Chapter 18
He shouldn’t have been in his office on a Saturday morning. Rowan had spent too long buried in studies, then work. Putting in eighty-hour weeks, not because he loved it, not because he had a goal, but because he hadn’t wanted to live in a world that stripped him of the woman he loved.
So he’d changed. Found things to do, ways to relax, but today he was in the office because he itched to solve Annelise’s case—though he wouldn’t admit that.
Even to himself. So, after doing everything he could to help around the town, he’d allowed himself to come here, to do something that was for him. Or for her.
It struck him on the drive out, the difference between then and now.
The first flood, the Velascos had also lost their house, and everyone had welcomed their help.
His father had pitched in helping other families rebuild.
His mother cooked for everyone, a young Jasper at her side, making large pots of stew and sandwiches to feed the working neighbors.
When Rowan showed up and offered to help—a strapping young man with a good back, as the neighbors liked to say—they had waved him in and put him to work.
Now when he offered the same, they brushed him off, “No. It’s good.
We’ve got it.” He could see the damage. See the other people from the Hollow, cutting drywall and repairing studs, rolling up rotted carpet and hauling it streetside for pickup.
He’d been turned away at every house. He didn’t know why the ranks closed to him and he wasn’t welcome.
Was it because of the house on the hill? Did they think he couldn’t understand? Or didn’t remember? Or was it something worse? The pentacle he’d seen at his mother’s neck? The one she brushed off as nothing.
When he’d confronted her, reminded her of the bargain, she’d laughed. “Please, Rowan, it’s a family legend. None of us were there for the deal. We don’t even know if it’s real or just a story.”
Whether it was a legend or not, his grandmother had warned them all away from the Lockheart, Goodman, and Hale families.
The Velascos had not been welcomed in the older women’s homes either.
Falling in love with Annelise had been a fuck you to both their elders.
A Romeo and Juliet love story, but with a happy ending.
He’d almost barked out a laugh right there in the empty office. How stupid and naive he’d been. They were just like Romeo and Juliet. They’d loved each other, strong and fierce, and it had burned like a wildfire leaving destruction in their path. In the end, he’d thought he might as well be dead.
He’d stayed cold inside for a long time.
And hadn’t realized that it still lingered even when he believed he’d shaken it off long ago.
When people showed up on the Velasco doorstep during the storm, he’d really felt like part of the community again.
The Goodman sisters had eventually come.
Even Annelise Lockheart—though it was clear Story had pushed her.
He’d been proud of the home his father built. For the first time in their lives, everyone had their own bedroom. It was something his father had always sworn he’d provide for his children, and he’d achieved it. No one mentioned that it was maybe a good ten years too late.
They couldn’t have turned him away because his mother was practicing magic . . . could they?
No. That was ridiculous. He didn’t even know that she was.
Didn’t know the Velascos had actually made a pact to give up what the town believed was dark magic in order to be accepted.
It had been at least three generations ago .
. . if it was even real. His mother was right about that.
She’d also barked, “I wasn’t born a Velasco.
It doesn’t apply to me!” before she stormed out of the room, as if she were mad at him for even asking.
Maybe it was more that they lived at the top of the hill now.
He was a lawyer, more educated with more opportunities than others in the Hollow, though many had gone off to college.
Like Annelise and a few of his siblings, most had stayed close, community college nearby, smaller universities, even UVA.
But he’d fled to New York. Now he couldn’t tell if it was the stink of the big city or the distinction of the big house that made people think he didn’t fit.
He wondered if they didn’t want him to see inside their little houses, if they’d forgotten that he grew up the same way.
He knew the hand-washed dishes in the rack beside the sink that never quite emptied.
He knew about having an ancient washing machine that kicked and ticked and sometimes bounced a little too hard, because with so many kids it was constantly running.
His mother had looked at him oddly this morning when he’d headed out the door with little explanation.
Jasper often made breakfast on Saturday mornings for anyone who was home.
He went for French toast stuffed with Nutella, crêpes with strawberries and handmade jams. Rowan would have thought, given that the man ran a restaurant, he wouldn’t want to cook at home.
Yet Jasper did. He cooked like his ass was on fire.
Like the restaurant he owned was the product of a deal with the devil.
Rowan had never asked where he’d gotten the money and Jasper had never volunteered.
But he didn’t cook for them this morning.
He was down in the Hollow. He’d found a working stovetop, and he’d hauled his supplies.
From the update he’d sent, he was about to turn his hundredth pancake.
Rowan didn’t have a meal to sit down to, and he couldn’t stop the itch under his skin.
So he’d let himself into the building, quiet since everyone else was smart enough to keep their weekends sacred.
It wasn’t because he’d seen Annelise Lockheart again.
It wasn’t because she’d set foot in here and he’d breathed the same air as her. It wasn’t . . .
Things could get back to normal next weekend or the next, he thought. Then he fought a flash of panic that maybe they never would. The last flood had changed everything. Maybe this one would too.
