Instead, he got a tattoo on his neck for me. Araisedtattoo, so he could feel it any time he wanted.
"I go back to spending every night dancing at the club. I finally fuck someone other than him or Jonah. I move to a differenthouse, and I move on. If Jonah's not my mate..." I shook my head. "Maybe I turn into Dare. I start trying to make bargains with anyone I meet who I find even slightly appealing. I'll probably be horrible at it, but I'll adapt. Maybe. I can put the house in his name as an apology, and erase his phone number so he's free of me, and it'll be okay."
It felt like a lie.
Doing the thinghelped, though.
He was right. It always did.
Niall and Larson hadn't had an easy childhood. When he taught methe thing, he'd known it worked because it worked for him. He and Larson had done it for years, until they were old enough to get away from their abusive shapeshifter father and their uninvolved spellcaster mother.
The hell Niall had been through was why he coped so well with my panic.Because he'd been there too. In a situation far worse than mine.
Something caught my eye on the kitchen island, and I saw a sticky note that hadn't been there the night before.
I leaned over and read it.
There were only five words.
I miss you
-Your Friend
"Maybe I should just go to his studio and have a real conversation with him about what we want, first," I said aloud to myself, quietly. "After I figure out the Jonah thing."
I mulled it over for a few seconds before I nodded and turned back to the fridge.
I didn't plan things the way Merrily did, but I did plan. Sometimes. Loosely.
My eyes were in a permanent state of burning as I made a fruit smoothie to go with my cold pizza, but that was fine.
I was pretending it was fine, at least.
Another panic attack was exactly what I didn't need, so I'd just keep pretending.
There was a knock at my front door, and I listened. If it didn't open immediately, it was someone I didn't consider family.
Part of me hoped it was Niall, but I knew it wasn't. Whatever the mess between us was at the moment, he wouldn't be ready to talk this soon.
He'd want at least a few hours to process everything. He'd spend that time in his studio, lost in his work and his thoughts.
The door opened without me answering it.
I flipped my blender on again, just to hear it rage the way the rest of me did.
"Niall was here," Callum said flatly, when he saw the massive ziploc bag of leftover pizza sitting on my countertop.
I smoothly folded the sticky note in half so he couldn't read it. "Maybe I just ordered pizza."
His unamused expression told me he knew I'd avoided pizza for the last two years, the same way I'd avoided the entire Spellcaster Sector, where Niall's studio was located.
"We brought breakfast, and your phone," Kat said. "Merrily said she'd found it, and hadn't heard from you. Are you okay?"
Callum set bags of takeout food on my table, and put my pizza back in the fridge. At least he didn't try to throw it out.
I dumped my smoothie into a cup and carried it over to them. They were annoyingly close to each other, some part of their bodies always touching. If I wasn't so jealous of them, I would've thought it was sweet.
"I'm fine," I lied.
