Like she was in a steam room set to high, and someone had locked the door.
Another ten seconds and she was going to pass out from heat exhaustion—and she couldn’t let that happen. He’d think she was all affected by bodily contact with him. Like before, only worse. Because this time, he seemed even less affected than he had by anything else. He was still shaking away at her hand, like he hadn’t a care in the world.
Though she had to say, the handshake was going on for a long time. And he didn’t seem to be saying a lot. He didn’t seem to be doing anything. She couldn’t even hear him breathing.
So when she went to pull away, she looked up.
But he wasn’t looking at her face. He was looking at their hands. He was staring at them, transfixed, like they were the most fascinating things he’d ever seen. And it was only when she tried to pull away that he stopped. His head jerked up, as if he’d been caught spying on something he shouldn’t.
Something filthy,she thought.
Even though that was ridiculous.
It was just a handshake. Nothing more, nothing less.
And if he walked away with one hand clenched and the other held spread open like it had just touched fire, like it had been burned by heated blood she didn’t actually have—well.
She would tell herself that it didn’t mean a single thing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
She knew his exposed body and the conversation and the resulting handshake had affected her too deeply. And not just because a lot of the things he’d said had left her puzzling over them. Or because that contact had been weird and intense enough that she could still feel it for hours afterward. Or because he’d walked away the way he had. No, there was also what happened in the middle of the phone conversation she had later that day with her mom.
Her mom asked, “So how are things going?”
And her first instinct wasn’t to say,well, my mortal enemy is a werewolf,orhey, just so you know, Gram was a half witch who never told me I have magical powers.Or even just a normal update on non-mind-blowing things like:I found a downstairs toilet under the stairs that Gram was weirdly using as a cupboard.
Instead, she almost blurted out,Seth Brubaker made my hand go really hot. Then it looked like I made his hand go really hot.
As if that mattered. As if it even remotely measured up to anything else that had happened.You should be asking your mom if she knew anything about this witch business, her mind scolded her. Though of course she knew why she didn’t.
There wasn’t a chance in hell her mother had any idea.
And even if she had, Cassie knew her mom wouldn’t have believed it. Her mother was the most practical person alive. Both her parents were. Their advice, after the whole high school business, had been to simply become a different person so it would never happen again.
“Things like that never happen to thin, well-dressed people,”her dad had said, without looking up from his paper. And that was the reason she’d moved across the country the second she could. It was why she’d relied on Seth for the kind of support her parents should have given her, just as he’d relied on her for the freedom his parents had rarely allowed.
So relaying any of this—including the hand thing—was pointless.
She simply told her mom that she was staying longer than she’d planned, that she was having fun catching up with old friends, that she had sublet her apartment so it didn’t matter anyway. Even though she hadn’t. She’d just let it go, figuring that she would use the money from the sale of the house to get a new place.
And at this point she wasn’t even sure if she wanted to do that.
I think I might have to live here now,she almost said at the end of the conversation with her mother. But of course she couldn’t explain why, so what was the point? It seemed better to just end the call and carry on trying to muddle through all of this in whatever way she could.
Which basically meant a lot of not daring to read the little stack of journals she’d gathered and set on the kitchen table. And not sleeping, because now the rocking chair might really be alive. And feeling relieved again when Seth showed up the next day.
Even though she didn’t want to be relieved at all. She wanted to be closed off, and guarded, and cautious. But instead, when he said, “So should we go inside and make ourselves comfortable?” she actually almost told himsure.
More than that, in fact. She didn’t thinktwiceabout saying sure. It felt like the most natural, casual thing in the world to simply go ahead. Like they were kids again, like they were buddies. Instead of the utterly deranged adult enemies they’d become.
He did that awful thing to you,she told herself.
And then she put the brakes on so hard, he almost crashed into her as she made her way up the porch steps. She heard him screech to a halt behind her, followed by a blurted out, “Whoa, easy there. I almost had you.”
And, okay, she knew he meantI came close to knocking intoyou. Yet, somehow, she just couldn’t shake the idea that it had a double meaning.He almost hoodwinked me, she thought. Then proceeded accordingly.
“You know what? I don’t think we should go in the house,” she said, as calmly and firmly as she could. Though somehow, it still came out too loud, and sounded sort of panicked. He actually held his hands up on hearing it. And he pretty much jumped back.
