Page 78 of The Scars I Bare
I can’t tell anyone.
Especially not any of you, which is why this will never be posted.
Ever.
Thankfully, by some act of God, we made it to our flight on time. The fact that it was thirty minutes delayed probably had something to do with it. That, and we’d made it from Nags Head to Norfolk Airport in record time.
With our early morning flight, staying in a closer hotel would have been ideal, but the idea of staying anywhere near Virginia Beach, which bordered Norfolk, was out of the question.
I knew it was silly. It wasn’t like I’d married into the mob, and Blake had men combing the city for me. But I wouldn’t start the trip out by stepping into my past, especially since I was currently avoiding his texts. All ten of them.
Thankfully, Dean understood, and I thought he sort of agreed, too, considering his nostrils did this sort of flaring thing whenever I mentioned Blake’s name.
So, we’d stayed in North Carolina and made the short drive into Virginia in the wee hours of the morning, avoiding most of the traffic and sliding into our seats on the aircraft at the last possible moment.
“Are these TVs?” Lizzie asked the moment we got on board.
“Yep,” Dean said, puffing his chest like he was some sort of plane aficionado when I knew for a fact that he’d only flown a grand total of three times—one being the emergency trip to the hospital after the ferryboat explosion.
“Maybe we can find you something interesting to watch. I’m sure they have a documentary or maybe the history—” Dean suggested.
“I want to watchMy Little Pony!” she announced, already flipping through the channels like a pro.
He looked over at me, his face taking on this blank kind of expression.
“Still a kid”—I shrugged—“remember?”
“Gotcha. Ponies for the win.”
The rest of the plane ride was fairly uneventful and short. Dean and I spent some time reading quietly until he nudged me, something obviously bothering him.
“What the hell is a Potterhead?” he asked.
I laughed, wondering how long this particular term had been bothering him. Good thing I hadn’t sprung any more on him. If there was a fandom, ranging from Marvel toStar TrektoThe Lord of the Rings, someone in my family was obsessed with it.
I pulled up the first book on my phone, the one I’d read over and over. If it were a physical copy, it’d have tattered pages and a worn cover. I actually had one of those, but it was Lizzie’s now.
“Oh,” he said. “You mean, Harry Potter. Why didn’t you just say that? I’ve seen the movies,” he said very matter-of-factly.
I just sat there, dumbfounded.
“I’m glad you brought this up before we landed; otherwise, there might have been bloodshed in the house of Carpenter. There is a difference between seeing the movies and being a Potterhead.”
His eyebrows rose in confusion. “Okay, I’m lost again.”
And he would be until I properly showed him the ways of my people.
The minute we were off the plane, I dragged him into one of those magazine stores in the airport and bought him the first book in the series, handing it over to him like the precious treasure it was.
“Read it,” I pressed. “You’ll thank me.”
His eyebrows rose once again as he looked down at me. “This is that other side of you, isn’t it? The one I’m gonna have to love, no matter what?”
I smirked as we headed toward baggage claim. “Yep. Wishing you’d stayed back home?”
He squeezed my hand as he looked down at the new reading material I’d just bought him. “Oh no,” he said, giving Lizzie a wink. “I’m all in.”
“You’ll like it,” Lizzie said.
