Chapter 24
“Wait!”
Cat was already stopping herself. She couldn’t run away again.
She spun back around. “Sorry!”
She hated that she was shaking as he dashed toward her and held out the hand still holding his cell phone. He cursed and stuffed the phone in his pocket.
She knew she was the one to push him away and that he wanted her here, but she’d still been terrified of this moment, to see disgust or disappointment in his eyes.
It had replayed over and over in her head as she’d gotten on the plane and throughout the flight until she wasn’t sure if it was a needless worry or a genuine vision, and she should get on the next plane out of there.
But the thought of going back to that cabin alone, where she’d been holed up since she’d regained consciousness, was untenable.
The twins hadn’t kicked her out again. The lightning strike—that’s what the town was calling it—had at least shaken them out of their conviction that the solution lay in messing with ancient, incredibly powerful spells they didn’t understand.
But she couldn’t look them in the eye. She couldn’t go back to the bookstore and look through the catalogs and not hear his voice, bewildered, talking about the ecliptic. She missed him with every cell in her body, and a voice within her kept screaming that she needed him.
She’d walked away from her life again and went back to the tiny cabin in the woods to see if the voice would get quieter, but she went to exactly the wrong place, sleeping in the bed that still smelled a little bit like him.
She had asked herself whether living in some skyscraper in New York was really going to be worse than this.
She’d been so afraid of losing herself, but she’d already given up her life for him—not to have him—but because the fact of him was more important than their fear.
Whether she was with him or not, she could not stay with the family who fought against who he was.
So why not be with him? What was she trying to prove?
She’d arrived in New York that morning and tracked him through the city with half-coherent visions, since his address wasn’t in any directory anywhere. She just hadn’t expected him to be in the elevator. She hadn’t braced herself and had immediately run.
“Sorry!” She realized he’d been standing in front of her, not touching her, with a hand outstretched for who knew how many minutes.
“Why are you sorry?” he asked quietly.
“For running.” She took a deep breath and faced him fully. “For telling you to run.”
“I was coming back to you.”
“What?”
“I was on my way to the airport.”
“Mateo, no! You don’t have to do that for me.”
With a groan, as if he could not hold off a second longer, he pulled her into his arms, and the singing rightness and power of the connection between them made her gasp.
“I would do anything for you,” Mateo said into her hair. “I don’t know when you’re going to accept that.”
“But your pack, your company. Your big crazy building!”
He pulled back with a jerk, and she flinched.
“How did you know it was mine?”
“I Saw it.”
He shook his head. “Tell me you’re not here because a vision said you were already here. Tell me you came here for me, that you made this choice.”
“I made the choice. I did need a little help finding the building. That’s all. I love you,” she added because she could not not say it and because it seemed like he really needed to hear it.
In a moment, she was crushed against him.
She let out a wheezing gasp. “Air!”
He wrenched his arms away. “Sorry!”
“But it still doesn’t change the fact you can’t come to Colorado!” she said.
“My pack is fine because it was never my pack.”
“What?”
“Long story. Will explain later. And I’ve hated my company pretty much since the day I founded it. I’m still working there. It just has new management. I am the Chief Shit Stirrer, now.”
“That’s your title?”
“No, I think it’s the development officer or something, but that’s what Tori called it.”
She didn’t think the day could get any more shocking. “Tori? My Tori?”
“Yes, your sister is going to run the company with the wolf that she fell in love with.”
“You’re letting a witch run your company.”
“No, I’m letting Tori Griffin run my company. You are not allowed to run the company. The twins are definitely not allowed anywhere near New York in general.”
She laughed, feeling a bubble of joy for her sister and grief that she would be so far away. She froze. She was already thinking of New York as far away when she stood in the beating heart of it.
“I can’t ask you to come back,” she whispered.
“You came all the way here. You would really stay?”
“Well, there’s this funny phenomenon where you cut ties to your family and quit your job and move out of your house, and then there’s nothing left for you.”
“How do you feel about a new house in Colorado?”
She shuddered, visions of the Double Thirteen house flitting through her head. She knew her impressions were colored by abject terror at the time, and she should really give the place a fighting chance.
“Not there.” He shook his head with a knowing grin.
