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“Come inside, let me make you some tea and we can talk.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk, I want this”—I pounded my fist to the center of my chest—“gone. I want it gone.”

Placing his hand on the small of my back, he steered me inside and into the same room where I’d met with him the last time I was here. He sat me down and crouched in front of me. “What, Jasmine? What do you want gone?”

My lips quivered, and I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to catch my breath when another sob was right there. I felt weak and pathetic, but that small bit of hope, that kiss, it crumbled the wall I’d built to protect myself and there was no getting it back up. I needed someone else to do it for me. I needed Xavier to do it for me. I grabbed his hand in both of mine, my eyes locked on his steady, cool gaze. “I’m in love with a male who will never love me back, and I want you to take it away, Xavier. Please, can you lock it away?”

His gaze didn’t falter, but he didn’t say anything either. He just stared into my eyes. Again, I felt drawn in, held in place, like he was looking inside me. I let him. I opened myself up and let him see it, all of it.

Finally, he asked, “You’re positive there’s no hope?”

“None. I’ve endured this…this feeling for so long. I’ve watched him with other females. Seen him try to drink his own pain away. He doesn’t…he doesn’t want me…he…”

Say it. Tell me you don’t want me.

I don’t. Not the way you want me.

His words echoed through my skull again, and I bit my lip to hold in an agonized cry. My throat was raw from fighting it. He didn’t want me, but he did need me. After what I heard Willow say, I had to put him first, over my own pain. Mine was nothing to his. This was the only way. I wouldn’t let Ren take his own life. Nothing was more important than that. “He doesn’t want me. He told me. Please, will you help me.”

Xavier stood and slid his hands in his pockets. “You understand how this works? If I do this, it can’t be undone.”

“I understand,” I rasped. “Does that mean you’ll do it?”

He studied me for several long seconds, then nodded. “If this is what you truly want, who am I to deny you.”

I dragged in a breath, it felt like the first one since I ran from Ren’s house. “I don’t have any money with me, but I’m good for it. Whatever your price—”

“No payment.” He held out his hand. “Come.”

I took it and let him lead me from the room and down a wide hall. He opened a door at the end and flicked on a light, then carried on down a set of steep stairs and along to another door. He opened it and led me into a large room. This was the basement, but it didn’t feel like one. The lighting was warm and the walls were emerald green. Shelves covered in books took up most of the wall space and, getting a closer look, I saw they weren’t the kinds of books found in your average library. These were old, and I felt the whisper of power flowing from them. Magic. There were several globes and an old-school blackboard with symbols drawn in chalk, variations of the same one.

He led me to the edge of the room, then moved a chair to the side before he rolled the mat back, revealing the hardwood floor. There were intricate symbols painted on the wood in white, laid out in a hexagon. Symbols I’d never seen or used before, not in my family or coven and not in any books in our library.

“What are these,” I asked, looking up at him.

He looked down at them as well, his head tilted to the side as if he hadn’t really looked at them in a long time, not with fresh eyes. “They’re symbols I created, well, modified. They help to boost my blocking gift and enhance my ability to pinpoint with absolute accuracy the location of the particular emotion that I need to seal off.”

“They’re beautiful,” I said, telling him the truth. To do this, to create these, Xavier saw things in a way a lot of people didn’t, couldn’t.

His lips lifted on one side in a small smile, but those intense lavender eyes stayed the same, cool and unaffected. “Thank you. They took me a very long time to perfect.”

I motioned to the blackboard. “Are those others you’re working on?”

“Yes.” He frowned at the chalk drawings. “I’m getting close, but they still need work.” He turned back to me. “Please, take a seat.”

He motioned to the chair he’d just moved and I did as he said, a flurry of nerves making my legs shake. I sat and watched as he strode to the other side of the room and proceeded to remove his jacket, followed by his shirt. He folded each carefully and placed them on a desk. He toed off his shoes and removed his socks, then turned to me. His pale, hairless chest was rigid with muscle, and the same symbols on the floor were tattooed on his chest and stomach in the same arrangement in red ink.

My heart hammered harder, but I made myself stay where I was. I had to do this for Ren, and for me. I was no good to him in my current state. I couldn’t help him while I was hanging on to such intense feelings for him. He didn’t deserve my anger. He’d done nothing wrong. I’d pumped him full of magic, had filled him with so many emotions he’d avoided in so long, and it had made him feel something that wasn’t real. It had confused him. He never would’ve kissed me otherwise.

“What happens now?” I asked.

Xavier stepped into the hexagon. “Now, I take your pain away.”

I wanted that, so badly. “What will it feel like?”

“It won’t be painful, if that’s what you’re asking. You may feel a little pressure while I build the walls, some get a mild headache afterward, but only for a short time, and nothing more than that.” He lowered himself to the floor and crossed his legs. “I need to go into what looks like a trance while I find the source of your distress. Right now, while you’re feeling it so acutely, it shouldn’t be difficult, but it helps if you think about the source of your pain—in this case, the male you love. It’ll broadcast the location of those emotions louder for me.”

“Okay.” That wouldn’t be hard. Ren was the only thing in my head in that moment.