Page 7 of Practically Witches

When I land, with my face at crotch level, he looks down at his shirt then at me. I don’t have anything to rub the stain out. And even if I did, I wouldn’t dream of it. But I know a spell. Backward and forward. I can say it in my sleep.

“Hang on. I can fix this.” I hear the spell in my head. It’s a cleaning spell. How can this go wrong? It’s a question I should’ve asked myself before I started speaking. But I don’t. Instead, I flex my fingers and say the words slow. And I’m almost a hundred percent certain they’re in the right order.

When I finish, I glance up, feeling the power that means the magic is working. But as I stand in front of him, staring at the stain, it doesn’t lift or fade. As a matter of fact, thestain isn’t removed at all. Instead, his shirt rips off, shreds itself, then falls on the ground in a pile of white fabric strips.

“What the fuck?” I look at the floor, not daring to lift my gaze to his chest.

His voice is soft, warm against my cheek because he’s leaned in but before I look up into his eyes, those pools of dark chocolate goodness that I want to drown in, I can hear the smile I don’t have to see. “You did a heart’s desire spell.”

Sweet sweaty fuck! I couldn’t have heard that correctly. “I did a-a-awhat?” My skin is so hot I could bake cookies on it. A heart’s desire spell takes the speaker’s desire and makes it happen even without said desire being spoken.

His grin is everything. And it’s pointed at me, even as he crosses his arms over his gloriously defined pectoral muscles. “It’s a heart’s desire spell. When you put the wordsdesiderium cordisin any spell…” He shrugs. “The magic searches your heart for what you truly desire.”

Oh. My. Ever-loving mother of fucking pearl.

If the world could just open and swallow me right now I would be oh so grateful. This is worse than the walking into class naked dream. This is the walking into a bookstore and stripping my crush half-naked reality.

I look at the floor and then my shoes and then anywhere but at him and the five-acre chest in front of me.

“Hey.” He curls his finger under my chin and tilts my head up so I have to look at him. “Hey. It’s okay. The shirt was tight anyway and I think I might like being your heart’s desire.” Oh, the smile. It’s everything.

Not quite enough to drown out the taste of my own stupidity, which is very similar to the flavor of caramel latte but a bit more bitter. I don’t have enough good sense to be ashamed. Or to keep my hands to myself.

Instead, because I am my own comedy of errors, I run my fingertip down his chest, over his rippling abs then to his belly button. It’s an innie that I swirl said fingertip into. If I knew the spell to make myself burst into flames and disappear, I would say it. Right now. Instead, I go with “Damn,” because I can’t stop humiliating myself until I’ve gone to the deepest depths of embarrassment.

But his skin is like silk. Smooth and soft over a batch of hard muscles. Lickable.

And because there’s one wrung on the mortification ladder I haven’t touched quite yet, I turn, run out of the store and all the way home, into the house through the front door.

It’s in that moment, when I see my Mom’s face, that I remember I’m grounded. And the rest of my night implodes.

Chapter

Four

If there’s one thing I don’t want to do, it’s go to school and face Zane Bradbury. So, I fuck around at home. Make myself pancakes for breakfast. Tell Aimee I’ll walk without her today and she can take the car we share. Maybe a walk will clear my head.

Mom’s already gone, so I could probably get by with ditching school today, but without the grimoire to practice with and see where I went wrong last night, my only choice—because I need the training—is to go to school.

I also have a lab today where I can work on my spellcasting for the final and I can’t really afford to miss it. Besides, I’ve gone five years without running into Zane in the hallway, without embarrassing myself in front of him. One faux pas at the bookstore won’t make him come looking for me.

I pep talk myself all the way through washing the dishes I used to make the pancakes then on the walk to the Institute. I can do this. And unless Zane has told someone—and why would he—no one knows about what happened at the bookstore. He doesn’t really seem likethe kind of guy who would revel in my total humiliation. Although, it’s sometimes hard to tell.

He did say, in his Brad Pitt voice, that maybe he would like being my heart’s desire. And he’d waved to me first. That’s something. Although I don’t really know what that particularsomethingmight be.

I rush down the hallway. If I skip going to my locker—which means I won’t have my textbook—I might be able to slide into my seat before class starts.

In my rush, I do a crazy two-step kind of dance with the janitor who has chosen this specific moment to pick invisible pieces of lint from the floor in front of my locker.

When I finally spring the door open, I toss in an empty water bottle I’d brought from home and it slides back out as I grab the books for my first two classes. We both reach for it, but the janitor picks it up and hands it back to me.

“We recycle here, Miss Baum.”

Of course we do. Forty percent of the students here are green witches and the earth’s inner power is very important to magic. “Thanks.” I take the bottle and shove it back into my locker.

I pull my book from the dark inner depths and slam the door shut then book it down the hallway because infractions for unprepared and late earn the same kind of admonishment and I don’t need it. Although, I can feel the janitor’s judgment as I dash away, but when I look back, he’s gone.

Just before Professor Beckett walks into the classroom and sets his book down, I dart through the door in front of him and slide into an empty spot. “Nice of you to join us, Miss Baum.”

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