The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,45

she wouldn’t be able to muster any leverage at all from her forearms to turn the heavy knob. That it might hurt if she tried. “I hate locked doors.”

“How do you know it’s locked?”

She stepped back to the door and grabbed the knob this time. She paused, trying to focus all of her strength and willpower into her left wrist. She tried over and over to find the strength, but it was pointless. Sebastian was impressed by her determination. Agnes stopped and backed away again, the look of chagrin on her face like a corner-store gambler with a losing lottery ticket.

“I can’t open it,” she said, frustrated but still determined. “Yet.”

“Try again another time.”

“When?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“Good advice for opening doors and hearts,” Agnes said.

Sebastian opened his arms to her for a comforting hug. Agnes balked but stepped slowly into his waiting grasp. She turned her head and pressed her check against his chest, her long, cascading hair the only chaperone between them. Agnes felt Sebastian’s heart beating. It was strong and steady, unlike hers, which seemed to be fast and skipping beats.

He tightened his arms around her and she squeezed around his waist, with strength she had failed to conjure for the doorknob. It might not have been true love yet, but this, she thought, is what love should feel like. Passion and peace, danger and safety, all at once.

“We shouldn’t,” she said, her head staying just a little bit ahead of her heart.

Sebastian didn’t budge and she didn’t really want him to.

Agnes straightened up and Sebastian fell to his knees. He looked up at Agnes, her long flowing hair falling on her bare shoulders down to her chest, her silk camisole clinging to her pallid skin. She looked statuesque.

Sebastian slowly took her hand.

“Ah, I think the others will be worried,” she said, reluctantly. “We should go.”

They separated slowly, eyes locked. After an uncomfortable second or two, Agnes tossed her long mane back behind her and cleared her throat. “May I thank you now?”

“You may,” he said, bowing slightly at the waist and formally gesturing toward the door.

As he bent back, he found himself face-to-face and eye-to-eye with her again.

“Thank you” barely escaped her lips.

He leaned in, slowly closing the distance between them. She leaned toward him expectantly, slowly closing her eyes again.

The pulsing storm outside providing the perfect underscore for forbidden romance.

A first kiss.

The kiss they both felt coming on was interrupted by an earth-shaking crack of thunder.

Like a warning finger wagging from above.

3 The phone rang. It was the principal. At least a reasonable facsimile.

“Due to the citywide weather emergency and out of concern for the safety of students and faculty . . . ”

A school cancellation robo call. Martha picked up the receiver, listened groggily, and hung up. Was a call really necessary? she thought.

“Agnes,” she called out. “Agnes!”

The wind blew hard against the windows, making it impossible to hear or to be sure she’d been heard.

“Damn this weather!” she said, sliding out of bed and heading down the hall to her daughter’s bedroom. “Will it ever end?”

Martha reached the door with the massive, rusted KEEP OUT wharf sign affixed to it that Agnes had dragged back on the train from last summer’s Montauk vacation. Martha resented it. She couldn’t help but take personally that Agnes would expend so much effort to broadcast her desire for privacy. Especially when it was just the two of them living there.

Come to think of it, the problems between them could be traced back to last summer and the beginning of her relationship with Sayer, that boy who Martha disapproved of so strongly. Mothers and daughters at each other’s throats. A tale as old as time. Agnes would come around and it would blow over. Eventually.

“Agnes, that was the school,” she said, rapping on the door to no response. “You can sleep in.”

The irony of waking Agnes up to tell her she could sleep later was not lost on her mother, and she smiled a little. Though she was a little surprised that Agnes was able to sleep through such an epic storm. Usually she’d wake to find the girl in bed next to her. Her mood and her tone softened considerably.

“C’mon, honey. You’re not still angry, are you?”

Martha reached for the knob and turned it, fully expecting the door to be locked, but it wasn’t. The door creaked open under its own weight and Martha noticed immediately the windswept curtains. The sill and the carpet below looked soaking wet, things