She clutched fresh flower crowns in her hands. Quickly skipping her fingers over the forget-me-nots, she dropped a different wreath of foliage on the top of my head. Reaching up, I caught it before it fell off the other side. Pulling it away from where it had caught in my braids, I stared down at it as I walked toward a different set of voices echoing from the sun porch, overlooking the backyard.
Vibrant red roses and wildflowers twisted between green flora.
I lifted my gaze back toward the room in front of me. The only two inside were lit up by the sun, nearly at its highest peak.
“They got you here too?” Dom’s hair was ruffled from the light breeze sneaking through the cracks in the slanted windows.
Ryan grinned, fixing his loose buttoned shirt until it lay just right. He adjusted the small flower behind his ear that must’ve been a gift to him from Essie as she tore through the house on a mission.
God, how did that kid always look so cute?
“Nah, I’ve been super excited ever since Lu told me about it. I have been around for their other celebrations, but this is my first …” Ryan glanced toward me as I entered the kitchen. “Beltane, right?”
I smiled. “You got it.”
Before Ryan could go on, Dom made his way across the room to me. Grasping my hands in his, warm and solid, Dom extended our arms out so he could get a good look at me.
His eyes traveled over my bare feet with red painted toes up to my head, while nearly poked him with how my flower crown sat on the top of my head. I had to give him the whole visual after all.
“Don’t you look …” Dominic took another scan, up and down, reaching out to touch a petal of flowers likely caught between my dark curls, which I’d left completely loose over my shoulders, cascading down on top of the red fringed shawl I left on to cover my shoulders. He licked his lips before biting the bottom one. “Pretty.”
“I look like the perfect little virgin sacrifice,” I corrected. The hem floated down over the tops of my bare feet as I shuffled.
He laughed. “A virgin sacrifice with sparkles.”
His thumb swiped over my cheek and around my eye, where I’d smeared some shimmer makeup, making my skin glow when hit by sunlight.
If he thought I was glittering, just wait until he saw Faith in her full fairy getup.
“The dress is tradition,” I explained, glancing down at him wearing a similar look to Ryan. “You’ll see. That’s why I told you to wear white.”
Dom looked down at himself, confused. “This is white.”
“More like beige.” I wrinkled my nose, teasing and swinging his hand.
He shook his head, turning around for further inspection as I rounded his tight, cut shoulders. His tattoos peeked out around the short sleeves, stark in contrast. “Sorry. When I packed, I hadn’t gotten the memo that I had to be prepared to participate in unknown pagan holidays in the middle of May.”
“You’re forgiven.”
“Don’t I get a crown though?”
Easily, I took off my flowers and plopped them onto his head. He rolled his eyes, but the corner of his lips curled.
“There.” I righted his crown a little more to the right. “Now, you’re one hundred percent ready to celebrate one of my favorite days of the year.”
Dominic didn’t reach to snatch the wreath of flowers off his head. In fact, it almost looked like he was having a good time.
* * *
The sun was rising high,and flowers were starting to pop up around the edges of the yard. As everyone came together and began to file outside, I couldn’t hold back my wide eyes and smile at the way everything looked.
Truly, those April showers had worked some miracles.
“I never took you as a girlie girl.”
“Beltane isn’t girlie,” I huffed, smiling as I continued down the yard, following Lu’s and Gertie’s lead.
We all gathered and dropped our baskets of flowers at the base of the sloped tree that jutted out from the ground and bent over the slow-moving river bend.
