Chapter Seven
Seven
M erle knew his mom hated that he worked in Poppy’s little tea shop at WiCKed Sisters. He really enjoyed hanging out with his cousin and her friends. Sera set aside books for him that had to do with D she’d changed into a long flowy skirt instead of those tight-ass jeans she’d had on earlier. Normally she wore a lot of rings, but when she read cards, she removed them.
He had always been curious about why she did that but had never asked.
He could now. He could probably ask her anything with the tension building between them.
She was giving him all the signs that she wanted to sleep with him and put the benefits into “friends with benefits” and he was...well, hesitating . Not because he didn’t want her. She’d dominated his fantasies and he wove her badass witch vibe into the NPCs he created for his campaigns.
But more because...he was still Merle Rutland. The odd Rutland. The one who wasn’t normal.
That was hard to shake. Even more difficult to deal with than being jealous. He should have leaned into the jealousy, acted the possessive hero and maybe let it burn out the other shit.
“Why don’t you ask her to read your cards?” Poppy said as she plopped down on one of the stools at the counter in the back of her tea shop.
He quickly brewed Poppy’s favorite tea blend and set it down in front of her before he leaned his hip against the back counter and put his arms over his chest. “What if she reads that I’m...?”
“Super into her?” Poppy suggested as she blew on her tea.
“Everyone knows that.”
“Even Liberty. So why are you watching her with that intense longing that I thought only existed in period dramas?”
“Why are you poking me?”
She shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I want one of us to be happy in love.”
“This thing with me and Liberty isn’t love.”
It couldn’t be. Not because he didn’t deserve love or any of that shit, but more because he’d seen love firsthand in his family and never wanted to feel that kind of responsibility. To work to make her happy only to let her down and live with her disappointment. To him, love had always been brought in when he didn’t live up to expectations—a “we love you anyway.” A consolation for his failures.
Liberty deserved someone who would never fail her.
“What is it then?”
“Lust, Poppy. And probably some of that magic that Liberty brings to the world around her. Just listening to the cadence of her voice and the sound of the cards as she shuffles them stirs the energy—”
He broke off, realizing he shouldn’t be saying any of that stuff out loud.
“She is magic,” Poppy said. “She’s the reason we have this shop. I mean we all worked at it and saved, but it was her dream first. She sees the world she wants and then goes out and makes it happen.”
He hadn’t thought of it that way.
When Liberty’s customer left, he glanced at Poppy who nodded at him to go. He left the tea shop and headed into Liberty’s section of the store. Sera and her assistant, Greer, were busy in the bookstore, and there were a few customers milling around in front of the caldrons and decks of tarot cards.
But Liberty had left her table and moved behind the register. She looked up as he approached. Her light gray eyes met his and all his words left him.
Why hadn’t he taken her up on her sexual invitation yesterday in the car? Why hadn’t he let things continue from that sensual kiss they’d shared this morning? Maybe it was the old fear that she was just teasing him. Why was he letting old fear keep him from the one woman he wanted?
Because of this. The softness in her eyes when she watched him. The fact that she’d come to him and asked for a favor regarding her father. He wanted to be different with her—to be himself. But decades of forcing himself to be what everyone else expected him to be had left him stymied. All of this time second-guessing himself was holding both of them back, even if she never saw him as more than a friend to flirt with.
He took the cup of mushroom mud that he’d brewed for her and set it on the counter.
“Ah, I need this. Thanks,” she said, inhaling deeply as she wrapped her hands around the mug.
“I figured,” he said. “It looked like that last session was intense.”
“It was. Were you watching me?” she teased.
“I always am.”
“I know. I like it,” she admitted.
“I know,” he said with a smirk. It was part of who they were. And he wondered if that might factor into his reluctance. He didn’t want to change things and lose this. Lose her.
All the charisma between them made him feel more alive than he had in a long time.
Liberty tried not to stare at Merle, but he normally wasn’t in the shop this early in the day. There was a zing about him this morning. Whenever she glanced over, he didn’t turn away and pretend he hadn’t been staring at her. One time he even winked, which sent a little shot of desire through her.
