Page 68 of The Spellreader and the Phoenix

Oh, yes, Max wanted all of that.

But he was getting ahead of himself. He was lucky that Rory and Alex were happy out front, giving Max more time to work on spells like he was doing—or supposed to be doing—right now. That didn’t mean it was going to last. If nothing else, Alex would graduate high school in a couple years. They didn’t know what would actually happen when Mr. Jones passed away. And perhaps at some point, Rory would decide spending all his time with Max wasn’t what he wanted to do anymore.

Max had been on his own since his parents died. His relationship with Evie was complicated by the fact that he’d raised her since she was seventeen. She was a whole-ass adult now, of course, but it was hard to break the habit of years. It was hard to believe that he should be leaning on her rather than the other way around.

And her energy could feel overwhelming in a way that Rory’s didn’t. He wasn’t entirely certain why. Now, somehow, Max was living with someone else, spending most of his time with that someone else, and had never been more content. If he looked at each of the separate pieces, it didn’t seem possible that they could combine to this wonderful whole that he was faced with every day.

It was weird and awesome all at the same time.

Max knew that he was grumpy—especially pre-coffee—and that he was a lot for some people to take, but Rory didn’t seem to notice that. He made coffee for Max and didn’t try to talk to him before he’d consumed it, and he was helpful and sweet and hot and—

Max’s brain screeched to a halt. Hot? Max could generally be trusted to be the most oblivious person in the world when it came to physical details. If pressed, he could agree that someone was aesthetically appealing, but it was always an afterthought to him, and often not something he even remarked upon on his own. He wasn’t sure that he could think of another time when he’d voluntarily and spontaneously identified someone as being attractive.

Did he think Rory was attractive? He envisioned Rory’s face, with his wild blond hair and bright honey eyes and kissable lips, and—

Had Max’s brain or body figured this out without his input? What if he envisioned kissing Rory, or pressing his body against the other man’s…?

Huh. Max didn’t think his dick had done this since he’d hit puberty, not based on imagining an encounter with an actual person as opposed to a standard bodily reaction. (He’d jerked off in the shower when his body seemed to require that, but it had always been absent of any sort of desire for or attraction to another person. He’d genuinely just labeled himself as uninterested and moved on, unsure what the big deal was.) He hadn’t bothered to look into it too much—he didn’t really care about labels and he wasn’t interested in connecting with anyone about it—but he’d always assumed he was asexual. He’d done enough research, though, to wonder now if he was actually demisexual and attracted to people that he formed a close emotional bond with.

The truth was that Max didn’t get close to people very often. He didn’t like people as a general rule, and being a witch just added another layer of distance. He kept huge parts of himself from most people, he had the bookshop taking up so much of his time, and just the idea of a hookup was an utter turn-off for him. Those few occasions in college had been incredibly lackluster. (Zero shade on those it worked for. It absolutely did not work for Max.) Those few attempts with boyfriends that he’d been hiding from had been dismal. And even the couple attempts with a witch here or a shifter there had been more because he thought maybe he should or because Evie was certain she’d found someone for him. He’d never given much of himself, and he hadn’t gotten much back in return. Apparently, that mattered.

Maybe if he’d figured it out sooner, he could have had a better relationship before this, but he was inclined to think that he’d figured it out exactly when he was supposed to. He was working this out about himself because he was emotionally connected to Rory. And Rory accepted him exactly as he was and clearly didn’t expect any surprise revelations.

(Was that fate? Or the Magic? Did Rory have the right end of the stick after all? Max still wasn’t sure. But he was maybe… slightly more convinced than he had been. In part because Rory didn’t seem to be trying to convince him. He’d just shared his belief and left Max to make his own decision.)

Max was thirty-eight years old, and it wasn’t like he thought he knew everything about everything. (To the contrary, the more he learned, the more he realized there was so much more out there to learn.) But it hadn’t occurred to him that there might be an aspect of himself that he didn’t know very well. Which, he supposed, probably showed how much he still had to learn here, too.

