Cursed In Love (The Adams' Witch Book 2) (10 page)

“I’m not apologizing. You still could’ve hurt me if the spell hadn’t worked.”

His eyes shined with humor. “You’re not getting it. I knew it would work.”

“Good for you.”

He pressed the frozen bag of peas on his fingers and sighed and winced simultaneously. I knew the feeling. It was the epitome of pleasure and pain mixed together. You knew it would hurt at first, but it would be better in the long run.

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine.”

I brushed at an imaginary piece of dust on the coffee table. Travis kept lifting the peas to see if his fingers would remarkably heal in an instant. There had to have been an awesome sort of spell for healing that he could use. He was a Natural after all.

Finally, he turned toward me. “Your spell won’t last forever by the way so don’t think you can fall down the stairs tonight and end up unscathed. Especially with newbies like you, it won’t last long at all.”

“What about with you?”

“My spells can last quite a while. The one I put on this morning will probably last until tomorrow. At the earliest, when I go to bed tonight.”

That would be an awesome skill to have. If I could, I’d put that spell on me and then touch my mom the whole time we had a real conversation. A conversation about Dad. A conversation about us. I wanted to know what she really thought about everything. So much of her was locked away in a vault. I’d seen bits of pieces come out when Aunt Rose had passed and we went to visit Dad in the cemetery, but there had to be more of that person in there somewhere. And hopefully it would come out more often, not just during difficult times.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

I doubted that. “Oh yeah?”

“You’re thinking how awesome I am.”

I looked at his hand with a frozen bag of peas wrapped around it. Awesome wasn’t the word I would’ve used to describe him right then.

“Fine. You’re thinking how awesome magick is.”

“You’re right about that.”

“Let me know if you ever want to learn anything else. I can teach you.”

He stood, and I looked up at him. “I’d like that.”

His smile didn’t have any of his usual cockiness and it felt as if Travis and I had somehow found some sort of common ground. We were a lot alike in many ways.

He threw the bag of peas at me and motioned toward the front of the house. “I should get going.”

I stood and walked him toward the door. “Let me know what you think we should do next. I’m up for anything.”

His eyes darkened, almost predatory, yet entirely delectable at the same time. I was sure my words of “I’m up for anything” meant something else to him than they did to me. He was cocky and sure and he probably had many reasons to believe he was just what he thought he was.

But behind all that, if I really tried to figure him out, he went deeper. Maybe he was a little bit of both of those guys. A bad guy, mixed in with a truly good one. He was a part of the witch police after all.

Travis raised his hand and grazed his fingertips against my cheek. His eyes turned glassy for a second. He was truly an enigma, and I was glad he was on my side.

His smile turned cocky. “Right on both accounts.”

“Wh-what?”

He took his hand away. “I’m both of those things.”

I reached up and felt my cheek. He’d touched my skin with his skin. He’d read my thoughts. Bastard. Hot anger rolled inside of me. “Don’t you ever do that again,” I seethed.

His forehead creased, but then it smoothed out again. “I just couldn’t help myself. I had to know what you thought of me.”

“Never again.”

I opened the door, and he slid out, his stare on the ground. As soon as he was clear, I pushed the door closed and felt some sort of satisfaction when it banged.

Asshole read my thoughts. What the hell? Clearly magick was cool when you were the one doing it and not the other way around. I said the basic protection spell in my head that I’d repeated earlier. I’d have to do that before every encounter with Travis now. And just when I was starting to like him, too.

The door to the kitchen swooshed open and Mom walked through with a red slushie drink, an umbrella sticking out of it. Even in the middle of Nowhere, Virginia, she was trying to act as if she was someplace else.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Travis.”

Mom’s face slid into a smile. “That’s your friend Jennie’s brother, right?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. Either because she was proud of the fact she actually knew who my friends were, or because of Travis. Mom wasn’t blind, although to people my age, she should be. Especially to ones I also thought were good looking.

