Covet (Clann)

shared dreams of this place…so many kisses while lying together on a picnic blanket as we’d talked for hours. The pine trees with their heavy boughs swaying in the storm’s retreat, the way they had swayed around us as Tristan and I had danced together barefoot on the mossy ground. Those same trees had been lit with thousands of tiny Christmas lights for my birthday last November as I’d kissed imaginary red velvet cake from Tristan’s lips.
    And now here we were. We’d finally come to the real clearing in the real woods to create another memory. A memory I would never be able to erase, no matter how much I would want to.
    He stood as if frozen as I closed the final inches between us. “Sav, I’m so sorry. I never meant for this—”
    “I know,” I murmured. “I’m sorry, too. But the council and the Clann are right to want us to stay away from each other. It’s better that way. Safer.”
    “No, Sav—”
    I pressed cold fingertips to his warm lips, the water sliding down his face and around my fingers like tiny streams flowing around rocks. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see his face when I said the next words. If I did, I might not be able to say what had to be said.
    Standing on tiptoe, I kissed his cheek, tasting the raindrops on his skin, lingering so I could inhale his faint cologne mixed with the ozone scent of the rain and feel his warmth against my skin one last time. Then I stepped back, my eyes still closed, holding on to it all as tightly as I could even as I made myself let him go.
    “We have to end this. Please don’t try to see me anymore. This is the right thing to do. Someday you’ll understand.”
    Before he could say anything to change my mind, I turned and walked out of our woods for the last time. Somehow I kept myself from looking back.
    But I already knew I would be spending the rest of my life looking back on today, on the last few months, on every choice I had made, and wondering. What if I had been stronger? If I had only managed to resist the way I felt about him… If I had only followed the rules…
    Nanna would still be alive.

CHAPTER 3
    The next few minutes while I waited in Dad’s rental car were a blur as the pain finally had its chance to claw through me. At some point an ambulance arrived. It turned around in the driveway then backed up in the yard behind the Coleman home. Two emergency workers got out and unloaded a metal gurney, carrying it into the woods between them. Eventually they came back, slower this time, the gurney between them supporting a bulky black bag.
    I looked away then, burying my face against my forearm on the dashboard.
    Eventually Dad came back to the car and got in. He sat there for a few seconds in silence. Then he awkwardly patted my back. The attempted comfort from him was so unfamiliar that it was like a little mental shake, reminding me I couldn’t fall apart, not yet. We had to tell Mom first.
    Dad started the car and followed the circle drive back to the road. Then we headed for my home.
    Nanna’s home.
    “Have you called Mom?” I asked, my croaky voice forcing me to clear my throat.
    “No.”
    “Then don’t, not yet. I don’t want her to hear while she’s driving.”
    He checked his watch. “She should be home in half an hour or so.”
    Neither of us spoke again until we reached the house.
    Every window of my home was dark when we pulled up onto the short, pine needle-blanketed driveway. The descendants had closed the front door but not locked it behind them after taking Nanna against her will. As we entered the house, I cringed, sure the place would be wrecked by a magical fight. But they must have snuck up on her and knocked her out before she had a chance to react. Everything was just as I’d last seen it.
    I turned on the living room lamp, grabbed a handful of towels from the linen closet in the hallway and gave Dad a couple so we could dry off. I would change later, after Mom came home. I was afraid to go to my bedroom before we talked; I might give in to the urge to fall apart again.
    I sank down onto the piano bench, the only furniture in the room that wasn’t upholstered and wouldn’t get wet from my clothes. Then I toed off my soggy sneakers and peeled off my soaked socks, trying to find any mental distraction that I could.
    The house was so silent. It was hardly ever this quiet around here. Usually Nanna would have the TV on in the dining area so she could listen to it while cooking in the kitchen or