27 | spilling secrets

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CHAPTER 27

Sheer purple fabric was used as a makeshift door into 'Mista's mysteries', and I stretched my arm to push it out of the way.

The way the booth looked through the material, a little bizarre and out of focus, was pretty much an accurate representation of the whole thing.

Bold colours battled each other for the attention of everybody that walked in, and we were no exception.

Deep orange. The colour of the light that spilt over the walls and ceiling, casting a warm glow throughout.

Sage green. The colour that wove itself through most of the tapestries I could see on the walls. There wasn't a single corner that wasn't occupied by a mandala or intricate pattern. I checked.

Despite all the others, the colour my eyes had honed in on was an off white. Specifically, the off white of the cards splayed across the table a few feet away from us.

I stepped forward slowly and Cora followed suit. She seemed a little unsettled, and I wondered if she was already regretting her decision to come in and get our fortunes told.

The unmistakable smell of incense flooded my nose and I looked up to see why, noticing a woman approaching us in a blur of loud bangles and colourful veils.

"Welcome!" She exclaimed, beads clanking against her wrist when she spread her arms out to gesture towards the chairs in front of her. "Sit, sit."

I moved to pull out Cora's chair for her and she threw me a grateful smile, sitting down in sync with me.

"Are you both wanting your cards read today?" She asked warmly, eyes flickering between us.

I started to shake my head, but Cora spoke before I could say that I'd rather not. "Yep, that would be great."

Her hands settled into a basket on the table and she met our eyes in turn. "Names?"

"I'm Cora and this is Gabriel." Cora said from next to me, and I watched the fortune-teller's eyes drift down to the deck in front of her once she was satisfied. "Is your name Mista? I saw the sign outside."

She nodded once before taking the cards into her palms and delicately shuffling them.

She placed three face down on the table and I could've sworn the lights flickered when she looked back up at us. "The cards you see here represent the three fates."

She gestured to them all. "They each deal with different parts of your life. The first is the past, the second is the present and the third is the future, which I know is what you're here for."

"I'll begin with you." She said to Cora, turning the first card over. My eyes dropped down to it, the image of a king on a throne. That in itself wasn't unusual, but it was flipped completely upside down.

Mista took a moment to stare at it with a soft hum, moving her hands to turn the other two over. This first was a little difficult to make out, but a little squinting had me labelling it as a woman with a large star above her. The other was just a man in a chariot.

She pointed at the first card as she looked at Cora. "You used to feel trapped. Misunderstood."

My scepticism only grew when she spoke, noticing how vague that was. After all, it was the kind of statement that could be applied to almost everyone.

I ate my words when she elaborated on what she had said, cutting me a hard look as if she could sense what had been running through my head.

"There was a lot of pressure on you. Resistance from others. I'm seeing... two people." She paused, looking at Cora for confirmation. "Your parents."

Her parents?

I took a glance at Cora myself and was surprised to see that she had frozen in place, her hands splayed across the table as if she needed something to hold onto.

The fortune-teller noticed too, using that as an opening to keep going. This time she gestured to the card at the very end, the one supposed to represent the future. "Beware of them. They haven't finished."

Cora looked distraught. "Haven't finished what?"

Mista shrugged. "I can only tell you what I see. Which is them, and a fancy dress."

I could see Cora's face screwing up in my peripheral vision. "What fancy dress?"

The fortune-teller paused for a moment, casting her eyes to the cards. She brought them back up slowly. "You're wearing it. And that's all I know."

"Wha—" Cora began to speak, but was cut off by the jangle of Mista's beads against her wrist.

"Your turn." She said, shifting her attention to me.

My mouth opened to protest but I was silenced by the sound of my own cards whipping through the air.

"Oh... you poor soul." She frowned as she looked down at the first one, some kind of castle that I couldn't see properly.

What on earth was she on about?

She lifted it, thumbing the image on the front while she looked at me. "This one tells me that you suffered a great loss at a young age."

My throat moved with a swallow.

"Somebody important to you." I could feel her eyes on my face, watching for my reaction when she paused. "Your father."

While my mind was spinning, still trying to process the fact that she had hit the nail right on the head, I felt a reassuring squeeze on my upper thigh.

