Page 18 of Cursed Touch
“At the risk of driving you away… You’re sure you didn’t see her eyes glow yellow?”
Carter took in a deep breath before shaking his head and looking at the stars barely visible above them. “No.”
An alarm went off in her mind, alerting her of his lie. She pulled her hand into her lap as tears brimmed behind her lids. “I can tolerate a lot of human sin, but I won’t stand to be lied to.”
Chapter 10
Carter felt like the scum of the earth.
A few things had become clear to him over the past few hours. One, logical or not, Vanessa was his. Two, even as a human, she was not blind to the supernatural around her. And three, he was the biggest fool for thinking he could lie to her.
His mouth opened and closed a few times, briefly wondering if it was how fish felt when they were pulled out of water. When Vanessa pushed to her feet without a word or cursory glance, it took him exactly 0.5 seconds to get up and take hold of her.
She could not leave. Not after he’d found her.
“Wait!” he said as he searched for the right words. Words that would not hurt her further. Words that would help keep her safe and ignorant to the other world.
She pulled free but turned toward him. Her arms wrapped around her middle, and pain reflected in her eyes as her stubborn chin raised to him.
Carter shoved a hand through his hair again, and he was sure he managed to rip a few strands out at the roughness. “I’m a doctor, Vanessa. If someone heard me talking about seeing glowing eyes, I…”
He did not know what else to say. Leaning on his profession was the coward’s way out but not entirely untrue.
She shook her head. “While that may be true, I refuse to date a liar. Thank you for dinner.”
He watched her walk away, a sharp pain bursting through him at the sight. Everything in him screamed to follow her, but if there was any chance of fixing the mess he made, he needed to let her go for now and figure it out.
***
Carter dragged himself to work and disappeared into his schedule. The monotony of helping others did not soothe the ache of finding and then losing his soulmate, but it made the seconds go by.
His front door shook at the banging it received, pushing him to sit up on the couch. Running a hand down his face, he sighed before opening the door. “I’m surprised it took you this long,” he told Georgia over his shoulder and returned to the living room. Giving the werewolf his back was probably the second stupidest thing he had done in the last month, but he could not drum up the energy to care.
“What the hell did you do to her?” Georgia snapped before the door slammed shut.
Carter peered past her, nodding with surprise that the door was still attached to its hinges before returning to the couch. “What did she tell you?” he asked, not bothering to deny he was at fault as he laid his head back. The couch dipped but she remained silent. Carter rolled his head toward her and raised a brow.
“She’s not right,” Georgia said.
“And you assume because she’s not right I did something wrong?”
Her nose crinkled. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks, I feel like it too.”
“Fucking witches… What the hell happened?”
Narrowing his eyes, he asked, “Does she know the truth about you?”
Georgia’s eyes rounded. “Hell no. It would put her in a lot of danger, especially since she’s human.”
He nodded. “Did you know she believes ‘something is going on in this town’?” he asked, curling his fingers with air quotes for added measure.
“What do you mean?”
Carter recalled what had happened on their date night. “On the one hand, she thinks she’s losing it, but on the other, she knows what she’s seen.”
“And why is she upset now? Did you embarrass her, or does she think you’re nuts for agreeing?” Georgia asked.
