AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“This is bullshit and you know it.” The sound of something crashing rang out from his end of the line. “I don’t hear from you for months, you barely keep in touch as it is, and this is what you drop on me? I knew you were lying when you said you didn’t have a thing for her the night you talked me into leaving without her, but I didn’t realize it was because you didn’t give a fuck about what she wanted. You were just looking out for yourself.”
“Don’t go there with me.” My voice had gotten dangerously low. “You know damn well it would’ve been selfish to take her away from here. She’s not like you. She doesn’t want to travel. She wants to build a life and a home where she feels settled.”
“I get that you were mad about me asking her out before you, but damn, Wes. We dated for five years. You should’ve let that shit go.”
“I tried.” Christ, did I try. For years I did everything in my power to put my feelings to rest. Dated other women, avoided family functions, tried drinking her away. Nothing worked. Audrey was it for me. Always had been, always would be.
“I loved her,” Seth said, his voice quiet. “And you’re the one who told me to leave her. What am I supposed to do with that?”
I thought back to what I would’ve done in Seth’s shoes. If I had been the one with Audrey and he was on my porch giving me a bunch reasons why we shouldn’t be together. “You didn’t love her. You didn’t even know her.”
“What the fuck makes you think that?”
“Because if you knew her, you never would’ve thought about asking her to leave, and if you loved her, you never would’ve gone.”
“I can’t do this with you right now.”
The line went dead, and I tossed my phone onto my desk.
That went as expected. As shitty as the conversation had been, it was a long time coming. I should’ve laid it out for him from jump, but I didn’t, and this was the fallout of my stupid decisions. He’d either get over it or stay pissed, but I was no longer interested in letting Seth be a factor in where things stood between me and Audrey.
I hoped he wouldn’t take the next flight to the island so he could try to win her back. It would be just like him to do something like that. Though, at this point, I didn’t think I had as much to worry about. A lot had changed in the last week. Even more in the last day.
I’d gone back to dealing with the paperwork on my desk when Donovan busted into my office with wild eyes and a look of sheer terror etched on his face. “We need to talk about this X-Men shit. What have you and Audrey been doing to control it?”
I stood. “Why? What’s going on?”
“My hand glowed with a blue light when I touched Violet.”
“She a Pisces?”
“Yep.”
I knew it. There had to be twelve of us, and Selene had been one hundred percent right about the positive and negative energies attracting each other. Donovan making a magic match with Violet Fischer proved it. Of all the people fate could’ve tied him with, it chose the woman he rejected nine years ago. Damn. And I thought my situation was complicated.
“Get this. She didn’t even feel the earthquake. Slept right through it.” He smiled as he shook his head. “She sleeps like the dead, but times that by ten when she’s helping her parents get their shop set up for the summer. So, she had no idea this was coming.”
“Did anything else happen?” I asked. “Rain, lightning, that sort of thing?”
“Sandy talked to me.” He grimaced. “Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
He pulled on the end of his beard, deep in thought. “She didn’t talk like you and I are talking right now, but when she barked, I understood it. She thinks Violet would be a good mother and that our island could use more squirrels, by the way.”
“What kind of Dr. Dolittle shit is that?”
“Hell if I know. You’re the one who’s got experience with this, you tell me.”
This was well outside my pay grade. “What can Violet do?”
“She grew gills, like right on the side of her neck. It was freaky as fuck. I think she can breathe underwater or something, but we didn’t test it.”
Donovan gave me the rundown of everything that happened by the park earlier, and how he figured out his magic worked with Violet. Something he was less than pleased about, considering the side effects. He was close with Violet. The two of them helped out at the local animal shelter once a week and had standing dinner plans every Saturday night, but it still must’ve been awkward to get horny feelings for someone he kept firmly in the friend zone.
“You need to practice,” I said. “That’s the only way you’ll get a handle on it.”
“Great.” His jaw clenched as he tapped his fingers against his leg. “I barely touched her and it took two miles to walk off my hard-on. How am I supposed to practice in that condition?”
