Page 7 of Once Charmed, Twice Cursed
He makes an irate sound, but something deeper than anger shimmers in his eyes. “Youshouldknow. Because you’re not a thing. You’re not some tool for me to just...use at my convenience. You’re a person. With your own life. And you were supposed to be busy tonight.”
That shuts me up. It’s everything I dream of hearing, but right now, the words only bloom cold in my bloodstream.
He was avoiding me today. On purpose.
“Busy,” I say icily. “What would I be busy with?”
“Making plans. With Brendan.” He slants his gaze away. “Choosing who to say yes to.”
For a moment, I can’t breathe. I wanted so badly to believe he’d forgotten. That he would’ve remembered tomorrow and come. “You knew,” I say, unable to wipe the hurt from my voice. “You knew what today was, and you chose to comehere.”
His brows pull together. “Of course I did. Where else would I have gone?”
My chin trembles and my eyes sting, but I push the reaction down. All these years, I’ve imagined I glimpsed the same longing in him that I harbor in my own heart. Time and again, he’s brought me books. He’s shattered men’s bones for thesake of my reputation. Those amber eyes have tracked me across the room a thousand times without cutting away.
That can’t have meant nothing, can it?
When I don’t answer, his scowl deepens. “Where else would I have gone, Bria?”
A hurt sound sneaks from my throat. He never calls me Bria. With him, I’m Birdie, always Birdie, ever since that time I was fifteen and he was sixteen and we came across a hatchling fallen from its nest. I brought the bird home and spent weeks nourishing it on a diet of milk-soaked bread. On the day I set it free, Weston declared me such a capable nursemaid that I must be part bird myself.
“Don’t call me that,” I say.
“Where else would I have gone?” he repeats, his tone dark.
“You could’ve come,” I snap. The quiver in my voice betrays me, but I can’t hold back. I’m too angry. Too wounded. Too...everything. “You could’veasked. You’re the only man who didn’t.”
He freezes. “Asked? Asked what?”
I mash my lips together.
He starts toward me, then thinks better of it and stops. Every line of his body pulls taut, his stillness so profound that it gives the impression he’s trembling. “Asked. What?”
The moment holds, pivoting around that question. But I won’t repeat myself. Ican’t. This represents an overture neither of us has made before, and he has to give mesomething. I can’t bridge this gap on my own.
At my silence, Weston rakes a hand through his sweat-dampened blond hair. His eyes drop to the line of red at my wrist before snapping back up.
Without a word, he retrieves a rag and a brown glass bottleof antiseptic from a shelf. He sets them on the desk and pushes them toward me, then snatches his fingers back the second I reach out.
His withdrawal hurts. It shouldn’t, but it does, and before my grip can close around the bottle, I pause. I can’t seem to muster the courage to ask for what I want, but I can’t just walk away. Because this is it. Our last chance.
After a moment’s hesitation, I extend my arm, exposing the jutting splinter. “You do it.”
“What?” Weston’s eyes flare. “No. I can’t.”
I step closer. He flinches but doesn’t back up, just levels me with his usual intensity, the kind that makes the air boil in my lungs. This close, his face is a collection of sharp angles, his eyes the color of a sunbeam slanting through honey.
Except, no, nothing about Weston is sweet. Better compare those eyes to whiskey—to that priceless bottle stored on the highest shelf, the one I never should’ve taken down, because now that I’ve suffered its bite, I can’t stop drinking.
“Don’t ask me that, Birdie,” he murmurs. All the anger from a moment ago bleeds out of him, leaving him hoarse. “One touch, and I’d strip you of your luck. Forever. You know that.”
“And I’d strip you of yours,” I say, just as quietly. “Don’t act like that would be a bad thing.”
“It would, for you.”
“But not for you.”
He chokes down a swallow before his attention drifts to my mouth. And I feel it—the familiar thickening that coils between us, that rope of heat that binds us together. It’s real, isn’t it? It has to be. So is the rawness of this moment, because when we stand close like this, I’m just a woman. He’s just aman. The Charm and the Null have faded, leaving two ordinary people.
