Page 53 of Love's a Witch
“Ugh, he never let us win, did he?” Nova remembered with a laugh.
“Nope. No mercy.” I smiled, the warmth of the good memories seeping in a bit. It had been easier to remember the bad instead of the good, as it helped to shore up my walls. If I couldn’t stay in Briarhaven with this stupid curse, why should I fall in love with it?
“Mum used to give me her cookbooks to read. Remember her stovies? So good. She just kind of got out of the habit of cooking, didn’t she?” Lyra murmured.
“Aye, I think it all became too much for her.” Maybe that was what happened when every day your magick changed, and you couldn’t rely upon anything. It was already stressing me out, and I was only a few days into this particular affliction. For the first time, my resentment toward my mother softened. She was a difficult woman, but she’d also had her challenges, hadn’t she?
“Wow, this place is packed.” Nova drew my attention from my thoughts, and my eyebrows rose at the line of people snaking around the edge of the community center, waiting to get inside. Music bumped, and laughter carried on the frigid night air.
“I think tonight’s going to be fun,” Nova decided.
“Here’s hoping,” I said.
Twenty minutes later, I was huddled in the corner of a large open room, clutching a glass of white wine, watching as my sisters tore around the dance floor. Despite the town professing to not like us, my sisters’ sheer enthusiasm at dancing had endeared them to most of the people on the dance floor, and soon Lyra was being twirled by Hannibal Lecter, while Nova was being dipped by Edward Scissorhands. Nobody tried to talk to me, and frankly, I was fine with that. I kind of needed a moment to readjust my thoughts about Briarhaven, the talk I’d had with my sisters on the way here bringing to the surface long-buried memories. Finishing my glass, I turned to go get another and bumped into someone.
“I’m sorry. Oh—”
“Sloane.” Knox grinned at me, and I gulped, suddenly wishing I still had wine in my glass to drink.
There was just so much muscle.
Everywhere.
He wore dark green fitted pants and… well… basically nothing else. A gold bodysuit, like a second skin, showcased his muscles, a pair of football-like shoulder pads dripped in fake fish scales, and dark liner coated his eyes.
Need bloomed as I remembered straddling him in the library, his mouth on mine, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his muscular chest.
I wanted to lick my way down—
“Sloane?” Knox snapped his fingers in front of my face and my eyes darted to his. My face flushed. “Eyes up here, darling.”
“I was just admiring your outfit.” The lie didn’t land, since I was clearly ogling his muscles, and I bustled away to fill my wineglass at the punch bowl, embarrassed at having been caught staring. But seriously… how could a man look that delectable?
“Enjoying yourself?” Knox asked, dogging my heels, filling his own glass. The music changed to something sharp and upbeat, and the crowd cheered. Lights from the disco ball twirled, sprinkling theroom, and I suddenly found it a tad hard to breathe with how close Knox was standing to me.
“Excuse me a moment.” I walked blindly through a door behind the drinks table and turned down another hallway, and then another, and then ducked through the door of an empty room. It was dark in there, a single beam of light illuminating the room from an outdoor streetlight, and I realized I’d stepped into an empty classroom of sorts. Taking a deep breath, I leaned against the wall, trying to settle myself.
“Are you okay?”
I closed my eyes at Knox’s voice, but didn’t move. I heard the soft sound of him entering the room, and then the click of the door closing behind him. My breathing slowed.
“Do you want the light on Sloane?”
“No,” I whispered. I didn’t know why I’d come here. And yet a part of me had known he’d follow.
Or maybe had just hoped.
“Are you okay?” Knox asked again, reaching out to take the wineglass from my hand. I let him. Maybe more alcohol wasn’t the answer needed here.
“No.” I turned my head against the wall, meeting his eyes that glinted in the darkness. “I’m mad at you.”
“The shopkeepers?” Knox had the decency to look ashamed.
“It was smart, I’ll give you that.”
“I’ll stop, Sloane.” Knox came forward, leaning his hands on the wall around my head, caging me in. “I asked them to do that days ago. But now… I think things have changed.”
“How so?” I angled my head to look up at him. “I’m still me. And you’re still you.”