Mom jacked her thumb in the direction of the kitchen. “We should talk.” I narrowed my eyes, but she still grinned. “C’mon Sarah. We’re basically strangers living inside the same house.”

“Whose fault is that?”

Mom’s face hardened, but she stuck her chin out. “Mine. And I know that. It also doesn’t mean I can’t change, though.”

I followed her into the kitchen. She sat down at the table with her fruity drink and I went to the fridge to find something with a little more sustenance. There was cottage cheese and apple sauce. Looked good to me.

I made myself a small plate and sat down opposite Mom, her drink now half gone. I must’ve raised my eyebrows because she wound her fingers around the glass so I couldn’t see how much was left anymore.

“You seem to be hanging out with Travis a lot?”

It was definitely more of a question than a statement. “Yes. We’re doing stuff you don’t want to know about.”

Mom smirked. “If I thought you meant sex, I might be worried. But I have a sinking suspicion you’re talking about something completely different.” She took a pull from her straw when I didn’t answer. “He’s helping you?” she asked.

I nodded.

“You’re both being safe?”

I nodded again. Truly in another house this conversation would’ve been something different. Mom had made it clear from the beginning she didn’t want to have anything to do with what went down the night Aunt Rose’s body turned to ash. She wasn’t capable of processing it. I wished I had that luxury.

“What about Drake? I thought you liked him?”

My heart constricted. I hadn’t seen Drake in a while. Not seeing him hurt, but seeing him hurt, too. “I do, Mom. But he’s not…himself.”

Mom placed her hands palm-down on the table. “He needs help?”

“That’s what Travis and I are trying to do. We’re trying to help him.”

Mom nodded slowly, her eyes far away. “You were always a good person like that, Sarah. Always trying to help someone who needed it. I wish I were more like you. I mean, for Christ’s sake I can’t even think too hard on what I know you’re into or else I’ll go insane. I’m glad the world has more people like you in it and less of people like me.”

So was I. But I didn’t want to blurt that out and hurt her feelings. “Are you still thinking of moving back to Miami?” I asked, specifically putting emphasis on the you because there was no way
I
was going anywhere.

She shook her head. “I need to be with you. I know I don’t want to know everything that’s going on with you right now, but if you need me, you know you can ask and I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

I smirked. “Just don’t go into a lot of detail?”

“Exactly.”

I chuckled. I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to know. It brought up memories of Dad, ones she was trying to get over. But then again, maybe she didn’t want to know because her brain couldn’t compute it.

I drummed my fingers against the table. “Is it because of what happened to Dad?”

She bit down on her lip and looked up at the ceiling. Her eyes glassed over with unshed tears. “I just want to go on thinking what I think in my head. I know you might not believe me, but I loved him so much. In my head, he died of a heart attack. I—I don’t want to know what happened before or after the heart attack. And I sure as hell don’t want to know anything you’ve found out that might point to something completely different. I just want to think of him happy and loving us, and then one day he was taking a walk, and bam, his heart gave out because it was so full of loving us.” She tipped her chin down and stared at me. Tears were streaming down her face. “That’s what happened.”

My own tears were welling up in the corners of my eyes. That did sound like a lovely story. Someone who died because they were so full of love instead of something evil happening. I wished I could believe in that even though that’s all it was—a story.

I smiled. “That’s exactly what happened, Mom.”

Hands shaking, she wiped at her face. “For what it’s worth. I like both Travis and Drake. You’d be good for either one of those boys.”

“It’s not about that, Mom.”

“But let me just pretend that it is, okay?”

I nodded. Some pretending didn’t sound like a bad idea right now—a little reprieve from what was actually happening. “Travis is very handsome, but he can be kind of a jerk.”

Mom beamed. Color ran back into her face and she pushed aside her fruity drink. “But sometimes those are the types we’re most attracted to, isn’t it? And Drake, he seems like such a sweet boy. And also very good looking.”

“It’s definitely a toss-up,” I said.

What? What was I saying? I didn’t even know Travis was in the running for anything. I was trying to help Drake from the binding spell to be with him, wasn’t I? Or was I just trying to help him because I was a good person like Mom said and he deserved to be in control of his own life?

