Page 58 of Until the Stars Fall

He took a deep breath and let it out. “Do you remember what I said in the forest that day we had a picnic? About finding a beautiful, dark-haired witch to settle down with, and you asked me if I’d divined her?”

I stiffened. Scenarios, each more horrible than the last, raced through my mind. He was seeing someone else. He was engaged. He was secretly married. He was secretly married, and he wanted me to be another wife. No, no. I was the monster here. Not him.

“Yeah,” I said cautiously, “and you said no, that that was just your type.”

“And while that’s very, very true,” he said, kissing my forehead, “it was only part of the truth.”

He breathed heavily again, bit his lip. Whatever he was about to impart was huge, and my heart was still pounding from making love.

“When I was seventeen, I started having dreams about this woman. This beautiful, dark-haired witch.”

A pang of jealousy, and I cocked my head.

“For years, I dreamed about her. Brown eyes, dark, curly hair.” He wrapped one of my curls around his finger. “Seriously, she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Not every night, but pretty often. Sometimes we were just sitting together, talking or laughing, or doing magic.” A shy smile, cheeks reddening. “Sometimes I was talking to our child in her pregnant belly. Sometimes we were making love, other times, we were lying just like this.”

The hairs on the nape of my neck stood to attention, my heart hammering like it might break. “And then I met Zola, and Noah and Hannah. I was at their house one day a couple years ago, and there was a framed photo on the mantel I’d never seen there before.”

Don’t say it. Please say it.

“When I saw it…it took the breath right out of me. It was her.” He looked down and back up, narrowed his eyes. “It was you.”

“Me?” I whispered, frozen in his arms. All the warmth and coziness had been sucked from my limbs, even as my heart surged with joy. It was both the most romantic and most terrifying thing I’d ever heard.

He bit his lip and tucked my hair behind my ear. “It was you, Gemma, beyond any doubt. I had the dream the night before I saw your picture, but never since, like it’d done its job. That’s why I was so nervous when we met, and why I probably acted weird as fuck around you. I’ve spent the past eleven years knowing you were going to be the one, and I didn’t want to fuck it up.”

I took a breath and opened my mouth, but I was speechless. The day I boarded the ship, that moment our eyes first met. He’d looked at me as if he recognized me. I didn’t understand it then, but I did now.

He drew his eyebrows together. “Am I freaking you out?”

“Yeah, a little.” Finally, I’d given him some honesty.

“In a good way or a bad way?”

By the look on his face, his whole world depended on my answer. But I snuggled against his chest, unable to meet his eyes. “A good way,” I said in a small voice, not at all sure I was telling the truth. But it seemed to be enough for him.

“I’m sorry I’ve been tryin’ to move so fast. I’ll do better. Just know I’m not going anywhere. I’ve always been yours, will always be yours.”

He sighed contentedly and snuggled me closer to his chest, lips buried against my hair. Before long, his breath rose and fell evenly, but it was a long time before I could sleep.

It was hard to lay still in his arms while pieces of my heart calved away. I was about to hurt him so badly that he’d take those words back. Because I hadn’t changed my mind about my magic, and my decision was only going to hurt him worse the later he found out.

I had to start pulling away. It would destroy me, but better me than him.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Beck’s confession haunted my dreams all night, and all morning I’d been trying to figure out how to distance myself so I didn’t make a bigger mess than I already had.

But it was a terrible day for it. We were approaching the Bifrost, the traversable wormhole that would bring us to just outside Gaia’s solar system. Well, “just outside” in interstellar proportions. Everyone was on edge. None of us had been through anything like this before. And even though it was safe by all reports, a dilapidated ship was no one’s dream vessel for the crossing.

In the engine room, Beck prepped a shield intensifier spell that would help protect us in the Bifrost while I made the adjustments in the system to accept it. Even with the Bifrost looming, all I could think about was being Beck’s literal dream witch, his meant-to-be. Who was about to break his heart.

He was in the best mood, practically glowing, singing everywhere he went. He had to be afraid of the wormhole, too, but what he felt for me seemed like his armor. He was making jokes, kissing me every time he passed me. It was hard to be in the same room, knowing what a fraud I was.

He had me, but he didn’t have her, that witch he’d dreamed about, set his whole future on. I couldn’t undo the damage I’d already done, but I had to stop making it worse.

The engine room door opened and shut, and Summer called out, “Hey guys, you’re not makin’ out or anything, huh? Can I come in and do the spell?”

“We just finished,” Beck teased. “Nah, I’m kiddin’. Come on in. Let’s get this thing done.”

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