Page 25 of My Hexed Honeymoon

“Ah! Thief!”

“You hesitated. I didn’t think you were going to finish it.” He unabashedly licks his lips, and now I’m recalling having them pressed against the column of my neck in the forest.

Fine. Maybe he did have a point about his methods of distraction. While I loathed the hikes and overwhelming feelings of failure of our outings, my entire body anticipated the momenthe’d distract me with the callused pads of his fingers or kiss my neck.

“I guess I missed that chapter in the supernatural etiquette handbook,” I say. “Weird because Andromeda made me read it front to back, too.”

Now I’m the one earning chuckles from him, and butterflies swirl in my gut.

For a while, I didn’t think I came with those—or that maybe my mother had beaten them out of me. A funny thing happens when your nerves are always cranked so high. You forget they’re capable of attraction and excitement and not just compliance and fear.

I’m obsessed with the moment he’ll press those lips to mine, while afraid it’ll be before I’m ready or after we’ve had our third magical, shifting child.

Diego lifts his metal stick, eyeing the pair of perfectly toasted marshmallows at the end. He snags a piece of chocolate from the unwrapped foil at his side, along with a sheet of graham crackers.

His big hands and long, strong fingers are precise in a way I didn’t expect. He builds an oversized, four-square, two marshmallow s’more, the firelight flickering across the unyielding line of his jaw and ridged slope of his nose.

Then he breaks the entire thing in half, crumbs flying, sticky marshmallow goo spilling out the sides in melty threads, and hands one half to me.

Rather than demurely showing him the last bite I still have left in my hand, I shove it in my mouth and accept the warm, fresh offering.

His fingers graze mine.

My breath catches.

I nearly choke on my s’more, my inhale sending crumbs to the back of my throat, and it takes every ounce of self-restraintnot to cough cracker bits all over him. I manage to shove it down, and he grins like he didn’t notice the struggle. Dare I say he might not even hesitate if I actually required the Heimlich maneuver. Funny how big that feels.

“Thank you,” I manage, once I’ve ensured everything goes down the right tube and I can still breathe through my windpipe.

As we sit by the fire, licking sticky remnants of the confection from our fingers, I find myself staring at his mouth again.

Great, now I’m reliving how he looked at me earlier as he leaned in close, lips brushing mine so softly it almost felt as if I imagined the featherlight contact.

I don’t hate you,he whispered, and I almost believed him.

The thing is, Iwantto believe him, and that’s the most surprising and unnerving thing of all.

Would it be so bad to let myself believe I could be accepted for who I truly am at my core, even if only for a moment?

Just Talia, a girl who connected with the critters in the forest more than most people, who loved botany not because plants could be used in potions, but because they were just really fucking cool. Like how calendula petals can speed up healing or how plantain leaves pull out poison and calm angry skin.

From moths and butterflies and even Asian longhorned beetles, with their bright spots and spindly antennae, I could lie in the dirt all afternoon. My friends were raccoons, foxes, and the fisher cats that freaked out local residents because they sound like a child screaming in the middle of the night. Hell, I’d rather hang with a stinky skunk than most people, and that went double if we were talking witches.

There wasn’t a number high enough for Mother.

Since I tended to wander and lose track of time outdoors, my mom began keeping me indoors, trying to mold me into something rigid and refined—so determined to shove me into a box I didn’t fit in.

A prison from which I could only glimpse the outside world.

Even though I never understood why, I swear she was jealous and vengeful against my love of nature and the way it’d always called to me.

Those rare stretches of solitude were the only times I felt like I belonged, when the threads of the universe would wrap around me like we were one without beginning or end.

Then I’d be called home to be surrounded by women who called me “sister” but always made me feel alone. My mother welcomed and allowed them mistakes and weaknesses she never accepted from me, not even on my worst days.

Great Goddess, I was so starved for affection that at the tiniest show of it—even from a werewolf—melts me like the puffed-up marshmallows melted the square of chocolate against the graham cracker lid.

“What do you think?” Diego asks, and I’m so terrified for a moment he’s read what I’m thinking that my cheeks burn with embarrassing heat. “Is dessert enough for you? Or would you like to roast up a few hot dogs for dinner?”

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