Chapter 23
Sabine
An hour later, I was still pussy drunk.
Gwen was addicting. Everything about her made my heart flutter into a frenzy.
Her smile, her laugh, the way her breaths quickened right before she climaxed.
She made me feral for more. I was so distracted by my daydreams—smiling like a damn idiot—that I didn’t even see Astrid until I was practically bowling her over outside the Harvest Moon cabin.
She stood with her arms tightly folded across her chest, her expression sour, while she tapped her foot on the ground. She had been waiting to scold me.
As if she has any right.
I straightened with the authority I had as her cabin counselor. “Who’s pissed in your cauldron this time?”
Astrid’s cheeks reddened with clear anger. “The new chick.”
My throat tightened. “From what I’ve heard, she’s been staying clear of you and your friends. You’ll have to be more specific if you have an actual grievance that I—as your cabin leader—can help with.”
All hope that she’d stay within the bounds of our places here at SCUW was thrown into the deepest part of the lake. Her eyes narrowed in on my neck, and instinctually, my hand covered the spot, damning me.
“I thought she was just some useless city girl,” she said with an accusatory tone. “But she’s got you all twisted up in her spider’s web, hasn’t she?”
I froze for a second. Did she know? How?
Astrid seemed to read the thoughts on my face because she said, “I’m not an idiot, Sabine. I see the way you two look at each other.”
I clenched my jaw. “We don’t look at each other like anything.”
“I suppose you’re stumbling through the forest with your belt undone, reeking of sex, for some other reason, then?
” she growled, and I quickly did up my belt.
“I know a summer tryst when I see one, but you should know better than to fuck a girl like her. Is she why you’re about to abandon our coven? ”
There was no point in trying to deny it. I couldn’t stop smiling about what had just happened if I tried.
“Listen, we—”
“And you know what’s worse?” she snapped. “It’s that she’s not just some random camper you’re hooking up with. She’s a danger to everything that we believe in. She’s convincing you to turn away from the only family you’ve ever known.”
That made my hackles rise. I didn’t like the way she spoke about Gwen. Magic spooled in me, darkness pulling toward my gut and radiating down toward my fingertips. I knew I needed to get it under control before it shot out of me and accidentally hurt her.
“Don’t talk about her like that,” I gritted out. “If you took your nose out of the air for two minutes, you’d see she’s not as terrible as you’ve made her out to be.”
She took a sharp inhale before her hands fisted tight to her sides. Her cheeks puffed out, completing her tantrum aesthetic.
“You have feelings for her!” she shouted. “I can’t believe you’d be so stupid.”
She started to pace in a tight line, her feet kicking the dust up into a cloud and caking the bottom of her bright pink flip-flops.
“Her mother ran out of town and ghosted everyone, including her best friend in the whole world. Including her parents! She left in the middle of the night like a coward. And she dared to treat everyone here like they weren’t worthy of a simple explanation.
Then, when she gave birth to that bitch, she didn’t even have the decency to tell people herself.
My mother had to hear it from Facebook, Sabine.
Facebook! Gwen and I should’ve grown up as best-friend daughters of best friends.
Instead, her mom turned her back on our people completely! ”
Her rant finally ended with tears gathering in her eyes.
“Wow, there’s a lot to unpack there,” I mused, surprised by the direction of her outburst.
I heard the hurt in Astrid’s voice, heard how she felt like something had been robbed from her and her mom.
I couldn’t imagine how much it would’ve hurt to have your best friend disappear without a trace, but still, I had to defend Gwen.
She was blameless in all that had transpired.
She hadn’t even known about her past until a few weeks ago.
“I get it.” I held my hands up in mock surrender. “But Gwen is not her mother.”
“Maybe not, but you are following in her footsteps pretty damn closely,” Astrid seethed. “You want to run out on your coven, go gallivanting across the city with that whore—”
“Enough!” I shouted, a tree branch exploding into splinters beside us.
Astrid gasped and leaped backward, shooting out a protection shield. Not a single wayward leaf touched her, nor did my sudden burst of magic.
She turned her nose up at me, returning to the pedestal she always put herself on. “You need to end whatever it is you two are doing. Now.” She brushed her ponytail over her shoulder.
I rolled my eyes. “Or what? You’re going to tattle on me?”
“Not to sound childish, but yeah! I’m going to tell Dagmar.”
I’d since resigned myself to the fact that another summer at Lake Nevermore was a high probability. Gwen and I couldn’t keep our hands off each other, and after what had happened earlier, there was no way I was walking away over a small threat.
I flashed Astrid a smile, and her eyes bulged. She thought she had something over me. She thought she could control me, blackmail me, but she clearly wasn’t prepared for my answer as I shrugged and said, “What’s one more summer?”
I turned on my heel and headed toward the lake, needing to jump into the cold water just as much as I needed to leave Astrid dumbfounded.