I hadn't told Cora anything about my dad, but she still somehow knew that I would need the comfort. That just showed how our connection transcended anything I could put into words.

I wondered if she even knew what that little touch did to me, the way it calmed the storm of my mind down to a drizzle and gave me the strength that I needed to continue with the reading.

What I'd claimed was an addiction to her lips was actually a fully fledged addiction to her as a whole, and I didn't know how to feel about it.

Scratch that, I knew exactly how I felt about it. But this wasn't the time.

I nodded for Mista to continue, noticing that she had gone eerily quiet.

When her eyes rose from the second card, they were glinting with something that I couldn't quite put my finger on. "I see something else. An object, which doesn't usually happen." She said, fingers resting on her chin.

"What is it?" I asked, taking the bait in spite of myself.

She paused for a moment, holding my attention. "A book. Does that mean anything to you?"

It was my turn to freeze. Until now, there had been a thought in the back of my mind that she might have just been reading us using good old body language and psychology, the cards on the table serving as nothing but a prop.

But I was the only living person that knew about the existence of that journal, and I was giving her nothing to work with body language wise.

I sat rigid in my chair, stuck between the choices of hearing what else she had to say or just taking Cora and getting the hell out of there.

I settled on the first one when she said something that had my blood running cold. "He reads them all, you know."

"Excuse me?" My voice struggled to stay as calm as it usually was.

"Your entries for him. He reads them all." She repeated.

That's enough.

I stood up from my seat slowly, trying to maintain some kind of outward composure.

Thoughts were shooting through me like bullets.

It was like I could feel my skin being punctured a little with each one, the final bullet dealt by the concept that the hours I used to spend writing in that stupid journal weren't in vein.

Cora stood up almost instantly after I did, as if she knew just how badly I needed to get out of there. Maybe she did.

We waved goodbye to Mista, and she shouted something over the hum of the people on the beach outside. "The answers are in the pages, Gabriel. Don't forget that."

I didn't even let myself stop to consider what that could mean, just pushed the purple fabric aside and stepped out.

Bloody hell.

We walked alongside each other for a while without speaking, letting our thoughts fill the silence instead. The beach had quietened too, the world's way of sensing that we needed a moment to ourselves.

Eventually her small hand reached out to grab my arm, eyes flashing with something intense when I looked at them. "We need to talk about what the hell just happened."

- - - -

The conservatory attached to my childhood home had been built shortly after I was born, the extra space needed to give my parents somewhere to relax.

Ironically, I was anything but relaxed when I entered it with Cora, having made the journey from the beach back to the house in half the time it took us before. An eagerness to hear the other's story had fueled us as we went, moving with the sound of cobblestones under our feet and heavy breathing in our ears.

My fingers drummed against the glass table we were seated at as I tried to figure out where to begin.

Cora solved my problem for me when she started speaking herself, eyes steely with an emotion I hadn't seen before. "My parents are rich."

I hadn't been expecting that, and I paused the movement of my hands to listen to her.

"I mean really rich. The kind of rich that means my children's children's children will be sorted." Her eyes dropped down to the table for a moment. "But I didn't want it. I've never thought of money as the most important part of life, and they do."

Words were pouring out of her mouth like they'd been on the tip of her tongue forever. "I love art. And travelling. And experiencing new things." She paused. "I couldn't do any of those things with my parents there. I felt trapped. My life had been decided for me before I could even talk and I hated every second of it."

"I'm supposed to be a socialite. Find the heir to another rich family and marry him. Continue the cycle." She then let out something between a laugh and a scoff. "Or become a doctor, earn a whole lot of money and keep the cycle going all the same."

That explained a lot. Why she had been so determined to push me away at first, the fire I saw in her eyes whenever I looked hard enough and the way she doubted herself, even with the amount of talent she had.

"I ran away and didn't look back." She said, before smiling. "Actually that's not true, I drove away and didn't look back. And it was the best decision I've ever made."

A strange feeling came over me. Some kind of pride on her behalf. She had taken a leap of faith and forged her own path, despite the way the people around her had done everything they could to stop her.

I would've found that admirable even if I knew nothing else about her.

