Small town big magic a w.., p.28
Small Town, Big Magic--A Witchy Rom-Com, page 28
Skip seems vaguely amused. “We’ll see,” he says, with enough menace to make my stomach twist. But he’s walking away, the porch suddenly seems well lit and welcoming again, and Jacob is tugging me inside.
And because Skip is leaving me unhurt, I focus all the messy things I’ve been feeling all night on the biggest load of old-fashioned, misogynistic, unacceptable behavior I’ve ever witnessed.
The door slams again behind me, violently enough to make me jump. I turn to Jacob, ready to give him a piece of my mind and a lesson on the toxicity of jealous behaviors better suited to baboons. But he charges ahead, fury pumping off of him as if he has something to be mad about.
“What was that?” I demand, storming after him.
“That’s what I’d like to know, Emerson.” His voice is so low and so harsh it sends an odd shudder of foreboding down my spine.
“I was handling him.”
He turns to face me, such naked affront on his face that I stop in my tracks. I see Georgie in the living room, but Zander and Ellowyn aren’t here yet. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. For them or for me.
“You called out for help,” Jacob says between gritted teeth. “Repeatedly.”
“I did no such thing.”
Except I was feeling a little panicked, so maybe I did and didn’t fully realize it. I’m still working on the difference between projecting my every thought and sharing specific ones. I could say that, but I’m too furious that he’s angry when I just suffered through a date with Skip Simon. I feel—strongly—that I should be getting nothing but praise.
“You did,” Georgie says somewhat apologetically, poking her head around Jacob’s intimidating form.
“As you absolutely should have done,” Jacob adds, stalking toward the hearth. Then he whirls around—a very un-Jacob-like move. “I’m going to kill him.”
Normally I’d think it was one of those silly, men-blowing-off-steam types of comments that’s so useless in our post-physical-confrontation-unless-you-want-a-lawsuit age, but the look in his eyes makes me wonder.
He is a witch after all. Maybe witches are less litigious. Witch justice is old-school, Georgie told me.
I move to head Jacob off before he can do something irrational, like chase Skip Simon through the streets of town, but he does that hand-flick thing as he mutters a few words and I slide across the floor, out of his way and onto a couch.
Outraged, I hold out my hand and picture a door closing the opening from the living room to the hallway. One doesn’t appear, so I offer simple and hasty words: Block his exit, keep him here.
Jacob stops abruptly. Clearly he can’t get through the magical block I’ve made.
He looks over his shoulder at me, practically spitting fire. I smirk at him. Probably not my wisest move, but, you know. Check me out. Fighting like a witch.
“Stop it,” Georgie scolds both of us. “Childish magic isn’t going to solve this.”
“No, but murder might,” Jacob growls.
“You’d only have to heal him if you hurt him,” Georgie says, with a gentleness I don’t think Jacob deserves.
“He locked that door. There was no light on that porch. He was cornering her.”
“I was handling it,” I practically yell.
Jacob glowers. “But you didn’t.”
That is a terrible read of the situation. I’m offended. I might have let panic get the better of me for a second, but only because I was trying to get something from Skip. If I didn’t think I was getting information out of that horrible get-together, I would have totally struck him down like an adlet.
Obviously.
I think better of saying this. “Do you want to know what I learned having a nice, friendly dinner with Skip tonight?” I ask instead. “Or will there be more displays of testosterone poisoning?”
“Sure, every nice, friendly dinner I’ve ever had has involved me blocking any exit the woman has with my dark magic to do God knows what. So nice. So friendly.”
“I was handling it.”
“You called for help. Don’t be pissed when it doesn’t come exactly the way you want it.”
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you, Jacob,” I shoot back.
He stands so very still. His expression doesn’t change. There isn’t even a flicker of emotion in his eyes. “All right.”
That’s all he says. Two words. Agreement? I think?
Yet I don’t feel like I’ve won.
Because it’s followed by complete, utter silence. Jacob’s expression is blank, and when the rest of my friends show up, he does not sit down.
He stands by the exit.
I feel gross and small and I hate that he can do that when I know he was in the wrong. Not me. I try to focus on why we’re all here. I tell them what Skip mentioned about working together and how I think it means we need a full coven. How I think it means we need Rebekah and Nicholas Frost on our side before the full moon.
But even as I work through all my points, my eyes keep drifting to Jacob. And my mind keeps working through that whole...explosion.
He was wrong. He was acting jealous, even if he’s not jealous of Skip, because who could be jealous of Skip? The bottom line is: he doesn’t trust me.
Even if I did call out.
“Em?”
Everyone is staring at me.
I’ve trailed off in the middle of a sentence. I cannot believe I am letting something so frivolous rattle me. We’ll have a conversation soon enough, and I’ll explain to him how wrong he is and everything will go back to the way it was.
Easy. Happy. With only the occasional, fluttery, what-the-hell-am-I-doing feeling.
“Let’s call it for tonight,” I say, because I want to get back to easy and happy, stat. “We’ll start early tomorrow. We need to figure out a way to reach Rebekah.”
