Chapter 29
BLAIRE
Iwake up sweating, and this is the coldest room in the cabin.
There’s only one fireplace, and the heat rarely makes it down the hall.
I’ve slept in this bed many falls and winters with my face tucked under the thick blankets because my nose was cold. Last night, Jamie put his chest to my back and held me while I fell asleep.
The door is open, and the air smells like coffee and bacon in a hot skillet.
I push the blankets off me and put my feet on the floor.
His clothes are in a small pile off to the side.
I glance down at my left hand, my ring finger now bare.
When Jamie slid that ring onto my finger, it was like the world stopped spinning.
It fit. It felt like a sign. The temperature in the room changed.
I forgot to breathe. So did he, and neither of us said a word about it.
I pull a T-shirt from the dresser drawer and go find him.
The fire is blazing, and the curtains are open in every room. Sunlight leaks through. I peek out, seeing frost on the grass in the yard. The sun is barely over the ridge.
Jamie’s at the stove in his joggers with a dish towel hanging over one shoulder.
“There you are.” He’s smiling. “I made coffee. It’s been a long time since I’ve used a French press. Breakfast will be ready in about ten minutes.” He looks back and stops. “Mmm. Good morning.”
“Morning,” I say, giving him a sweet smile.
I move toward the French press. Beside it is a mug waiting for me. Jamie grabs it, pouring the perfect amount of brown sugar creamer in the bottom before handing it to me. The coffee is the exact color that I like.
“Thanks,” I say, blowing on it before sipping. “What’s the occasion?”
“Just another day with my favorite witch,” he says. “How did you sleep?”
“Great actually. You?”
“No complaints. You’re a good bed buddy.” He laughs and flips the bacon.
Eggs are cracked and fried in the cast-iron skillet. A few minutes later, he’s carrying our plates and sitting beside me.
My yolks are runny, and the whites are good—exactly how I like them. I take the toast and dip it into the yellow.
“Well?” he asks.
“As I said before, I could get used to this.”
“Me too.” He sips his coffee and watches me eat.
His hair’s wrecked, and there’s a mark on his neck that I put there. My eyes widen.
“Shit,” I whisper.
He notices what I’m focused on.
“What?”
“Um. There’s a mark.”
His brows raise. “Guess I’ll need to return the favor.”
“Please don’t tempt me with a good time,” I say around a mouthful.
He reaches over and pushes my hair off my shoulder, then leaves his hand on the back of my neck a second longer. Goose bumps travel over me, and I like how I feel when we touch. It’s never forced or unwanted.
I finish my eggs. He finishes his bacon.
Behind us, a log drops in the fireplace.
Out the window, the frost is starting to melt.
The trees on the hillside have lost a ton of leaves since the last time we were here.
It feels like a lifetime ago. In the distance, I can almost make out the ridge through those aspens.
Soon, it will be bare, then covered in snow.
The temperatures up here are in the twenties right now.
We finish eating; the conversation stays light. I stack our plates, and his hand rests on my thighs.
“Can we talk about it now?”
I twist my body so I’m facing him. “What do you want to know?”
He meets my eyes. “Everything.”
“Okay.” I put my hands on top of his and suck in a deep breath. “Teddy Marsh was my first real love. We dated for five years, and I thought we’d get married. Things ended badly. It took me years to get over it.” I take a breath. “I’d manifested him.”
“What does that mean?”
“I had cast a love spell for myself even though my aunt warned me against it hundreds of times.” My thumbs move over his knuckles. “I did it anyway.”
“And it worked.”
“My love spells always work. That’s what makes me dangerous,” I confess. “But just because it works doesn’t mean it will last. At twenty-one, I wanted somebody badly enough to force the universe into giving me my way. But our relationship was never quite right.”
“How so?”
I look up at him. I give him the truth, because we promised. “I wanted to be loved so much that I was willing to lose myself to have something that resembled what I thought love should be.”
He doesn’t say anything right away. His thumb moves back and forth over the top of my hand.
I let out a breath. “I’d walk into a room and could feel the energy was off before I ever opened my mouth. I could feel what kind of mood he was in, which determined which version of me he got that night. I became so good at being everything he wanted that I stopped being myself.”
“And what was he after?”
“A trad wife. He wanted me home, dedicated to him and our future children.”
His hands stop moving on my thighs. I rest my hands over his.
“He also hated the ‘witch shit.’ He was embarrassed by it. Of Flora. He told people I was a jewelry maker. Then he’d change the subject before anybody could ask what else I did. Then he wanted me to dye my hair blond.”
Jamie’s brows lift. “Really?”
“I almost did it,” I whisper. “But then I woke up, snapped out of it. Asked my aunt to do a cleansing spell, and things ended on Halloween. Five years ago.”
He shakes his head.
“Flora threw a costume party every year. The manor was always decked out. The front yard too. Everybody in town was invited. I’d always volunteer to come and pass out candy to the kids as everyone got trashed on witches’ brew.
