Page 45 of Best Hex Ever
The rivers of moonlight twisted in rivulets across her body, until they all collected into the teacup in a shimmering liquid. For a moment, the air around them was scented like fresh coffee and spices.
Dina met Scott’s eyes, testing him. He couldn’t speak, but he wasn’t running away.
With an ecstatic smile, Dina flicked the teacup, flinging moonlight outward, splashing it against the trunks of trees, coating ferns and shrubs near the path like silver luminescent paint. As it landed, it began to fade, until—within seconds—full night had returned. Dina set the teacup down on the front step of the cottage.
As if nothing peculiar had happened, Dina looped her arm back through Scott’s. As if she hadn’t just upended his world. Her arm was warm in his, and he held her as close to him as politeness would permit.
“Was that moonlight?” Scott said, his voice raw. “In a teacup?”
“It was,” she whispered back.
They walked on in silence toward the candlelight emanating from Honeywell House.
—
Scott splashed his face with cool water. He was in a small bathroom just outside the North Parlor, where the braver among the wedding party had decided to forgo a night of beauty sleep and were instead playing a highly competitive game of Scrabble.
What had he witnessed?
She had looked like a wild and beautiful creature, a goddess, something ethereal and undecipherable. Dina had filled his vision, the pale light dancing around her, as she’d broken his world, and everything he thought he knew, apart.
He was ninety percent sure that Dina was a witch. The other ten percent…well. He was flirting with the idea that she might be some kind of djinn, or succubus, but neither of those terms felt quite right. And “magician” made him think of rabbits in hats and coins collected from behind ears. No, if there was ever a word to describe Dina Whitlock, it was “witch.”
Scott didn’t think he’d forget this night for the rest of his life, and there was absolutely no way that had been an illusion or a trick of the light.
But if Dina was a witch, what did that make him? Was he under her spell? From the way his cock had gone rock-hard the moment she’d returned his kiss in the lovers’ nook, he was certainly under some primal influence.
After the maze it had taken all his willpower not to carry herstraight to the cottage, throw her down onto the kitchen counter and make her come over and over again. He bet her face looked lovely when she came.
There was no doubt in his mind now that she wanted him back. He splashed his face again, trying to regain some semblance of composure. The cool water was helping. Alcohol had been free-flowing at dinner earlier, though Scott had stayed away from drinking too much. He wanted to remember every second of tonight and getting drunk reminded him of Alice.
He wasn’t proud of what he’d become in the weeks after he’d found out that she’d cheated on him. He’d wanted to forget all about it and drink himself into painless oblivion. Everywhere he looked, there she was. The sofa that they’d picked out together when she’d first moved in. The mugs she’d bought him as gifts in the cupboards.
He was haunted by the pictures of them on the wall. He’d looked so happy back then, so unaware. And she’d looked happy too. How could she have lied to him that entire time? In all those years, how did he never see the truth in her eyes?
Scott splashed more cold water onto his face, washing away the memories.
That part of his life was over now, he reminded himself. He had a new apartment, and he was more himself than he’d felt in a long time. He was making London his home again. He would be there for his mums, for his friends, and for Dina—if she’d have him.
Scott made his way back into the parlor, just as Dina screeched at the top of her lungs, “I win! Pay up, fuckers!” To which he heard simultaneously shouted replies from Rosemary of “ ‘Qi’ is not a word” and “You don’t win money in Scrabble.”
Dina caught Scott’s eye as he made his way back to the group.
“Scott, can you please mediate for us? These halfwits aresaying I made up ‘qi’!” Dina rolled her eyes dramatically. “It’s the vital force that is inherent in all things.”
“Sorry to break it to you all, but Dina is right. ‘Qi’ is a Scrabble word. Also spelled ‘K-I’ or ‘C-H-I.’ Let’s see…” Scott bent over the board and caught a whiff of Dina’s perfume—vanilla and cinnamon.
“Q is worth ten, but you have it on a triple letter so that’s thirty-one points total. She beat you all!”
Immy huffed loudly and looked like she was ready to upend the board.
“Oh, come on, Immy, you know you can never beat me at Scrabble, especially not tonight.” Dina sidled over to her friend and threw an arm around her.
“My job is literally words, Dina. I do the words!”
“I know you do, honey.”
They whiled away the rest of the evening with party games: charades, pin the veil on the bride, and for those willing to contort themselves in all manner of positions, Twister. Scott found it particularly hard to concentrate on that game when Dina reached her arm over him to touch a red circle. Her breasts, delectably pushed up in that sin of a dress, brushed against his chest, and shortly after he had to excuse himself from the game, lest the wedding party see his erection.