His phone pinged and he pulled it out of his pocket, glancing down, fingers tapping on the screen. A strand of his thick curly hair fell forward. Her fingers itched to thread through it. She should have put her hands in his hair when she’d kissed him, but she’d been too consumed with the feel of his mouth and body against hers.
She set her drink on the counter and took off the rings she wore when doing readings in the store. It was a quirk of hers—she used the moonlight to cleanse and then charge the rings for her readings. Asked the moon to give her clarity and guidance so she could help those who came to her. Not everyone put stock on tarot, and some of her customers booked a session with her purely for the novelty of it. When she wore the rings after, they raised questions. More than once she’d explained her process, which was rooted in her spirituality, and saw judgment and dismissal in her “woo-woo, it’s just for fun” clients.
But no matter their intent, she always tried to deliver the most accurate reading she could. She took her rings off and put them in a small wooden box that had been passed down to her from Nan when she turned thirteen. It had intricate carvings of Celtic runes and ancient symbols of protection on it. Nan even added a spell when she’d given it to Liberty. Each year on her birthday, they went up to the top of Hanging Hill and renewed the spell.
Her heart ached. This year Nan might not be able to go with her.
“Good news. I’ve got a lead on a John Jones who was in the New England area around the time of your birth. I’m running a search to see what it pulls back. Should take about thirty minutes. Are you free for lunch? We could talk then?”
Liberty hadn’t been prepared for that. She had half-banished John Jones from her mind, concentrating on this charged back-and-forth with Merle.
Fuck.
That chaos and anger was immediately back in her mind. She was glad she’d taken her rings off. She didn’t want them to be tainted by any negative feelings. She turned away from him as she tried to process it.
But it wasn’t easy. Of course she wanted to know what he’d found out. That was why she’d gone to him. But knowing would change everything. She still hadn’t decided what to do about her mom—
Merle came around and put his hand on her shoulder. He blinked as if not sure what to do or say. Not that she blamed him. Really, she had no clue what it was she wanted. He’d always been steady—constant. And she flustered him and got a small thrill from it. But that dynamic had changed, and she was so tempted to let him in.
Maybe allow him to see that she was scared. And sad. And anxious.
“Sorry. That’s great. I can do a late lunch. I have a reading in about thirty minutes,” she said. It was with one of her regulars so she needed to clear her head. Go in the back and meditate. Set up a circle and ask for guidance.
“Can you watch the shop for me?” she asked.
Months of being aloof and keeping her distance...and now she was asking him for favors left and right, acting like a complete mess. She took a deep breath.
“Of course. Should I not run the query?”
“What query?”
“The information search on him. Do you want me to stop?” he asked.
Yes. No. Fucking hell, she had no real idea of what she wanted.
She glanced around her shop, reluctant to think about something so private here. Not in the space she’d created, that leaned into her strengths and the special bond she had with Sera and Poppy.
“I don’t know. I need to go and meditate to reach out to my spirit guides. I’ll be fifteen to twenty minutes,” she said.
“Take your time. I can handle the register until Lucy comes in,” Merle said.
She nodded and reached around him, taking her mushroom mud and walking into her back room. The stock room and storage area had a simple hardwood floor. One wall was lined with bottles and vials of herbs and oils that she used to make potions and spells for her customers. Another wall had a long wooden bench that she used as an altar with her cauldron on it. Farther down was the spot where she hand-dipped candles once she added oils to the wax.
This space was her bower and smelled of the outdoors. She looked at the cluster of pumpkins sitting near her meditation pillow and took a deep breath.
John Jones.
She wasn’t sure that she should know about him, now that Merle might be able to uncover the truth. Of course she wanted to know—that was why she’d asked him to look in the first place—but at the same time, she was scared of what the information would reveal and of the emotions it might stir.
She poured a circle of salt and then sat in the middle. Lit a candle for guidance and pulled the herbs she needed for clarity around her. She sank down in a cross-legged position and closed her eyes. The familiar scents of her ritual calmed her mind to a small degree so she could use her chaotic energy to pull down answers from the universe.
Even though they might not be comfortable.
Did she want to know more about her father? Did she want to keep that information a secret from her mom?
And where did Merle fit into all of this? Was she using him as a crutch or a distraction, because it made her feel better to be with a man she knew she could trust while another was fucking up her life? Or was there potential for something...more?
