Payback's a Witch (The Witches of Thistle Grove #1)(42)

I blinked, a little taken aback by how seen I suddenly felt, as if I really had managed to forget just how well Linden knew me. While this depiction didn’t make me sound particularly considerate or kind, it was true. Ever since Gareth, I did have a tendency to hold myself back. Maybe that heartbreak had been formative, somehow; or maybe it was just how I was made. Either way, I’d wound up feeling terrible more than once, when someone declared their love long before I’d begun to even consider the possibility of falling.

I was rational, careful, scrupulously sparing with my feelings when it came to lovers.

But Talia . . . “Careful” was miles away from how she made me feel. Galaxies away.

“I appreciate you looking out for me like that,” I said, reaching out to cover Linden’s sun-warmed hand with mine and give her a little squeeze. “And what about you? How are you doing?”

She contemplated her pastry thoughtfully before taking another bite. “Well, I’m not crying into these doughnuts. So that’s gotta be considered progress, right?”

I chuckled, torn between amusement and sympathy at the memory of Lin slumping against me, alternating between sobbing, stuffing her face with Emilio’s day-old dozen, and taking tear-gurgled swigs of boxed wine.

“You didn’t actually tell me what happened at the gala,” I said, “to prompt the carb rampage.”

“You mean what happened while you and Talia were all wrapped up in each other, doing the Morticia and Gomez tango?” she said dryly. “No shade, I know it was for Gareth’s benefit, mostly. And you guys looked hot together. It just made me feel all sorry for myself, thinking about when I went salsa dancing with him in Carbondale, and—”

“Gareth can salsa dance now?” I said through a fake gag, my soul shriveling at the idea. “Ugh.”

“He actually has surprising rhythm for someone saddled with so much prep,” she said, shrugging. “It was one of the things that . . . you know what, no, I’m not upsetting myself by dwelling on the stuff I liked when we were together. Anyway, I was in my feelings about missing him, and he apparently smelled my weakness like some kind of sociopathic shark. So when he came by to talk to me, I didn’t say no like I should’ve. Instead I let him tell me all the reasons why cheating was the most terrible mistake, we were so good together, I was the very best thing before he fucked it all up, let’s be in sweet love again, and so forth.”

I stared at her, aghast. “He really thinks you’re going to get back together? After what he did?”

She shook her head in bemused wonder. “I guess he thinks he’s redeemable? Or that he deserves to be? For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s lying about missing me, or about wishing he were less of a fuckup. But it doesn’t matter that it’s true. I could never trust him again after what he did. It ruined everything, forever. And this nonstop trying to woo me back, or whatever he thinks he’s doing . . . all it does is upset me.”

I gritted my teeth, familiar anger churning in my belly. “So that wasn’t the first time he’s tried?”

“I wish.” She scoffed through her lips, a frustrated pffft. “No, after I blocked him on every possible form of social media, and my phone obviously, he started ambushing me all over town, just trying to get me to talk. But I don’t want to talk to him. I want to get over it, move on, feel better. And he just . . . he won’t even let me do that.”

“You deserve to be able to do that,” I said, giving her another squeeze. “Just like he deserves everything we do to keep him from winning, and then some.”

“And for what his family’s doing to the orchards, too,” Linden said darkly, shaking her head. “You should see their fancy new outdoor setup over at Camelot, Em. Maybe it’s not personal to them, just more tourist money. Diversifying their assets or whatever. But Honeycake is special, anyone can feel it. How could they—how could anyone—put a perfect place like this at risk?”

Caught up in righteous outrage on Linden’s behalf, I’d almost forgotten that piece of things. On a Halloween-month weekend like this one, the orchard should have been slammed with a steady stream of visitors, bouncing along on the hayride that became charmingly “haunted” after dark, rambling their way through the hedge maze, wandering through the tidy rows of trees with lumpy totes slung over their shoulders, apples rolling in their wake. But instead I’d seen only a thin trickle of tourists the whole time we’d been here.

And given how teeming the town was with visitors, there should have been more than enough to go around—had things not become so rigged in the Blackmoores’ favor.

“That just makes me hate that jagbag even more,” I said, jaw tight. “Him and his whole shitty family.”

Linden let out a surprised little burst of laughter. “That what?”

“Jagbag, it’s a Chicago thing. I think it’s a slightly more couth version of jackass, or maybe jerkoff? I just like how it sounds.”

“Jagbag,” she repeated, trying it on. “Yeah, you know, I like it for him, too. It fits.”

We lapsed into companionable silence as the sunflowers bobbed above us, their heads rippling as a brisker edge of wind scythed through the field. I tugged my fisherman’s sweater tighter over my shoulders with a cozy shiver, enjoying both the spun wool and the chill.