Page 51 of Witch You Would
“Right.” He rested his forehead on mine. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
No, I was shook. Customer service smile: go. “Totally.”
Instead of smiling back, Leandro frowned. “That’s your fake smile.”
“It’s real!”
“You don’t have to lie to me.”
“I’m not lying,” I lied.
“Okay.” He lifted me off him, giving me a chance to stand before he let go. Then he got up and brushed the dirt off his pants.
I was still holding the deck of cards, the one I was so sure was a trick. Maybe Leandro was, too. Maybe all his shy talk aboutfan panties was how he got into people’s pants. What did I know?
Catastrophizing. Overthinking. I had to stop. If nothing else, we were a team. We wouldn’t win if I second-guessed everythingand didn’t trust him.
Did I trust him? Trust had to start somewhere.
I held out the cards. “Here.”
Leandro gave me a sad half smile. “You don’t want to check them, after all that?”
“No. It was a good trick. Knowing how it works would ruin the magic.”
“Sometimes knowing makes it more impressive.”
“That’s true. But sometimes...” I gestured at the sculpture with its shifting threads. “It’s okay to just enjoy something,right? Like a kid. Have fun and not worry about the why and how. Sometimes magic can just be magic.”
I had forgotten that at some point, hadn’t I?
Leandro’s smile slipped into what I was starting to recognize as his stage mode. Maybe that’s why he noticed when I did thesame thing. He held up the deck and fanned it out, then turned it around so I could see the cards.
All of them were different. He stacked them together again and passed his hand over them, then held the deck out to me. “Checkthe top card.”
I turned it over. The queen of hearts. Magic.
I tried to give the card back, but he pushed my hand away.
“Keep it,” Leandro said. “For good luck.”
“But then that deck won’t have a queen.”
“Ah, but it doesn’t need one. You’re already the queen of my heart, m’lady.”
I rolled my eyes. “Is that one of Sam’s pickup lines?”
“Nope. That’s a Leandro Presto original.”
I slipped the card into my back pocket, which was too small, so it stuck halfway out. Hopefully I wouldn’t lose it beforeI could put it in a safer place.
On the walk back to the lake, I rebuilt my calm stone by stone until I was once again Penelope Delmar, spell technician andCast Judgmentcontestant. I wasn’t sure who I’d been for those minutes in the butterfly garden. Maybe the real me.
Or maybe overstressed me. Didn’t some people do wild stuff in high-stress situations? Like making out with cute available guys,and how about let’s not think about Leandro’s hands on me because now I was hot again. Hotter, I mean. It was Miami. Always hot.
Now that I knew what might happen between the two of us, I could be more careful. Pretend to flirt in ways that wouldn’t getme all... whatever this was. Unlike the sculpture, I didn’t need to open up to him and show him my boring center. Nothingto see here, move along.
Or...
