her from us when she was only forty-eight. When I was younger, she always felt so much older than me, but now that I’m almost thirty, forty-eight feels a lot younger, just around the corner. The day after she got the diagnosis, she started putting stuff together in these little storage containers for everyone close to her: Mom, Dad, me, and her boyfriend, Thomas. Mom had snort-laughed when she opened hers the day after the funeral and found a pile of sticky notes with furniture and clothing items listed that Aunt Shannon wanted her to have but was still using. When I couldn’t look in mine right away, I told Mom to open it so she could gather up the stuff Aunt Shannon wanted me to have: the LA Rays hoodie I’d given her for Christmas the year I got the training job with the Rays and a few items of jewelry. The hoodie is in my closet. I shoved the jewelry into the box and closed the lid back up. Thomas asked Mom to do it for him too. He couldn’t bear to go through her stuff, to see any of it. It was hard to lose Aunt Shannon so quickly. It was also hard to see how much her death shattered the man who loved her.

Now I put my hand on the lid and rest it there. Then I laugh. “I’m acting like your ashes are in here.” I lift the lid without further ado. Like I’m pulling off Kinesio tape quickly from an athlete because it’s funny to see those big guys flinch at such a little thing.

I set aside the tangled jewelry I put in there a year ago and sift through the box. There’s a small notebook with a floral cover, full of Aunt Shannon’s handwriting—they look like quotes. I flip absently through the pages, knowing if I stop on any one that I won’t make it through looking at anything else in this box. There’s a thick envelope with my name on the outside. The flap isn’t sealed shut, and inside is a stack of folded papers.

The first one is labeled, Open on your 30 th birthday . The others are similar: When you meet “The One,” When you get married, When you have your first baby, On your fortieth birthday , and one that nearly undoes me, When your mom dies.

I shuffle When you meet “The One” to the front of the pile, indulging in the warmth swirling in my chest in hope that maybe it’s happened. Brock and I are just texting. I have a crush, yes, one that’s growing day by day as we text. Maybe it could turn into something?

I stuff them all back in their envelope and set them aside. There are a few trinkets she collected from trips with me. One is a keychain with “Pumas” written in vintage script from when she came to Houston to see the Rays play them at Christmas a couple years ago. She crashed at my hotel with me, and it’s a memory I still treasure since she died a year later. There’s a picture in a frame of us at Disney World right after I graduated from high school. Aunt Shannon took me to celebrate my last moments of freedom, she called them, before I went to college and started the grueling undergrad program for my path to PT school.

My phone dings, and I welcome the interruption. Opening the box is as heavy as I suspected it would be, even if the memories all warm me. Even if I’m grateful that Aunt Shannon took the time to put all this together to help me remember her. To help me remember the good life we had together, as short as it was.

Brock: I’m seeing Lyra’s first betrayal with new eyes. Hear me out. What if the big reveal in the last book is her identity …

Brock: The Obsidian Queen

I snort. Lyra would never. I return the items I’ve left out on the bed to the box and put the lid back on to sort through more later. For now I need a break.

Presley: No other reason a woman would have that much power except to take over the world.

Brock: No, no, no.

Brock: #girlpower and all that.

Brock: Just saying it would be the biggest twist.

Presley: Pretty much everyone agrees that Seren Moonvale is the Obsidian Queen.

Brock: Too easy.

Presley: Simplest answer is usually the right one.

Brock: She’s literally cursed from the dark magic of the Obsidian Kingdom.

Presley: Or so she says…

Brock:

Presley: Lyra has had to do some bad things, yes. But she would never, EVER kill Kael’s brother. That’s unforgiveable. Kael and Lyra 4evah.

Brock responds with a GIF of a woman snort laughing and almost spitting out her drink, and I grin at the thought that I might have made him react like that.

Brock: Maybe The Obsidian Queen is misunderstood. Maybe there’s something else going on here.

Presley: If only there was a sixteenth book.

He sends a link to a new article I haven’t seen yet. An anonymous source is claiming that they have a friend who was an editor on the rumored sixteenth book who can’t talk about it, but the book is definitely coming out this year.

Presley: Seems sketchy. Friend of a friend ?

Brock: Playing the heartstrings of poor, devoted fans. If it’s legit, the leak was planned. I guarantee it.

Presley:

Brock: Already at the throne room battle scene. You?

The throne room? That’s nearly three-quarters through the book. I glance over at my nightstand, where I’d laid down my open book at page 175, not even halfway through. The first book is by far the shortest in the series. If Brock beats me through this one, I’ll never catch up.

Presley: Psh. Almost done, rookie.

I smirk at the lie, but I have all night, and Brock is an early riser. (Too many texts at five a.m. for my taste, even if they are from him.)

Brock:

Presley: Shhh, please. Reading.

I grab my book and my phone, splurging by opening the QuickEats app so I won’t have to waste time figuring out food. By the time I’m settled comfortably on my couch, book in hand, my late lunch is on its way.