Page 5 of Witch Upon a Star
“Knowing Keys, it could be anyone. He has cyber contacts everywhere,” Frankie answered, an odd note in her voice. “But there’s also the possibility Keys bid on himself just to get out of the embarrassment of that.”
A haze came over my eyes and I saw a beautiful, young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes holding loose computer keys in the palms of her hands. I smiled. “No,” I said. “It was real. ‘A rose does not answer its enemies with words, but with beauty’,” I quoted.
Dosia and Frankie both looked at me perplexed—and then there was a sudden shift in the crowd. My smile fell as the last man took the stage.Myman.
He was gorgeous as always. Shortly after moving to town, he started a TikTok account doing exercise tutorials, fitness challenges, and dare I say, thirst traps. I was his very first follower. Though I’d never commented, shared, or liked any of his videos, I’d seen every single one of them. I had a very small following when it came to my videos about bees, but Quinten had gained a fast following.
After his patch-in party, he wore his cut for some of his thirst traps. It was how I knew his road name was Starbucks. Ididn’t know why, though I could guess it had something to do with his love of coffee.
He played up Louisa’s announcement of him by flashing the women his abs. Catcalls sounded loudly from a group of young women towards the front of the crowd, followed quickly by incessant giggling. My spine stiffened, but I kept my mouth clamped shut and my eyes on my man.
“Who’s that?” Dosia asked. If I didn’t know she was head over heels for Pumpkin, I might have lost my composure at her question and glared at her. Instead, I stared straight ahead. I stared so long and hard, in fact, that my vision started to get a bit hazy.
Frankie made a scoffing sound. “Starbucks. Never saw a vagina he didn’t want.”
A coldness washed over me that had nothing to do with the late fall afternoon. Dosia snorted into her hot chocolate and shot a glance at JJ, who thankfully didn’t seem to have heard or understood Frankie’s comment. On stage, my man sent a flirty wave to the crowd of women at the front.
I had to swallow back bile. I knew he wasn’t a monk. He had no idea I existed, and I couldn’t fault him for having a life. But Goddess, did it hurt… It hurt so bad to see him interacting with those women and never even once look in my direction.
“Opening bid—” Louisa started, but one of the women from that group called out, “Two hundred!”
“Two-twenty!” a blonde next to her offered. They were all around my age, early twenties, and likely didn’t have the money to bid in higher increments.
“Two-fifty!”
“Two-fifty-one!”
“Ladies,”Louisa scolded. “Serious bids only please. And you know the rules, bids are supposed to be made in increments of fifty dollars. So we’re back to two-fifty being the highest bid,” Louisa said, pointing to the woman who offered that.
The crowd, the auction, even the table where I was sitting faded. I blinked, and found myself standing in front of a mirror. I wasn’t at my house. I didn’t recognize the bathroom I was in. It was small, likely an apartment or maybe a dorm room.
I turned my head and nearly gasped. My face wasn’t my own. I had straight brunette hair, not curly blonde. I was petite, standing at five-four with a narrow waist and boobs that could easily be mistaken as bug bites. But the reflection in the mirror that stared back at me now was tall, five-eight or -nine, with an hourglass figure and a full chest. The cleavage showing was generous, and just shy of being too much. I would never be caught dead in a shirt like this.
I was holding a phone to my ear, though I couldn’t hear anything specifically from it. My mouth was moving as I spoke words that were not my own into it.
“Look, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m pregnant, and it’s not yours. I’ve moved on with my life, Kurt. You should too…”
I blinked, finding myself back in the present as the first woman who bid on my man shouted, “Three hundred,” with a flirty wave.
He winked back at her and the woman practically fell over swooning. Her face turned, and even from the back of the crowd, I got a good glimpse at it. I gasped, my hand shooting out to grip Dosia’s wrist. “Calliope, what?—”
No!I could do a lot, put up with a lot, because of my gift. I’d denied myself sex or the touch of any man because I knew that they were not the man I was meant to be with. I could sit back and watch as he lived his life without me, because I knew I’d one day be in it. I’d be his whole world and we would be blissfully happy.
But I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t just sit here and watch him get another woman pregnant. Instinct told me that she wasn’t already, that what I had seen was a future conversation. And if that woman won the bid, it would come to pass. Icouldn’tlet that happen.
It was selfish and wrong. I knew that. If he was meant to have a child with this woman, who was I to deny him that? But fuck it all, I couldn’t. All the loneliness, all the love I felt for this man, came crashing down on me, and I knew that I could not allow his bid to be won by anyone but me.
I wasdonesitting on the sidelines.
In a rushed plea, I hastily said to Dosia, “I need to borrow five hundred dollars.”
“What? Why?” I could hear the confusion in her voice.
“Dosia, please.” I was growing frantic, my eyes glancing between my man on stage and the woman in the crowd.
“Yes, yes, of course.”
Relief filled me and I stood, nearly knocking JJ off of the table. “Five hundred!”
