Chapter 5
CALLIOPE
He called me ‘Winnie’. My heart hammered in my chest. I couldn’t believe it, and so soon after our meeting. Was this when it started? But it couldn’t be. We were still too early. But he called me ‘Winnie’! My mind was still reeling from that when he asked me on a proper date.
The pain in my chest was immeasurable. How could this wonderful man be asking me on a date, and I had to decline him? How was that fair? How was that just?
My heart screamed at me to forget everything I knew, everything I believed in. That if I was just a normal woman being asked out, I wouldn’t have to say ‘no’.
But I wasn’t normal.
I’d never be normal.
And I knew things that made it impossible for me to say ‘yes’.
Even if it broke my heart, I had to decline.
I wished I could use his already-set plans tonight as my reasoning, wished that was a big enough excuse to turn him down.
But he’d ask again. What was building between us was already strong.
The tether that bound our fates was beginning to twine.
I wanted to grab hold, to wind the binds around us like a lasso and pull the cords tight. This was no longer one-sided. He saw me. He felt this just as much as I did. I wasn’t sure what changed, what had made him look at me as a woman, but I would forever be grateful.
And yet… It would be so much easier if he didn’t. As much as it would have hurt, it would have been easier.
Quinten shook his head. “You can’t?” There was hurt and confusion on his face, and I hated that I was the one who put them there. “I don’t understand. Why not? You feel this too, whatever this is. I know you do.”
Shit, how did I explain this one? “Why are you riding your bike today?”
He blinked, his face scrunching. “What?”
“Just answer the question. I have a point, I promise.” At least, I think I did. I hoped I did.
The look Quinten gave me made me believe he was questioning my sanity, but he still answered. “Because I love riding my hog.”
“Even when the weather gets cold?”
He nodded. “Especially when the weather gets cold. The others put their sleds away because they won’t take their ol’ ladies or kids riding in this weather, but give me a brisk wind and a windy road, and I’m a happy man.”
I lifted my hand to his chest. “And you’ll ride for as long as you can until the weather says you shouldn’t.”
“Generally,” he agreed. He was watching me closely, and I knew he was trying to guess my point. “Do you have a fear of motorcycles? Is that why you won’t go out with me?”
My lips twitched at the assumption. He had no idea just how much I loved motorcycles. I’d been obsessed with them long before I understood why. I waggled my finger in front of his face. “And when the weather starts to warm, you take your bike out before it’s time?”
His eyes narrowed slightly, and he quickly craned his head down to nip at the pad of my finger.
“Has anyone ever told you that holding a conversation with you is like trying to hold onto Jell-O?” I felt my cheeks heat up as he snaked his arm around my waist. “It’s a very good thing Jell-O is my favorite dessert.
” Nuzzling my temple, he answered, “Yes, Winnie, I take my hog out far earlier than my brothers do. Now bring this conversation home and connect the dots for me please.”
His scent of leather and musk was heady.
I had to fight to keep my eyes from closing and had to straighten my spine to keep from leaning into him.
For a moment I couldn’t remember what the point of this conversation was.
I took a deep breath. The fog in my mind reminded me of when I was meditating, how disconnected and yet in sync everything felt.
“It’s not summertime,” I informed him.
Quinten stepped back. I nearly lost my balance at the loss of contact, but managed only a small stagger.
I blinked, the fog surrounding my mind clearing at the distance he put between us.
“Before, you said something like there not being a today, but a someday, for us. Do you know something that I don’t?
You’re single, I’m single. We have this crazy connection.
Yet from the start, you pushed me away. I could have taken you on a date today.
You paid for it, but you insisted on labor.
” He pointed to my counter where Oolong and Joe were cuddled up.
“You have a litter box for my cat and coffee for me. What is it you’re not telling me? ”
Turning my head away from him, I confessed, “It was a mistake to bid on you.”
