Page 45 of Surviving in Everton

“Ugh, fine. You’re lucky I love you too. Alsonotlike that.” If looks could kill, I would be a dead man right now.

“Well, this is nice and all, but if you could kindly remove your arm from my girl, I’d appreciate it,” Nate growls.

“Oh, right. Sorry.” West slowly lifts his hand off of Rowen’s shoulder and pulls his arm away.

Rowen rolls her eyes again, but she does scoot over on the couch. Right onto the wet spot from where I put out one of the fires she started earlier.

“What the! Why is the couch wet?!” she squeals as she jumps up and wipes at her wet pants.

“Uh, about that…” Ayden grabs the back of his neck with a grimace. “You got a little mad, the magic took over, and you tried to kill me and Kayden,” he informs her.

“I what?!?”

“But it’s okay! We jumped out of the way in time! And Hudson put the fire out. Hence the wet couch,” he attempts to reassure her. I don’t think it’s working as planned.

“Fire?” she groans.

“Well, yeah, fire. You kinda sent dual bursts of power at Kayden and me at the same time. But we jumped out of the way, so the power hit the couch and caused a little fire.” He holds up his index finger and thumb about an inch apart showing how small he’s claiming the fire was.

“What?! You mean Iliterallytried to kill you?!?” Yeah, see she’s starting to freak out now.

“Rowen. Calm down. Remember the magic. We don’t want it to take over again,” I gently remind her. “It’s okay, no one got hurt, but you need to remember to be careful with your emotions. I know it’s hard and it sucks and it’s not fair, but you can’t get too upset or next time maybe we won’t be so lucky and someone will get hurt.”

I watch as she closes her eyes and takes a few calming breaths. When she’s more centered, she opens her eyes and stares at me. “What made me so mad that I flew off the handle like that and almost killed Ayden and Kayden?” she asks me calmly, but I’m not fooled. There’s a storm raging in her eyes. I can tell she’s trying to remain calm so the magic doesn’t take control again, but it’s a struggle. Unfortunately, it’s gonna be much worse when I answer her.

I take a deep breath before I tell her. “We know who helped Harris.” I hold up my hand to stop any response. “Or, at least we’re ninety-nine percent sure. We put the pieces together when we talked to Brad on Saturday. We didn’t want to tell you because you were having such a good day with the kids and we didn’t want to ruin your weekend. With everything going on, and waiting for news from the doctor, we wanted you to have the weekend to enjoy yourself and not think about it, or worry about everything,” I explain.

Her shoulders sag as the fight leaves her body. “Thank you.”

I look at her in surprise as she goes on.

“I did have an amazing weekend, and it was nice to not think about it for a while. But it’s time I know everything. The doctor said we don’t have much time. We need to be sure this person did it, and get them to tell us about the spell.”

“Well, we do have a plan for that. Which is why West is here,” I offer.

She looks at West in question, but he just shrugs his shoulder.

“Okay then, who is it?” she demands.

I look around to see if anyone’s gonna take this one, but no, they’re all leaving it to me, those assholes. I finally just spit it out. “Britney did it.”

“I’m sorry… What did you just say? It sounded like you said Britney did it. But that can’t be what you said,” she asserts, shaking her head like a dog shaking out his fur.

“I’m sorry, Rowe. We have reason to believe it was her,” I tell her.

“How? How would she even know him?”

“It seems they met at a party,” I explain. “We obviously don’t know all of the specifics, but we do know Harris had asked Brad to make him a love spell. When Brad told him no, he got pissed and left. But Brad saw him with Britney later that night. It’s really not that big of a jump to assume he talked to her about it and when she learned it wasyouhe wanted to spell, she would have been all over that.”

“Oh yeah, she would definitely jump at the opportunity to fuck me over. Damn it! Why didn’t we automatically assume it was her? I mean, she’s pretty much the only person with an actual motive. And with him giving me the potion repeatedly over ten years, he had to have stayed in contact with her to get more.”

“I don’t know, Kitten, but we know now, so we’re gonna find the bitch and make her talk.”

“What do you mean, find her? Where is she?” Rowe cocks her head to the side.

“Well, we realized Saturday, that none of us have seen her since the confrontations on the first day of school. Declan kicked her out of his class and hasn’t seen her since, and I haven’t seen her since I kicked her out of the bakery,” I explain.

“That’s why I’m here. I’ve had an eye on her since they called Saturday. When Ayden called me today and told me it was time, I came straight over. I want to be there when you take this bitch down, Rowen. You know the shit I’ve been through because of her,” he says quietly.

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