Page 25 of Witch Upon a Star
He watched me carefully. “You’ve seen it? You’ve seen…us?”
Slowly, I nodded.
Quinten lowered his hand. He took a step back, and then another. “And you saw it before today.” It wasn’t a question. I could see him starting to connect the dots, as he’d put it. “You knew who I was when you bid on me, but you’re under some misconception that you weren’t supposed to bid on me.”
“It’s not a misconception,” I pressed, but my voice was soft. I barely had any fight left in me. Every time he stepped away, all I wanted was for him to come closer.
He looked down, studying the last unfinished shelf. “And if I keep pressing, you’re going to keep pushing me away, because you think we’re not supposed to ‘start’ yet.”
He thought this was me pushing him away? Goddess, I felt like I was failing miserably at keeping him at bay. I didn’t say anything, because there wasn’t anything to say. And I feared, if I opened my mouth, I would tell him everything.
Everything.
Quinten nodded like I had responded. Maybe my silence was answer enough. He stepped even further away. “I need you to leave for a bit.”
My heart sank, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. “W-what?” I stammered.
“I need to finish building this shelf and I can’t do thatwhile you’re here,” he told me. His expression was hard, unyielding.
“Quinten, you don’t need to?—”
“I do,” he snapped, cutting me off. “Because knowing you, you’d try to build it yourself and then you’d end up on that ladder trying to secure it to the wall. No,” he shook his head. “Not happening. So you need to go so I can finish. You’re too damn distracting.”
My eyes flew from the shelf to him to Oolong to the door and back again. “Where am I to go?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “But I need time to think, and I can’t do that with you here.”
I knew I’d regret asking, but I still had to. “Think about what?”
He stood there, staring at me for a long moment. Every beat my heart made felt like there was barbed wire wrapped around it. “Whether I’m going to listen to your witchy predictions—or say ‘fuck it’ and kiss you anyway.”
I was no athlete,but I hastily grabbed Oolong and then ran from my shop. Quinten was not the only one who needed space. What was I supposed to do? And why did my stupid heart flutter like a butterfly’s wings at his chivalry? He could have easily left—it was my store, after all. But he didn’t. He stayed to finish building my shelves, and essentially kickedmeout of my own store. Stupid, stupid heart.
A few years ago, I’d read a book about fated mates, butthe heroine hated her mate. Mind, in that book, he was also the antagonist and not a good guy or the story’s antihero. Don’t get me wrong, I loved me a good morally gray hero, but that was not this book’s storyline. In the end, she got a mate who was not her fated mate and lived happily ever after. Proving that Fate did not know all and we still had a choice to form our own destinies.
And while I knew that was fiction, it made me ponder. I’d spent so much time thinking about the man who would one day be mine, a man whose name at that time I hadn’t known. What if I didn’t like him? What if I spent so much of my time and energy on a relationship that was doomed from the start because we weren’t compatible? Or worse—what if I loved him and he hated me?
Was I more in love with the idea of love and my happily ever after than I was the man who would one day be mine?
It was certainly something to worry about. After I met Quinten—or really, walked into him inLoafin’ Around—and got to see him in person, I knew that my worries were for nothing. At least on my end, there was no way I couldn’t fall in love with that man.
He shoveled the sidewalks of Main Street after a snowstorm, helped the elderly do their grocery shopping, fixed little kids’ bikes, and was fuckinghot. Because I was just shallow enough to care about that one. Every video that he posted was like a glimpse into his soul, and I fell, hard, before he ever said a single word to me.
And now he was falling too? Just as hard, just as quickly, as me. Was that Fate’s doing? Had I been wrong to bid on him? Yes, absolutely. But what if I had set in motion a new course, a new destiny for us?
I bit my lip, clutching Oolong to my chest. He was staring up at me like I’d betrayed him, ripping him away from the love of his life. How was it that ourpetsgot to be together when we couldn’t?
I stared blindly down Main Street. I truly had no idea where to go, but I also had no desire to go anywhere.
I spun around. The glass windows and door of my shop had a slight glare from the afternoon sun, but I could still see inside. It looked like Quinten was kneeling on the floor, building the last shelf, while arguing with his cat. Joe was pacing in front of him, clearly agitated.
I knew the feeling.
Before I could change my mind, I opened my shop door and walked back inside. Quinten looked up at me, interrupting whatever it was he’d been telling Joe mid-word.
“Oolong didn’t like being separated from Joe,” I said, thinking it a believable excuse.
Quinten’s mouth twitched. “Oolong’s a smart dragon.”
