Page 64 of The Gathering Storm

She laughed and tightened her arms around him, and they stood that way for a long time, clinging to the moment as if it were their last.

Friday afternoon, Will closed The Omega at two and shooed everybody out. He left Casey to oversee cleanup and headed over to Tellowee’s high school, located on the IECS campus. School was still in session when he arrived, so he tracked down a gym teacher and borrowed a handful of teenagers to help him set up.

There really wasn’t much left to do. Caterers were bringing in finger foods at five. Two of the students, Dierdre Bellegarde and her step-sister Amelia Terhune, James’s daughter, volunteered to retrieve the extra Gatorade and bottled water he’d ordered for the event from the bowels of the Archives. A third, Johnny Linton, went with them as the driver and, as he put it, the muscle, and the trio jogged out of the gym laughing and cutting up.

Will shook his head and directed the other students to help him pull out bleachers and set up mats. So many adults had wanted to participate, they’d had to move the youngest kids’ portion to the next day, before the second round of the competitive matches. Only teenagers and up would compete that night, the teens in a group of their own, including some out-of-towners who’d shown up with older family members.

Most of the adults had randomly been assigned partners. Only a few, like Sigrid and Chana, were fighting specific challenges. Interestingly enough, those included a bout between Rebecca and Lukas Alexiou. She hadn’t said what the challenge was over when she’d asked him to include it in the night’s activities, and he’d respected her privacy. It would come out before the fight anyway.

In the meantime, gossip would fly once the attendees spotted that particular challenge on the posters he’d pinned to a prominent location inside the gym.

He hadn’t seen Sigrid since he’d dropped into her bed last night and curled himself around her sleeping form. She’d been long gone when he awoke a mere five hours later. Her pillow had carried her scent, but none of her warmth.

A pang touched his heart. He rubbed a palm against it and scowled at the night’s lineup, neatly printed by a local copy shop on a glossy, movie poster sized sheet of paper. Damn it, he missed her. He missed talking to her and holding her, and he missed being inside her. At the rate events were unfolding, they wouldn’t be able to have sex again until after whatever was steamrolling toward them had passed, and maybe not then.

That was unacceptable.

He dropped his hand and pivoted around, heading toward the locker room. She would by Ki come out and talk to him before the match. A kiss wouldn’t kill her, would it? And maybe it’d rattle Chana a little, knowing he favored another.

The memory of the confrontation between her and Sigrid flitted through his mind, and he winced. Yeah, probably not. That one was a little too sure of herself, thanks to his meddling grandmother.

One day, the women in his family would learn to keep their noses out of his business.

He rubbed a hand over his nape, squeezed the back of his neck. Maybe on a cold day in hell. Blessed Ki, when had his life gotten so complicated?

He jogged down the short flight of stairs toward the women’s locker room, strode along the short hallway, and banged a fist into the closed door separating him from his lover. Coaxing Sigrid into a kiss would be simple enough, at least, and then he could retreat to the sidelines and pray like hell she won so he’d have one less thing to worry about.

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