“But I thought it would be okay to greet him.”
Darkness flashes in Devlin’s eyes. “Let me feel him out. You did break his nose.”
“And I should apologize,” I argue.
“Let me talk to him before you do.” I lift a brow in defiance, and Devlin smirks. “You know I’m right.”
Of course he’s right. That’s what’s so annoying. Why does he have to always be right?
He glances down at my arm, seeming to realize for the first time that he’s touching me, and drops me like a hot potato. Then he strides into the crowd, managing to make striding look swelteringly sexy.
“So have you hit that yet?” Chelsea says, sidling up with Dallas.
I scoff. “No, I haven’t, and I’m not going to.”
“Is that a hickey on your neck?” Dallas asks, squinting in my vicinity.
“What? Where? Quick. One of you give me a mirror.”
My sisters stare at each other and burst into laughter. “Oh, I got you,” Dallas says.
“You didn’t get me.” I fluff out my skirt in annoyance. “I knew there wasn’t a hickey, because there’s no reason for there to be one.”
Chelsea clasps her hands behind her back. “Then why’d you look? Hm?”
“You surprised me,” I mutter. “But anyway, Storm looks like he survived spell ball.”
“Just barely,” Dallas admits, clicking her tongue. “I heard he almost left because of it.”
A pit opens in my stomach, and my body falls into it. This is a disaster.
Devlin’s talking to him now. Storm looks all broody and delicious. Devlin’s greeting him, saying something. Storm’s gaze tracks the room until it lands on me.
Then he turns up his nose and looks away.
I become a puddle of sludge. I’ve ruined things between us. Completely. Irrevocably.
I can just see it now—Storm Grayson leaves, taking with him my last chance at marriage. I wind up manless, it being just me and my vibrator for the rest of my life. My family loses their magic and we’re forced to sell the bookshop, because who needs a bookshop of magic when it doesn’t have any magic?
My sisters all marry off, and I’m left at home, taking care of my parents and dead nana, who reminds me of all my past mistakes every day for the rest of my life. Then I die and amburied in an unmarked grave that no one tends, and it gets covered in weeds.
Wow. I’ve really got to get out and stop imagining terrible things.
But that doesn’t stop the fact that Storm does not look happy to see me, and it amplifies the sinking feeling in my gut.
“Here comes Devlin,” Chelsea tells me. “We’ll leave you to it.”
Before I can tell them that they don’t have to leave, my sisters scurry off, nodding and smiling at Devlin as they pass him in the crowd.
I barely wait for him to arrive before pouncing. “Well? How’d things go?” I omit the fact that Storm shot torpedoes out of his eyes at me.
“Not well.”
My chest seizes. “No?”
“No. Oh, he gladly took the information I had about the anti-aging treatment, but there’s bad news.”
His eyes flash on me in a way that says I don’t want to hear what’s coming. But of course I ask because I’ve got to know the truth. “What is it?”
