Fractured Souls(88)

“Why the hell would you think that?” Alex’s voice is sharp and rumbles with fury as he sits up straight, slamming his hands down on the handles of the chair. “I wasn’t supposed to see her.”
“I understand that.” My mom’s demeanor is professionally calm. “However, I need to know if you went behind Stephan’s back and snuck off to see her almost as though it was out of your control.”
Alex glances out at the ocean, his eyes pools of black in the moonlight. “It was something I couldn’t help…going there, I mean. I didn’t think anything would happen.” He rips his concentration away from the water and rotates in the chair to look at me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.” There’s genuine honesty in his voice.
I gape at him unfathomably. “Why didn’t you say something?” I lean in and lower my voice. “After everything we’ve been through, it doesn’t make any sense.”
He lets his knee fall to the side and rests it against mine as his back bends and his body moves closer to mine. “At first it was because I thought I couldn’t—because I was still my father’s puppet. Then… well, I had just left you there, crying in the middle of the parking lot surrounded by a ton of strangers. I didn’t want to own up to doing that. ”
I swallow hard, remembering the day when I fell to my knees and cried for the very first time in the middle of the University of Wyoming’s parking lot, my chest feeling like it’d been ripped open. I could barely get up afterward and I had such a hard time dealing with it that when I got home I thought about taking very drastic measures to turn it off—I thought about ending my life.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, lacing our fingers as he takes ahold of my hand. His skin is deliciously warm and is humming with electric sparks that briefly make everything around us—problems and people—vanish. “I wish I could take it back—do things differently—but I can’t.”
“Okay.” It’s all I say—all I can say. Not because I’m angry with him, either. I actually feel very sorry for him. Beaten up by his father and taught to be unemotional. No wonder he’s so complicated.
I turn to my mother. “What’s the point of all of this? I don’t understand.”
“The point is that all of you are connected,” she says. “And that connection is why you’ve all had such messed up paths.”
“What’s the connection?” Alex asks, looking at me and not her, as though he’s trying to see into my thoughts.
My mom takes a deep breath and glances up at the starry sky. “The star.”
 

Chapter 31
 
“The star,” Alex, Aislin, and I say simultaneously while Laylen opts to stay quiet, his eyes locked on the space of deck in front of his feet, his expression undecipherable.
“How does that connect to all of us?” I question. “It’s only in me, so…” I trail off as a gut-wrenching thought occurs to me. Electricity that flows between two people. Sparks. An irrational, overwhelming, obsession with each other. Always melting into each other’s arms. Every time I’m around Alex it’s there. I can feel it buzzing right now, a gentle current flowing off his fingers and onto mine as he holds my hand.
“Does… Does Alex have a star’s power in him, too?” I ask and I feel his fingers tremble.
Alex’s head whips in my direction. “Are you crazy?”
“Maybe,” I say and then hold my breath as I wait for my mom to answer.
She reluctantly nods. “Not a separate star, but the same one.”
Alex shakes his head in refusal of accepting the ugly truth. He tugs his fingers through his hair, forgetting to let go of my hand and my fingers end up going with his hair too. “No… There’s no way.” He stands to his feet and pulls me with him, then sits back down and I fall back into my chair. I think about taking my hand away from him, but I’m worried he might break apart if I do. He looks so defenseless and lost right now. After a lot of heavy breathing and cursing, he collects himself and says, “How?”
“Because what happened with the star wasn’t an accident,” my mother explains, gesturing at all of us. “None of this was. All of this—all of you—happened for a reason. The star being split up and placed inside you two, Aislin learning black magic, and Laylen turning into a Vampire. None of that was an accident.”
My heart thuds in my chest as I remember what Nicholas said in the forest. I glance over Laylen and his head is hung low, his elbows stationed on his knees. He almost looks like a statue cut from marble, created to portray the definition of anguish.