“No. You came here because you were passing through on your way to somewhere else. Or you were distraught or needed to get away. Oh, or you came to confront me about a curse that was my fault and turned your life upside down.”
At the mention of the curse, a few eyes turned, those looking at the charms on the table near me, with new appreciation and concern.
I rolled my eyes, focusing them back on the person sitting directly in front of me. I almost didn’t want to say his name. Even thinking it turned a crack in my heart that I had been sticking together with superglue. I’d tried to give him space and time, and this was what he did? He was infiltrating my life yet again?
“You didn’t come here for me.”
“But I did,” Dom insisted. “There wasn’t anything else I’d ever come back here for. At least, there wasn’t. You were right. But there is now. I’m here for you. I messed up, Ana. You know that, and you called me out on it. Now, I’m here to fix it.”
“You can’t just say the words, and it will be all better. That kind of apology isn’t a magic spell.”
“I know that. I have a plan.”
I looked away, wondering if anyone else in the shop had noticed my unfortunate situation. So far, it looked like they were all too preoccupied—or doing very well at ignoring me. Any line I used to have for readings was now suddenly extinct.
“I’m sure you do.”
“I’m going to tell you, if you are quiet for a minute and let me,” Dom said.
I was about to open my mouth and tell him exactly how rude he was for even saying that, but I remained silent. I shuffled my cards once more to keep my hands busy.
“I came back here for you. Every time I come here, all I think about is the fact that I never wanted to. But that’s the thing, Ana. I was meant to come back here,” Dom said, his voice low and serious. “I was meant to stop that day in the summer, and I was meant to find you. Because every day I spend with you, however simple or ridiculous it might be, like trying to solve a curse you set on us or making terrible pottery, they are some of the best days of my life. When they’re over, I feel like I’m dying. I’m done pretending that I have to die, Ana. I want to live. I want to give you everything you deserve. I’ll even stay here in Barnett and maybe, one day, even get that little house by the water with a fence that we’ll complain about having to paint every few years.”
“We?”
“Yes,we,” he said confidently, even while his eyes wavered at my flat expression. “Because I want that. I want us. No matter what it takes, I’m going to make it happen because I’m done spiraling in this same loop over and over when we both know for once in our lives exactly where we are supposed to be. It’s with each other.”
Was it?
“Isn’t it?”
I stared at him, unsure of what to say.
“We are messy and bad with our words half the time. We make stupid decisions, but I’m willing to do all that and make all the mistakes if we can do it together,” Dom went on. “Because then those mistakes will only feel like another good story we’ll have both been a part of. The summer. The spring. We still have two more seasons to go and years after, Ana. I believe we can do it—that is, if you still want me.”
I cringed, knowing just how much I still wanted him, and yet it was all so complicated now. It was somuch. “And your daughter?”
“I want her to know,” said Dom without pause.
I shook my head. “Know what?”
“Magic.”
My heart stopped in my chest.
“I didn’t realize how much I’d even wanted to know magic until I walked away from you because only then did I start to see it everywhere. I saw it in Piper’s smile. I saw it in how the sun peeked through the windows at sunset—even though it was never as beautiful as when I had watched it with you on the river. When I walked away, I felt that same awful feeling I’d felt last year all over again. I walked away for the last time, Ana, because this is where I want to be. I want to be here in the magic. I want to be with you. I want my daughter to meet you and know this world full of love and strength and passion that you all have for each other and the things you do. I want my daughter to be raised in this.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am,” he said. “I told you, I messed up a lot and wasted a lot of time. But this, I am sure about. I just didn’t have the words. I didn’t even think I was worthy of this life, like you believed you were—and you were right for believing in it all this time. I have been a disappointment all my life. But I’m not going to be. Not to my daughter. Not to you,” Dom said, his throat clogging with emotion as he stared at me.
I swallowed, trying to think of what to say. I couldn’t do this again. I’d told him that before.
“Please, just trust me.”
Trust him. The words caught in my chest.Trust him?
After the past year, how could I trust Dominic Rovnik with anything? He had made me feel small, and just when I had thought that I was something big in his eyes, he had pushed me down again.
