Chapter Fifteen
Iwas falling in love with this woman.
I lay on the ground next to Odette, who was on the couch, staring at her sleeping body. My hand reached out, grazing along her side that was draped in blankets as she slept.
“Mmmm,” she stirred, and I leaned down and placed a kiss on her forehead.
“Stunning,” I whispered to her and pulled back, admiring her again.
“Did I fall asleep?” She quickly sat up, letting the blankets fall to her waist, eyes wide.
“Slightly, but your phone went off that the pizza driver is almost here.”
“Oh.” Her eyebrows scrunched together.
“Is everything okay?” I sat up next to her now. Was she regretting having me stay and us spending the night in? She didn’t seem to want me to leave earlier, but that didn’t mean her little power nap didn’t have her changing her mind.
“Yes,” she shook her head before continuing. “I just wasn’t expecting to fall asleep, or you let me sleep.”
“I wasn’t planning that either, but fuck,” I reached out to her, grabbing her waist and pulling her to me. This woman brought out the animal inside me. My cock was already jumping at the chance to get back inside her. “You looked so peaceful after being thoroughly fucked.”
She placed her hands on my face and pulled me into a kiss.
“I want that again.” Her head rested against mine as a knock sounded at the door.
“Pizza,” I huffed before heading to the door. “I’ll be right back.”
I grabbed the pizza, pretty much dismissing him as I chucked a twenty at him and slammed the door shut. I breezed past Odette and placed the boxes on the kitchen counter before turning around to get back to her, but she was standing there by the table.
“I know you said you’d be back, but I’m kind of hungry.”
She was dressed in my button-up that I’d taken off while she slept; long gone were her jeans and shirt from earlier. Her hands reached up to put her hair into a bun, and as the shirt rode up with her arms, I could see that it was all she was wearing.
“Fuck,” I whispered and adjusted myself in my jeans, which were fucking uncomfortable now.
“You can fuck me after you feed me.” She walked to me and placed a hand on my chest before skirting around me and straight to the pizza. She opened the boxes and grabbed plates from a cabinet. “Drinks?”
“I’ll just take some water.”
“One water coming right up.”
I watched as she moved around the kitchen effortlessly. This clearly wasn’t just a house for her but a home. The entire house matched her vibes; a little cottage woman who wrote and played video games. It was like it was straight out of her game.
“Are you a witch like Abigail? Because your house fits the vibes,” I joked with her.
She handed me the plates she’d made for us and motioned to the table, where she sat down with me and placed our drinks.
“I am.”
That was all she said to me as she grabbed a piece of pizza and started eating. I picked up my piece, but put it down and looked over at her and around the house.
“Wait, what?” I asked, confused at her admission.
“I’m a witch.”
I tilted my head as she took a sip of her drink and took another bite of her pizza, like it was just another thing about her that was normal.
“What does that mean?” I prodded because now I wanted to know everything.
“I practice witchcraft. I mainly work in the kitchen and do spell work; it depends on the time of year or what I need in my life.”
She looked over at me, smiling as she said it.
“So, like what you put into your game?”
“A lot of that comes from how I work within my practice, but I also pull from the fantasy, especially since in the game I can have Abigail have an amazing herb garden where in real life, I kill anything that’s green.”
She let out a laugh as she leaned back in her chair.
I took a bite of pizza, trying to process what she was telling me.
“I don’t normally tell many new people about what I do, but,” she put her slice of pizza down and placed a hand on my thigh. “for some reason, I trust you and don’t feel like you’ll judge me.”
Fuck.
“That’s a lot of trust,” I smile at her, but I feel it slipping. This woman was giving me something special, and the sinking feeling that I was keeping so much from her crept in. I watched as her smile faltered in front of me.
I grabbed her hand and brought it to my mouth, planting a kiss.
“What about you?” She moved closer to me. “What else can you tell me about yourself?”
“I’m not sure where to start.”
“What about what you do for a living?” Odette was eager as she asked her question. She was on the edge of her seat.
“I work with Beckett.” Not a lie.
“Doing what exactly? I know you said Beckett games, but what do you do?”
Shit.
“I game too, kind of, but mostly help Beckett.” I grabbed the back of my neck, rubbing it. “I mostly work from home.”
“Okay.” Odette pulled her hand and sat up in the chair, moving slightly away from me. These fucking lies were going to be the death of me. I could give her something, though. Something that I could be vague enough about. “I’m from Nashville, just like Beckett. My parents run a local café there.”
“Oh,” Odette perked up at the admission. “That’s so cool.”
“It was when I was younger,” I laughed and took a few bites of pizza before continuing.
Talking about my parents’ café was always hard since I grew up there, spent any time I wasn’t at home or school in booths, meeting tons of people, but as I grew up, I became the person everyone wanted to be friends with to get an in.
Beckett had become my best friend in high school, and while his parents were in the industry, he wasn’t like everyone else.
He always wanted to get as far away from the city whenever we hung out.
It was refreshing and what I needed. “I was quick to outgrow the novelty of it all. It became more of a job than somewhere fun to be.”
“Is that how you ended up here?”
Odette was sitting closer now, her hand back on my leg, and I felt at ease now that I’d avoided her questions about gaming and what I did for work.
“It is.” I placed my hand over hers, squeezing lightly.
