Chapter Fifteen Lyra #2
Turning, I leaned against the counter while he sat with his bowl and dove in.
I couldn’t bring myself to join him at the table.
It was too… cozy. Already I was kind of embarrassed that I’d immediately defaulted into my pattern of wanting to take care of others.
I’d just barged into this man’s house, yelled at him for eating a dinner of his choice, and then steamrolled him into eating a meal that I’d made.
Sighing, I rolled my eyes at myself and took a bite of the mac and cheese. It wasn’t bad, all things considered, but I would have liked there to be a mixture of cheeses and maybe some crumbled bits of bacon on top.
“This is good,” Rab said, an unreadable look on his face. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” I put the bowl down, unable to eat more, as nerves ground in my stomach. “My magick is broken.”
“What?” Rab stopped eating and looked up at me, a flash of something behind his eyes.
“It’s broken. I…” I winced, unable to meet his eyes. “I think it’s part of our curse. Sloane had it, too, when she got her magick, except for her it manifested in having different magick every day.”
“She had different magick every day? I didn’t know that.”
I snorted and took a sip of my wine. “She hated it. Sloane’s an absolute control freak, so being unable to plan what she’d be dealing with every day really set her off.”
“That was right when Sloane and Knox were getting together?”
“Aye.” I nodded.
“I remember now. Knox had mentioned things were chaotic.”
“But he didn’t tell you details?” I asked, surprised.
Rab scooped more food into his mouth. “Men don’t talk like that.”
“Right.” I cleared my throat and shifted, trying to look everywhere else but him. The kitchen wasn’t all that big, and his presence filled it.
I missed him.
Missed this.
Just us, alone, talking. The world hovering outside, nothing being able to touch it because this was us, and we had our whole future ahead of us. Together.
But would that have fallen apart had we stayed together?
Because now that I knew what he’d really thought of me, he would have grown tired of my…
inadequacies. Perhaps I’d never been book smart enough for him.
Was it for the best that we’d finished when we had?
Would I have been miserable always feeling less than compared to him?
Physically, we’d been like fire, but that wasn’t enough for long term, right?
“So your magick is broken. How do you plan to fix it?” Rab’s voice cut through my thoughts, and I blinked at him, thrust firmly back into the here and now.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s… doing the opposite of whatever I ask it to do.”
“Ah,” Rab said, leaning back, his plate already cleared. “That explains today but doesn’t explain why you could whip up this meal with no problems.”
“I deliberately didn’t use my magick,” I explained. “I wanted to—hell, my magick wants to come out every time I step in a kitchen—but I held it back.”
“So just hold it back in the competition, then,” Rab said.
“I… you… can’t. It’s part of the rules.” I looked at him, widening my eyes. “You have to use magick. That’s the entire premise of the show.”
“Can’t we just use my magick, then? Does it have to be both?” Rab asked, his eyebrows drawing together on his forehead.
Something inside me loosened.
He was trying to find a solution.
Which maybe, just maybe, meant we might have a way forward.
“We can try. But I don’t think it’s just in their rules. I think that is part of the magick that controls the show. I’m not sure I can contain my use of magick when I’m cooking there.”
“I…” Rab tilted his head as he thought about it.
Getting up, he took his plate to the sink.
“Actually, you may be right. Because when you were busy destroying a perfectly nice soufflé, I could feel my magick humming along, wanting to be used. I think it even began to seep out, but your catastrophic magick made it scared.”
“I was not destroying it…” I argued, appalled.
“Och, darling.” Rab turned and laughed outright, and despite my embarrassment, I found myself grinning at him.
It was impossible not to. He’d been a good-looking boy, but holy hell, he’d grown into a mouthwateringly handsome man.
It was like all his soft edges and gawkiness as a teen had filled out into all muscle and confidence as an adult. “You were an absolute mess.”
“I know…” I said, my shoulders shaking so hard with laughter that tears sprung to my eyes. “Bloody hell, but I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t control it. It was like a tornado in there.”
“And I was just caught in the danger zone.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I truly am.”
“Och, it’s fine. Now that I know what’s going on, I can try to do something about it.” Rab waved it away and hope sprung up.
“You’re going back? To the show, that is? I was certain you’d be out after today.”
Rab tilted his head, seemingly weighing his words as he looked at me, his mossy eyes drilling a hole through me.
“I can’t say I haven’t been sitting here considering it. But no, Lyra. I gave my word. Which is something I take seriously.” Rab’s jaw tightened as he looked at me, an unreadable look in his eyes.
Was that supposed to be a dig at me? It wasn’t me that hadn’t kept my word.
“Is that right? I suppose that’s yet to be determined. Your track record doesn’t speak well for itself.”
Rab was across the room in a blur of movement, his arms on either side of me at the counter, caging me.
“I say what I mean, Lyra.”
“Aye, so I heard.” I lift my chin, refusing to back down.
Why did it feel like we were having two different conversations here? But as I met his eyes in challenge, something shifted inside me.
Our faces were centimeters apart, and I was so close I could pick out the tiny gold flecks in his eyes.
“That face,” Rab fumed. “I’ve never been able to get past you, Lyra.”
His words fell like acid on my skin, burning me. He didn’t say it as a good thing. He said it with the deep-rooted conviction that something was bad for him.
I swallowed.
Because I understood.
I felt exactly the same.
Something fundamental in me, in my personal growth, had stalled with Rab. I was stuck, caught in the sticky web of emotions that I still felt for him.
“Bloody hell.” Rab closed the distance, and his lips were on mine.
Burning, burning, and I was falling, falling into everything that I’d remembered and tried to forget about him. Rab kissed me with the urgency of youth and the confidence of adulthood, one hand coming up to grip the back of my neck, angling my mouth so he could take.
Before I could think better of it—or worse of it—his other hand found my waist and lifted. The edge of the counter pressed into the backs of my thighs as he settled me there, close enough that there was no mistaking what this meant, or how little space he intended to give me.
My fingers curled into his jumper, my knees bracketing his hips as he kissed me again, slower this time, deeper. Like he was reminding himself. Like he was reminding me.
Like I’d ever really forgotten. No matter how hard I’d tried to.
I mewled into his mouth, heat flashing like throwing water on a grease fire, and—
“What the—”
Rab drew back as a squeak sounded. I thought it had been me.
But it wasn’t.
Not even close.
A swarm of hedgehogs filled his kitchen. Was it a swarm? I had no idea what to call it. All I knew was that there were a good twenty hedgehogs racing around his kitchen floor, squeaking and snorting, and I closed my eyes.
This was all my fault.
Without another word, I darted through an opening in the hedgehog party and out the front door.
“Lyra!”
I ignored Rab’s shout, because I was done.
I was so done.
My humiliation for the day was complete.
Because I’d just confirmed my suspicions from the Mabon party.
It was true.
Apparently, when I was turned on, somehow that manifested into sentient objects shifting into hedgehogs.
This must be the universe’s way of telling me to stay away from Rab.
Every time I was near him, my brain just scrambled.
And what was the point of finding out why Rab loathed me so undeniably?
He’d said what he’d meant to his parents and for some unknown reason was also determined to be angry toward me.
I can’t change the past. I can’t change him.
Just leave it be.
My lips still burned from his kiss. I pressed my fingers to my mouth, sealing the feel of him to my lips, and then dug my hands into my pockets as though I were hiding his kiss away forever.