Page 43 of Fire of the Fox

I quirked an eyebrow at him. “Excuse me?”

“You know,” he said. He glanced down at himself, way down, before meeting my eyes with a meaningful look. “The goods. Aim for them.”

Cheeks heating, I looked away and waved a hand at him. “Oh, right. Yeah. Will do.”

“Well, I guess I’ll see you around,” he said.

I bit my lip, ignoring the smile in his voice.

“See you tomorrow, Bria.”

Rune started to walk past me to leave but abruptly stopped. He looked down at me with his brow furrowed and his eyes searching. Glancing at his folder of pictures, he opened it. I watched as he took out the picture of Myra, Alvaro, him, and the twins.

He watched me carefully as he held the picture out for me. “Do you want to hold onto this one?”

I stared up at him in disbelief. “What? No! I couldn’t take your picture. That’s a precious photo of you and your brothers.”

He laughed. “It’s fine. I want you to hold onto it for me for the next two months. Maybe having that picture will help you look forward to the trip, because I still want you to come.”

Our gazes locked in an unbreakable hold. The sudden happiness that blossomed inside me was so unexpected, I had to fight the urge to smile. How could his words make me this happy and nervous all at once? I couldn’t believe he’d actually said he wanted me to come with them. That was almost like a compliment coming from him, and it sent my emotions into an unrestrained frenzy. I tried blaming all those reactions on the fact that this meant I still had a chance of getting my five thousand dollars.

Nothing more.

I tore my gaze from his and looked at the photo in his outstretched hand. I was immediately met with the image of Newt’s and Greshim’s large grins. I slowly reached out to take the picture, and my attention traveled to Rune in the photo. His smile was so genuine, and it was rare that I got to see that kind of look on him. This photo had captured it, allowing me to see the beauty of it for as long as I wanted.

Beaming up at Rune, I said, “Thank you. I’ll take good care of it.”

The smile he now wore was contagious. Had I inadvertently given my official agreement to go along with everything? I think I had. I prayed I wouldn’t come to regret it, though I doubted I could ever come to regret a decision that made him look at me the way he was right now.

He turned and resumed leaving.

My eyes followed him as he walked away. I sank down in my chair, and I couldn’t help but notice the tightness that grew in my chest as I watched Rune leave. We had only met to discuss his family and their pictures, but it felt like so much more had gone on and in such little time, too. We had let our guard down and shared intimate emotions. It had gone by so quickly, and I wished that it hadn’t. Despite how I had felt when I first arrived, I actually wanted more time with him.

Chapter Eighteen

MY EYES WERE glued to the photo Rune had given me. My cheeks hurt from smiling at it all day. I had brought it with me to art class the following morning, hoping the elated faces would give me inspiration for the piece I was working on. So far, all it had done was fill my head with more thoughts of Rune.

I’d been having trouble getting him out of my head since yesterday.

Which couldn’t be a good sign.

Forcing myself to focus, I sketched out a coffee mug in my notebook after abandoning the bowl idea in favor of a coffee mug. Mugs were something I had experience with from high school, so I hoped it would be the easiest to complete. The only thing holding me up was deciding the design.

I looked back at the photograph. My eyes immediately went to Rune. His fox ears stood erect on top of his head, and his fluffy tail was draped to the side. His fang-like canines flashed brilliantly at the camera, revealed only because of his warm smile. Inspiration sparked somewhere in the back of my mind. I glanced at my blank mug sketch, then back at the photo.

Suddenly eager, I got to work with my sketch. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of this before. My head had been full of nothing but this new, fascinating world ever since I’d learned about it. It should’ve been obvious. My inspiration had been in front of me all along.

I drew out a fox head on the front of the mug, and on the opposite side, I sketched the handle. I labeled each section with the color it would be once I glazed it. The mug itself would be blue, Rune’s favorite color, and the fox would be the same beautiful black with white tips as his ears and tail.

My plan was complete, and excitement rushed through my veins. I was actually looking forward to making the mug, and I wanted to try my absolute hardest to make it perfect. Since Rune’s birthday was coming up, I figured I could give him the mug as a present. He drank coffee like it was water, so it felt like a good gift for him. I hoped he wouldn’t think it was silly.

The rest of the day dragged on. I found that paying attention in class was far harder now that I knew there were bigger things in life than how to write a character analysis essay or the difference between mitosis and meiosis. I mean, things of myths and fairy tales were real. It was hard not to walk around campus, see a squirrel darting by, and think that that little guy could actually be a sexy hunk of a man. Or when I was forced to listen in on a dull lecture about people from history and secretly wonder if that person was actually a mighty Fae. Nothing felt the same anymore.

When my last class of the day was finally over, I walked across campus to my dorm room. Dallas was inside, highlighting in her textbook, while sprawled on her bed. She beamed at me when I came in before jotting down a note.

“Hey you,” she said as her smile disappeared, and she grimaced at her pointer finger.

I tossed my backpack onto the bed and nodded at her. “Hey to you, too. What’s wrong with you?”

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