“I can imagine. And oh, my Lord, Charly, that man is blazing hot.” Brooklyn fans herself. “I knew there was something unnatural about him.”
“Remind me to tell you how Rhys made Jason piss his pants on the Fourth of July.”
“Liar!” she says with a scandalized gasp. “He did not.”
I make a cross over my heart. “He surely did.” Then I get serious real quick. “I have to get him back, Brooklyn. He can’tstay in that void, and I…” I drag in a deep breath, my heart aching. “I can’t imagine life without him.”
Brooklyn’s wistful smile is positively lovely, brightening my best friend’s pretty face. “You really do love him, don’t you?”
“With everything I am.”
Brooklyn tucks my hair behind my ear. “Then you’ll find a way,” she whispers.
A week ago, I learned that magic is real. Miracles happen. But I’m also a realist. A god gave me a gift, and what did I do? I shit on his generosity. Now, I hope to convince him to give me a second chance.
Somehow.
If I can figure out a way to get Cupid to even listen to me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Do you believe in instant love?” I ask casually, nonchalantly, but leave it to Gram to see right through my bullshit.
We’re at the kitchen table, picking at our steak and salad for entirely different reasons. Gram’s stomach issues prevent her from eating much anymore. As for me…
A broken heart doesn’t make for a hearty appetite.
“For me, Muffin, or for you?”
Toying with the romaine speared on my fork, I shrug. “Both? Or just me. I don’t know.” I redirect my gaze to her, with my heart splintering even more. Today isn’t a good day. Sure, she got a bath, with her gray hair in a tidy bun, and she’sin a new blue house dress. But the hunch of her shoulders and the laborious breathing tell a terrible story. “Do you, though? Do you believe people can fall in love—reallove—almost immediately?”
“Depends on the people,” she counters before tucking a tiny square of steak between her wrinkled lips.
“Okay, fine.Me, Gram. Me. Do you think I can fall in instalove with someone?”
Gram swallows her bite of meat. “Sure, I do,” she says, but is also quick to add, “When you’re not busy being a stubborn ass.”
“Gram!”
“Charly!” she shoots back at me. “Someone’s got to tell you the facts before you lose that boy of yours.”
The fork slips from my hand, dropping onto the plate. “I already lost him.” I rest my elbows on the table and lean my chin on my hands, the hitch in my voice mirroring the tears I’m holding back.
“So, get him back,” she says, as if it were that easy.
Utterly defeated, I shake my head and clasp my hands in my lap. “I can’t.”
“Bullshit. Yes, you can.”
With my eyes downcast, I whisper, “I can’t, Gram. Rhys isgone—forever gone.”
“Oh, Muffin, he’s not dead, is he?”
The question whispers out of her mouth like poison sliding off her tongue. Neither of us deals well with death, for obvious reasons. I lost my parents, true, but Millie Benson buried her only child. That a giant ‘fuck you’ to the natural order of life. The cruelest thing the universe can do to a parent. Even the word ‘death’ is still difficult for her to say. And who would blame her for it? Not me. Not anyone with half a heart.
Yet Gram held my hand as best she could through my miscarriage, which, of course, resurfaced the agony of losing her daughter and son-in-law—whom she adored like he was her own child. She is an extraordinary woman whose strength is remarkable. But grief and ill health took their toll, and sitting across from her now, I realize how precious and fleeting her time left here is.
She, too, is slipping through my fingers.