But what happened after this? Did he announce it to Rory? Did Max do nothing? Should he wait and confirm? Should he test it somehow? His stomach twisted uneasily. He didn’t want to mess anything up with Rory. The man was amazing, and the last thing Max wanted was to somehow wreck things because he couldn’t figure himself out.

Rory had always told him that there was zero pressure and he wanted to be in Max’s life however Max wanted, but was he actually prepared for what Max wanted to change? Or what if Max was wrong, and it turned out this was an evening’s daydream?

Frowning, Max decided he’d think about it. He wasn’t hiding; he could practically hear Evie making that accusation. He was being sensible because this was a big deal, and Rory meant a lot to him. He’d make sure the feeling was… was reproducible, and then he’d consider mentioning it to Rory. Or he’d try to subtly test the waters. Not that he thought subtle was one of his skills, but maybe there was a first time for everything.

Something crashed somewhere beneath Max, and he jolted. That had come from… the basement? It had sounded loud. Had someone fallen? He remembered that he’d given Alex permission to spend an extra hour in the basement sorting some of the boxes of books.

There was another crash, and this unfroze Max. He sprang to his feet and bolted out of the room. Nōwē was wailing, and Max skidded down the hall. His cat had just shot out of the basement and screeched at him.

“I’m going!” Max said before clattering down the stairs. He burst into the basement and then windmilled to what would no doubt have been a hilarious halt in any other circumstances, because there was a bear in his basement.

It looked like a grizzly or a black bear—there was a difference between them, but just at the moment, Max didn’t have the slightest idea what it was, because there was a bear in his basement. It was gigantic and dark brown, and that’s where Max’s knowledge ended. He was pretty sure that with one of them, you were supposed to fight them off, and with the other, you were supposed to play dead. The fact that he didn’t know which was which had never mattered before, because Max didn’t go anywhere where bears lived. In fact, he kind of avoided places like that.

How had it gotten in? Why had it gotten in? There wasn’t any food down here. Sure, the shop smelled nicer now thanks to Rory and the cookies and the pumpkin spice, but surely not enough to lure a bear into the middle of the city. And, oh, good god, where was Alex? Had the bear eaten them? What would Max say to Alex’s mom? Max’s eyes flitted frantically around the room, but there was no sign of Alex, no sign of anything except the bear—

And finally, Max’s brain caught up with his emotions.

Fuck me sideways.

The not-attacking, terrified-looking bear who was in the basement where Alex was supposed to be and was looking like it had crashed into the table and knocked over some boxes of books.

Max drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, calming the fuck down. Now that adrenaline hadn’t hijacked his entire nervous system, he could feel the buzz of magic that told him he was in the presence of a magical being, a tell-tale sign that only appeared once witch and shifter kids hit late puberty and came into their magic.

This had always seemed weird to Max; why didn’t it slowly accumulate as they grew and become noticeable in increments? On the other hand: magic. Clearly, it could work however it wanted.

Max had only ever experienced coming into his own magic, obviously. He’d been seventeen, and as a witch, he had the much better end of the stick, as far as he was concerned. One day, the buzz had just been there, and his parents, as witches, had recognized it. They’d taught him a simple spell, and for the first time ever, Max had been able not just to sketch the spell with his finger, he’d actually been able to power it with magic. It had been instinctive. He’d drawn the spell, and his magic had immediately wanted to fuel it. And that was it, he was a witch.

He’d never thought about a witch who came from a family of non-witches. (Not common, but it did happen. There also had to be witches who were orphans or adopted and wound up in the normal person system.) Max had never considered what happened if you were a shifter who didn’t know you were a shifter, and the first sign of magic was shifting for the first time.

Max stepped forward, even though his instincts were still clamoring at him that he needed to back away. “Alex, it’s okay.”