Page 71 of Summertime Hexy
“I love you.”
Three words.
Still.
Quiet.
Like a truth so ancient and unbreakable that speaking it doesn’t make it more real, just moreknown.
My chest constricts, but not with panic.
With relief.
Like I’ve been holding my breath for years, and now I can finally exhale because the sky didn’t fall, and the world didn’t end, and he loves me, andIlovehim, and it’s not a spell or chaos or an accident.
It’s just us.
“I love you, too,” I whisper back, before I can overthink it or make a joke to dispel the weight of the moment.
A soft growl reverberates from him, and then his mouth is on mine, and we’re not kissing so much as he’s drinking me in or I’m setting fire to him or maybe we’re both just exploding into stardust and letting it burn.
It is everything.
It is not.
Then he pulls away, his thumb brushing my lower lip, his gaze searching mine.
“We have a lot to talk about,” he says, gravely.
We do, but I want to bask in this moment a little longer, because I know the second we start talking, it’s going to be warring over what should happen next, and the mess we’re in, and how he nearly died, and?—
“We do,” I agree, shifting closer, fingers curling against his chest. “But later.”
His brow lifts, but there’s a smirk hidden in the corner of his lips. “Later,” he agrees.
And then he pulls me back to him, one hand cupping the back of my neck again, and gods, there is no place in the world that feels safer than here, like the world could end all around us and within his arms I would still be whole.
CHAPTER 24
DEREK
The Grove smells like old storms and crushed herbs.
Damp moss clings to the soles of my boots, and the air crackles with something older than any of us. Something ancient and half-wild, watching from the trees like a god with no name.
We’ve cleared a space at the heart of the ley line convergence. Hazel said the earth needed to “breathe,” so we carved back the overgrowth and spread salt in a circle wide enough to hold four souls and a secret. Candles flicker along the edges—some enchanted, some just stubbornly ordinary. They throw gold and red light that dances up the trunks of the trees, casting everything in shadow and fire.
Hazel kneels in the center, hunched over her chalkwork, the hem of her shirt riding up just enough to show a thin line of skin above her waistband. Her fingers are smudged with charcoal, her knuckles scraped. She’s murmuring to herself as she redraws a glyph for the third time.
It’s beautiful. It’s chaos. It’sher.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the veil if you keep obsessing,” I say, arms crossed, trying not to pace. “We need to trust it’s ready.”
She doesn’t look up. “I don’t trustanythingwhen it involves ritual magic and unstable ley anchors.”
“Comforting.”
She sits back on her heels and finally meets my eyes. “You want to do it wrong and risk another tear?”
