Page 54 of Risking it All

Relic grinned, a beautiful slow one that lit me up like a firefly. “Mazie Hutchinson, what have you done to me?”

“What does that mean?”

“I meet you and two extraordinary things happen.”

“What’s that?”

“One, someone is thanking me for helping them, which has never happened in my life.”

“And two?”

“I have never wanted to kiss anymore more than I have wanted to kiss you.”

I was also lost in the spell. He stared down at me, I stared up at him, and a gravitational pull propelled me to rise on my toes as he leaned down. Our lips met, his hands moved around to my back, but then my phone rang. My heart thumped so hard it slammed into my chest. I yanked my cell out of my back pocket and answered, “I’m okay and I’m almost home.”

“I wanted to make sure you’re okay.” Mom sounded panicked. “You’re not showing up on the driving app.”

I rubbed my forehead as I had forgotten about that. “Sorry. I don’t know what happened. I had to turn my phone off at work to conserve power, so maybe that tripped something up. I’m in the neighborhood. At a stop sign. I’ll be home in a minute, okay?” Good gracious I was becoming too good at lying.

“Okay,” Mom sighed with relief and hung up.

Relic had a devilish smile on his face. “I’m beginning to think our families have a conspiracy theory against us kissing.”

Sadly, me too. “I have to go.”

“Then kissing will wait.”

My eyebrow cocked in a “Really?” and Relic chuckled. “Someday, we’ll have more than a few minutes to kiss, and believe me when I say I’ll make the wait worth your while.”

Relic wrapped his arms around me, and I leaned into him, holding him as close as he held me. I breathed in his dark scent and wished I had more time with him. More time to be held like this, more time to be kissed.

He released me and gave me a wink. “See you soon, Mazie Hutchinson.”

As he had taken to doing, Relic waited as I eased into the car and started it. Then he watched as I drove away.

Chapter twenty-five

Relic

In my same seat in group therapy, I rolled my neck and stretched in an attempt to wake myself up. We had storms last night, Camila had a tornado of a meltdown, and I didn’t fall asleep until near five in the morning. We lost power. Because of the storm or because I hadn’t paid the bill, I had no idea, so I held Camila on the couch, telling her stories until she fell asleep. Because her body temperature happened to be five million degrees, I sweated out every ounce of fluid, making me so dehydrated I could drink an ocean’s worth of water and still be parched.

Zuri’s voice had this lullaby hum to it as she incessantly babbled on about how it was okay to make mistakes. I didn’t believe Zuri. The luxury of making mistakes didn’t belong to me. People with money could make all the mistakes they wanted. People like me lost real life shit over the simplest of choices.

Everyone else also seemed to have been seduced into a zombie state by Zuri’s one-woman show. Lev had taken to lying on thefloor to pet Zeus, Demarius’ head dropped every few seconds, Melanie played with her friendship bracelets, and Macie stared into the vastness of space as her fingers tapped the beat to whatever song played in her brain.

I forced my own mind back to my conversation with Macie about the carjacking. Our next step was for me to take her to the crime scene. Before therapy started, I asked her if she wanted to go today, and she didn’t answer. She’d never been back there since what happened, and I could tell with how translucent her skin was that she was not looking forward to the experience.

“…to make mistakes,” Zuri continued, “it’s only human.”

Macie sang out something, and every eye shot to her. Even Zeus popped his head up.

“What did you say?” Zuri’s forehead scrunched in confusion.

“You said it’s only human,” Macie answered.

“Yes, I did, but what did you mean by—”

Macie sang the line again and then continued the chorus of a Jonas Brothers song I had been forced to listen to in Macie’s car more times than should be legally allowed. Melanie joined in with the next line, but what I didn’t expect was Lev belting out a lyric like he was a brother belonging to the clan of Jonas.

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