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A familiar zap of energy surged up my spine. The one that I felt when I knew I was listening to a human talk about magic but had no clue that’s what they were discussing.
I reached for my notes, scanning over them once again. It helped me to write out all my thoughts in long-form. Helped my mind make connections it wouldn’t otherwise.
Darla had the power to make a shower appear over her parents’ garden. Could ensure pleasant weather for her birthday parties. Was it so far out of the realm of possibility to think that she could make a freak lightning storm happen?
Without a second thought, I grabbed my bag and rushed out of the paper.
* * *
I didn’t wantto admit how much I was looking forward to seeing Jack again.
I’d felt him get off only moments before. My body was still surging with the pleasure of my release. And knowing that he had felt that same release made me want to be as close to him as possible. Even if he didn’t want to be close to me.
If only things could be different. Fantasies fluttered through my mind of driving down the long, winding path that led to Jack’s cabin. When I pulled up in front of the cabin, he wouldn’t simply accept my presence. Instead, he would pull me to him, making my body flush against his.
And then he would love me exactly the way I’d always wanted him to.
Instead, he was having an orgasm across town with me feeling his release. Him alone in his cabin and me trying to pretend I wasn’t coming apart as I sat at my desk at the Gazette.
As I turned off the main highway and onto the dirt path that led to the cabin, my pulse pounded. With each bounce of the car over a tree root that crossed the path, my breath left my body in a whoosh. In the back of my mind, there was a part of me that wanted this to end with us both sharing another release together.
Maybe, just maybe, things would change.
The cabin was nestled in a copse of trees, separated from the rest of the world. As my car breached the line of trees, my heart stuttered as I noticed the car sitting before the cabin doors.
My foot hit the brake so hard that the seatbelt jerked me back into the seat, my chest smarting from the impact. I didn’t bother to turn off the ignition. Instead, I sat in the car, the sound of my breath and motor mingling together in a strange symphony of anxiety.
Then, the cabin door opened.
And she stepped out.
Lana Rogers. Just the other day, I’d sat in Blanche Mooney’s house and listened as she had told the entire coven that she was certain Jack was her true mate. Rainbow had assured me it couldn’t be the case.
But as I watched, breathless, as Jack ushered Lana out of the house with such tenderness and care, my stomach dropped. My mouth went dry.
I wasn’t sure he had ever displayed such tenderness toward me when we’d been together. Usually, he was so busy trying to put distance between us that it felt as if I could count the times he had actually touched me on one hand. And now, he seemed to be so genuinely resolute about seeing Lana safely to her car. And Lana was looking at Jack with such admiration that she hadn’t noticed my car idling alongside the pathway.
He looked down at her sweetly, a hand on her back, as he put her in the car. He smiled at her before he closed the door, shutting her inside. As if the most important thing in the world at that moment was seeing her safely off.
And I’d once been fool enough to think that the concern he’d shown for me made me special to him.
I sat on the periphery of the scene, completely invisible to both people. Two people too caught up in each other to notice that I was watching them like a voyeur on the sidelines.
Above all this, there was one pulsing, ugly thought that served as a soundtrack for the scene I was watching unfold before me.
He hadn’t been alone.
I had.
But he had been with her. He had given her the very thing that he told me I could never have: him.
I knew Lana was in an arranged bond with another warlock. Perhaps Jack and she had found solace in one another. Two miserable, magical people who commiserated over being bound to someone they didn’t truly want.
My hands clenched at the steering wheel, willing myself to jerk the wheel and turn the car around. My brain screamed at me to leave. Just pull the car out of the drive, get back on the highway, and never turn back.
What if I just kept going? What if I never stopped? What if I left Mystic Springs and never returned? If I got far enough away from him, would the gnawing, needy feeling that lived in my gut every time I thought of Jack finally go away?
And if it wouldn’t, maybe I could live with it. It would become a dull ache. Surely there had to be other witches over time who had to deal with being rejected by their mate.
