Chapter Seventeen #3
Now the damn stars were pushing her toward Taliesin, too?
She was mad at herself for even thinking it—love?
Taliesin? This was…well, she didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t that.
They didn’t even like each other. Not really.
It would be easier to look for the masked man from Beltane, easier to find a stranger she couldn’t even recognize than entertain whatever made working beside Taliesin feel so comfortable.
Easy. The way working with her ex, Evan, had once felt easy before he betrayed her.
She slid the notification away with so much force, she knew he noticed it with that observant gaze that was always searching her for something.
She was scrambling to find purchase, to put herself squarely somewhere safe and comfortable. So she picked the fight. Selfish Taliesin, arrogant Taliesin, was familiar territory. Better than the man who looked at her with heat in his eyes, who cared for his students, who was good at his job.
It didn’t matter that her argument was thin, that he was right when he asked her if she checked astrological transits before every spell she cast. Of course she didn’t.
Plus, she had been working at Hawthorn for four years to Taliesin’s nine months, and she had never once considered the three rivers running through the Wilds as a possible convergence point just waiting for another naturally occurring power of three to cause havoc.
The odds of a convergence, of a spell being cast and a potent mistake setting off a chain reaction at the exact moment the planets were square above the confluence of the river, was so unlikely…
unlucky, his word that she had such a problem with, really was the right description.
But even as she could rationally agree with him, her brain worked overtime to sabotage whatever was pulling their bodies closer and closer together.
He could pretend to be kind and open when it suited him, but at the end of the day, all she really knew about him was what he did.
What he did was dismiss her and her work by slashing her budget.
What he did was ignore the importance of an astrological transit on his class 3 spell and then have the nerve to call it luck.
When they left the Annex, saying awkward have a good summers to Dr. Paige, Maggie tried to walk out ahead of him, forgetting for a moment that their destination was one and the same and Taliesin’s legs were significantly longer than hers.
He didn’t say anything, but he did keep up, the tension between them coiling tighter and tighter as they returned to Ilex Hall.
Back in their office, she dropped a book Dr. Paige had given her on Galloway history onto her desk when Taliesin had finally had enough. “What did I say to upset you?”
Maggie scoffed. She tried to keep the sound to herself, tried to keep it in her head, but of course it didn’t work out that way.
“Forget it,” she said. She didn’t want to have this conversation, not now.
She needed to go home and cool down so they could get through this summer working together. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Of course I’m going to worry about it,” he said, exasperated.
Maggie understood—she was sick of herself, too—but she couldn’t bring herself to stop.
She glanced up from the spot on her desk that she had been studying intently.
He had spun his desk chair around, and his hand was curled in a tight fist on his knee.
His brow was furrowed, and he looked at her like she was a mystery that needed to be solved, which only ignited another spark of indignation in her.
“Fine, you want to know what you did? You’re arrogant…”
“A jerk. Rude. Inconsiderate,” he said, looking wounded and sounding like he was reciting something. “I know, Maggie. I heard you that day in Dahlia and Jim’s office.” Her stomach coiled with something like shame. “I know you don’t like me very much. But what is this about?”
“You can’t go around acting like your field of research is the only one that matters.
People care what you think here,” she said.
I care what you think, her traitorous mind supplied, but she managed to keep that to herself.
She took a shallow breath, ignoring the burning pinpricks of tears in her eyes.
“What have I ever done to make you think I don’t value your work?” he asked as he ran his fingers through his hair. When she didn’t answer him right away, he went on. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s the problem!” she yelled. “You came to Hawthorn because you needed to get away from your life at Dartwood, and, believe me, I get it. But getting stupid committee assignments is part of the territory at a small college.” Gods below, she was rambling.
None of this was coming out right, and she was afraid she was going to start crying any minute.
“Did you really think that I wouldn’t notice?
” His furrow deepened. “Eight thousand dollars from my budget isn’t a percentage; it’s the entire thing. ”
“What did I do?” His voice had a desperate edge to it that she, frustratingly, wanted to smooth away. “I can’t fix it if I don’t know what I did.”