Page 115
I’d been fidgeting with the cuff of my shirt. I paused. Two twin flames at the pool party would be much more convincing than one, but I’d need a believable excuse for Kai to attend. Then, faster than I’d like to admit, an idea came to me.
“Do you think you could pretend to be an organic wine guy and charm women with small talk?”
“Um, yeah,” Kai said without hesitation. “I could, like, do that for a living.”
Chapter Thirty
Kai and Callie had left at around five in the morning, almost sober. Two hours later, Damian and I sat at my kitchen table drinking coffee without a wink of sleep behind us. The nerves under my skin felt like an instrument ruthlessly plucked and overplayed.
My stomach felt hollow, but there wasn’t a thing in the kitchen I could imagine eating.
Damian looked like he’d taken a ten-hour road trip without stopping. Hair raked back from a nervous hand, a wrinkled shirt, and dark crescents forming under his eyes.
“I’m driving you to work,” he said, draining his coffee. “Or following you, at least.”
“You really think that’s—”
“Yes.”
I drew a small circle with my finger on the table. “So this negotiation… when do we do it?”
“I’ll call my mother today.”
My throat tightened around a hard knot.
“What do you think she’s going to say?”
I tried to picture what Damian’s mother might be like. Some elegant creature who planned murder over a delicate brunch of fennel and pomegranate. She didn’t feel entirely real to me. Damian was too down to earth, too grounded to be the son of the woman I imagined.
“She’ll say something cruel and vile dressed up as manners,” he said.
“She sounds like a blast.”
He looked at me. “You learned what you need in the cave. You know how to keep your feet on the ground.”
I rubbed my temples. “I guess so. Is she even going to agree to this? And does she need some kind of coven consensus?”
“She’ll agree to it if we package it neatly enough. She doesn’t like a mess, or the appearance of one. She’ll tell me I shouldn’t confuse love with strategy, and I’ll have to convince her that I can have both.”
I looked at him, seated at my thrifted table by a mug I’d bought from a flea market. At his unshaved jaw and his blue eyes that never landed on anything he couldn’t endure or negotiate. The very quiet anxiety strung through the tendons of his hands and forearms. There were small scars on his thumb and forefingers. I hoped they were from carpentry work.
“How are you even normal? With a mother like that?”
He frowned. “I’m not.”
I laughed. It strained my own tired ears. “You’re not a serial killer.”
“That’s debatable.”
I didn’t laugh at that. I saw the giant wound in him instead, and it felt like a punch in the chest.
I put my mug down and reached for him. He took my hand and pulled me gently between his knees, until I was standing close enough for his face to settle against my sternum and his breath to warm the thin fabric of my shirt. His hands reached around me, warm and insistent, like we both might drift from the spot if he didn’t hold on tight enough.
I showered and dressed for work with the door closed. That separation felt a little too aware of itself. It was warm outside, so I pulled on a navy sundress covered in tiny flowers.
“You’re welcome to use the shower.”
“I’ll shower at home and grab some stuff,” he said, glancing at me, then glancing again. I guess he liked the sundress.
