Nat
NathanielAlderlikedalot of things: children, bread and butter, a cozy drink on a cold day.But kissing Thea Greene was the thing he liked most of all.And sitting here on the floor of the café that she had built in his building, holding her in his arms, was quickly becoming his new favorite.
“Nat…” she whispered, pulling away from him, turning her head to the side so that he couldn’t kiss her again.“We do have to talk about this.”
“What’s there to talk about?”he asked, pressing a kiss to her forehead.“I love you, and you love me, and we finally have each other again after all these years.I don’t see anything to talk about.”
Thea let out a slight giggle as he began pressing his nose against the spot on her neck where she was ticklish.Apparently, that hadn’t changed, and he loved it.
“Stop,” she said, batting him away.“I’m serious.”
“And I’m not.”
“I know you’re not,” she said with a groan, “but we do need to talk.”
“Or I could kiss you again,” he said, putting his finger under her chin and turning her face toward his with a smirk.
“Nathaniel Alder,” she said with a sigh of exasperation, “we need to talk before you turn into a cat again.”
Nat sighed and slumped against the counter.Of course she had to be logical.“Well, when you put it that way.”
“What are we going to do about you becoming a cat?Aside from talking to Guinevere, is there anything we can do?How did it even happen in the first place?”she asked.
He hadn’t wanted to tell her, since he didn’t want to scare her, but he wouldn’t withhold the truth from her now that she’d asked.
“There was a sorcerer coming into your café,” he said.“I didn’t like the looks of him, so I stopped him.And when I did, he cursed me—turned me into a cat.”
Thea grew pensive.“Until I watched you turn into a cat in front of my own eyes, I’d never really considered that magic was real.”
“My mom told me stories when I was growing up,” Nathaniel said, “stories about dragons and talking animals.And I suppose a part of me always thought those stories came from somewhere, but I also never thought that magic still existed—until I turned into a cat.”He grimaced.“And now I don’t know how to fix it.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Thea said, reaching for his hand and lacing her fingers through his.“We have the rest of our lives to figure it out.”
“I don’t want to take the rest of our lives to figure it out,” he whined.
Thea laughed.“I don’t, either.But we don’t have to figure it out tonight.We can work on it tomorrow.”
Oh.Speaking of tomorrow….“We were invited to dinner tomorrow.”
Thea looked up at him, the question in her eyes.
“Roan wants us to have dinner with him and Abigail at the Lucky Goat tomorrow.”
Thea didn’t respond, just looked at him steadily.
“I think he wants to apologize more, and I think Abigail wants to get to know us better.”
“And they want me?”she asked.
He nodded.“He invited both of us.”
Thea pulled away from him, chewing on her lip, and reached for the broom.“We have to clean.”
She needed to think about it.That was fine.“We can talk while we work,” Nat said, pushing himself off the counter and taking the broom from her, beginning to sweep up around the café.
They quickly fell into the same rhythms from all those years ago.
“If only we didn’t have to clean up,” Thea said with a sigh.
