For someone so large as him, I didn’t understand how this strange little spoon situation would have ever worked, and yet …
Only when he glanced over his shoulder and saw his head against my thigh did Ryan smile and hoist himself off the couch, as if he wasn’t at all surprised where he had ended up.
“Not gonna lie,” he said. “The wholesleeping in the librarything sounded a lot better in theory.”
“You could’ve gone home.”
“I could’ve.” He shrugged. His hair was more haphazard than usual while he reached for his things, shoving them all into the largest pocket of his backpack. “It’ll probably be worse to go back to the sports house now. They are all probably hungover or worse.”
I slowly followed suit, letting my legs drop down from the couch. My laptop had long since turned dark. The film flickered on, paused past the halfway mark. Had Ryan stopped it?
If he had and then laid back down with me, that made a whole lot less sense.
Yet I didn’t ask.
“Worse?”
“Didn’t you know? Football players are all about the drama,” Ryan chuckles, garnering the attention of a few other hungover, early rising university students who started to wander around us. Large coffee cups from the cart down on the first floor were set up beside their books or on the surrounding square tables with curved backs for privacy.
A few of those same eyes cared a lot less about my own privacy as they landed on me. Or rather, Ryan. Then, they landed on me.
Ryan and me.
The phrase really didn’t sound right. Too simple.
The only person who wasn’t looking at me right now was Ryan. I glanced up at him as he threw a tired smile over his shoulder, quickly turning his gaze back in the other direction again. “I need to head off to meet the team for the fundraiser they are hosting, if they make it out of bed. You know, whether or not I’m still on the team.”
“Good luck.” I nodded dumbly. “Have fun.”
“We’ll see if that’s possible when I tell everyone the news about me and my good old leg here. See you later, right?” Ryan asked, pointing back at me.
“Yeah, see you.”
With a twist of his crutches, Ryan moved back toward the steps without looking back. I stared at him until I could no longer see him over the brass railing.
A few more stares stuck to me as I finished putting the rest of my things back into my bag and grabbed my boots. Interest lingered there, yet I rolled my eyes at one of them. If they didn’t have the confidence to ask me what it was that I had done, staying the night, they did not deserve the answer in return.
Then again, whathadhappened last night?
I felt my fingers drift up toward my lips, as if I could tell if the kiss was a dream by touch. Shaking my own head, I stopped myself, slipping back down the stairs and out the heavy front doors of the library, not confident I wanted any answer.
* * *
“You look absolutely dreadful.”
“Thank you.” That was exactly what I needed to hear.
Stepping through the door, I kicked off my boots and padded my way down the frame-lined hallway of Gertrude Maison’s—also known as Gertie—opulently eclectic home.
The moment the heavy door shut behind me, a weight dripped down from where it had been sitting on my shoulders, like the rain outside sliding down the old-fashioned paned windows. The pressure I’d been putting on myself drained past my elbows and through my legs, escaping through each step of my feet toward the sharp pitch of voices from my coven members. The light from the crescent moon stained glass window high above illuminated the way to the kitchen.
So did the smell of warm baked apples drifting through the air.
“That’s exactly what I always hope to hear,” I added with a heavy glaze of sarcasm to Gertie trailing behind me, taking in my slouched gait. Though truly, I never expected to get any compliment other than honesty from the eldest coven member and our high priestess for all intents and purposes.
Being high priestess was a symbol of honor. Gertie had created this space for all of us to live and practice together. Thus, she became our gratifying leader of a sort and would be until she could or would no longer.
“I’m merely stating the truth. I still don’t understand. If you didn’t have anywhere to stay for a proper sleep last night, why didn’t you just come down here?” she asked. “You know where the key is.”