She read palms at a card table by the stairs, and they’d play music loud.
It was so much fun.” I smile, thinking about the different parties over the years.
“I begged him since January to take that Saturday off. He could have requested it and been guaranteed not to travel. But he didn’t.
The morning of, he broke the news that he wouldn’t be able to make it.
He told me he was tired of my aunt encouraging my delusions and that I needed to stop with the witch shit. ”
Jamie doesn’t say anything for long enough that I have to keep going.
“I dumped him.” My voice gets away from me. “That night, I hooked up with one of his close friends who was at the party.”
“You did what?” He looks shocked.
“Payback.” I shrug. “I like to get even. Plus, there was a vibe between us. No regrets.”
“That’s evil,” he says with a laugh. “But, yeah, sounds like he deserved it.”
“Please, I’m sure you’ve done things that make that seem like child’s play.”
He licks his lips. “You’d be right.”
Now I’m intrigued. “Like what?”
He shakes his head. “This morning is about you, sweetheart. Did you see the hookup again?”
“Yeah. A few times. Then he fell in love with me, and I dumped him,” I explain.
Jamie swallows hard. His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “So, it’s like that?”
“For now,” I admit, nearly smirking. “Still waiting for Prince Charming.”
Jamie runs his fingers through my hair, and I lean into him.
“Well, sweetheart,” he whispers against my lips, “hope you find him.”
I kiss him instead of answering. He tastes like coffee. One hand slides up the back of my neck and holds me where he wants me. He grabs the stool and pulls me closer to him. Then I’m being lifted onto his lap.
Jamie carries me across the room to the fire, and I’m brought back to last night when headlights interrupted us.
He lays me down on the fluffy rug in front of the fireplace and pulls the T-shirt over my head.
One side of me goes hot from the fire, and the other has goose bumps from his light touch.
He works down my body, taking his time in every place he’s memorized, and there are a lot of them.
When he settles between my legs, he looks up the length of me first.
I don’t know where this road leads, but sex has never felt so fucking good. He braces both forearms beside my head.
“Fuck me like I’m yours,” I whisper into his neck.
He unravels me with the sun barely over the ridge.
“You are mine.” He nibbles on my ear, and I dig my heels into his ass.
He stops being careful. I get both hands in his hair as he fucks me, claims me. His mouth is on my neck, marking me.
“Yes.” The word falls from my lips. “More.”
Jamie fucks me like his life depends on it, like he’s erasing every man that came before him until he’s the last one standing.
I gasp for air, my back arching off the floor.
He takes my nipple into his mouth as I scream out his name.
The orgasm pulls me under as warmth spreads through my body.
I don’t know where I end and he begins, and I don’t want to.
He groans into my neck, spilling inside me. I close my eyes as the fire pops.
“When I was with Teddy,” I confess, “I’d fake my orgasms.”
Jamie laughs against my collarbone. “No.”
“Every time.”
“You deserve better than that.”
“Do I?” I ask.
He kisses me. “Fuck yes.”
We pull apart and jump in the shower together. As Jamie washes my hair, I watch him. He’s careful and attentive. I rest my hands on his hips.
“We have to be more careful with the things we say out loud. Words have weight,” I tell him. “Last night, with the ring, and …”
“I know,” he says. “It was weird as fuck.”
All I can do is laugh. “That’s my life constantly. Sometimes, none of it makes sense.”
He tips my head back under the water and rinses my hair out. He isn’t in a hurry about it. I close my eyes and let him.
“It doesn’t have to.” He laughs. “Your life is an adventure. Never a dull moment.”
“That’s true.” Water and soap run off my skin. “Perspective is everything.”
“It is. But I also know you see the glass as half full instead of empty. You make wishes on stars. You believe in mood rings and birth charts and manifesting. You can have whatever it is you want.”
Once my hair is rinsed, I take my time scrubbing every inch of him with the body wash and loofah. This man is a dream.
As if he can read my mind, he smiles.
We stay in until the hot water runs cold. Up here, that takes exactly sixteen minutes. He gets out and holds a towel open for me. I step into it and let him dry me.
“Queen treatment,” I say, grinning.
He curtsies to me—properly too. “It’s my pleasure, Your Highness.”
The rest of the day is easy, but it might be our last one like this for a long time.
It rains in the mountains, and we stay inside by the fire, playing rummy on the coffee table.
We drink vodka, have more sex, and share funny facts about ourselves.
Whatever is happening in the real world doesn’t matter right now.
I want to keep seeing the world with a glass half full.
“I’m going to miss this,” I tell him as we’re eating grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.
“I will too,” he says, and then neither of us says anything else about it.
“I had a thought,” he continues.
“Yeah?”
“Why don’t you throw your aunt’s annual Halloween party this year?”
“But—”
He places his finger on my lips. “Your party is more important. It’s a town tradition.”
I chew on the edge of my lip and smile. “I should.”
“You absolutely fucking should.”