Page 76 of Truly Madly Magically

I happen to think I sound very reasonable and adult.

So I’m not sure why I suddenly feel depressed as fuck.

Zander’s eyes gleam. Say that out loud, he suggests.

I sigh. “Last night was a reasonable response to a lot of emotional upheaval,” I continue around a bite of bacon. “Nothing wrong with that. But we could be putting ourselves in a risky position, going forward. One that doesn’t put our child first. I just wonder if we need to take a very careful step back.”

He doesn’t interrupt. He doesn’t say anything else in my head, not to argue or agree. When I’m done, I sit there. Waiting.

But it’s like he plans to sit in silence and stare at me forever.

“Well?” I demand.

“Well what?”

“Don’t you have anything to say?”

“Not really.”

He gets up and rinses out his mug in the sink. I find this performative, given that we are witches and he could have done that with magic. “So you agree with me?”

Zander lets out a laugh at that. He turns to look at me, lounging back against the sink. My sink. Where I will now always picture him like this. “No.”

“No?” It’s lowering how squeaky my voice sounds. Or how hard my heart is beating.

He shrugs. “No.”

“It’s not fair to just say no.”

“Who said I had to be fair? Eat the toast, El.”

I look down at my plate and at the toast liberally slathered in peanut butter. I’m still starving so, fine, I eat it. Not because he told me to.

Then the next thing I know, he kneels next to me and takes one of my hands in his. Everything in me freezes. Or bursts into flame. Maybe both at once.

There’s no smile on his face. Everything he says is delivered very gently, but it lands like bullets all the same. “Life isn’t safe, Ellowyn. You can’t live your life setting up rules to keep yourself from getting hurt. Stepping back to keep the potentially bad things at a distance. You can put on all the armor in the world, but it doesn’t stop the hurt either. You know this.”

I want to argue, but all I can hear is Elizabeth saying, Anger doesn’t serve you.

Zander keeps talking. “They tell us life is long for witches. They tell us we have time. My mom didn’t have time. Zachariah didn’t have long either. Elizabeth did, but I bet her years felt a hell of a lot longer being so mad about everything.” He keeps looking at me in that way that seems to get inside me, beneath my skin. “I don’t want to be mad anymore, El.”

I do, I think to myself. I want to hold on to it so I don’t crumple.

We’re not going to do this again, I tell him, and okay. Maybe I’m a little panicked. Ever.

I say it so resolutely that it’s not until his eyes fill with amusement that I realize I didn’t say that out loud.

“Tell me that with your mouth, baby,” he says.

I want to. Or I want to be able to, anyway. Yet all I can do is stare back at him.

Caught there in all that gray.

Then he laughs at me as he gets to his feet. Laughs. At me. And doesn’t do a thing to hide it. I surge to my feet as he starts walking for the door, my cheeks hot and red.

I tell myself this is the anger I’ve been missing, though it feels more complicated than that.

You don’t call the shots, Zander, I throw at him, hot on his heels.

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