How to Charm a Nerd

Chapter One

One

L iberty lit her favorite autumn candle that she and her mom had made over the summer. It held all the scents that she associated with and loved about the season leading up to Samhain. Slowly the living room of her apartment filled with the earthy scent of the outdoors, of trees and leaves that had wilted with the first cold chill. All of the smells that reminded her of midnight and a big, full harvest moon.

She closed her eyes, listening to the sounds of the wind—which was in a playful mood tonight—pushing the branches of the trees around her apartment building against the walls and windows. She was tempted to get up and open the glass door that led to her balcony.

Liberty sat in that urge for a minute and felt as if she needed the wind spirits with her tonight.

As soon as she opened the door, she felt the lingering warmth from the September day and then the breeze came in, dancing around her shoulders and stirring her long hair with a crisp chill. Autumn was beckoning. Then winter. It was fitting that she was trying to deal with something that she’d always thought was dead to her.

John Jones.

Since she’d found out his name from Nan in March, she’d been trying to figure out what to do with the knowledge. It wasn’t Nan’s fault at all. But this news had changed her world. Alzheimer’s hadn’t exactly been a fucking treat, but they’d been managing. Liberty and her mom had been coming home after visits and laugh-crying at the caught glimpses of the old Nan, before her mind started to give in to the disease that was slowly taking her from them.

But damn.

She hadn’t been prepared to hear the name of her biological father. Or to have Nan talk to her as if she were Lourdes—Liberty’s mom—like a disapproving mother who wanted the best for her daughter.

John Jones had been a fucking cunt. Her mom didn’t approve of the word, but it was the only one she could use when she thought of that man.

Liberty immediately shook her head. She cursed when she was mad and hurt.

Her mom had offered to tell her the name of her biological father when she’d been sixteen. They called him the sperm donor at home, but the reality was that her mom had been in a relationship with him when she’d gotten pregnant.

The asshole had offered her mom money for an abortion and then walked out of her life when she refused.

Fuck him.

After Nan dropped the name on her, Liberty immediately told her two closest friends, the sisters the universe had sent into her life. They’d been supportive. Whatever Liberty wanted to do; they had her back.

She wanted to tell her mom that she knew his name. To get her advice, because there was no one who she relied more on than her mother. But after saying she never wanted to know years ago...well, for the first time in her life, Liberty hadn’t been sure what to do.

She’d drawn a tarot card from her Rider-Waite deck for clarity, but her mind had been a hot mess and the tarot hadn’t really provided any guidance. It had instead been sensible Poppy who’d suggested she take one of those over-the-counter DNA tests and see if any relatives showed up on her paternal side.

She’d tried it and nothing came back. And fucking John Jones wasn’t exactly a unique name so no amount of googling turned up any leads. Asshole.

Even now he was just...what? Was he dead? Or with a new family living his best life, never thinking about the daughter he hadn’t wanted?

For most of her life, Liberty had been successful in completely ignoring the man’s existence, probably because he’d always been nameless and faceless. But now he had a name, and a world of possibilities she’d never considered had opened up. She hated that and was so conflicted that she was making herself crazy.

So she decided to pull out her favorite Samhain oracle deck and pull six cards in a Witch’s Tools Spread. Oracle decks were different from her Rider-Waite tarot deck in that they offered a more detailed and specific spiritual guidance. They also tended to have bigger energy. Since her magic felt like it was in flux, she needed everything the oracle deck could give her.

With the breeze moving through her apartment stirring the dark drapes and making the flame on the candle dance, she started to find her center again.

Liberty pushed out her curse words and that man’s name and moved back to the small meditation pillow set in the middle of a circle of salt. She lit a candle before she sat down.

She closed her eyes and asked about the energy of her situation...pulling Grief from the oracle. Interesting. Was she grieving? The card probably meant that she had unresolved emotions about her father. Well duh, right?

“Come on, goddess, show me the good stuff,” she said.

She pulled potions and spells...reversed.

Thank you, goddess. She needed to get clarity around the situation before trying to manifest him into her life.

She took a minute to sit in that information. There were consequences outside of herself to consider. Her mom was a big one.

When Liberty had been sixteen, a letter arrived from her sperm donor, and Lourdes asked her if she wanted to read it. And Liberty said no. She didn’t need a man in her life who didn’t want to be there. Neither did her mom. So they burned that letter under the full moon for cleansing and releasing and moving on. They danced around until his spirit had no power over them anymore.

Now Alzheimer’s had brought him back. She had to admit she’d been disappointed when she opened the DNA results and saw no paternal connections. Maybe that should be it.

Except when had she ever let something go?

Never.

Like never , never. If she got a mosquito bite, she scratched and scratched it until it scabbed over even though she knew she shouldn’t.