“Then why did you?” His voice was harsh, and I attributed that to the hurt and confusion he was feeling right now. I did not hold it against him.
I didn’t know how to answer his question. What did I say? That I was jealous? That I thought that other woman, the blonde, was trying to manipulate him? That I saw a vision of her telling someone she was pregnant with his baby? He’d think me insane—if he didn’t already.
“Time is like a river. There’s debris, rocks, stones, that slow its path, but it will always keep flowing.”
Quinten rushed forward. He took my chin in his hand, forcing me to look back at him. Well, he moved my head. There was no ‘forcing’ necessary because I was a willing puppet in his arms. He had only to pull the right strings.
“Don’t speak to me like one of your clients or some shmuck on the street looking for his fortune.
I have never felt this way about anyone, Calliope.
I am entirely out of my element, and I know—fuck me, I know—that I am not a good man, the right man, for you.
But I want you anyway. I want you with a ferocity that defies sense and reason.
I don’t know if I can change, if I can be a better man for you, but in the span of minutes, you have made me want to be.
So don’t give me some mystical mumbo-jumbo filled with guesswork and assumption. Tell me the truth, as you know it.”
My chin trembled in his hold. My stomach sat heavy, like I’d swallowed a boulder and my heart fluttered like a hummingbird’s wings.
His coffee-colored eyes were so serene, and yet hid a passion waiting to be let loose.
He was right, though. I owed him, of everyone in my life, the truth. But he was also very wrong.
“It’s not time yet,” I told him solemnly. “You and I… Our future doesn’t start yet.” The confession tasted like ash on my tongue.
He watched me carefully. “You’ve seen it? You’ve seen…us?”
Slowly, I nodded.
Quinten lowered his hand. He took a step back, and then another. “And you saw it before today.” It wasn’t a question. I could see him starting to connect the dots, as he’d put it. “You knew who I was when you bid on me, but you’re under some misconception that you weren’t supposed to bid on me.”
“It’s not a misconception,” I pressed, but my voice was soft. I barely had any fight left in me. Every time he stepped away, all I wanted was for him to come closer.
He looked down, studying the last unfinished shelf. “And if I keep pressing, you’re going to keep pushing me away, because you think we’re not supposed to ‘start’ yet.”
He thought this was me pushing him away? Goddess, I felt like I was failing miserably at keeping him at bay. I didn’t say anything, because there wasn’t anything to say. And I feared, if I opened my mouth, I would tell him everything.
Everything.
Quinten nodded like I had responded. Maybe my silence was answer enough. He stepped even further away. “I need you to leave for a bit.”
My heart sank, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. “W-what?” I stammered.
“I need to finish building this shelf and I can’t do that while you’re here,” he told me. His expression was hard, unyielding.
“Quinten, you don’t need to—”
“I do,” he snapped, cutting me off. “Because knowing you, you’d try to build it yourself and then you’d end up on that ladder trying to secure it to the wall. No,” he shook his head. “Not happening. So you need to go so I can finish. You’re too damn distracting.”
My eyes flew from the shelf to him to Oolong to the door and back again. “Where am I to go?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “But I need time to think, and I can’t do that with you here.”
I knew I’d regret asking, but I still had to. “Think about what?”
He stood there, staring at me for a long moment. Every beat my heart made felt like there was barbed wire wrapped around it. “Whether I’m going to listen to your witchy predictions—or say ‘fuck it’ and kiss you anyway.”
I was no athlete, but I hastily grabbed Oolong and then ran from my shop.
Quinten was not the only one who needed space.
What was I supposed to do? And why did my stupid heart flutter like a butterfly’s wings at his chivalry?
He could have easily left—it was my store, after all.
But he didn’t. He stayed to finish building my shelves, and essentially kicked me out of my own store. Stupid, stupid heart.
A few years ago, I’d read a book about fated mates, but the heroine hated her mate.
Mind, in that book, he was also the antagonist and not a good guy or the story’s antihero.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved me a good morally gray hero, but that was not this book’s storyline.
