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I push my anger away. Or I try. Because if I get angrier, this knot is liable to start up again and I know she already aches from the way my body has been punishing hers.
“Clearly you haven’t rehearsed this speech,” I mutter.
“No. No, I haven’t,” she admits softly. “Because what happened haunts me. Haunts me, Riley. And whenever I think on it I can’t function that well and I… need to function. And I know you’ll never forgive me. I know this… all this with us right now is just biology. I know when we get through this week that you agreed to-”
“That they pushed on me,” I correct.
Her eyes drop and she pouts while shrugging. “I’ll give it back to you. Your life. I’ll cut myself out of your life for you. So that you can finally find happiness. You just have to request it.”
Her eyes move back up to meet mine. I stare deep, despite that it hurts to look into her eyes. I know I need to look. To listen.
“I’m listening,” I say, and it comes out soft.
“I can’t take back all the pain I caused you. I really wish I could. Believe me, please, when I tell you I never wanted this. I wanted you.”
I grind my teeth.
She twists her fingers between our chests nervously. I stare at her hands while she resumes talking.
“I just went about things the wrong way. I fucked up. It’s on me. If I’d waited for nature to take its course, I would’ve had what I wanted, and this was a hard lesson for me. A lesson you never should’ve had to be the scapegoat for. But I didn’t know that. And it’s still no excuse, so I don’t even know why I’m saying it. I pleaded my case for you to be free of this… this pain because of my actions when I stood trial. They wouldn’t.” She shakes her head. “They wouldn’t let me free you of this pain and God, I pleaded on my hands and knees, Riley.” She chokes up and covers her face with her hands. “I tried so hard. They wouldn’t let me. They made me punish you as a punishment to myself.”
“Who?” I demand, moving her hands away from her face.
“The supernatural council collective. They found out what I did, found out fast, and they arrested me for it, made me stand trial. I… I wanted you. I wanted you and I did a spell not knowing I just had to wait. I’m so impatient so some who know me might not believe I’d wait, but I would. I would’ve waited if I’d known the alternative was hurting you. I drank some spelled wine that I should’ve known better than to drink, not that I knew what it was, but I knew better than to consume anything opened in Aunt Lyrica’s fridge without asking what it was first. But that day… my heart was broken because my boyfriend cheated on me, and Aunt Lyrica was in the hospital so I was sad and broken-hearted, and I didn’t think. I just drank the wine. And the wine… yeah… it did what it was spelled to do.”
She startles, eyes widening, and I realize it’s because I’ve bared my teeth. I try to clear my expression, feeling the anger rise at what she’s just said. Because she mentioned a boyfriend? The flash of anger I feel at anyone else touching her has me ready to shift and rip shit up.
She resumes talking. “And I saw you that day, so I went into a trance and hit that fire hydrant and left and then between finding my great aunt unconscious on the floor, then the ambulance and the hospital…” She takes a breath.
My fuckin’ head is spinning.
“I drank wine spelled that makes you lose your inhibitions and go for what you want. And I did. I got drunk and wrote a spell and went into the woods and you found me the next morning in the wildflowers. I just went for what I wanted. And I wanted you. I…” She wipes her eyes with her shaking fingers and takes another deep breath. “Okay, I’ll back up a bit. I saw you right after I found out I was a witch when I turned eighteen, three years earlier. That’s a whole other long story but I didn’t find out I’m a witch until my eighteenth birthday. And that’s the day it felt like my life started. My aunt was training me and took me to a tree near your village. You couldn’t see us because we were cloaked, but you were talking about building a tree house with your friends and you were just so…” She shakes her head. “I was smitten. She told me about how wolf shifters live, and it sounded amazing. The way you mate for life, how you care for your mates.”
