Page 148 of Raven

There, that’s her choice.

She gives me this cute, playful look, shifting closer. “I want us official.”

My eyebrows shoot up in surprise before I manage to arrange my face into a more neutral expression. “Are we talking public?”

“That’s what dating means.”

I stall. I fucking stall because she kissed me first, and now she’s saying this first. That’s her choice? Me? Official?

“Are you asking me to be your boyfriend, Maddy?”

She sucks in her cheeks, hiding a smile.

“Is that it?” I insist. “Is that what you want?”

“I’d like that, yes. Very much.”

There’s no blushing, no teasing, just an intense gaze. And that’s something I learned about Maddy. She often goes for what she wants with fierce straightforwardness. I just never gave a chance to the idea that she would choose me.

My heart pulsates in a strange way. My entire body and mind feel extraordinary. There's no other way to explain the feeling of being high without doing any drugs, wanting to shout to the world and do an air fist pump.

“I must be dreaming,” I say, trying to ease the tension that makes it hard to speak.

“Hmm. Is it bad that I’m the one asking?”

It hits me right in the gut, too, the truth. “You know I would’ve never asked it when we met,” I confess. “Because you would’ve never said yes.”

“I wouldn’t have. Not at first.”

“Not at first,” I echo. “All right. Yes.” I have a hard time keeping my smile in check. “Yes. To the dating, to us. But you’ll have to tell me when you don’t want me around. When I get too intense. When I don’t pay attention to what you want. When I forget to ask. I get carried away, Maddy. With you, I do.”

She nods, her smile growing. “I will.”

“You always let me have my way.”

“Because I felt like it. I wanted what you wanted. Always.”

“Except the time you said no. Before we stopped talking.”

She shakes her head. “Even then.”

I gape at her.

“Especially then,” she says, studying my face. She enjoys taking me by surprise. “Because you finally knew that it wasn’t a deal. I made it happen. I let you, Raven. I hope you can see it now. And by then, I wanted you more than anything. I was in this as much as you were. But I also needed to know that you respected my word.”

I gaze into her eyes and feel like I’m holding my heart in my palm, and she controls its heartbeat. She is a beautiful witch with a crazy love spell, because I can’t stop looking and feeling and hoping for an eternity with her. And I don’t have to, because, yeah, boyfriend. Let’s hope I don’t end up with broken legs because her daddy doesn’t approve. He might kill me. Is she worth it? Abso-fucking-lutely.

She crawls on top of me, cups my face with her gentle hands, and kisses me.

Yes, a hundred percent worth it.

Her hair hangs loose around my face like a curtain, and I’m drowning, drowning, drowning in her. I want this kiss deeper, but I hold back. I brush my fingers along her spine, barely touching, but I don’t want to push her into anything. I want her to show me what she wants right now. I learned a lot about violence. For once, I’m letting someone show me how to go for something I want without destroying everything on my path.

Maybe this is her wishful kindness—showing me how to heal, so I can do that in the future for others. I’m broken, and when we made a deal, I took her with the same carelessness she had run from in her past. One day, I will learn how to ask and be patient enough to wait for answers. I can only hope that one day, she will still choose to be with me.

As her lips gently take mine in soft kisses, I pray that she will someday stay with me for good. It would be the biggest gift.

In Hawaiian, a gift is called “mahalo.”

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