Ellowyn and Zander stand.
Zander gives Jacob a nod toward the door. “You want that beer?”
I have no idea why Zander thinks it’s beer time. Of course he’s wrong—but I’m shocked when Jacob moves toward my cousin.
“No, he does not,” I snap.
In retrospect, maybe a little dictatorially.
Jacob stops. He turns. And he speaks very, very carefully. “You don’t speak for me, Emerson.”
He says it with absolutely no inflection.
I have never felt smaller or uglier. I want to scream. Or maybe go to my room and cry, but I’m an adult.
I swallow, even though it’s hard. And I hate that all of our friends are watching this, looking as frozen as I feel. “We need to have a conversation. Privately.”
There is a very tense, very awkward silence.
I realize that I have no idea what’s going to happen. That I can’t control it.
Or him.
Then Jacob takes two steps over to me, takes my hand—not exactly gently—and we’re flying.
23
We land outside his house. In the vast rolling yard. I cannot believe he’d be so high-handed, so utterly controlling, as to just yank me here. “What the hell was that?” I demand.
“Trust me, you’re going to want to do this here,” he says, and at least he isn’t speaking in that horrible emotionless voice. He’s angry again, and that suits me fine because I am twice as angry.
“Why is that? Home turf? Can’t handle an argument where I—”
“Because I am furious.” He cuts me off with a blaze of temper. Controlled temper, but still. “I have never in my life wanted to kill someone, but I would have ended Skip Simon tonight. That is not who I am. That has never been who I am, but you called out, because he had you trapped. You were scared.” The way he says that makes something crack in me. “And if that’s not enough, you’re mad that I interfered. Like I’m not allowed to have an emotion about that. You think it’s jealousy? Over that weasel?”
I’m a little taken aback. He was angry about me seeing Nicholas Frost without telling anyone back in the beginning, but that was different. He was worried. Afraid for me.
This isn’t fear. Jacob is mad. At me.
If I think about that too much—and how I can’t remember him ever being anything but eventually supportive, if grim—it makes me feel hollow.
Which is good and fine, because I am mad at him. “I cannot believe the childish behavior I’m witnessing. You can’t possibly think that just because we’ve slept together—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” he grits out. “We’ll both regret it.”
I hate that he’s right.
Then he laughs, but it’s that bitter kind that makes my stomach tie in knots. He begins to pace, and even though I’m right, even though I should be mad at him and he should apologize, I feel...sorry. Nothing but sorry. Like everything has veered off course and I don’t know how or why and I hate this—
But I am not going to apologize.
“Push it all down,” he mutters. “Pretend it doesn’t hurt. Pretend, pretend, pretend.” These are all words he aims more at himself, but then he turns that brilliant green gaze on me. “You’re damn lucky I’m a Healer and so fucking good at it.”
“I don’t know what that means.” I know when I say that out loud that I should. There’s that weight he carries, that I self-centeredly thought was about me and not remembering our past—but it’s not. It’s about him. His role. Not what he is. Who he is.
A Healer.
“What conversation do you want to have?” he asks me, and he’s pulled that bright, simmering fury back. I wouldn’t say he’s hidden it, but he’s—
Well. It’s what he said. He’s pushed it down.
There’s a moment where I think I shouldn’t answer his question. I should take this opportunity to learn more about that whole Healer thing. And what it really means. But that would be ignoring the fact his behavior tonight is inexcusable.
I don’t ask myself why I’m so angry. I know. He doesn’t trust me, and he can call it whatever he wants. It’s a problem.
I’m used to people not trusting me. Everyone who believed I was powerless, for example, when I told them I wasn’t. My parents. The Joywood.
But I concentrate on Jacob not trusting me, which feels worse. Partly because I can’t remember the other betrayals. Partly because I have been intimate with this man. If that’s not a sacred trust, then what is?
“You can’t burst into a situation like that and think you can answer for me,” I tell him.
“Fine. I won’t. Is that all? Feel free to go.”
He wheels around and starts toward his house. Like that is in fact it. “Where are you going?”
“Away from you, Emerson. I don’t particularly feel like being in your company. We’ll talk again when I’ve got a better handle on it.”
“Handle on what?”
“You don’t want me to say what I have to say.”
“Of course I do. I always want you to say whatever you want to say, because I actually trust you, Jacob, and—”
He turns. He skewers me with one glance.
“I love you,” he says, almost flatly. But a sliver of pain threads through his words and spears through me. “I have always loved you.”
It legitimately feels like the ground has been yanked out from under me. And maybe I should have known, or seen this coming. Maybe I did, but I thought I had time. I thought we could dance around this particular truth for a while. Until after we save St. Cyprian. And convince the Joywood we shouldn’t be mind wiped. Maybe figure out how to defeat Skip and his weird dark magic thing. I want to learn how to be the best witch. I want to get ready for whatever comes, including this.
I don’t know how much time passes. But I don’t say anything. My heart roars around in my chest. I’m not ready.
“Told you,” he says. Quietly. It’s devastating. He turns again. Like the weight of the world is on his shoulders while he walks away.
