11. Freddie
Freddie
It’s taking every single ounce of my willpower not to hit the floor and completely lose my shit right now.
What the hell is actually happening? Never in a million years—not in my wildest, most unhinged dreams—would I have thought Callum McKinley and I would end up in this position. And trust me, there are plenty of other positions I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours imagining us in.
While he’s in the bathroom probably contemplating his life choices, I duck into my bedroom and swap my outfit for something comfier—my favorite oversized Dolly Parton tee and a pair of black biker shorts, letting my hair down so it tumbles in an unruly, wavy mess down my back, nearly reaching my butt.
I try to act preoccupied by wiping down my kitchen counter and washing out my dirty cauldron so he’ll think I’m busy. Maybe he won’t be as nervous to step out—but in reality, my phone is already unlocked, camera app open, thumb ready to hover over the shutter button at any given second.
The bathroom door finally creaks open with a slow whine and I nearly trip over my feet as I run over.
The second I look up, I burst out laughing so hard my ribs ache. I have to physically grab my side to stay upright. “Holy shit,” I gasp out, completely breathless.
Callum stands there in my hallway, glaring at me like a massive, disgruntled grizzly bear. His lips twitch beneath his mustache. I knew my brother’s old sweatpants wouldn’t fit this giant hulk of a man, but I couldn’t have pictured this.
“What are you getting ready to do, McKinley?” I wheeze, wiping a tear from the corner of my eye as I take in his exposed calves. “Is the tide coming in? Are you joining a ballet company?”
“Ha, ha,” he says flatly, crossing his huge arms over his broad chest. A few corded veins in his forearms shift with the movement, flexing tightly. “Hilarious, Rowley. Where’s the washer?”
“Be my guest,” I choke out, gesturing down the short hall toward the utility closet, still giggling like a maniac as I follow right behind him.
He steps up to the stackable unit, opening the small door.
The moment he bends over at the waist to shove his ruined jeans and briefs into the washer, I act fast, lifting my phone and snapping a picture of his tight, heather-grey-clad ass—and of course, the flash goes off with a loud, blinding CLICK.
Callum whips around so fast he nearly hits his head on the doorframe. “Winifred!”
I drop my hands, laughing hysterically. “There is no way on God’s green earth you thought I wasn’t documenting this!”
“Give me the phone,” he says, stepping out of the closet alcove and looming over me. “Now.”
“No!” I shriek, immediately darting toward the living room, keeping my phone clutched safely against my chest.
I hear his thunderous footsteps coming right behind me. I spin around near the sofa, seeing him practically on top of me—“No, Callum, wait!—”
His broad hands wrap around my waist, lifting me effortlessly off my feet, and he hoists me directly backward onto the couch cushions.
I sink into the velvet, laughing so hard I can barely breathe, and in a moment of sheer self-preservation, I shove my phone straight down the front of my oversized shirt, tucking it securely into the top of my bra.
I grin up at him. “Gotcha. You’re welcome to try and retrieve it, Detective, but it’s pretty much lost in the abyss now.”
Callum doesn’t turn away. Instead, he shifts his weight, his large frame coming down fully over mine, trapping me against the cushions. The laughter instantly dies in my throat.
Something inside my chest snaps awake. My magic—usually a prickly static—suddenly shifts into something completely new.
It surges toward him, inviting, purring low in my core like it wants to wrap around his shoulders and hold him right here against me.
It feels like a magnetic pull, refusing to let him leave my space.
Before I can process it, Callum reaches down as he smirks, trapping my wrists in his large palms and pinning them to the sofa above my head.
My breath catches sharply. Up close, the light from my living room window catches his face, revealing the tiny, hidden specks of gold buried deep within his dark blue eyes.
I stare up at him, my pulse thudding wildly against my ribs.
I have this urge to reach up with my finger and play Connect the Dots with every single freckle scattered across the bridge of his nose and cheeks.
I want to run my fingers through the auburn hair falling slightly over his forehead.
Callum lowers his head, leaning down until his jaw brushes the sensitive line of my neck. The soft bristling of his mustache tickles my skin, sending a shiver straight down to my toes as he breathes against my ear. “Don’t tempt me, Winifred.”
I swallow hard, my throat like sandpaper, desperately trying to force my magic to stop reaching for him before something flares out of control.