I shook my head and Mom laughed. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“You have no idea.”

She put her face in her hands. “Just think about how each of them make you feel when you’re with them. Don’t compare, but how do they make you feel?”

I closed my eyes and thought back about being with Drake. It’d been awkward at first. He was so into everything going on in this town and I really wasn’t. Then, we were kind of sort of friends and he was helping me figure out what happened to Dad. Then, I couldn’t stop thinking about kissing him. He said he’d wanted to be with me.

Travis hadn’t said anything like that, but—and I didn’t think I was being delusional—it seemed as if he wanted to be with me. He wanted to know what I thought of him. And I wasn’t thinking about kissing him all the time, because half the time I wanted to smack him upside the head.

One thing was for sure, boys were even trickier than curses and binding spells.

CHAPTER NINE

The one major improvement over having Aunt Rose-the-impostor not around? Wi-Fi. Installing wireless was the first thing Mom did when she found out I was intent on staying in Adams. I guess I could give that to her. When I’d first told her I wanted to stay in Adams, she didn’t fight with me much. I think she understood. Maybe even wanted to, too.

Belly down on the bed, I scrolled through a Wiccan website I’d looked up. I wanted to find the mind reading spell without having to ask Travis for it. I was hoping to use it on Mom. Knowing what Mom thought deep down inside would make my life 100 percent easier. That woman was locked up tighter than the U.S. Mint.

My phone vibrated. I flipped it over and sat up. The text was from Travis:
Where are you in the house?

What kind of a weird question was that? Was this like one of those, are you naked sexting things?
None of your business
, I wrote back.

The phone rang then. Travis again. I swiped to answer. “What?”

“God damnit. Where are you in the house?”

His voice was high and tight. On instinct, I knew I needed to answer him. “U-upstairs. My bedroom.”

“What about your mom?”

“I don’t know. I left her in the kitchen earlier.”

“Fuck.”

I froze, not liking the sound of that. “What’s going on, Travis?”

A thud and footsteps sounded on his end. “I want you to lock your door and don’t open it until it’s me, okay?”

I didn’t answer. My breaths came faster. It was too much like before.

“Sarah?”

I shook my head, ran to the door, and pushed the lock into place. “Okay. Locked.”

He hung up without saying another word. Of course, I didn’t realize he’d hung up until the dial tone buzzed in my ear. “Ass,” I cursed, then threw my phone on the bed. In my head, I said the protection spell Travis had taught me earlier three times hoping to God it worked if I really needed it. Something must’ve been in the house. But how did Travis know?

Downstairs, there was a thud and then sounds of a scuffle. I put my hand over my mouth. There was something happening down there. What if it was mom? Was she okay?

I stared at the lock for a good long time. Travis had said not to do anything until he was at the door, but I couldn’t just sit there and listen at the sound downstairs and not do anything.

I ran to the door, unlocked it, and bounded down the stairs. The sounds were coming from the library. Of course! It was always the library! I ran in and saw Travis plastered against a row of bookcases, his hands held by invisible ties. It was clear he wasn’t moving because he couldn’t, though to the naked eye, it looked as if there was nothing holding him back.

His eyes widened when he saw me and panic flashed in his eyes. Across the room, a blond boy was smirking at him. It was Courtney’s cousin, Andrew. I recognized him from the high school parking lot the other day. I picked up the closest thing within reach and whipped it at him. The object happened to be a red vase and my target was spot on. The glass vase connected with Andrew’s shoulder and shattered.

The disturbance must’ve given Travis just enough of a respite that he flew into action. He tackled Courtney’s cousin, pinning his arms to the floor physically, and then with a quick set of words, he was now tied up in magick.

Travis stood, wiped his brow, and stared me down. “I told you to stay upstairs.”

“I was worried it was my mom.” And you, too, I wanted to say. I also wanted to tell him that I obviously helped since he didn’t seem to do so well on his own.