Lucy arrived about ten minutes after Liberty disappeared to her back room. Merle hesitated and then told Lucy to let Liberty know to text him about lunch. He went back over to the tea shop, but Poppy was with a customer and her extra staff had arrived, so she waved him off.
With his unexpected free time, he left WiCKed Sisters, walking up Main Street toward the Bootless Soldier after grabbing his backpack. He had so many ideas he wanted to add into the D he would roll for them during a session and perform their voices. He had a few regulars that he sometimes went back to from earlier campaigns, but he liked creating new characters as well.
The tavern served breakfast until eleven but it wasn’t that busy, so Merle found a table toward the back and pulled out his tablet to start working on his character notes and some new ideas he had for using the music to lure the campaign into someplace unknown. Merle kept his head down and wrote, his fingers moving over the keyboard. He didn’t even try to pretend he was setting this particular battle up for anyone other than Liberty. It would lean into her strengths, and the artifact he was going to hide at the end would be perfect for her. Something that she would appreciate finding. It was his way of giving her an outlet to express the combo of sadness and anger he’d seen in her earlier.
“Dude, I knew I’d find you here.”
Merle looked up, surprised to see his brother Marcus. “Uh, what are you doing here?”
“Really, that’s how you say hello?”
“You said you were in Bangor on Friday.”
“Yeah, I know, but... Mom asked me to check on you,” he said.
Yeah, right. “Mom doesn’t give a crap about me. Why are you here?”
Marcus shrugged and dropped into the chair across the table. His hair was trimmed close to his head, his eyes the same dark brown as Merle’s. Marcus shrugged out of his leather bomber jacket, revealing his licensed Under Armour shirt, designed to show off the results of his lifetime athleticism and daily gym sessions.
“My girlfriend is really into that game you play,” Marcus said.
For fuck’s sake.
“So?”
“She has a group she plays with each week and I really don’t know shit about the game,” Marcus said. “I remember you tried to show me but it wasn’t like, go in and win. You had to eat and sleep and cast spells. Honestly, it was a lot when I was in high school.”
“But now that you’re twenty-three, it seems less?” Merle asked.
“Make fun if it makes you feel better. I like this girl. She’s smart—like scary smart—and all of her friends are into it. Could you help me out with the game? I was going to ask on Friday but I need to concentrate on baseball then.”
“Help you out how?” he asked.
“Give me the idiots’ notes on the game and what I need to do,” Marcus said.
The fact that Marcus wanted to play the game to impress a girl pleased Merle. His brother was used to winning—being the best. After all these years, there was finally something Merle was good at that Marcus couldn’t fathom.
“Do you know what edition of D he’d at least watched a few YouTube videos.
Together they worked out that Marcus would do best as a barbarian half-orc. The character class that usually raged and used brawn in battles.
“You should probably read the Player’s Handbook,” Merle said, opening the ebook on his phone.
Marcus took one look at it and shook his head. “Is there anything more...basic? I don’t have time to read all of that.”
“Yeah,” Merle said, opening up the basic rules book which Marcus could download.
“This is what I’m talking about. Thanks, bro.”
“No problem. I think you’ll like it once you get into it,” he said.
“I’m not sure about that. But Talia is really into it and she comes to all my games, so I want to do something that’s for her, you know?”
Marcus left a few minutes later and told him they could skip Friday now. For the first time with his brother, Merle had been himself, and it was exactly what his brother needed. Not another sports analogy or some baseball trivia, but a willingness to listen and not judge.
Maybe he’d gotten too used to hiding from his family, letting those young adult behaviors flavor his attitude toward his parents and brothers. He wasn’t sure how his oldest brother would react, or his parents, if he was finally, truly himself.
His mom was never going to like his hair long, but that didn’t matter. He’d been doing more than putting on a baseball cap when it came to hiding who he was and what he did. Living two lives instead of one.
Today, as he wove Liberty’s magic into his D&D campaign, it no longer felt like something he wanted to do. He wanted to stop being out of sync with everything and start vibing with himself, stepping into his own nerdiness to stop letting others’ judgment define him. Talking to Marcus had opened him up to the fact that what he did led to good things.
It was past time that he did that. Past time to stop hiding himself from the world and live as if he had nothing to apologize for.