Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(73)

Only Tilda would exercise her anger by making sure a bunch of strangers had enough to eat.

“Why?” She crosses her arms, the move drawing my gaze to the way her tits look in my old black T-shirt and the little points her nipples make as they strain against the cotton material. “Did I scare you?”

“Yes,” I say, playing along. “You are petrifying. I think it’s the glasses.”

She throws back her head and laughs. “They do have that effect on people.”

We stand there for a second. Neither one of us sure what to say next. There are a million things I want to explain, a billion promises I want to make. But first I have to apologize. “I’m sorry I didn’t have time to let you in on my plan.”

Her chin trembles. “I thought you’d left.”

Fuck. It really doesn’t get worse than the disappointment and hurt in her voice. “Never. At least not permanently.” I take her hand in mine, intertwining our fingers, my thumb brushing over the spot on her ring finger where a band will go. “You’re stuck with me, Tilda Sherwood.”

“Look, about what I said last night.” Her whole face is the color of one of the apples hanging in the part of the orchard that is still here. “It just sort of slipped out. I know it’s way too early for anything like that and—” She stalls out for a second, turning even redder as she gnaws on her bottom lip. “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but Griselda always says you know when you know. Well, I know. I realize that this may be coming from way out of left field, and after everything I’ve said on our dates may seem way out of character for me, but it is what it is. I love you. I realize this could be influenced by the adrenaline ride of the past few days or your family duíl magic, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. I’m not asking you to love me back. We can take it one day at a time. No pressure. I just—”

“You’re right.” She always seems to be. I mean, I’m sure I’ll find something she’s wrong about. Someday. “Everything’s happened in a rush and maybe we should take it slow. That would be the smart thing.”

“Yeah, of course,” she says, her voice a squeak of a sound. “Right. Perfect.”

“But the thing is,”—I dip my head lower so that our lips are practically touching, and the urge to kiss her nearly overwhelms me, but I have to get the words out first—“I don’t want to be smart about this. I don’t want to think cynically about the possible outcomes. I just want to keep on loving you.”

She blinks several times before one side of her mouth curls into a smile. “You do?”

“I do.” Unable to wait any longer, I kiss her, brushing my lips against hers in a promise of what’s to come since we are surrounded by her entire family, and they are all watching us. “I’m gonna tell you a secret about the duíl magic. It can’t make something out of nothing. The desire has to already be there. We might let folks think that it can create a want or need that wasn’t there before, but it can’t. Like your spellbinding magic, it only amplifies what’s already there. I may not have realized it, but I was already half in love with you in that coffee shop when the dragon’s blood tree went after you. That’s not gonna stop, with or without the duíl magic, because there will never be an end to me wanting to love you. It’ll be there forever.”

She toys with the buttons on my shirt, bringing back memories of last night and sending all of my thoughts to exactly where they don’t need to go at the moment.

“And the adrenaline factor?” she asks.

Oh, the woman is just fucking with me now. “Tilda, I have absolutely no illusions about living with you. It will always be unexpected, exciting, and everything I could ever want.”

“I snore.”

I shrug. “I’m a hard sleeper.”

She bites her bottom lip, looking up at the sky as she tries to come up with another warning for me. “I take really long showers and use up the vast majority of the hot water.”

“Looks like I have a reason to join you then.” Tilda soapy and naked in the steam? Yes please.

She glances back at the crowd of Sherwoods watching us. “My family is a lot.”

“Just wait until you meet mine.” There aren’t as many, but they are definitely just as nosy.

“For the love of pixie dust,” Vance hollers from the train platform. “Will you just put the man out of his misery already and tell him you really do love him too?”

Griselda, who is standing next to him, rolls her eyes. “Vance Eldridge, you have the manners of a unicorn shifter.”

“I am a unicorn shifter,” he shoots back.

“Believe me,”—Griselda pinches her nose—“we smell that.”

“Watch it, Griselda, or I’ll get your future godson-in-law to use that duíl magic on you.”

She lets out a bark of a laugh. “I already have everything I want.”

“Only on Thursday nights,” Vance says with a wink.

Griselda turns six shades of red and disappears in a poof. Vance lets out a low, rumbling laugh.

“Don’t worry, G,” he says to the empty spot where Griselda was. “I’ll still be there at the usual time.”

The exchange between Vance and Griselda breaks the moment and the Sherwoods stop watching us as a live reality show and start to share theories about what’s really going on between the unicorn shifter and the baddest old-school witch in Wrightsville. Witches, you can always count on them to get distracted by the latest gossip.