Page 22 of Just A Little Magic

“We could go back to town and pretend it never happened, but we’d still have to talk about it eventually.”

“Can we just wait until we’re back? I just…I just can’t right now. Okay?”

“Yeah, babe, we can wait.”

With an agreed-upon truce, we tried to get Lucifer to warm up to me. We failed. Every time I came close to Owen, Lucifer raised his hackles and hissed. He wouldn’t even accept a food bribe from me. When I tried to feed him, he snapped at my fingers. When Owen did it, he purred and preened.

If I wasn’t so preoccupied with what came next for Owen and me, I would have laughed. As it was, all I would managewas a weak smile. I knew Owen wanted to run away, but I needed to figure out how to make him stay.

“Do you think we could let him out of the bathroom for a while?”

“Yeah, he’s figured out the litter box, so it should be fine. Can you have pets at your place?”

If Owen couldn’t keep his new friend, he’d be heartbroken. The cat might hate me, but he’d live with me if Owen’s place wasn’t an option. There was no way in hell I’d expect Owen to let him go. And it would be an even better excuse to have him in my house more often than he already was.

“I’ve been there so long without a pet, I don’t even remember.”

Owen lived in an in-law cottage that he’d turned into a perfect display of his considerable talents. When he moved in, it was builder-grade bare minimum, but now it was a work of art built from mostly reclaimed, recycled, and thrifted items. Levi, his landlord and friend, liked it so much that he had Owen redo the main house.

My wandering thoughts were interrupted by Owen taking my hand. The moment I felt his touch, my attention locked in.

“Hey, little demon, he’s our friend,” Owen crooned.

The cat apparently decided I was all right so long as Owen touched him too. We petted him in tandem until purrs rumbled through his body. When the kitten closed his eyes, Owen withdrew his finger and mine remained. The cat peered up at the loss of his favorite but otherwise remained motionless.

“Maybe he just needed a sign?”

“A sign of what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a sign that you’re not going to hurt him?”

“Hmmm. Or maybe he just needed a sign from you that it was okay?”

“Could be,” Owen agreed with a soft smile. “Part of me wants to call Levi, but I don’t want to hear him say no. Little Lucifer is going to be a surprise.”

The caretaker really had taken his job seriously. The pantry was fully stocked. I found some jarred tomato sauce and pasta. It would be plenty to carry us over until the morning. Kim would leave first thing in the morning, so our time would come to a quick end tomorrow. I wasn’t ready for the return to reality I knew was on the horizon. I wanted more.

“Hey, Owen, is jarred spaghetti sauce and pasta okay for dinner?” I asked when I went over to the couch where Owen had perched after reluctantly leaving the bathroom. The day’s adventure and the food had sent the kitten straight back to bed. Owen left him in the bathroom so there was no chance of being unable to find him in the morning. From the couch, he had an unobstructed view of the door. He hadn’t taken his eyes off it.

“What? I missed that,” he answered with a distracted tone.

“I asked if pasta and spaghetti sauce was all right for dinner.”

He looked downright forlorn, curled up on the couch by himself, and I couldn’t leave him there without a cuddle to at least try and make him feel better.

When I sat beside him, he turned directly to me. That cat clearly represented a helluva lot more to him than just a stray. He’d been off enough for a while, maybe even months, that I had begun to worry. Owen snuggled next to me was a goddamn Band-Aid to my soul.

Even after we graduated, we were inseparable. We were each other’s favorite travel partner. If there was a wedding, we were each other’s plus one. Our families expected the otherwould attend special occasions, dinners, and birthday parties. But over the last few months, he’d been too busy to go on a trip with me for fun. He’d never been one for the club, but he’d practically stopped going there as well. When I invited him to a stage show, his absolute favorite, he’d said there was too much on his plate to take a break. But except for Rory’s Victorian, he hadn’t taken on any private clients.

Owen had always been private and never talked about who he was dating. He said it was just a thing and not a big deal, but I worried about him.

I’d been instantly attracted to him from the first time we met, but he’d encouraged me to find other boys to play with. He’d always insisted he preferred to play alone.

So here we were a decade later—both single, both into kink, and one of us pining like a goddamn Brontë novel. I’d always swallowed whatever foolish thoughts entered my head about confessing my undying and unrequited love.

And now we’d gone and fucked. Hell if I knew what that meant. But he was letting me near him again, so I would soak in every moment. The longer we sat together, the more Owen burrowed into my side. At some point, he couldn’t get wedged in tighter and frustration radiated from him.

“All right, baby, climb up here.” I shifted for him to get on my lap, and he moved there without hesitation.

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