In the end, she got a mate who was not her fated mate and lived happily ever after.
Proving that Fate did not know all and we still had a choice to form our own destinies.
And while I knew that was fiction, it made me ponder.
I’d spent so much time thinking about the man who would one day be mine, a man whose name at that time I hadn’t known.
What if I didn’t like him? What if I spent so much of my time and energy on a relationship that was doomed from the start because we weren’t compatible?
Or worse—what if I loved him and he hated me?
Was I more in love with the idea of love and my happily ever after than I was the man who would one day be mine?
It was certainly something to worry about. After I met Quinten—or really, walked into him in Loafin’ Around—and got to see him in person, I knew that my worries were for nothing. At least on my end, there was no way I couldn’t fall in love with that man.
He shoveled the sidewalks of Main Street after a snowstorm, helped the elderly do their grocery shopping, fixed little kids’ bikes, and was fucking hot.
Because I was just shallow enough to care about that one.
Every video that he posted was like a glimpse into his soul, and I fell, hard, before he ever said a single word to me.
And now he was falling too? Just as hard, just as quickly, as me. Was that Fate’s doing? Had I been wrong to bid on him? Yes, absolutely. But what if I had set in motion a new course, a new destiny for us?
I bit my lip, clutching Oolong to my chest. He was staring up at me like I’d betrayed him, ripping him away from the love of his life. How was it that our pets got to be together when we couldn’t?
I stared blindly down Main Street. I truly had no idea where to go, but I also had no desire to go anywhere.
I spun around. The glass windows and door of my shop had a slight glare from the afternoon sun, but I could still see inside. It looked like Quinten was kneeling on the floor, building the last shelf, while arguing with his cat. Joe was pacing in front of him, clearly agitated.
I knew the feeling.
Before I could change my mind, I opened my shop door and walked back inside. Quinten looked up at me, interrupting whatever it was he’d been telling Joe mid-word.
“Oolong didn’t like being separated from Joe,” I said, thinking it a believable excuse.
Quinten’s mouth twitched. “Oolong’s a smart dragon.”
Joe ran to my feet, immediately trying to climb up my pant leg to get to her boyfriend. I bent down and scooped her up. Walking both back over to the counter, I was very aware of Quinten’s eyes fixed to my back.
I placed Joe and Oolong on their cushion on the countertop, but kept my back to Quinten.
“I’ll go into the back. I’ve got work back there I can do.
” When he didn’t say anything, I continued around the counter, but hesitated when I got to the storage room door.
It was still propped open by Joe’s litter box.
“You’re wrong, you know. You are a good man.
The best man I know. And if you want to stay on my good side, you’ll stop saying you’re a bad or dishonorable man. ”
“If you knew the things I want to do to your body right now, you would understand why I keep saying that.”
A shiver ran down my spine at his daring words. “I know your intentions, remember?” I reminded him. Shooting him a smile over my shoulder, I added, “And what makes you think my intentions with your body aren’t just as depraved?”
A low growl emanated from his chest. “Don’t test me, witch.”
I was not usually so naughty, and was a bit impressed with myself for teasing him so. My nipples were hard pebbles against the cotton of my bra. Turning back towards the storage room, I said, “Don’t worry. This door has a lock on it.”
I felt a breeze at the back of my neck. When he spoke, he was no longer across the room from me. My breath caught, realizing he was directly behind me.
“You say that as if a lock will keep me from you.” His voice was nothing more than a rumble.
A slow, sensuous tenor of promise and desire.
Wetness pooled between my legs as my knees shook, no longer wanting to hold up my weight.
“I am a bad man, Winnie, and the only reason I am not already inside of you is because I know you are wavering. But this tug of war will only keep me from you for so long, witch. I will claim you. It’s only a matter of when. ”
I felt him reach next to me. A light shove on my back moved me forward enough for him to close the door behind me.