Chapter 10 The Gift, Transformed #2
We stood there for a moment, wrapped up in each other, the brooch warm in my palm. Then his hands started to wander, and my breath caught, and dinner became significantly less important.
“The food will get cold,” I managed.
“I can reheat it.”
“Very practical.”
“I’m a practical man.”
“We don’t have to—” I started.
“I want to.”
His voice was low, rough, and something in my chest cracked open.
“I want to,” he said again, quieter this time. “I’ve been telling myself I wasn’t ready. That it was too soon. That I needed more time.” He reached up, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and the gentleness of it made my breath catch. “But I think I was just scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of wanting something this much.” His hand slid down to cup my jaw, thumb brushing my cheekbone. “It’s been so long since I wanted anything. I forgot what it felt like.”
“And now?”
“Now I remember.” He leaned closer, and I could feel his breath on my lips. “And it’s terrifying. And wonderful. And I don’t want to wait anymore.”
I closed the distance. His lips found my neck.
His hands were in my hair. Mine were fisted in his shirt. We kissed like we were making up for lost time—all the weeks of careful restraint combusting into something urgent and hungry and a little bit desperate.
“Bedroom,” I managed against his mouth.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I’m—” I pulled back enough to meet his eyes, needing him to see that I meant it. “No exit strategy. No backup plan. I want this. I want you.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
I laughed—breathless, giddy—and let him lead me down the hallway.
His bedroom was simple. Clean. A bed with grey sheets, a nightstand with a lamp and a book he’d been reading, a window that let in the last orange light of sunset.
He stopped at the edge of the bed, turned to face me. “I should warn you—it’s been a while.”
“For me too.” I reached for the hem of my shirt, pulled it over my head. “We’ll figure it out.”
His breath caught. And then he was pulling me close, and we were falling onto the bed together, and there was laughter tangled up in it—nervous and real. Because we were both out of practice, and it was awkward, and neither of us quite knew what we were doing anymore.
But we figured it out.
Slowly. Carefully. Learning each other with hands and mouths and whispered words. He touched me like I was something precious, something he’d been waiting for without knowing he was waiting. And I touched him back—this man who had lost everything and was brave enough to try again.
I woke to sunlight and the weight of his arm across my waist.
For one terrifying second, I waited for the panic. The regret. The urgent need to escape, to put distance between myself and this thing I’d let happen.
It didn’t come.
I lay there, in Marcus Chen’s bed, in the golden morning light, and felt… peaceful. Content. Like every restless, spinning part of me had finally found somewhere to land.
He stirred. His arm tightened around me, pulling me closer.
“You snore,” Marcus said.
“I do not.”
“Like a very dignified chainsaw.”
“This relationship is over.”
“It’s really not.” He kissed my forehead, and I felt it all the way down to my toes. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
I pressed my face into his chest, hiding my smile. “You’re very confident this morning.”
“I had a very good night.”
“Hmm.” I traced patterns on his skin, feeling him shiver under my touch. “Want to have a very good morning too?”
His answer was to roll me onto my back, and I laughed—bright and real and surprised by my own happiness.
Later, tangled in his sheets, I held up the brooch and watched it catch the lamplight.
“Tell me about this,” I said. “Sarah. When she found it.”
Marcus shifted beside me, propping himself up on one elbow. “She found it at an estate sale. Some old farmhouse outside of town. She said she felt it calling to her from across the room.”
“Did she know? About magic?”
“Not that she ever said out loud. But she always said some objects had souls. That they remembered things. The people who’d owned them, the hands that had touched them.” He traced a pattern on my shoulder. “I thought it was romantic nonsense. Now I think she was sensing what I couldn’t see.”
“She would have been a good witch.”
“She would have been a chaotic witch. She had very strong opinions and no patience for rules.” He smiled, soft and sad. “You would have liked each other.”
“I think I would have.” I set the brooch on the nightstand, turned to face him fully. “Does it bother you? That I ask about her?”
“No. It’s…” He searched for the right word. “It’s a relief. Everyone else either avoids her completely or treats her like something fragile. You ask like she was a person.”
“She was a person. An important one. I can’t know you without knowing about her.”
He kissed me—soft, grateful. “How did I get this lucky?”
“You weren’t lucky. You were grumpy at a woman with a possessed phone, and somehow that worked out.”
“My finest moment.”
“Truly.”
We lay there in comfortable silence, his hand tracing lazy patterns on my skin. The apartment was quiet. My phone was silent. The frantic energy that had defined my life for weeks was gone, replaced by something steadier.
“I can see things now,” I said finally. “Connections. Between people.”
“Like what you did with Cassie and Liam?”
“I told you about that?”
“You mentioned it when you arrived. Between kissing me and criticizing my vegetable chopping technique.”
“Your technique needed criticism. You were mutilating those carrots.”
“The carrots were fine. But go on—connections?”
I told him about the thread I’d seen. The certainty I’d felt. Margaret’s explanation of the gift finally settling into what it was supposed to be.
“So you’re a love witch now,” he said when I finished. “Officially.”
“Apparently. I can see if people belong together.”
“Can you see us?”
The question hung in the air. I turned to look at him—really look, the way I had with Cassie and Liam.
And there it was. A thread, golden and warm, running between us. Not as old as theirs—newer, more fragile. But solid. Real. Growing stronger even as I watched.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I can see us.”
“And?”
“And we’re going to be okay.” I felt tears prick my eyes. “More than okay. We’re going to be good.”
He pulled me close, pressed his face into my hair. “Good,” he said roughly. “That’s good.”
We stayed like that for a long time. Just breathing together. Just being.
My phone stayed silent on the nightstand. The brooch gleamed in the lamplight.
And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid of what came next.