She squinted at him. “Oh, now you can read my mind?”
“I can guess. How would you feel about a new house?”
“Where?”
“Well, the former owners of a particular rundown shack on the outskirts of Silver Spring were extremely happy about the offer I made them because they had no plans to ever go back.”
“You bought the cabin?” She laughed hard and long. All the time she’d been feeling so cut off from him, she’d been living on the land he bought for her.
“To be clear, not that cabin either,” he said, looking pained.
“What?”
“We’re building a new house. One with plumbing and central heating.”
She shook her head. “We are not tearing it down.”
He opened his mouth and closed it.
“We are not going to kill the place we fell in love!” she said.
He smiled. “Did we?”
“It took me longer than you to realize that. I’m so sorry.”
“That’s the last time you have to apologize for that. We were both idiots. Come on, let’s go.”
“What? Now?”
“The plane is packed. I said I was coming to you. I meant now.”
She closed her eyes. “Of course you have a plane.”
“I’ll sell the plane.”
She opened her eyes, loving him so much. “After we get there.”
He grinned. “Of course after.”
The elevator dinged, and the huge man she’d met in Colorado stepped out into the foyer, took one look at the two of them, and stepped back into the elevator. “I’ll take the next one.”
He’d been the one to carry Bea into the house over the stakes.
“He’ll take the next elevator?” she asked, looking around.
“He’s coming back to Colorado. Apparently, some of the wolves are staying. Not with us.”
She couldn’t help but tremble at that. The twins were still the twins, even if they had stopped contemplating mass murder. The pack northwest of town was also trolling their woods. She couldn’t do anything about any of that.
For the first time, she stepped toward him to wrap her arms around him. If they could find peace together, why not everyone else?
In a matter of minutes, they were in the back of an SUV flying toward the airport.
She bounced on the leather seats and eyed him. “I thought you’d be in a limo.”
“Yes, because navigating traffic with a car the size of two cars gets you there so much faster than in a car the size of one car.”
“I knew you were good at math.”
She wanted to park herself in his lap, but the driver looked a lot like Mateo and kept eyeing them both from the mirror, and she did not need any more gossip flying around.
When they got to the airport, they were immediately whisked directly onto the tarmac and dropped off at the base of a plane.
She blinked and looked back at the chaotic and crazy terminal she’d gotten lost in twice that morning. It had taken her over an hour and an absurd amount of money to get into the city.
Private planes are a terrible environmental tragedy, she chanted to herself as they climbed the steps, and Mateo told the pilot to take off as soon as he could.
She stopped short when she reached the main cabin.
There were over twenty seats in the plane arranged in pods of four facing each other.
All of them were full of suitcases and boxes except for the first four on the left.
The book was buckled into the very first seat.
She was about to comment on whether that was a good idea when she noticed it wasn’t the only object to get a seatbelt.
Every other seat on the plane had a little crystal ball cradled in the belt.
She kneeled next to the first one. “What on earth?”
“You said you needed a hundred crystal balls. I mean, this is only about twenty, but we’ll get there.”
She twisted to him. “You bought me crystal balls.”
He shrugged, looking uncomfortable, and she leaped up to wrap her arms around his neck. “With you, I’m not sure I’ll ever need one again.”
“So I’m the crystal ball in this scenario.”
She pulled away, suddenly worried. “I’m not here because you give me power.”
His hands tightened around her, and paradoxically, she could breathe better. “I know. Still, it’s yours.”
He drew her down into the first pair of seats, and she examined the rest of the luggage shoved everywhere else.
“You really are moving.”
“I told you.”
She raised one eyebrow. “Pretty sure of me, weren’t you?”
He swallowed. “It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“Explain,” she said, biting back hurt.
“Yes. I want you. I want a house, and I want our life, and I want babies.” He stopped talking, and she blushed.
“Go on,” she said, and he crushed her hand in his.
“But also, I didn’t want that.” He threw a hand back toward Manhattan. “All of this has been impossible for a very long time, and I’m so grateful to you that you made me see it. And even if there had been no you, I could not live that life anymore.”
She leaned into him, loving him, grieving for him and the decisions they both made for the wrong reasons, even if it was for the people they loved.
