Page 62 of The Sun and the Moon
She’s been readying them for you.I feel the thought, force my focus away from the cards and back to the tarot reader’s face.
“There’s this girl.” The words drop from my lips, too heavy to hold inside anymore. “And despite my better judgment—despite the very real truth that she fulfills my own soulmate prediction”—I pause when Kit’s breath catches in her throat—“despite the factthat everything in me wants to stay far away from anything that gives Moira more power in my life…”
I look between them for a sign of surprise, but what I find is that both of their faces fix in very different—though no less transparent—expressions of understanding.
“I think I’m falling for her.”
Kit’s lips curve up.
Her eyes rest on mine, caring and sure. She extends the deck in her hand.
“Pick a card.”
I’m tugged, like a rope has been tied around my hand, like my body is possessed. My heart pounds as my fingers reach to cut the stack of cards into two sections. I rest the one in my hand on the table next to Kit’s wineglass. My eyes drift back up to hers, awaiting instruction.
“Which one?” she asks me, her voice steady, reassuring. I point to the stack in her hands, too breathless to speak. Too shocked that I’m doing this at all. She places the stack I picked on top of the other, her hand hovering above the cards for a second. Her fingers give a little wiggle.
She flips the card over to face me.
The Ten of Cups stares up from the table. And my heart leaps. This card can only mean one thing.
The exact thing I’m trying to avoid.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sydney
Should we stop the scheme?
In the heat of the shower, as steam cocoons me with my thoughts, I can’t stop questioning our whole plan. Which is really fucking annoying because I’m already questioning more than enough at the moment without adding this on top.
But.Fishy as all of this is, I can’t shake the feeling that it may be fishy only because we want it to be. Because Cadence and I are hardened unromantic messes who have degraded our belief in true love so completely that we can’t acknowledge it could happen to anyone for real.
I haven’t seen Rick this happy in a long timewas Pam’s assessment of Dad. If he really loves Moira, who am I to stand in the way? After everything he went through with my mom, and then with raising me alone, his assured happiness would be a huge weight off my shoulders.
Maybe even a way for me to start healing a little myself.
When a girl loses a mother before she’s out of training bras, there’s a lot she loses out on. Stuff no one tells her, teaches her,even knows she needs, because it’s stuff only a mom can know. Growing up with a mom like Moira, it’s not the same as growing up without a mom entirely, but there is something about the way Cadence holds herself so tight—like someone who hasn’t ever been hugged hard enough, held long enough—that is so familiar to me.
We’re opposites.The Sun and the Moon. But we aren’t that different at our core.
I wonder: If we could stop looking for pain, would it be able to findusafter all?
I twist my damp hair into a loose braid and swing it over my shoulder, taking one last look in the mirror. I need to talk to Cadence about this.
I need to tell her I like her.That thought comes crashing out of nowhere, but I can’t reject it, because it’s true. I do like her.
I’ll talk to Cadence. I’ll just tell her all of this.
I may need a drink, too.
I grab my room key and my purse on my way out the door. She said she was going to the bar, so I trek back through the courtyard that connects our bank of rooms to the lobby. It’s a gray cobblestone area dotted with seating arrangements, each around its own firepit. Some of the hotel staff are prepping the space for the evening, fluffing the pillows and setting up the firepits for guests to enjoy.
She may not like me back.
I know she finds me hot. The memory of her lips on mine, her hands gently but firmly gripping my back, is proof alone that the girl wants a taste. But with all the soulmate mess in her head and the mommy issues in her heart, I don’t know if she’ll be willing to give me more than a taste. And I don’t even know what I meanwhen I say that, either. I just know that I don’t want Ranger Girl to hike out of my life without at least letting me try to figure it out.
I walk through the doors into the lobby, and my eyes search for the way to the bar.
