Page 7 of Summertime Hexy
“Yeah, well, that was adrenaline. This is existential defeat.”
He pauses. I hear it—the quiet shift of thought.
“You’re not bad out there,” he says finally.
I blink into the sheets. “Wow. Is that praise? Did I just earn a vampire merit badge?”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“Too late,” I say, smiling into the pillow.
And then, I glance up at him.
He’s sitting on the edge of the top bunk now, back hunched slightly, shoulders rigid. His flask is in his hand, but he’s not drinking. Just staring into it like he’s seeing something that isn’t there. The set of his jaw, the tired weight behind his eyes—it hits me then.
He’s sad.
Not the quiet kind of sad that comes and goes. No, this is the type you learn to live with. The type that curls around your ribs and makes a home of your spine. The kind you try to disguise with silence and routines and sharpening everything about yourself until no one wants to ask why.
And suddenly, I want to ask.
Instead, I say softly, “You okay?”
He looks at me, startled for a second. I don’t press. Just let the question hang.
He doesn’t answer, but he nods once—barely—and looks away.
That’s the moment I stop seeing him as a brooding cliché.
And start seeing the man underneath.
CHAPTER 4
DEREK
The day starts with a fire in the laundry cabin and ends with me magically tethered to a witch who thinks sarcasm is a personality type.
I should’ve known. Ididknow. The moment Hazel Blackmoore rolled into this camp with enough chaotic energy to short-circuit a ley line, I felt it in my bones—this one was going to be a problem. Not just for camp security, but forme.
And now we’re stuck. Literally.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she huffs, arms crossed, hip cocked in that infuriating way she does when she’s feeling defensive but pretending she’s not. “It was an accident.”
“You mixed two incompatible enchantments,” I growl, tugging at the invisible cord linking our wrists together. “What exactly were you trying to do?”
“I was stabilizing a charm!” she protests. “The squirrel wason fire, Derek!”
“The squirrel was smoking slightly. You panicked.”
“I didn’t panic,” she snaps. “Ireacted creatively.”
“Creatively?” I tilt my head. “You fused our energy signatures. That’s not creative. That’s reckless.”
She opens her mouth to argue and then notices—finally—that the cord glows faintly gold between us. One end wrapped around her wrist like a spell gone rogue, the other wound around mine, warm and pulsing in time with her heartbeat.
Twenty-four hours. That’s what the scroll says. Twenty-four hours of shared energy. Shared space.
She groans, eyes closing in dramatic despair. “This is your nightmare, isn’t it?”
