The Rush (The Siren Series) - By Rachel Higginson Page 0,88

prying eyes. I felt Chase close behind me but didn’t turn around until we had slipped out a west side door that faced the art museum. The drizzle had stopped for now, but the gray October sky promised more rain to follow. The grass between the school and marbled art museum was brown with the threat of winter and soggy and slick with mud.

“Ivy?” Chase asked when I kept my space from him outside and crossed my arms.

“Chase,” my voice faltered before I even started with the hard stuff. “You’re really great-“

“Oh, no,” he sighed. He ran his hands over his face roughly and then had to push his dirty blonde hair out of his eyes. “I’m not going to like this am I?”

“I jumped into this too soon, I think,” it felt weird being truthful with him. But this was the truth. I was breaking up with Chase for all the right reasons, even if I would have done the same thing for the wrong ones. “I’m just not ready for any kind of relationship. Not even a slow one.”

“You’re breaking up with me before we were really ever together?” Chase turned his back on me and pressed two palms against the rough stone of the building like he could push through it.

“I just don’t want you to think that this was you or anything you did,” I rushed to offer promises. “This is all me. I ‘m just still…. broken,” I admitted lamely. My voice filled with emotion and my lungs felt closed off and drowning with dread, but between the two of us there was nothing. I didn’t know Chase enough to really be upset about it. The only emotions I felt were selfish and shallow. I felt bad for letting him down and guilty for letting the curse pull him in only to push him right back out.

“What is that? A it’s not you, it’s me speech?” He looked over his shoulder at me. His cheeks red with frustration and his eyes shifted to hard blue orbs of anger, but he was a good enough man to treat me gently.

“No,” I swore. And then hated the lie. “Ok, maybe?”

That earned me a small crack in his surely demeanor and he smiled at me. “I really like you Ivy.” His words were a harsh whisper of declaration.

“No you don’t,” I whispered back. “You think you do. But you deserve someone who can give you everything. Who can give you a complete version of a relationship.” The truth hurt as it came out of my mouth, like it was barbed and prickly and ripped from my throat. It settled into the air like weights pressing against my chest, oppressive and suffocating.

“What if I would rather have you?” Chase turned around so he could face me again. He brushed away the leftover gravel on his hands against his pants. His gaze was piercing, demanding.

“You can’t have me, Chase.”

We stared at each other for a few moments while he accepted this truth. There was no real connection between us; our interest in each other had barely been two weeks long. Still, the curse was hard to walk away from. That was the whole point.

Sailors to their graves and all.

“Does anyone get to have you, Ivy?” he asked somberly. His blue eyes were the deepest I’d seen them, dark rises of ocean waves.

I shook my head and looked away.

Nope, no one got me. And I planned to save all mankind by keeping that true.

“When you’re, um, not broken anymore?” I lifted my eyes to meet his very serious ones. “Think of me?”

“When I’m not broken anymore, Chase, you will be the first person I think of.” My throat was thick and coated with emotion and not even because of Chase.

Because I knew there wouldn’t be a time when I wasn’t broken.

Only a time when I would be free.

Chase shot me one more of his adorable grins and seemed to accept his defeat with grace. “Ivy,” he nodded as way of goodbye.

“Goodbye Chase,” I forced a smile back and then watched him slip back into the building.

I stood outside in the damp air, the chilly wind coasting across my arms and face. I had no energy to face the halls of high school again after that. I felt emotionally drained and empty. Another breakup was just a reminder in the long list of reasons my life would never be what it should be. Born into this world, I was already a slave.