Shattered Promises 02 - Fractured Souls by Jessica Sorensen (motivational books for students TXT) 📕

“Why don’t you start with the day that Gemma’s soul was detached,” my mom patiently suggests. “Do you remember what happened that day?”

He glances at me and I raise my eyebrows at him as I lean back in the chair, thrumming my fingers against the armrests, implying to go ahead because I’m dying to hear what he has to say about this.

He shuts his eyes, his chest expanding as he breathes in the ocean air. “She and I were hiding out in that little fort in the side of the hill,” he says, his eyelids fluttering open. “Because earlier my father told us that Gemma had to go away and I didn’t want her to. So I ran away with her, very stupidly thinking that if we did, he wouldn’t make her go when he found us.”

I touch the palm of my hand and outline the faint scar, remembering the vision I saw. He’d cut my hand and his, saying the words forem as we pressed our palms together. What does the damn word mean?

Alex balls up his own hand as if he’s trying to hide his scar. “He ended up taking her away from me and I never saw her again... Well, until my dad made me enroll in college so I could try to get to the bottom of why her emotions were surfacing again.”

“And what happened during all those years when you didn’t see Gemma?” my mother asks.

His jaw goes taught and he clenches his hands even tighter, yet his expression is surprisingly stoic. “Basically, my father beat the shit out of me so I’d learn to feel pain over emotion. He said it was an important part of being a Keeper or whatever.” He slumps back in the chair and flexes out his fingers. “Who the fuck cares?”

Laylen and I trade an astonished look, seeming equally as surprised, though my mom and Aislin appear rationally calm, like they expected it.

“What about you Aislin?” she asks. “What was your life like?”

Aislin scrapes at her nail polish and tucks a leg underneath her. “I was taught to be a very confident Witch. I didn’t go to Wicca school, though. I was trained at home by a Witch named Estella.”

“Estella Evernandy?” my mom says sullenly. “Of the Evernandy Clan.”

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Aislin replies, coiling a strand of her hair around her finger. “But why do you sound so upset?”

“Do you know anything about the Evernandy Clan?” my mom asks, her voice attentive.

Aislin shrugs, putting her foot back onto the floor as she unwinds the hair from her finger. “Yeah, that they come from a very powerful bloodline.” She gathers her golden blonde hair and secures it in a messy bun with a rubber band that’s on her wrist.

“A black magic bloodline,” my mom explains. “Aislin, your father had you taught to learn black magic.”

Aislin shakes her head in denial. “No, he wouldn’t do that,” she insists. “I know it.”

“Yes, he would,” Alex mutters, staring at his lap with his brows furrowed. “Don’t deny things that are clearly possible.”

“Shut up.” Aislin slumps back in the chair and stomps her foot on the deck. “We don’t know her. She might be lying.”

“I doubt it.” Alex frowns at my mom. “But I really don’t get what any of this has to do with the star’s power and the end of the world, which is what we should be focusing on; not Aislin and mine's fucked up pasts.”

“This stuff has everything to do with it—you two have just as much to do with it as Gemma does,” my mother tells him. She rolls up the sleeves of her shirt and crosses her legs, fanning the front of her face with her hand as the heat overwhelms her. “I have one more question and then I’ll get to the point.” She pauses. “Were you near Gemma the day her emotions first came back to her.”

“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