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I glance over my shoulder at Charlie, who rolls his eyes before affixing them back on my arse.
“Things are complicated with Gabe.”
“Because he moved in with Darwin while you were missing?”
When I nod, she belches again. Thank the Mother she turns her face away and does it into her shoulder.
“You shouldn’t blame him for that,” she says, wiping her wet lips and the remnants of her dark purple lipstick on her sleeve. Good thing she’s wearing a black top. “He was so messed up when you disappeared. He slept with me and Wyatt a couple of nights because he couldn’t stand being in your bed without you. He was crying in his sleep. I felt so bad for him.”
Gabe slept with Wyatt and Rachel while I was gone instead of Darwin? Charlie didn’t tell me that. I wonder if he even knows?
I look back over my shoulder, catch Charlie’s eye, and jerk my head to come over and hear what Rachel’s saying. He climbs off the couch, but before he reaches us, he turns to look at someone walking up on my other side.
Before I even follow his eyes, I know who it is. The faint scent of cloves teases me under the musky mélange of weed, alcohol, and sweat. His magic licks at me. I haven’t felt it’s touch in days, cut off from my Water-mage both in this Time and the future. It makes my knees so weak, they’d rattle inside my trackies if I wasn’t holding Rachel up.
“Gabe!” she shrieks in my ear.
She unwraps herself from me and throws herself at Gabe. He catches her and lets her wind herself around him, even while staring at me over her shoulder with a look that pleads for more than me not to reject him again.
I smile at him and step back to let him deal with her drunk arse for a tick. Sniggering as I listen to him try to talk her down, I turn to Charlie. He offers me the environmentally-incorrect cup he’s drinking out of and I take several swigs. He’s just drinking fizzy water, which is smart given our emotional state as well as how hard we were sweating not too long ago.
“You want to dance with him?” Charlie asks, putting his mouth near my ear. His breath’s redolent of the tortilla chips he’s been eating. Food arrived with the second wave of lacrosse players and I’ve seen everything from crisps and pot brownies to slices of pizza circulating through the party.
“If I don’t, are you going to?”
“Yeah, but I’d rather dance with both of you.”
“If we dance with him, is he staying the night?”
Charlie slides his arm around me. “Your call, but my vote’s yes. We don’t have to make any decisions. But I think we should hear him out. I heard what Rachel said. I didn’t know he was with her and Wyatt. I thought he was with Darwin the whole time. He never told me different.”
I nod and take his cup again for another drink before giving him a fizzy kiss. “You’re the best lad I’ve ever known, Charlie Miller. Never forget that. I came back through Time to you.”
A brilliant smile stretches Charlie’s cheeks, bringing out his dimples.
“I didn’t thinka that,” he admits.
I stretch up on my toes to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Something I’ve learned with all this Time-Walking shite. Time may be a vicious bitch, but she doesn’t make mistakes. I was meant to go forward to comfort future-Gabe and future-Darwin and bring them back together. And I was meant to come back to you.”
“So it’s all Fate, yeah?”
“Nope. Fate fucking hates me.” I drop back to my heels but leave my arm looped around his neck as I look up into his forest gaze. “It’s all you.”
He grins and kisses me, before taking his cup back, and turning me to face Gabe.
Chapter16
Drunk-Logic
Although our party was impromptu, word’s clearly gotten out because Gabe’s dressed for it.
He’s wearing black, skinny jeans and one of myOlive With An Aconcert T-shirts that I didn’t realize he’d stolen. He has a dark blue long-sleeve tied around his hips that I’m pretty sure is Charlie’s. I wonder if Chaz knows it’s missing, or if he cares. That Gabe’s wearing our clothes, not Darwin’s, doesn’t escape me.
Neither does the fact that he’s wearing liner.
The liner accentuates the circles under his deep-ocean eyes and the redness of his eyelids. Not that I would have missed them. I notice everything about my boy.
Although his grief’s clear, if he’s spiraled during this separation, it’s not obvious. His hair is clean, tousled so it falls over his eyes the way he knows I like. His jaw’s smooth. He’s wearing his crooked smile as he tries to disentangle himself from Rachel, who is howling at him, in a stage-whisper they can probably hear on the other side of campus, that he just needs to get down on his knees and beg my forgiveness and then Wyatt will get back together with her.
