He took us to a small club near Albuquerque, dark and smoky, and the music pounded through my veins. After a couple of drinks, we could’ve been anywhere in the world and it wouldn’t have made a difference to me, as long as I was with him.
We soon found out that Magic wasn’t the only thing that worked well as dimidiums. When we danced, we moved smoothly, his hips pressing against mine, perfectly in sync. He’d drunk just enough for a buzz, to laugh that warm laugh that melted me to my core. I took another sip and looked into his eyes.
He grabbed my hand and pulled me closer, letting my hand rest on his chest. “I love this song,” he whispered.
I couldn’t look away from him. His eyes were a clear, liquid blue. A thin line of stubble ran over his chin and down his neck. “Me too.”
He put a hand on my waist and whispered in my hair, “Come here.”
He cupped my chin in his hand and tilted it up to him. His lips were feverishly hot, parting slightly to invite me inside. We fell into the dark, the music pumping all around us. My legs tangled in his, his hips pressing me into the wall. A knee slipped between my legs, and my hands looped around his waist, pulling him closer.
My dorm room afterward was a blur of hot breath on lips, flashes of his chest, and the sharp line of his hip in the sliver of light shining through the curtain. We breathed together, and one by one, more pieces of clothing slipped to the floor.
I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck and yanked him close, greedy for the heat of his lips on me. His lips traced down my neck, my shoulder, to my collarbone, and down. All along the line to my stomach. And as we tangled together in a flurry of clothes and hot breath and sticky kisses, for once I felt clean, I felt whole, I felt safe.
“You fucking wreck me,” he said, lips against my neck.
“Are you sure we should do this?” I whispered, in between soft kisses in the moonlight. Despite how good it felt, I was afraid of what people would say, afraid of rumors and of stupid people’s talk. God, I was afraid of so many things.
And here he was, afraid of nothing.
“Fuck them. Forget about everything else except this right here. Because you and me, this is real. This is what matters.”
Now the bell outside the Science building trilled four p.m. Max frowned.
“Did you want to go first?”
I blinked. “Sorry, what?”
“Did you want to go first pulling? Or should I?”
“Oh. I can.”
I cleared my throat and tentatively reached out to his aura.
Our Magic brushed up against each other, as if we were reacquainting ourselves. In a way, his Magic balanced mine. On my own, my Magic was dark and watery—but when we cast together, I ended up in altogether nicer locales. Instead of at the bottom of a murky lake, seaweed clawing at my legs, I’d be on a sunny beach, splashing in tide pools, or floating down a peaceful, rolling river.
I pulled a couple of threads to me. First only two, then another and another, and gathered them in my palms. Even if my body wasn’t truly there, my mind filled it in for me. I could feel the water trickling onto my feet, the wind lifting my air, the night sky blinking back at me. But I wasn’t alone. In the distance—somewhere far, but not too far—were galloping horses. They were breathing hard, writhing to get free of the leather binding their bodies. To reach me.
I remembered all of a sudden what Dr. Simmons had said about Max and me when I’d first arrived.Extraordinary, much like the law of gravitational force. The closer you are in each other’s orbit, the stronger your pull to each other.
I felt our Magic swirling and twisting and whipping around, a thousand tiny pieces of electricity firing on all my nerves.
Somewhere outside all of it, Max took a shuddering breath. “Cel.”
Too much.
“Sorry,” I murmured, my voice not sounding quite like my own. Because while my body was in the courtyard with him,Iwas here, in the Magic, on a short stretch of windswept, forgotten beach, tree roots tangled in the rocks behind me. I let some of the threads I’d pulled from him go and took a deep breath.
I scooped a palmful of water beneath me, watched with wonder as it stayed molded to the shape of my palm afterward. As if it had gone as solid as metal, the threads of Magic writhing beneath it, all lit up like stars.
“Cel,” he said again, breathing hard. “Cel, it’s too much. I’ve got to stop.”
“I can hear the galloping,” I said faintly. “What’s wrong?”
Then, like a cold wind receding, I felt him tug his threads back. The stars in the sky above me blinked out one by one, until I was left in complete darkness.
I dropped my own threads and opened my eyes. “You okay?”
