“Did I do something to upset you?” Wyatt asked me off to the side when it was clear I was getting ready to leave.
“No, not at all,” I told him, sighing when he didn’t seem like he was going to let it go. “All over today, and it’s hard to admit certain things when it’s you. I feel…” I shrugged.
“I don’t know how to interpret that,” he muttered.
“I don’t either,” I confessed and got the hell out of there. I was glad when Winter left it alone and just gave my hair a kiss.
“I wish I could go to this first yoga class with you, but I have to get to work.”
“Sergey asked to come.” I frowned when he made a non-committal noise. “What?”
“I’m being jealous. I think that was part of earlier,” he admitted, sighing when I waved him on. “I don’t like that Sergey gets Saturday night on your schedule and I—I’m being a dick.”
“You are,” I agreed, shocking him, Kate, and my guards. “Try asking. You’ve cracked jokes or made comments, but you’ve never just asked. Sergey did. That’s how he got on Saturdays.” I gave a half shrug when he didn’t seem to know what to do with it.
Yeah, well, look how easy that was.
And women were drama?
Hell, I felt like I wasn’t for once, which was nice.
I had some time before dinner because the yarn magic for the blankets went that fast and after that was yoga. I was already changed into what I was going to wear, so I would normally have just gone to the cafeteria, but Kate asked to talk to me privately.
“Please just spit it out,” I said as gently as possible when her nerves were about choking me.
She gave an awkward chuckle and nodded. “I could use a job, but not—I’m not in the same position as the others. I could pick up a few shifts and be fine. So it’s not about that.” She waited until I nodded. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m going to be blunt, and I hope you just understand this is from a good place.”
“I trust you. You’ve been weird around me lately and I thought it was about…”
“I won’t go near Professor Wyatt and I won’t tell anyone,” she mumbled.
I gaped at her. “I didn’t mean that. I meant… I’m not sure what I meant but not that.” I cleared my throat and sat on the edge of my bed. “I’m too tired to deny it.”
“And there was no denying it after you looked at me like you might gut me when I leaned into him to look over his journal. I wasn’t flirting. He’s not my type.” She cleared her throat when I raised an eyebrow at that. “I like a golden retriever type. Derek Wyatt is not that.”
I snorted. No, not even close.
“Fair enough.” I sighed and scrubbed my hands over my face. “I don’t know what is wrong with me or—I can tell it all to you later and maybe you can figure me out. I denied him and now I’m having sex dreams and yeah, getting jealous over myown friends. I don’t even know anymore. But let’s focus on what you need.”
“It’s actually what I think you need,” Kate sighed as she plopped on my desk chair. “Look, they’re super focused on you being a goddess witch or the owner of Familiar Treasures or even now you’re gonna get shit about being the head of the reborn Millen family. Whatever that means, but I get it. That’s all important even.”
“And what do I need?” I asked, confused what she was getting at.
“To be a fucking college kid, Bev,” she sighed. “You need the college experience or like today—you need to see or understand how it goes. You’ve had enough weird and different. You want to know what we all experience and how things go. Yes, today was awkward, but that’s so much nicer than how most of our power assessments go. And not just that.”
I listened to Kate for the next ten minutes as she outlined the changes she already saw needed for my life to balance and I couldn’t be the one to do it. The way she framed it was that I was the talent and I needed a gatekeeper. Not a manger, that was Tracey. But someone to field the calls and handle the bookings.
A personal assistant basically. Someone who would deal with coordinating updates because too many came from too many different places for me and it was all overwhelming. And some of them I didn’t need to know, but people didn’t want me to feel left out.
But especially now seeing how my emotions could feed my magic—which was super common and I needed to know that. But I wouldn’t want to tell Wyatt or others that. I could tell Kate. Once we got caught up for Familiar Treasures and were working ahead, it would be easy to work on blanket stuff if I wanted comfort myself.
Or whatever else. It would make my life fucking hell to orchestrate that, and I might feel influenced to do it… But if someone with an outside perspective was handling it, that would be something to possibly manage.
Sometimes. If it worked out.
Nothing was perfect.
Also, she wasn’t picking on Mrs. Reid, but she was outdated with Morrigan’s coursework and what was coming up for me. Kate was ridiculously familiar with it having gone through it the past couple of years. So she could help be an advocate for me in that way.
