Page 41 of Fixing the Grumpy Pumpkin King
“Jack… wait…”
But Jack was gone. Teleported away in a swirl of leaves and fading magic, leaving Locke alone on a bed of autumn leaves that suddenly felt cold and ordinary.
The pocket dimension shuddered.
Oh, fuck.
Locke scrambled for his clothes as the walls began to dissolve, that translucent shimmer flickering like a dying lightbulb. His jeans were inside out. His shirt had leaves stuck to it. He could hear voices from the regular maze getting louder. Tourists, families, kids.
He shoved his legs into his jeans, hopping on one foot. The dimension wavered.
Get dressed get dressed get dressed.
His shirt went on backwards. He fixed it, fingers fumbling. The dimension flickered again.
His head was pounding. Jack’s face when he left. That hurt. That resignation. Like he’d expected Locke to reject him all along.
I didn’t mean…I just needed to think—
But he’d hesitated. And Jack had seen it as rejection.
Fuck.
Locke shoved his feet into his shoes just as the pocket dimension dissolved completely. He stumbled out of the maze proper, trying to look casual, picking hay out of his hair.
His heart was pounding. His thoughts were a mess.
The tourists were too loud. Everything felt sharp-edged and wrong in a way that made Locke want to crawl back into that pocket dimension and rewind the last ten minutes.
“What were you doing in there?”
Locke’s head snapped up. Rowan stood by the ticket booth, eyebrows raised, half-smirking like he was ready to tease the hell out of whatever answer Locke gave.
Then Rowan’s eyes landed on his neck (on what was definitely a very obvious hickey) and he blushed. “Never mind.”
But the smirk faded fast. Rowan’s expression shifted to that particular look of concern that Locke had seen a hundred times growing up. The look that saidI know you, and something’s wrong.
“Wait a minute.” Rowan stepped closer, searching his face. “What happened? Key, are you okay?”
Key.
Rowan only called him that when he was sad. When they were kids and Locke skinned his knee. When Corbin made him cry. When things were bad and Rowan needed him to know he wasn’t alone. he thought he was so clever back in elementary school when he came up with the nickname.
Locke’s throat closed up.
“Yeah,” he managed, but his voice came out wrong. Thin. Brittle.
“What happened to you in the maze?” Rowan’s concern sharpened into something fiercer. “I’m gonna raise holy hell if anybody hurt you.”
“The only person doing the hurting was me.”
“Is this about Jack?”
Locke nodded.
And then, humiliatingly, he started crying.
Right there in front of the maze. In front of tourists and families and the person manning the ticket booth next to Rowan who was definitely staring. Tears just came, hot and messy and completely beyond his control.
