Page 22 of Truly Madly Magically

Just fine, just fine, just fucking fine.

I try so hard to get those words out that I nearly give myself an aneurysm.

His gray eyes gleam with a hard sort of triumph that I tell myself is in no way hot.

“The bottom line, the thing you have to understand above and beyond everything else, is this,” he tells me, still not shifting that gaze from mine. “You’re not cutting me out. This is my kid too. I’m in it. All of it, from here on out. That means we have to fix our shit.”

Like our shit is fixable. “Some breaks are irreparable.”

He doesn’t even blink, and I’ve always been pure trash for steely-eyed Zander. “That’s bullshit. We’ve spent the past ten years up in each other’s business in an effort to keep Emerson safe. This last year has amped that up, and we’ve done what we’ve had to do for the people we love. If we can do that without ripping pieces off each other, we can figure out how to parent the kid we made too. Hear me on this, Ellowyn. We will figure it out.”

I wish I had his certainty.

“My parents loved each other,” he continues, and there’s an emotion he’s trying so desperately to hide, but I feel it. Raw and aching like it’s my own, right there in my own chest. “Sure, I saw them fight sometimes, but nothing like what you saw your parents do there at the end. Don’t forget that I was around when your dad left. I watched what that kind of nastiness does to a kid.”

Not just to any kid. To me.

I want to tell him I’m perfectly fine, but I don’t bother to try.

“That’s not going to be our kid,” he tells me, his voice as intense as the way he’s looking at me. I want to protest, but I can’t, because I’m too busy fighting back a sudden case of allergies from the late summer weather. It has to be allergies, because otherwise it’s me trying not to cry. He nods, like he knows that too. “If we have to cast some kind of get-along spell. If we have to wipe our own goddamned memories. We’re done being enemies, Ellowyn, whatever it takes. We’re parents now.”

That word, parents, lands on me, bright and hard.

I hate when he lectures me. Because he only does it when he’s right and I can’t argue. What I can do is evade.

I tip my chin up. “The way I see it, we can keep being enemies—as Hecate intended—for about five more months.”

“No.” He doesn’t even stop to consider that. He certainly doesn’t laugh. That’s party Zander. This is real Zander, and he’s always made me a little breathless. I hate it. He looks away then, scowling out toward the river, but if that’s my chance to run, I don’t take it. “We might not have proof, but I know the Joywood had something to do with my mom dying the way she did. They will pay for that. I’ll make sure of it.”

He turns back to me. “We get along starting now. For our kid, first and foremost. And to fuck the Joywood, because I have to figure they get off on any of us being at odds, and whatever the opposite of that is, I’m all about it.”

This time, the things that crowd my mouth are things I could say, but don’t.

I won’t.

Because it would be opening doors we closed for very good reasons.

So I go a different route entirely. I know how he’ll react to what I’m about to say, but I can’t seem to stop myself. “Everyone’s excited about this ghost sponsor thing, but you know as well as I do what happens when I start summoning.” I swallow, trying to look very flippant about it. Unbothered, like I don’t care that I can’t control my magic.

He gazes down at me, and only stubborn pride keeps me from looking away. There’s something in his expression, something I haven’t seen in a while. A kind of honesty we stopped having with each other. Because it was that or hurt ourselves on it.

“When I say I know you can do it, Ellowyn, it isn’t for fun.” His voice is hard in a different way now. “It isn’t to be nice. That’s not exactly our MO, is it? And it sure as hell isn’t because you’re pregnant with my kid. Protection spells and sending you to Antarctica, far away from this mess, sound a lot better than that. It’s because you’re a part of this puzzle. Only we can put it together. We wouldn’t have gotten this far if it wasn’t meant for us.”

We. Us. There’s been a lot of that. When I wish I could just be a me.

Something else I don’t dare to try to say out loud, but this time because I’m not sure if I can or not. Maybe I’m afraid I don’t want to know if I can.

Zander is still looking at me in the same way, like he sees the real me, buried down deep, that only he ever has. “You can do it. And you will. Just like you’ve been doing since Ostara. Maybe it won’t be perfect, but who’s expecting that after everything the Joywood has done to us? You’re the only one who holds yourself to the impossible standard of perfection.”

These are words we don’t say. This is...a genuine pep talk from Zander Rivers. Something he would have said to me in high school when I fucked something up because my magic couldn’t hold. Not excusing me, not telling me not to worry, but calling me higher. Telling me I had no limits except the ones I put on myself.

I don’t want to remember that. I don’t want to think back to the time that when we weren’t bad for each other, we were pretty good. It doesn’t do me any good to remember that.

Of course, telling yourself not to remember something is a surefire way to have nothing but that thing in your head. Then all the other Zander things follow, to the point my face gets a little hot.

There’s a little flicker of a moment where I think his mind might be heading down the same path, but he looks away and squints at the river. “I have to get to my shift at the ferry.”

I clear my throat. Virtuously, like my thoughts were nothing but pristine. “You’re not supposed to go alone.”

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