“I didn’t know that about me either,” I whispered, picking at my grown-out nails again. “Not until the past few years when the thought kept coming up. I heard my cousins were having babies, and it never really bothered me. Then …”
“What? Do I need to remind you again hownotold you are? Because the words are truly taxing to a woman of my age, I hope you realize.”
I shook my head, letting out the truth for once, however quiet I kept my voice. “I met Dom. I met him last summer, and up until then, I hadn’t really thought about the future. I knew better than to do that. Now, I’m more settled. More than I was when I first showed up on your doorstep.”
“Leaps and bounds,” granted Gertie.
“Sure, I wanted things,” I admitted, using her words. “I wanted someone to love me, thus all the terrible men and the terrible dates. But then Dom came in and started asking about that future. He started to ask about how I sawmyfuture, telling me to picture it. So, I did. I pictured the little house with the white picket fence. The plants in the window boxes. The yard I’d complain about raking leaves off of every year. And I saw it. I saw it all. I even saw it with maybe another someone, someone who’d jump into those stupid leaves I’d piled up and who would come with me to meetings, like Essie used to with Celeste. I could see it along with a person coming up behind me and looking at me like … like someone who loved me.”
Of course, then, it had been Dom in that vision.
“You deserve all that, Ana.”
“Yeah, well”—I took a deep breath—“after everything and that stupid boring baby shower, I was on my floor with the wine stain on it, and suddenly, I was piecing together almost every bad variation of hex I knew into a stupid jar spell with his name burning inside. It sounds almost corny. I never thought it would work. Of course, I hadn’t thought I would ever have the balls to even attempt something like this. Then, the bad luck started to settle in here and there until I found the cause, who showed up right on my doorstep, bringing the bad mojo I had thrown at him.”
“That must’ve been a shock.”
“It was like waking up in a nightmare,” I admitted. But that didn’t feel right. “At first anyway. But not a surprise, no. I knew something wasn’t right. I knew I couldn’t get away from him so easily.”
When he had shown at my door, he had been raging in that odd, silent way that he did, which was sometimes scarier than being screamed at. And he knew too. He had known what I’d done, even before I did in a way. Wasn’t that the most irritating part?
“Things have changed since he first arrived then?” asked Gertie.
His lips capturing mine in a way only he had ever managed swept back through my mind.
I snorted a laugh.
“Something funny?” Gertie asked, smiling with me.
“The opposite really. We’re just good together.” Or we could’ve been. That hadn’t changed even if we tried to force it. The air between us didn’t lie. “And we’re just …” My words faded off.
I didn’t know what we were or what we were doing at this point. I didn’t know what I was doing. We weren’t fighting as of the past twenty-four hours, which was something, but I still couldn’t let anything else come to light.
I needed help to figure out this curse, and then he’d leave. I’d get to move back on with my life just how it had been going before. I would maybe take a trip or upgrade my apartment without the fear of being laid off for a few weeks again because of the distraction of Dom and everything else going on.
It would all be back to right. It would be better.
“I just need to figure this out and move on.”
“Move on?” Gertie raised a light-gray eyebrow.
“Move forward? Whatever you’d like to call it so long as I don’t mess his life up any more than I already have.”
Gertie’s voice took on a soft quality. “What about your life?”
Shutting my eyes, I breathed—only breathed—for another few seconds. “Right now, my life doesn’t matter so much. I have a life. I have my job, which I’ll get back after this is all over. I have you guys. I have my space. I have more than I could’ve ever wanted at one point.”
I needed to fix my mistakes, whatever repercussions that caused for me. Bad luck for seven years. Never understanding the feeling of falling in love with my soul mate when it wasn’t Dom, clearly. Whatever it was, I’d take the pain right now.
I deserved it, no matter the backstory.
Gertie nodded, as if she saw whatever she thought I was going to say hanging in the air.
“You are doing everything right.” Gertie’s voice remained careful and reassuring.
Though I had been with the coven for some time, I wasn’t sure when Gertie and I’d had a conversation that was just us. Besides when I had first been inducted, we kept a respectful distance. I appreciated her, and she had let me in the club without complaint, and that was how our lives got along just fine.
After I had finally admitted to her what had brought me to Barnett, I honestly didn’t want to know more about what she thought of me. Slowly, over the years, I pieced together the messy side of Gertie’s story. I could only imagine that she thought that I was a brat. An inheritance kid who acted out when she had a good thing going, unlike how she had grown up. I might have been welcomed, but I couldn’t help but feel judged by those who knew why and how I had ended up in Barnett.
