As the clock chimed for the final time, I hollered out, "I dub thee, broken!" And then I turned, intending to fling the whole thing – minus the box – out the front door, past his porch, and onto the hard walkway beyond – thus, breaking the curse into a million pieces.
But this didn't quite happen.
Sometime while I'd been focused on Cole, the brunette must've shut the door behind us because rather than sailing out through the open doorway, the icy concoction crashed into his front door, shattered on impact, and scattered throughout the entryway, leaving bits of broken ice and random jelly beans lying on the entryway floor.
For a long moment, all of us stared. The clock had gone utterly silent, leaving an ominous void that seemed to fill the whole house.
I cleared my throat. "Well, that didn't goexactlyhow I planned." I whirled to face Cole. "But did it work? Can you tell the difference? Do you feel uncursed?"
As his sister muttered something about me belonging in a loony bin, I held my breath and waited for Cole's reply.
He looked from me to the icy mess and back again. He never did answer my question. But hedidsay in a low voice, "I think it's time for you to leave."
And just like that, my hopes shattered like the bits of ice scattered in his entryway, and I realized something.
If anyone was cursed, it was me, because I'd officially lost the guy of my dreams. And I had no one to blame but myself.
Chapter 42
Lexie
In my dreams, I was being pelted with snowballs. They were hitting one after another in a soft plopping sort of way, splattering on my head, my torso, my legs, and even my toes.
The pelting was oddly painless. Or maybe I couldn’t feel anything beyond the pain in my heart. Even in my sleep, I could still feel it, the ache of longing for what I'd lostandfor what I would never have.
After Cole had asked me to leave, I'd stood my ground only long enough to apologize and ask for his forgiveness. All I'd received in return was mutterings from his sister and a terse "It's fine" from Cole himself.
But itwasn'tfine. That much had been obvious by the set of his jaw and the coldness in his eyes. I'd even lowered myself to ask for another chance, a new beginning, a do-ever, if you will.
To this, Cole had said nothing at all.
Talk about humiliating.
The humiliation, I could bear. After all, my attacks on his integrity had surely humiliatedhim– or at the very least, insulted him to high heaven.
But what Icouldn’tbear was the thought of being without him, of never hearing his voice or seeing him smile, of never telling him that I loved him or hearinghimsay it in return.
Nowthatwould've been something.
In the end, I'd left peacefully with hopes of returning someday for another try. Even if we never had a second chance at a relationship, he deserved to know why I'd behaved the way I had.
But first, I had to figure it out for myself. Happily – or was it sadly? – this didn't take long as I tossed and turned in my cold, lonely bed.
Right from the beginning, I'd been all too willing to assume the worst of him.And why was that?
It didn't take much thinking to come up with the answer. It was because I'd been blinded by misplaced loyalty to somebody else – Mister Grampkin of all people.
Sure, my sister had also played a role in it, but that was different – a misunderstanding caused by poor communication on her part and, if I were being completely honest, on mine, too.
After all, if only I'd admitted to Harper weeks ago that I might've been wrong about Mister Grampkin,shemight've been less eager to assume that Cole was the monster behind all of those bad references.
Poor Harper.
After I'd returned from Cole's place and told her what had happened, she'd looked nearly as sad as I felt. With Gwen spending the night at her mom's house for Christmas Eve, Harper had even offered to make me hot chocolate and fresh Christmas cookies if I wanted them.
I hadn't.
All I'd wanted was to crawl into bed and pray that tomorrow was a better day.
