Chapter 20
TWENTY
CASSIA
The shift had already happened. Cassia had felt it on the cliff, in the rain, with Aero’s hand against her cheek and lightning splitting the sky above them. She’d known it walking home. She’d known it all night.
She couldn’t name what it had become—only that it was different.
A constant hum beneath her skin, an awareness that prickled along her nerve endings every time he walked into a room, every time his gaze found hers across the weather station, every time his shoulder brushed hers as they bent over the same data printout.
Her magic recognized it before she could put words to it. The surge and settle of power whenever his footsteps sounded on the station’s stone steps. The way her storms gentled when he spoke, as if even the weather wanted to hear what he had to say.
He looked at her differently now. Longer. With an intensity that made her skin prickle and her magic stir beneath her ribs. Before, he’d observed her the way he observed everything—clinically, analytically, cataloging data points. Now he watched her like she was the only data point that mattered.
It had been two days since the cliff. Two days since they’d stood in the rain while lightning split the sky overhead, his hand on her face, neither of them moving away. Two days since he’d called her magnificent and she’d believed him.
Two days of pretending nothing had happened while something charged and wordless sparked in every shared glance.
Cassia was going to lose her mind.
She stood at her workstation in the weather monitoring station, staring at readings that should have demanded her full attention.
The anomalies were getting worse. Three rogue waves had nearly swamped fishing boats yesterday—massive swells that had appeared from nowhere, defying every predictive model she had.
The temperature had dropped fifteen degrees in an hour this morning, then climbed back up just as fast. The barometric pressure kept fluctuating in patterns that made no meteorological sense.
She should be focused on the data. Should be tracking the patterns, looking for the source, figuring out what the hell was happening to Haven Shores’s weather.
Instead, she kept watching Aero.
He stood at the bank of monitors on the far wall, his back to her, reviewing surge intensity readings from the coastal sensors.
The station’s main room wasn’t large—shelves of equipment lining every wall, screens displaying real-time data, the central workstation cluttered with coffee rings and hastily scribbled calculations.
There was no way to avoid proximity in this space.
Not that she was trying to avoid it.
She watched the way his hands moved over the keyboard. Long fingers, precise movements. She’d seen those hands grip a steering wheel, adjust his collar, brush a wet curl from her face in the pouring rain. She couldn’t stop thinking about what else those hands might do.
Heat crept up her neck. Outside, the wind picked up.
Aero glanced at the window, then back at her. One eyebrow lifted almost imperceptibly.
“Your magic is restless,” he observed.
“My magic is fine.”
“The wind shifted direction three times in the last minute.”
“Coincidence.”
His lip twitched. Not quite a smile—she didn’t think she’d ever seen him fully smile—but something close. Something that made her pulse kick.
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m an excellent liar. Ask anyone.” She turned back to her screen, trying to focus on the pressure readings instead of the way heat radiated from him even across the room. “I’ve convinced the entire town I’m not slowly going insane. That takes skill.”
“You’re not going insane.”
“Tell that to the three squalls I accidentally summoned last week.”
“Those weren’t accidents.” He moved closer—not touching, but near enough that she felt the warmth bleeding through the air between them. “Your magic was responding to external stimuli. The surge amplification, the weather anomalies, the—” He stopped.
“The what?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Focus on the data.”
Cassia bit back her frustration and tried to do exactly that.