“A second chance,” he continued. His gaze was firm as he processed her look of shock. “Do you want to know the moment I fell for you?”
“I…Yes?”
His head bowed for a moment, and when it came up, it was not without a whisper of grief.
“It was my first day back…after she died. Everyone was acting like I was glass. No one would even sit next to me. Then you came in and flopped right on down. I must’ve looked at you funny, because you leaned in and said, ‘What? You thought you’d keep this entire section for yourself, McCreery? I don’t think so.’ You treated me like a person.”
“Seems like a low bar,” she murmured.
He chuckled softly. “Maybe, but no one else cleared it…” He studied her, tucking an errant lock of hair behind her ear. “You really never realized I was into you?”
Rowan flushed and shook her head. “I didn’t…Why didn’t you ever say, or do, anything about it?”
Gavin looked thoughtful, and then frustrated. “I don’t know, to be honest.” He shook his head. “I got close.” His enviably long lashes fluttered, and he once again seemed perplexed. “Do you remember that time we went to the debate finals? I gave you a ride home, and we stopped at that waterfall?” Rowan must have looked blank. “Wait, do you not?”
“I…” Rowan shook her head. She didn’t remember ever going on any long drives alone with Gavin, much less one involving a quasi-romantic stop at a waterfall. “I don’t, I’m sorry.”
He couldn’t disguise a note of hurt. “I guess it was more significant for me than it was for you.”
Rowan settled back onto his chest, so that she moved with the rise and fall of his breath. “Tell me more. Maybe it’ll come back.”
Mollified, he said, “We stayed there for a couple of hours, until the sun set, talking. I remember you leaning over the rail of the bridge, the light catching your hair.” The way he’d reacted on the deck at Aelfhome when she’d feigned falling suddenly made more sense. “You glanced back, like you were daring me to come stop you…”
She could sense how he’d wanted it to end—how it could have ended. Him getting close enough to grab her, their bodies inches apart, the closeness causing what it did now, all heady excitement, heat, ache. When she’d finally put her feet back down on the bridge, he’d have been there, waiting for her. He’d have reached down, pulled the hair from her face and let his hand linger before leaning in to press his lips to hers. Younger, less confident, but with no less intention.
It almost felt real, and when Rowan looked at Gavin, it seemed like they had been imagining the same ending to the story—what could have been but had not.
Why not?Well, there was the fact she had seen him as her scornful rival at the time—spoiled son of a rich man who had it out for her family.
But no. She shook her head, discarding the now clear artifice of the narrative. It was a story she’d started telling herself somewhere along the way, because she’d lost too many details of what had actually happened.
He had always been Gavin. Son of Dennis but of Sarah too, annoyingly handsome and a better person than he had any right to be. His sensibility and thoughtfulness had made her feel like if she strayed too far into the clouds, he would be there to keep her from floating away. Not to limit her, only to keep her from getting lost. And she pushed him to think bigger, to dream. They had never truly been rivals. There was more to it than that.
But then why couldn’t she remember?
By the time they left the sanctuary of the garage, the festival had long since broken up, the night deep with a comfortable darkness. They drove by the charred remains of the straw Yule Goat, and Rowan remembered with a pang of guilt that she should have been a part of the ritual preceding its conflagration. Thankfully, there should have been many witches available to stand in her place for the night.
The fact she thought of it as “her place” caught her by surprise. It wasn’t really her place. She was just standing in for whoever would take it on permanently one day.
Wasn’t she?
By the time they were home, her thoughts were in all kinds of knots.
As they reached the door, he said, “There’s a party at my house tomorrow. Today, I guess?” His laughter was high, light. “You should come. We can pitch the plan to my dad. Together.”
“Okay.” The sudden invitation was a bit of a surprise, but it made sense.
“There’s something I should tell you first,” he said, hands in his pockets. His eyes darted to the ground and back up again. Whatever he was gearing up to say, it was heavy. He took a deep breath. “I’m going to tell him I’m moving back.”
She couldn’t believe what she had just heard. “What was that?”
“I’m moving back…” he repeated. “He’ll never agree to this if he has to be involved, so I’ll offer to do it instead.”
“Are…are you sure?”
“As sure as anything. I’m going to ask him to let me take this on, and in exchange, I’ll do whatever else he wants for the business too.”
She furrowed her brow. “We don’t need to start with that…”