“Never do that again,” she whispered.
“Not a chance.”
“No, I mean it. Not for me either. I love you.”
He kissed her gently. “You would never ask me to.”
She nodded once, fiercely. “That’s all right then. I can’t believe you just packed up your life. How many suitcases?”
He looked baffled. “How would I know?”
She shook her head. Of course, he hadn’t packed his own life, carefully weighing each object and deciding what to keep.
She launched herself at him and landed in his lap as he grunted. She strangled him in her haste to show her gratitude.
She ended up staying there as the plane rumbled to life and they climbed into the sky. She knew this was not the smartest idea if anything happened, but also, his arms around her were stronger than any seatbelt humans had ever made.
Finally, when the plane had leveled and was gliding smoothly through the air, and she could almost convince herself she wasn’t several thousand feet above the ground, he pushed her back a little and rubbed a hand along the side of her head. “Have you ever heard of the Mile High Club?”
“You know Silver Spring is over a mile high, right?”
“I don’t think that counts.”
What was she trying to do? “You’re right, definitely doesn’t count.”
He pulled her toward him, but she resisted so she could look around. “You’re telling me this fancy flying limousine doesn’t have a bed?”
He grimaced. “We can outfit it for that, but it’s set up like this to haul the pack around. So not at the moment.”
She shook her head. “You clearly need a divination witch in your life who foresees every plane configuration needed.”
He laughed. “I think that is an excellent use of magic.”
He smiled as she shifted to bring them together, and he put the seat back surprisingly far until they bumped into a suitcase.
As she undid her shirt, he groaned. “Not again.”
She froze, ice trickling through the warmth.
“No! Not like that. It’s just that I have condoms somewhere. They are in a suitcase.” He looked around the plane with a hopeless puppy dog look on his face.
She ran a hand along his cheek to pull him back toward her. “You did say something about babies.”
“Really?”
He sounded like a boy on Christmas morning.
She took a deep breath, trying to think through the haze of lust that sent her blood bubbling. This was a terrible decision to make in the heat of the moment. They barely knew each other. They were sworn enemies. What would happen to a child of theirs?
They would love her.
A part of her brain told her it could be a boy. They had a fifty/fifty shot, but the larger part of her magic just knew.
Mateo’s love was short in time, but not in intimacy. She knew him better than she knew herself and vice versa. She loved him. There would never be anyone else. They were already twined together.
She shook her head at her life. A few months ago, she was racketing around Silver Spring, content to investigate crimes and order books and be everything to everyone with almost nothing in return. The richness of her life now and the family that she would build took her breath away.
He hadn’t moved or even changed expression.
She had a flash of a child, a girl, with jet black hair and eyes like his, and gasped.
She leaned forward to kiss him, lust fading in a wave of desperate longing.
She broke the kiss only so that she could kiss the rest of his face. When she got to an ear, she said, “She’s so beautiful.”
He kissed her ear. “Who? You in about five minutes?”
She shook her head with a delighted giggle as she pulled away. “Our daughter.”
Something hot and possessive flared in his eyes, and all traces of humor died.
She felt more than heard his chest rumble before he was scrambling at her jeans.
He didn’t get very far and growled again.
“Just let me—”
She climbed off of him to shuck them herself as he reached for her and tried not to break the kiss. He shoved his pants down just enough, and they did an inelegant dance of limbs to bring her back on top of him. There wasn’t enough room. She was barely ready. It was far too fast.
Neither of them seemed to be able to stop themselves as she sank down on him, groaning at the stretch and the heat and the breathless promise.
“Don’t. Move.” She gripped his shoulders hard and waited for the sensation of being impaled to ease.
He didn’t move anything except his hands, which came to her hips and stroked slowly up her torso and back again, soothing her.
He moved to her breasts, rolling her nipples until she was breathless and her hips canted on their own.
“Why aren’t you moving?” she asked with a groan.
He chuckled. “Patchouli, you are going to be the death of me.”
Something went jagged in her heart at the nickname she thought she would never hear again.
She shook her head, letting her nose brush his. “I don’t wear patchouli.”
He kissed her and finally moved.
As the plane swept westward with the sun, they were bathed in the same golden, timeless light for hours.