This felt the same.

She wanted to find out more about him. She needed to.

She closed her eyes, moving on to the third card. How could she feel supported moving through this?

Intuition.

Liberty always used her gut as her compass. It hadn’t let her down. Her gut led her to the job at the coffee shop near campus where she met Poppy and Sera—her found sisters. They’d all had small businesses of their own, and the universe directed them to open their shop here in Birch Lake. WiCKed Sisters had been bumping along making a nice profit until Amber Rapp—yeah, the mega pop singer—stopped in and purchased a journal from Sera, handmade tea from Poppy and a tarot reading from Liberty herself.

Then everything changed.

She’d been manifesting change into her life, but she’d only wanted it for the store and maybe where that hot, nerdy cousin of Poppy’s was concerned. But the universe answered with John Jones as well.

She opened her eyes and looked around her apartment.

The fact that Merle was on her mind too didn’t surprise her. She’d seen him earlier when they’d both been closing the shop. He’d been reading books on adventure... By the goddess, that guy was so into Dungeons & Dragons. But he always perked up when she was around. Glancing at her when he thought she wasn’t looking.

She did the same to him.

On paper they made no sense, but in her mind and body...well they would be electric together. Like heat lightning that lit up the sky all summer. Stirring up something frightening, exciting in her. Thinking about Merle took her out of her thought spiral. He was really good with computers—was some kind of programmer in his day job from what Poppy had said. Merle also helped out when Poppy was short-staffed at WiCKed Sisters.

But to be honest, whenever Merle came up, Liberty conjured images of him with his shirt off, leaning against the back of the delivery van and licking dripping ice cream from his hand.

Curse the day she’d seen that, because since that moment over a year ago she couldn’t get it out of her mind.

They were in a friend group and he was the cousin of her business partner, so a short-term hookup had stupid written all over it.

But...

Merle might be the key to her figuring out who John Jones was.

The sexual attraction that had her distracted, almost frazzled whenever he was around would be a counterbalance to the chaos and confusion she was experiencing as far as her biological fucking father was concerned.

She had three more cards to pull. But she was already convinced Merle would be the key to getting out of this stage and moving into the next one. If he could find out more about John Jones...and if she could find out how Merle’s tongue felt on her skin...maybe she’d get through Samhain and the fall without creating a few curses and spells.

The fourth card she pulled was All Hallow’s Eve reversed, which immediately made her smile. It reinforced the fact that she shouldn’t be doing spells or curses until she had her emotions under control. Who knew what she’d draw into her life if she tried a summoning spell to bring John Jones’s information to her.

Unless she was fully rooted in her confidence, there was a chance that the spell could backfire. The universe tended to give back threefold anything negative that was put into it.

Next she asked the cards to show her how she could move past this situation and pulled the Banshee reversed. A warning that sent a shiver straight down her spine. Seeking wrath or revenge could backfire. Her mom’s face drifted into her mind. Liberty had to be very careful how she moved forward.

And her magic seemed to be the wrong option. She’d known that deep down, but this confirmed it.

Merle was the only true option here.

She pulled one last card, asking for any additional information and it was the Witch. A sign to use her energy and wisdom to move through this. Follow her gut. She had always believed that her true strength came from the long line of women who’d come before her. Her energy was very feminine, and so was her wisdom.

She wasn’t going to be able to use the tools she had relied on in the past but that didn’t mean she should ignore her gut or her rituals or practices. Her strength was still the core of who she was.

Her friends were also there to guide her, along with Merle.

She hoped it wasn’t her crush that was directing her to him, but either way there would be some outcome that she couldn’t predict. And Merle had never given in to her teasing and flirting. Maybe he’d simply be a friend. A good, hot friend.

Maybe not.

As much as she liked to believe that she had no baggage from the father she never knew, that was a lie. She didn’t trust men. Never could. Men took what they wanted and then moved on.

She shook her head as the wind and her conscience warned her that not all men were like John Jones. But Liberty had never been willing to risk her heart or her feelings to find out. Hookups and casual boyfriends were as far as she’d been willing to go in any relationship.

And as she moved through finding her biological father, whether she wanted to or not, she was probably going to have to find a way to trust a man. If she was going to ask Merle for his help, she’d have to believe he could get results. Otherwise she’d fuck up the universe once again.

Finally getting closure was worth the risk.

The very last thing Merle wanted to do was FaceTime with his mom. But she insisted she had very important news to share. So that meant he had to shave, which he really hadn’t planned on doing today. It took time to put away the map he’d created for his latest Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. Then he went into the bathroom and made himself look how all of the Rutlands looked.