Cassie nudges me in his direction when I didn’t even realize she was here. I look at the dog, and she gives me a little growl. Don’t be a dumbass.
“I am a bit tired of having a rude familiar.”
Too bad.
I’m not sure what to think about that, but I can’t handle this. We can’t leave things like this. We might be a mess, I might not have the slightest idea how to handle feelings or intimacy or sacred trusts or this, but we have to have moved beyond walking away from each other. At least I have.
Jacob goes inside and he moves to close the door behind him, shutting me out, but I block it with magic. He only shrugs. He doesn’t fight me. He doesn’t acknowledge me at all. He keeps going, like he’ll just keep walking until I stop.
Like hell I’ll stop.
I charge after him. Up the steps, across the porch, and into his kitchen.
“Jacob...” But I don’t know how to fix this. I have no elegant words. No clear checklist of how to handle this. I don’t even have the truth, because I’m too scared to look directly at it. I dance around it instead. “I care about you.”
He turns back to me, but I am under no illusions that fixed anything. “Emerson, I’ve heard you give a lot of speeches. To hundreds of people. To people with power and influence. Why did you sound so much more sure then? Passionate. Certain. Like you’d fight the very gates of hell to make everything you love about St. Cyprian a reality. I’ve never heard you be timid about anything except Jacob, I care about you.”
I don’t particularly like hearing my words in his mouth, particularly the tepid way he says them that matches my tone perfectly.
“I...” I realize in this moment, in a hundred ways, what it is. What it’s always been that’s kept me at arm’s length from Jacob. Even the past few days, having sex. Being together. That was surface stuff. We were attracted. We acted on it. Two healthy, consenting adults.
But I have kept a distance. Facts, not feelings, I used to tell myself. Now I’d convinced myself it was because of my plans. I’d convinced myself I was still dealing with the idea of fate or conduits or soul mates, even while enjoying the easier, more exciting parts of getting close to this man. I thought we could be partners.
On the surface. Where he acted the way I wanted, gave me a few orgasms—okay, a lot more than a few—and never pushed.
And that’s something. Maybe even a good thing—I can’t judge. But it’s not this. And at the end of the day, love—the kind Jacob is talking about—is the one thing that terrifies me. And always has. It’s not only about control, though I can maybe admit some of it is that, yes, I like to be in control. It’s about what love does to people. Grandma claimed to love my grandfather, but I don’t remember it. And if anything Carol said is true, Grandma gave up things for him. Maybe she could have beat the flood if she’d dedicated less time to what women of her generation were expected to do for their men.
Just like Mom always did. Dad ruled the house. They called it love, but he called the shots, and I hated it.
Then there’s what I remember of Zander and Ellowyn in high school. I always thought it was a bit melodramatic due to teenage hormones, but they did love each other. And practically destroyed themselves in the process.
Plus what Ellowyn told me about her parents, who’d ended in cheating and curses and a price their daughter still pays.
Why would I want any of that?
I stare back at Jacob and I don’t want to tell him any of those things. It makes me seem weak. Worse, it makes me feel weak.
But he loves me. Clearly, he doesn’t know what love does to people. He needs to know, I think. To understand what he’s saying is all wrong, so we can move back from this edge and stay where it’s easy. “All those speeches were about getting what I want. Getting power, not giving it up.”
“I don’t want any of your power.”
“Isn’t that what loving someone is? For a woman anyway. You may say you don’t want it. Everyone claims they want equality, don’t they, but men see equality as a loss. And women do the emotional labor no matter how equal everyone’s supposed to be. It’s what happens.”
Something in him softens, like he feels sorry for me, when clearly he’s the one in the dark. But he crosses to me in his unlit kitchen. And he touches me for the first time in this whole argument.
His palm cups my cheek. “Not if you do it right.”
Something flutters, deep inside me, and it’s fear. I know it’s fear and I should fight it back. But... “How do...how do you know how to do it right?”
“Because people do,” he says. “Your uncle Zack and aunt Zelda? I know they bicker, but they enjoy it. He’d sacrifice everything to make her better. And she’d sacrifice everything to take that pain away from him. My parents might not be the most demonstrative people, but they are a team. They’ve always been a team. My grandparents and great-grandparents too. You, of all people, must know that love is what you make of it, like everything else. We get to decide.”
That is not the perception of love I have, but there’s something about how that’s the perception of love he has, that has some of that bone-deep fear easing from where it’s wrapped too tight around my lungs.
“I don’t need...reciprocation.” His hand is still warm against my cheek. “That isn’t what this is. It’s not why I’m angry. You’ve got entire parts of your life you don’t remember. You’re only just figuring out all this witch stuff. We have dark magic and floods and who knows what else.” This is perilously close to what I was thinking, and it dislodges another great swathe of that fear. “I’d wait a million years on you, Em. But I need you to stop believing that by standing up for you I’m somehow taking your power. I will never do anything but celebrate you. I never have. And I can’t stand you being afraid of what I might feel.”
“I’m not... That isn’t...” But I’m at a loss for words.
