“Magic… and Google. There are twelve Liam Morrises in this city but only one lives in Lake View.”
He brushed her hair back from her face. “I’m so glad you came, but what are you doing here? I thought your father—”
“I don’t care what my father wants, Liam. I know what I want, and I want to be here. So I dropped you off at the North Pole and returned to Paragon, changed into this, and then dimension walked here.” She fisted her hands between them. “All my life I’ve done what they asked me to do. I’ve gone along with everything, obeyed their every command, because nothing was that important to me. Their way or my way, it didn’t make a difference.”
Her eyes met his. “But you matter, and when I tried to tell my father that, he wouldn’t listen. And all at once it just hit me. I’m an adult with the power to go anywhere I want. I can travel through time and space. And with all that power at my fingertips, the only place I wanted to be was here… with you.”
His heart leaped even as warning bells went off in his mind. They’d only known each other a short time, and if what the legends said was true about the gods wanting to enslave her, she was at risk coming here. But he couldn’t bring himself to bring up either of those things. She was here, in his arms, and he was going to appreciate every moment of it.
A low rumble sounded between them. “Was that your stomach or mine?”
“Mine,” she said. “I haven’t eaten today. I could have, when I first arrived here, but I was too nervous.”
“About what?”
“Afraid you would reject me.” She chewed her lip, looking as vulnerable as he’d ever seen her.
He scoffed and shook his head. “Never. But I don’t have any food in the house. What do you say to a trip to the grocery store? We can make dinner here, watch a movie?” Taking her out to dinner was out of the question. He wanted her to himself tonight, both to keep her safe and so she could let out those pretty wings she had bottled up inside her.
“A movie?” She squinted, and he marveled again at the lack of technology in Paragon.
“Like live theater but they record it so you can watch it later. You have live theater, don’t you?”
“Yes, but why would you record it?”
“Sometimes to save money. Other times for convenience. With movies you can watch whenever you want.”
“Why wouldn’t you want to watch it while it was happening?”
“Give it a chance. I think you might like it.”
He slipped his down coat over her shoulders, then grabbed an old one he rarely wore from the closet.
“I don’t need this,” she said. “I can’t feel the cold.”
“It’s twenty-seven degrees out there. You need it or some bighearted Chicagoan is going to try to take you to a women’s shelter.”
She threaded her arms through the sleeves, and he took her hand and tugged her toward the door. An hour later, Liam’s stomach was threatening to eat him from the inside out and they’d just made it back to the apartment. Although he had all the fixings for chicken vesuvio, he was starting to regret not ordering a pizza instead. He’d never expected it would take so long to get through the grocery store, but Charlotte’s constant stream of questions from how chickens were raised to where potatoes were grown had slowed their visit to a snail’s pace. Then he’d spent ten minutes showing her cow pictures on his phone, then another ten minutes explaining the phone.
“You can let your wings out,” he said while he jabbed buttons to preheat the stove. He wasn’t a great cook, but this was a recipe he could handle.
“What about the windows?”
“In this city, no one will think twice about it.”
She laughed, digging a red pepper out of the bag and biting into it like an apple. The yummy sounds she made told him she enjoyed it.
“We should probably wash that off first.”
“Why? I can’t catch anything.”
He stared at her for a beat and then reached out to pull off the produce sticker. To his horror, she popped the pepper—stem, seeds, and all—into her mouth. She’d swallowed it before he could say anything. “I guess there’s no point in washing it then.”
He turned back to the stove and heated up some oil in his brazier before quickly chopping some potatoes.
“Why will no one think twice about it if I let my wings out in here? Are there other people with wings?”
He glanced back at her to see she still had them away. “Sort of. Cosplayers. Victoria’s Secret models. The occasional drag queen. It’s hard to see into my windows from the street, but people won’t question it if you’re inside anyway.” He added the chicken to brown.