“That’s kind of how I ended up here, too.”
“Oh,” I leaned forward. “Really?”
I knew a lot when it came to Odette, but learning new things about her was an addiction.
“I grew up in New York City with my parents, but after I graduated high school and went to college, I found that the life I was raised in wasn’t what I wanted.
I didn’t want to go into business or marketing like them.
I wanted to be creative.” She took in a deep breath.
“They hated the idea of it, but supported me getting a creative writing degree.”
“That’s great.”
“Kind of,” she grimaced. “They had another agenda for me, a job lined up at a company my mother worked with, that had nothing to do with my degree. When I never showed up for the first day after graduation, it became an ultimatum on taking the job or finding somewhere else to live.”
I was quiet as I listened to Odette talk about her past. A pain filled my chest at the thought of how my parents were when I refused to take over the family business and how my father wanted nothing to do with me for years after he found out I was making money gaming.
I squeezed Odette’s hand again, letting her know that I was there for her.
“I’m assuming you left right after.”
“You would actually be wrong.” Odette let out a loud laugh, her head shaking.
“I had nowhere to go, no friends, no real money to my name, so I took the job, saved as much as I could. It wasn’t until a few years into working there that I met my ex.
In order to keep saving money, I stayed with my parents, and he lived in his own apartment.
It was an odd arrangement, but we made it work for many years. ”
“Then how’d you get here?” I asked, unsure of how her story would play out, and I wanted to know about her time with Parker, because I knew that was exactly who the ex she was talking about was.
“Oh,” she leaned in, a glint in her eye that she was excited to tell me. “That’s a fun one.”
She took a few bites of pizza first before continuing.
“At some point, I realized that I had saved up enough that I could move out on my own, and that I could quit that job and do whatever I’d like.
By then, I’d secretly already written many books but hadn’t done anything with them, so I started to query them to different publishing companies.
It didn’t take long for The Ink Well to pick up my books and start to work with me to publish.
The first few books did okay, but it was my third that took off and became a best seller.
My name was everywhere, but I hadn’t told anyone what I was doing, not my family or my ex. It was mine and mine only.”
“Shit, baby.” I leaned in, taking Odette’s face in my hands, planting a kiss on her lips. She’d spent so much time doing this on her own.
“It was a lot and shortly after I quit my job, but Parker didn’t want to move in together yet, even though we’d been together for years by then, so I found a cheap apartment close to where he was and continued to work on my books.
That’s also when I started on my first game.
Parker wasn’t much of a gamer then, but he tested it out after I got some people to assist with the design and building of it.
It did okay, but we went into League of Witches right after, pouring ourselves into it day and night.
After six months of working on it, we were launching, and it was soaring on the charts. ”
“An overnight success.”
Odette let out another laugh.
“If you’d consider pouring years of your life into your passion projects overnight, sure.”
“I do.” I leaned in and kissed her again. She placed her hands on my chest, roaming her fingers over my chest hair. “Fuck.”
“After a year of League of Witches being out, I couldn’t do all of it on my own, and that’s when I met Jemma, and we just clicked.
She helped me and became my rock, so when I decided it was time to leave the city, because it was honestly not who I was anymore, and I needed out, I started looking for houses.
I had hoped to get something for me and Parker, but even though he was breaking through with his own gaming, he didn’t want to leave.
And I couldn’t stay. So, I found this house a year after that, and Jemma moved in next door quickly afterwards.
Parker and I broke up about a month after that, and it’s just been me and Jemma ever since. ”
“Sounds like quite the ride for you.”
“It has been, but I honestly wouldn’t change any second of it if it meant that I’d end up where I am.
As much as I was scared about blowing up and the pressure it put on me, or the fact that my family nor Parker was ever there for me in my successes, I’m here now. And I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
Odette beamed at me, her meaning catching my breath.
She was telling me everything she went through because she’d go through it all just to be here with me.
I leaned in, placing my lips on her, letting her hands roam more over my body.
I pulled her onto my lap, legs straddling me.
My hands kneaded over her thighs, inching under my button-up she had on.
I fucking loved every part of this woman.
My hands moved to her ass, squeezing handfuls before I moved up her back and pulled her closer.
“I love being able to learn about your life.” I kissed down her neck, and Odette let out a soft moan.
She pulled away, grabbed my face with her hands, and looked me in the eyes. She searched them as if she were looking for something, anything, but I had no idea what.
“I want to know more about you.”
I took in a sharp breath at her request.
“But it doesn’t need to be right now.” She placed her forehead against mine, and we sat there in her kitchen; she had laid her life story out for me. Baring it all, and I could barely get out a story that involved what I did daily.
I wanted to tell her it all, right this second, but I had no plan for if it didn’t go well or what to do if she told others. I didn’t think she would, but this was a part of my life I’d kept secret from anyone who wasn’t my parents or Beckett.
A smile curved on her lips, and she planted a kiss on me. I let our lips meld together as one thought kept running through my head.
I want to tell her, though.
I wanted to lay everything out for her as she had done for me, but I needed to talk to Beckett first. Get my shit together and figure out when I could do this, because the longer I went with lying to her, the more I hated myself.
In all the time I’d spent talking with Odette and seeing her, I realized one true thing in this moment.
I just wanted to be me.