Rain dabbled the windscreen and the wipers thumped in a steady rhythm. The loch was a dark stretch to our right, the lights of Loren Brae fading behind us.
“You want music?” I asked eventually.
“No.”
Right.
We were almost at the turn-off to the house when she spoke.
“She’s right, you know,” Liora said softly.
My hands tightened on the wheel. “About what?”
“About me.” She stared out the window. “The Heartbreak Witch. I ruin things. I ruined your relationship with her. I should have known better about showing her how our charts lined up. I should have known her well enough to know that she wouldn’t have handled that well. And who knows? Maybe I’ve ruined Greta too, and probably now Matthew. I drag people into my mess and I make everything worse, and then I run away and someone else has to clean it up.”
“Liora.” My chest ached. “That’s not?—”
“It is,” she said sharply. “You don’t see it because you’re …you. Steady. Kind. But that doesn’t change the facts.”
“Facts?” I pulled into the drive, parked, turned off the engine, and turned to face her. “Here are the facts as I know them. You gave Avery a reading. She reacted badly because it confirmed things she didn’t want to face. She lied about me to cover her own arse. That’s not on you.”
“That reading blew up your life.” Her voice cracked. “You just said yourself people still remember. And tonight”—she let out a brittle laugh—“proves they’re not going to forget anytime soon.”
“Most people in there didn’t give her the time of day,” I pointed out. “Did you not notice that?”
“I noticed that the second she said ‘Heartbreak Witch,’ every head turned,” Liora whispered. “I noticed that the thing I’m most ashamed of is now a fun label strangers get to throw around.”
She scrubbed her hands over her face. “And Zara?—”
She stopped dead.
I waited.
“And Zara?” I asked gently.
She shook her head, jaw tightening. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to you,” I said. “So it matters to me.”
She hesitated, then blew out a breath. “As you know, we had a fight.”
I stayed quiet.
“She thinks I should have told her about you,” Liora said, the words coming out rushed now. “And the truth spell. And being a chartweaver. And she’s right. I should have. She’s my sister, she’s always been there for me, and I just…didn’t tell her. I kept it all to myself because I was happy and scared it would disappear if I said it out loud.”
“That’s understandable,” I said, not moving though I wanted to gather her into my arms.
“She doesn’t see it that way,” Liora said, voice going wobbly. “She thinks I’m reckless. That I jump into things without thinking. That I don’t learn. That I’m always the one causing chaos and then expecting her to fix it. And she’s not wrong.”
“Liora—”
“I didn’t tell her about you because I knew she’d have concerns.” Her mouth twisted around the word. “She’d tell me to slow down. To think. To remember what happened last time. And I didn’t want to hear it because I wanted this.You. Without the lecture. Without the reminder that I’m the screwup.”
There it was. The raw thing at the center of her.
“You’re not a screwup,” I said, feeling the truth of it settle deep.
She huffed out a laugh that wasn’t amused. “Funny how the common thread in every disaster of my life is me.”