I try to push the energy back down into my chest, but the more I let myself react to him—to his weight, his scent, the warmth of his body pressed against mine—the more my power wants to bridge every fraction of an inch between us.
Panicking slightly under the intimacy of it all, I try to lighten the mood, though my heart is hammering so hard against my chest I’m scared he can actually feel it through his shirt.
I swallow, letting out a breathless laugh. “Yeah…better not. Before you end up having to borrow one of my dresses next.”
Callum stills for a fraction of a second, then lets out a genuine laugh right against my collarbone.
He pushes back slightly, looking down at me, searching my face, and I watch the shift in his own as he smiles.
It changes everything about him. The harsh, guarded lines around his mouth soften; his eyes crinkle at the corners.
He looks lighter. Younger. More ridiculously handsome, if that was even possible.
I clear my throat, the sound small in the stillness of the living room.
Callum’s blue eyes flicker over my face again before he awkwardly clears his own throat. “Right, I’ll just, uh—” he mutters, sitting up and swinging his legs over the edge of the sofa.
The loss of him leaves a cold draft across my whole body. I sit up beside him, tucking my legs beneath me, and take a shaky breath. My magic is still humming under my skin, bright and stubborn and wide awake.
No, no, no, I think, closing my eyes for a split second and forcefully shoving the energy down, down, down.
I repeat the cold, hard facts to myself like a mantra: Callum is just a normal human man who got stuck in my apartment.
A man who is actively, eagerly trying to find a way out of Amberhollow and back to his real life.
There is no point in getting worked up, or letting my magic throw a party, over a guy who’s going to be a ghost the second we figure out how to tear open the Veil.
When I don’t force it into a small box—when I actually let it breathe—it doesn’t feel like a weapon at all.
It feels like wild horses breaking through a fence, hooves thunderous, running untamed across an endless, open field.
It feels like lightning catching in the highest branches of an oak tree, or the electric smell of rain right before the sky breaks open over the mountains.
It feels like ocean tides pulling at the shore or a million tiny fireflies rising out of the grass all at once, lighting up the dark just because they can.
Magic was never meant to be trapped beneath bone and skin.
It was made to spill into the world, to reach every corner of the sky, to belong to everything all at once.
As witches, we were only ever meant to be the vessel for something far bigger than ourselves.
Trying to keep it tucked inside myself is like trying to hold a storm in my palms.
“Are you okay?”
Callum’s deep voice startles me, breaking through the silence. When I look up, he’s leaning forward with his elbows resting on those tight ass sweatpants, his brows creased with genuine concern.
“Yeah,” I say, offering an apologetic smile as I run a hand through my tangled hair. “Sorry. It’s…just my magic. Sometimes it gets a little crazy.”
“Crazy?”
I nod. “It…reacts differently around you.”
Curiosity flashes in his eyes. “How so?”
I shake my head, struggling to find the right words without sounding like a lunatic. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just more…haywire when you’re around, I guess. It takes me a lot longer to get it back under control.”
Callum holds my gaze, his expression unreadable as he absorbs that. “Is that a bad thing?”
“I don’t know yet. But I’m fine now.”
He nods once, the worry lines smoothing out, though his gaze remains fixed on me. “Good. So, how exactly is all of this possible?”
“How is all of what possible?” I ask, leaning back more comfortably against the couch cushion.
Callum gestures vaguely around my living room, his long fingers pointing first at the framed Pulp Fiction poster by the window, then over toward the original broadside for The Rocky Horror Picture Show I found at a flea market three summers ago.
His eyes track across the gallery wall—Frances Ha, Velvet Goldmine, the vintage Dirty Dancing print with the creased edges—before landing on the music corner where posters of Stevie Nicks, David Bowie, Elton, Joan Jett, and Dolly reign supreme in gilded frames.
“All of this,” he says, his brow knotting together in that painfully serious way of his. “If Amberhollow is separated by a Veil to keep it hidden from the outside world…how do things from out there end up in here? How do you have movies from our world on DVD? How do you know who Stevie Nicks is?”
I pull my legs out, kicking my feet onto the edge of the coffee table. My cobalt-painted toenails are chipping on my big toe, a little detail I make a mental note to fix.