"I have no idea what the psychic meant about me, them and a fancy dress, though." She said. "I'm never going to see them again, so she must have just gotten that mixed up with something else--"

I took my thumb and tilted Cora's chin until her mouth met mine. The words she had been speaking were swallowed by my tongue in quick, hungry strokes that I had to restrain myself from taking any further.

I let a groan against her mouth, revelling in the way she always tasted like the sugary foods she was so fond of.

She pulled away looking slightly dazed, and it was all I could do not to bring those lips right back to mine. "Uh... wow. What was that for?"

"That was because you're brave and strong-minded." My eyes gleamed. "And because you continue to surprise me."

Her face softened. "Thank you."

I watched as that expression changed, morphing into something more serious. "Gabe, there's a picture of you in the room I'm staying in. I recognised you and your mum, but there was another man with his arm around you." She paused. "Is that your dad?"

I didn't give her a response, trying to decide on the best way to answer. She mistook it as a sign that I didn't want to talk about him, face clouding over. "I'm sorry if I overstepped. You don't have to answer that."

A sad smile fell onto my lips. "No, I want to. The man in that photo is my dad."

"What happened to him?" She asked softly, fingers dancing over the nape of my neck.

My heart twisted, and I struggled to get my next words out. "He's dead."

Her face dropped. "I'm so sor-"

Cora began to console me but I cut her off. I didn't deserve it.

"He's dead because I killed him." I told her, jaw clenching.

If she had a reaction to that she didn't show it, just watched me as I spoke.

"I killed my own father." I repeated, voice breaking slightly.

She squeezed my hand, silently spurring me on. "What happened?"

I sighed. "We were walking to my primary school together, just like any other damn day. I think that's what hurts the most, that it started off like a normal day. There was nothing to prepare me."

I closed my eyes momentarily. This was the part that hurt the most to remember. "A book fell out of my bag and onto the road, and my Dad went to get it."

"I didn't stop him, Cora." The pain I felt was written all over my face.

"I stood there like an idiot, watching a car come out of nowhere." My head dropped down before I could see her reaction, because I had a feeling that that would be my last straw.

I felt her before I heard her, dainty fingers that wrapped around my cheek and brought my face back up to look at her.

Tears glistened in her eyes while she spoke. "Gabe, it wasn't your fault."

"I had the chance to pull him back and I didn't." My voice rose, pain cutting through it. "It was definitely my fault."

"You were a child." She pressed. "You hear me? A child. It wasn't your fault."

I didn't believe her, but I didn't say anything else since I had a feeling she wouldn't back down.

My eyes travelled to the clear glass of the conservatory, noticing how my vision had blurred slightly. I hadn't cried since the day he died, so I had no clue why the emotions I'd guarded so fiercely were now beginning to escape.

Christ. I didn't realise how numb I had become until that moment. It was like it had taken that conversation to remind me that wounds were supposed to hurt.

What happened to my Dad had scarred me, but I buried it under the fleeting moments of happiness I got from other things. The only time I ever let myself dwell on it was to write in the same book that he had died trying to save.

"You know, he didn't die instantly. They took him to a hospital and he went through hours of pain." I paused, voice hardening. "Because of me."

I hadn't known how badly I had needed to be held until I was, the warmth of Cora's body combatting the chill running through me.

"It's okay." She whispered softly, and I could see tears running down her face.

With perfect timing the sky began pouring its own tears down, the rain that my mother had warned us about earlier. There was something strangely comforting about it all, as if the world was grieving with me.

The repeated hitting of water droplets against the roof of the conservatory reminded me that we needed to hurry up if we wanted to make the dinner with the man my mum had met.

But I still had one more thing I needed to show her.

"There were so many things that I hadn't been able to say to him while he was alive." I said, watching as Cora lifted her head from my chest to listen.

"I needed him to know, so I..." My sentence trailed off. The contents of that journal were probably the most sacred part of me, a window into the darkness that I hid under a wide grin and relaxed gait.

Once I told her about it, there was no going back.

"So you what?" She asked, her voice sweet without even trying.

I stood up from my chair, holding my hand out for hers. "I think it's best if I show you."

I nearly cried writing the words "He's dead because I killed him." I can't even imagine what it would be like to carry that weight around with you constantly :(

That's almost everything out in the open now, except for the mystery of what's inside that journal.

I love you all and have a good day/night <3