Read Online Cursed by Jennifer L. Armentrout - Free Book Online Page B

secrets. The drawing wasn’t working, but I couldn’t stop. Smudged lines flowed across the page.
    “What are you doing?”
    I snapped the pad shut and twisted toward the voice. Hayden. In the sun, his hair shone a dozen colors of red and brown.
    He took only one step closer, pulling his hands out of the pockets of his jeans. “Ember?”
    I jumped to my feet. “Don’t come any closer.”
    Hayden stopped. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk to you.”
    “Not going to hurt me?” I backed up, successfully trapping myself against the wall. “You said that right before you knocked me out for three days.”
    “I’m really sorry about that.” He looked away, drawing in a deep breath. “I know you, Ember. You’re a fighter—”
    “You don’t know me. We only talked for five minutes in the library.”
    A lopsided smile pulled at his lips as he turned toward me. “Since the accident, we’ve checked in on you. Sometimes I came with my father. I saw enough.”
    A fine shiver coursed through me. I wrapped my arms around me, but it didn’t help. “Saw what?”
    He looked away again, staring off at something I couldn’t see. “How hard it was for you. The way those kids at school treated you. How you managed to survive when there was no one there to help you.” The striking lines of his face turned hard. “I know you’re scared, but you don’t have any reason to be now.”
    “Really? Because you tell me so, huh? And this is coming from a boy who has been stalking me with his father. Not to mention the fact that you guys have kidnap—”
    “I wasn’t stalking you, Ember, and we didn’t kidnap you.” He faced me once again. “We just… relocated you.”
    “So Olivia can be among her ‘kind’.” I rolled my eyes. “Are you serious? I don’t have a ‘kind’, and neither does Olivia.”
    “But you do.” Hayden moved fast. I flattened myself against the wall as if I could somehow disappear into it. I held the pad between us. It made for a weak, stupid barrier. “Jonathan Cromwell really isn’t my father, did you know that? My parents—my real parents—didn’t want anything to do with me. They were scared of me. When I was young, I couldn’t control it.”
    A voice inside my head screamed at me to shut up and run, but I didn’t. “Control what?”
    Hayden’s lips twisted. “I’m what they call an ‘enerpath.’ I can drain energy from just about anything there is, including the air around us. With people, I can drain a little of their energy. Or I can take it all. It works the same with people who are gifted.”
    “And what did you mean about the air?”
    “I could bring this entire house down if I wanted to.”
    My mouth dropped open.
    “I was in foster homes for several years. If Jonathan hadn’t found me, I don’t know where I’d be now. He told me what I was and taught me how to control it. Never once did he ask for anything in return. I owe him my life, Ember. As does every kid he’s ever saved.” His eyes flicked up. “I’ve scared you, haven’t I?”
    “I… that’s…” I shook my head, “freaky?”
    Silence stretched out between us while he studied me in a way that made me feel transparent. His brown eyes shifted to a much darker color, almost black. Then he moved away, going back to the railing.
    “I’m sorry.” I found myself apologizing without even knowing why. “I didn’t mean—”
    Hayden threw up his hand, cutting me off. “It’s okay. Being called a freak by you is sort of a compliment.”
    Was that an insult? “What happened when you touched me? I mean, for a few seconds nothing happened. No one—nothing can touch me.”
    “I can touch you for a minute or two. It’s like a buffer, Ember. I can handle small portions, but it would overwhelm me if you held on and I didn’t drain your touch.”
    “But you knocked me out, like, hard-core.”
    Hayden ran the tips of his fingers over the railing. “That’s what happens when I drain