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He frowns. It’s obvious he doesn’t remember any of this, which doesn’t surprise me with the enchantment locking up his thoughts onto the path Ophelia has chosen. “You drew me?”
“Yes. I came to your room. You posed for me.”
“No way,” one of the girls whispers behind my back.
“I posed,” he says, dark brows meeting over his nose. “For you.”
I’m ready for this. I place the drawing I’d made in his room that day on the desk. “Here. Keep it. I know it’s not a masterpiece, but you’re the real artist, not me. Just produce a drawing of me so we can give both to the teacher by tomorrow and be done with it.”
“But…”
I turn my back to him and walk away, determined not to allow any glimpse of my inner thoughts—the need to look at him longer, catalog every line of his face, stroke the tension from his jaw, touch the black circles under his eyes, take that damn blankness in his gaze away.
I just hope he notices what I’ve added to the picture—my message to him. I don’t care if I fail the class. I don’t care if I fail the year, as long as I don’t fail him.
As for Jason… I’m still not sure what sort of message I could leave as I wasn’t able to decipher his message at all—if it was his. The dream, the visitation from last night, is still vivid in my mind, making me feel too hot even as the wintry cold closes in. And he doesn’t come to our shared classes, which makes things even more difficult. Where is he?
Then I remember that he must be training full-time now for the Scale-ball match that is tomorrow.
Great. What do I do now? I bet Ophelia must have set camp on the bleachers. Probably led him onto the field by the hand and is waiting to lead him back out when he’s done.
Well, desperate times, desperate measures. I’m not leaving him out. Whether that piece of paper was a message to me or not, I need to let him know that I still care, am still fighting on his side. Maybe he will have a lucid moment later in the day and he will understand.
Something makes me draw for him instead of write—even though, as we’ve already established, I’m not an artist by any artistic standard out there—so I draw for him a heart and sign it. I feel silly doing it, like a little schoolgirl with a crush, but something at the back of my mind tells me he’ll read it more easily. Something about him having trouble reading words.
That’s significant, I think, as his cryptic message flashes again in front of my eyes. I need to look at it again—but first things first.
Deliver my message.
I don’t even glance up at the bleachers. Speed is my friend, as is the element of surprise. I speed-walk through the tunnel to the field and then I make a beeline for the blue T-shirts. I know the Reds are on my left, and I catch a glimpse of Emrys with them, his spiky hairdo standing out—but then I spot Jason.
Will I ever stop replaying the scene between them in my mind?
My face hot, I walk right up to him, sidestepping other tall boys who frown at me as I interrupt their exercises, and come to a halt in front of him.
Jason straightens from a squat he was doing and blows blond bangs out of his eyes. He’s standing there, in all his tall, muscular maleness, his sweat-drenched T-shirt clinging to every defined muscle, his shorts rucked up, showing off his powerful legs. Sweat runs down his long neck. His face is a study in contrasts, the soft gold of his hair, the straight line of his nose, the sharp squareness of his jaw.
What did I come to do?
“Mia,” he says, just my name, green eyes like laser beams, and good, I think hazily, at least he remembers who I am, because God knows what number that enchantment is doing on him and good Lord, I want to tell him that I saw him last night in my sleep, and is that too weird?
Probably.
“You got my message?” he says, and I blink, gathering my tongue from the floor. “The paper on the floor?”
“Uh, yeah,” I whisper and sag in relief.
Here is the confirmation. It was a message after all.
“My handwriting sucks.” A rueful grin pulls at his mouth, revealing those sexy dimples. “Part of my ADHD. So the school therapist once told me.”
Gah. This boy. So sexy.
And does that mean that his message wasn’t in symbols but actual letters? What exactly is ADHD? I have to check it out.
“Gotta get back to the training,” he says and his eyes cut to the bleachers.
Sigh. I’d forgotten about Ophelia and her nefarious plans and spells for a second there. I take his hand and he frowns down at it. I press my piece of paper into his palm, close his fingers around it.
