Page 19 of The Witch & the Hound
When I finally crawled back into bed, quilt tugged up to my chin, my phone still glowed faintly in my hand.
Me too,I typed, before I could talk myself out of it.
Then I shoved the phone under my pillow, heart hammering, and lay there in the dark, smiling like a fool at nothing and everything until sleep finally dragged me under.
Chapter 10
Maggie
I was elbow-deep in a vat of rosemary-lemon base, muttering at the thermometer because the temperature refused to cooperate when my phone buzzed on the workbench.
Bram's name lit up the screen.
My stomach did an entirely undignified flip.
We'd been texting since Sunday night, good morning check-ins, random observations about his day at SuperMart, my complaints about stubborn soap recipes. Easy stuff. Safe stuff. Nothing that required me to acknowledge that I'd woken up three days ago with his knot still locked inside me and my entire worldview slightly rearranged.
I wiped my hands on my apron and picked up the phone.
Are you free Friday night?
I stared at the screen. Typed back:Define free.
Three dots appeared immediately. Disappeared. Reappeared.
Dinner. A real one. Not emergency soup.
My heart kicked into a rhythm that had nothing to do with the physical labor of soap-making and everything to do with the fact that Bram, quiet, careful, "useful not wanted" Bram, was asking me on an actual date.
Like... a date date?I typed because apparently, I'd regressed to middle school.
Yes.
One word. No elaboration.
I chewed my lip, then typed:Where?
The Captain's Table. 7 PM.
Oh God.
The Captain's Table was the nicest restaurant in Seaview. White tablecloths, candlelight, reservations-required nice. The kind of place where tourists went for anniversaries and locals went when they were trying to impress someone.
Or propose.
Not that he was proposing. Obviously. We'd had sex once. Okay, multiple times in one night, but still. This was just dinner. A fancy dinner. In public. In Seaview. Where everyone knew me as "the weird soap witch who used to be a cop" and no one knew him yet.
This was a statement.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I could make an excuse. Claim I had orders to fill, a migraine coming on, a sudden aversion to tablecloths.
Instead, I typed:Pick me up at 6:45?
The response was immediate:I'll be there.
I set the phone down carefully, like it might explode. Then I looked down at myself: ancient yoga pants speckled with lavender oil, an oversized sweater that used to be black but had faded to a grayish suggestion, hair piled on top of my head with a clip that was barely holding on.
"Oh no," I whispered to the empty workshop.