He put on a collared golf shirt that he’d gotten on their last family vacation when they’d visited St. Andrew’s golf course in Scotland. Merle had wanted to explore Celtic sites and visit some pubs, but he hadn’t wanted to rock the boat, so instead—just like every other family vacation—he found himself losing to his parents and brothers on the golf course.

God all but spited his dad when Merle miraculously hit under par on the hardest hole on the course, but that hadn’t made the trip more enjoyable for either one of them.

He still wasn’t sporty enough for his father. Even an achievement that would be boasting material for his brothers wasn’t good enough.

He put on a Red Sox baseball cap—his family always supported Boston—and then went to sit with all the lights on and blinds open. His mom hated when he kept his house the way he liked it, dimly lit. She thought he was hiding away behind his computer screen.

She wanted something more...well he wasn’t sure what. A different life for him. Neither of his parents ever really acknowledged that he might be happy in the life he created for himself.

He was tempted to have a couple of shots of tequila. But that wasn’t smart. He’d probably just take the baseball cap off and let her see his hair, which was down to his shoulders now and not trimmed with a number two blade, the same as his father and brothers used.

He still wanted something he wasn’t sure he’d get. Acceptance from his parents just for being who he was. A somewhat sloppy, professional computer programmer and gamer who ran highly successful weekly Dungeons & Dragons sessions.

All things that would piss his parents off. They’d never been accepting of anything he’d done. Not even that dumb-luck shot on a prestigious golf course.

His alarm went off and he silenced it as he turned toward his laptop. His mother thought being on time was late. She’d start the call a minute before the hour.

As soon as he saw that this wasn’t a one-on-one call, his pulse raced and he wished he’d done that shot. But it was too late now. He was going on with the entire family, sober and faking it.

That would probably be the story of his life.

He hit the button to answer the video call just as an image of Liberty laughing and teasing him from the day before danced through his mind. She’d transitioned to all-black outfits as fall had officially begun—or as she called it, the season of the witch. Her season. She wore a scoop neck, tight-fitting top over a pair of jeans that she’d painted with stars and moons and the constellations that made up the astrological signs. She told him that she’d placed the constellation of his sign high on her right thigh to keep her warm.

She was always flirting, hoping he’d react. Occasionally he did, just to keep her off guard, but she probably figured he was joking and would never see him as more than Poppy’s cousin.

But this was his reality. He was a grown-ass man with a good paying job who owned his own home and still had to pretend to be someone he wasn’t with his parents. In short, he was a coward. Still trying to measure up to their expectations when he was with them.

There was a duality to his life and how he saw himself. He just hadn’t wanted to bring a woman into that mix and have to explain, I’m really this guy, unless I’m with my parents and then I have to change how I dress, talk and act so they accept me .

That’s why his relationships were always short and temporary. At some point they wanted to meet his parents and brothers. How could he ever justify that he had to change everything he was for his parents to be comfortable around him?

And he definitely couldn’t with Liberty, who exuded individuality and self-confidence without even trying. It was what drew him to her. She’d taken up residence in his mind. A part of him even wanted to believe in her witchy ways, her spells and tarot cards and whispered magic. Maybe she’d cast a charm on him.

But he knew the truth. Before she’d spoken one word to him, when he’d seen her talking to his cousin and heard that loud, carefree laughter of hers, he’d gotten hard and wanted her as his own.

And wanted her to see him not as Merle, the trying-too-hard son, but Merle, legendary dungeon master. The real Merle. The one he was so afraid to let the world see.

“Merle, did you get a haircut? It looks good on you,” his mom said.

“No. Why are you asking?”

“Aunt Jean shared a picture of you with Poppy and her friends at the weird shop of hers and it looked like your hair was unkempt. You look much nicer today,” she said.

How was he supposed to respond to that? She probably expected him to say thank you. But how was that a compliment?

“Why are we on this call? I have a zoom with my boss in ten minutes,” he said.

“That’s good. Well as soon as your dad gets back, we can start,” his mom said. He noticed his dad’s icon appear on screen.

“Now that we are all here, Marcus, do you want to tell him?”

His younger brother looked straight into the camera in that arrogant way of his. “I got a job as an assistant coach for the Sox farm team.”

Of course he did. “Congrats.”

That was all he could say as the rest of the family, including his middle brother Manford, rejoiced in having another son who lived up to the Rutland name. Merle smiled and cheered, then made his excuses to leave.

He took off his hat, closed the blinds and turned the lights back off. He shoved aside the feelings that being around his family always stirred. Instead he lost himself in history, reading about real-life battles in medieval Scotland, using it as inspiration for the new campaign he was writing for his D&D group.

This was the third campaign he’d run in the world he created. The one where he felt most at home. And it wasn’t lost on him that it was make believe.