Page 25 of The Fate Factor

“It all started with you.” The look he’s giving me is positively reverent, and it makes me squirm. “I looked for you after that night, you know. Not in like a creepy way, but I asked around. It was like you just disappeared.”

Oh. Here I’d been praying to forget the name Jamie Bishop, and he’d been out looking for me? I wonder what would have happened if he’d gotten in touch with me before now. If he’d run into Kate and she’d given him my number. I probably would have blocked him.

“I guess I kind of did disappear,” I admit. “I’ve spent every summer here with my grandmother since I was a kid, but the last couple of years I, ah, haven’t been able to make it.”

It’s not a lie, but it’s a spin, and the smile I hang on my face to pull it off feels like it’s made of plaster. Fragile and hollow inside.

“Oh, shit.” He groans, running a hand down his face. “Was your grandmother there when I passed out on your porch?”

He looks so adorably mortified, and I wish I could laugh, but instead I’m back to spiraling over the blankness I feel when I say, “No. She passed away in July.”

I’ve said it like a robot, and there’s a flicker of curiosity in his expression. “I’m sorry, Noel.”

“Thank you.” I clear my throat. “I’m here on sabbatical, actually.”

“That’s right. You said that on the porch. Is it like anEat, Pray, Lovetype thing?”

I fake a pout even though I’m inclined to laugh at myself. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I promise I’m not.” He lays his hand over his heart and the gesture wiggles something open in me. I’m talking to a man who built a whole life around a psychic vision. I guess I shouldn’t have expected him to judge me for a silly Find My Feelings mission.

“It’s more of a work thing.” I bite my lip at another white lie. It’s a pretty big me thing too, being broken this way. “Anyway, I’m here until the end of the year.”

His eyebrows jump, which looks painful with that cut. “What do you do?”

“I’m an artist. Graphic designer. I can work from anywhere, but my boss actually gave me some time off.” I leave out the part where it wasn’t my choice.

“What a coincidence.” He waves a hand over his midsection. “My boss gave me some time off too.”

I chuckle into my beer.

“Well, it sounds like an adventure,” he says, still grinning at me with something like fascination.

But my face falls at that word. I’ve hated it since I was a kid, when Mom used adventure synonymously with recklessness. It’s a perfectly-timed reminder that this man has that same recklessness written all over him. I’ve thought so since that very first night when he smiled at me from the edge of a roof. I feel like I’m on that edge now, teetering into dangerous territory.

Chasing magic can’t be without consequences. He called me an angel, but he could be an actual demon for all I know. The kind that tricks you with their sexy jawline and soft eyes until you’re taking your clothes off in their apartment-slash-sex dungeon.

Oh my God, Noel.He drives a Honda and lives above a bar. He’s not a demon.

I’m losing my mind, but I knew that when I agreed to come tonight.

“Look, this place is great, Jamie. I’m just not sure why I’m here.”

“Right.” I watch his Adam’s apple bob with a thick swallow. Jamie’s face is like a slideshow of boyish expressions—theaw shucksgrin he gave the nurse, the playful smile he beamed at me that night on the roof—and if I had to label the one I’m lookingat now, it would be guilty mischief. “The truth is I was, um, kind of hoping you might do it again.”

“Do what again?” I’m genuinely curious because he obviously doesn’t meanreadhim. I was pretty clear on my stance on that.

Jamie leans back, wrapping an arm around his ribs, and my gaze betrays me by tracing the line of his bicep, the ink poking out of his T-shirt sleeve the same way it did that night. “Look, ah, it’s just that your timing is sort of impeccable. Some things are up in the air here with my business. This might sound crazy, I mean, I guess this whole thing is crazy, but the last time I had a big decision to make, you appeared. And now I have another one and here you are again.”

He shakes his head as though he’s utterly bewitched by this coincidence. I’m not. “That’s why you invited me here, then? You want something.”

“Well, when you put it like that… ” He chuckles, running a hand through his hair. “I just wanted you to see it, Noel. To see this thing that came out of whatever happened that night. And yeah, I’m kind of at a crossroad and I guess I was hoping you might be able to help me get my sure thing back. Can you blame me?”

I’m already shaking my head. “All I told you was that the money would come to you. You had to have trusted your own judgment for a hundred decisions after that.”

“Sure, but I mean, confidence breeds success, right? Two years ago, I was deciding whether to go all in, or abandon this dream all together. What you told me was a pretty clear yes. Why would the universe give me a sign like that just to point me in the wrong direction? It kinda felt like I couldn’t lose at that point.”

“Then you don’t need me. You can’t lose.”

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