Telling himself the work would comfort him, he got back to it. It hit him again. Why was she the one whose presence seemed to linger? Then again, she was the only client that he’d almost kissed, the only client he’d once made love to, the only client he’d never been able to shake.
Each time he told himself he was over her for good, a hot dream would seep in—or maybe even worse, a casual one.
Rather than the two of them burning up the sheets, naked and slick and moving into each other, he’d see himself and Annelise making breakfast in their own kitchen.
He’d hear children in the background—their children.
He’d be thirty-five soon, and he’d fully expected them to have car seats in a minivan by now. But Annelise had been gone almost as long as he’d known her. And he’d known her since birth.
Their mothers had been pregnant at the same time, four doors down.
A first pregnancy for both of them. For Vienna Velasco, the first of a long run that would produce seven children.
And Vienna hadn’t let the old family warnings about the Lockhearts ruin her chance to commiserate with the only other pregnant woman in the area.
Sniffing the air, he told himself he didn’t smell Annelise’s perfume.
Heading to the shelf, he grabbed one of the volumes he had there.
The law books were partially for show now.
They held good and useful information, but most of what he needed was available online.
He pulled up his laptop, opening it. He’d switched from a desktop years ago just to be able to fold it up, put it away and have his attention fully on his client.
Half an hour later, it was clear that, if the insurance company had pulled one over on Astoria Lockheart, there was legal precedence.
He looked through the file, though, and it appeared to be on the up-and-up.
They’d given her a rate increase earlier, and three months of warnings when she failed to pay.
It looked like they’d sent all the proper documentation.
To Annalise’s credit as an honest dealer, she’d pulled out trashed emails from her aunt’s backlog indicating that not only had the insurance company sent the warnings, it looked as if Story had simply ignored them.
He wondered if he could find other cases in the area, and maybe—though they hadn’t screwed Astoria Lockheart personally—she could be part of a class action suit as the insurance company attempted to illegally shed members of the Belle Hollow community.
Unfortunately, it really looked as if Astoria didn’t have a leg to stand on, as if she’d made foolish choices and bet on the weather not damaging the home.
What a foolish bet, he thought. The Lockhearts knew as much as anyone what the floods could do.
The last time it had begun a string of good changes for his own family and nothing but bad for hers.
She seemed to blame him for the disparity and outcome.
That wasn’t his fault, and not his family’s fault either.
That’s what hurt so much. He hadn’t even done anything wrong. There was nothing he should apologize for. She hated his father for the promotion he received, and when her mother hadn’t dealt well with the Lockhearts’ own bad luck, Annelise had gotten mad—at him, at the world.
The last thing he’d said to her fifteen years ago was that it wasn’t their fault. Not the Velascos’ fault her mother had died. That he was sorry that Melissa and Story made shitty choices, that Annelise could do better.
But her mouth had fallen open, and she’d looked at him as if he were a fool. She’d just breathed out a stunned, “Yes, it is!” She only said that she knew, and that she couldn’t show him. Since he couldn’t see any real evidence, he’d told himself she was just angry. For once, she wasn’t right.
She’d already been pulling away. When his family moved, they’d seen each other less. He knew she wasn’t telling him everything. So then, when her breath had come heavy, and her hand had waved, he knew she was casting something. Only this time she didn’t tell him what she had cast.
She said the words low and dark and dirty.
“It was exactly your parents’ fault,” and she’d walked away.
He’d messaged, he’d reached out, he’d talked to Story, but Annelise had never spoken to him again.
He hadn’t even run into her, and two months later when he’d headed off for college, it finally occurred to him: She’d cast a spell to keep them apart.
He wondered if he had run into her and he simply hadn’t seen her.
He’d spent his first semester of college in a depression he couldn’t name and never wanted to revisit.
But now as he looked at the folder and thought about the hot nights they’d spent together and the cool reception he’d received recently, he found he couldn’t reconcile it.
The moment they’d stepped so close, he could have just leaned down and kissed her.
She could have pushed up on her toes the way she used to, pressing into him, pressing her mouth to his. It looked like she almost had . . .
He wished he could get a spell from her right now so he could see the path to getting the family their money. Then he sat back harshly, throwing the pen down. He didn’t need her damn spells. He’d gotten this far on his own without her, hadn’t he? She’d made sure of that.
Even if he did find something to win this case, the chances that he had enough to sew it up so tightly that the settlement would be adequate and fast was next to nothing.
It was likely they could spend years in court and all their savings.
They might have to choose between fighting a legal battle or rebuilding the house.
Still, he wanted nothing more than to wave his own magic wand and make it go away for her.
He hated that he still loved her. But he did.
So here he was, working for her, diving back in with no magic of his own.
Whatever witchcraft had existed in the Velasco family was purposely snuffed out several generations ago.
He simply had to put his nose to the grindstone and find the one thing he could leverage. He had to stop thinking about the kiss that hadn’t happened and all the ones he dreamed of that never would.
About an hour and a half later, he put his finger on a date and said, “Oh, holy shit.”