Page 24 of The Pushy Pixies Are Going Down
“I’m not coming back here… at least not anytime soon. Not for this case.”
“Is… that what you really want?”
“Yes.” I answered without delay, because I knew what I wanted, and it certainly wasn’t dealing with all the bullshit that came with this place. Give me faeries any day… even if they were all gnomes.
“Okay. That’s good, then, sugar butt.”
“I think so, sweet cheeks.”
There was silence for a beat, and then he barked out a laugh that made me smile.
“Hey, you started it.”
He snorted.“That’s fair.”
Winter didn’t hesitate to keep talking, telling me a story about Goliath chasing a groundhog at the dog park.
He had me laughing in minutes.
Chapter Seven
Miles
The relief I felt when I saw Winter—and Goliath—sitting on my porch steps was palpable. After I parked in my driveway and got out of the car with Sola on my shoulder, I locked the truck up and walked around it to find Winter already standing there on the sidewalk, waiting for me.
Sola let out a little trill, jumped from my shoulder, scaring the crap out of me, and glided over to the porch railing where she landed.
As if that was some kind of signal, Winter stepped up to me and pulled me into a tight hug without hesitation. Right there,in my front yard, Winter hugged me. And it wasn’t a small hug, either. It was big and warm and exactly what I needed.
I melted into him, burying my face against his throat as I wrapped my arms around his waist. He was so strong, so kind, so warm, so ugh… just soeverything, and I never wanted to let him go.
He kissed my hair and rocked me a little for a few minutes, and I soaked it up like a damn sponge.
I’d never had this.
I’d never had this physical comfort. This… simple affection.
The only exception had been my grandmother, but I hadn’t had that since she passed away when I was a little kid.
My parents had stopped hugging me when they realized what I was. I was maybe three or four the last time I’d received a hug from either of them.
After that, I’d learned to stay away from people, that touching people wasbad. Not only because I didn’t like getting bombarded with their emotions—especially when those emotions were usually disgust at being near me—but because so many people were afraid of me and my magic.
I stayed away from them, but they stayed away from me too.
No one wanted an empath to touch them.
No one wanted someone else to sense that much about themselves.
And so… I stayed away.
Even past boyfriends, although there were very few of those, hadn’t hugged me like this. They may’ve tried looking past what I was, but they’d never… fully trusted me enough to make themselves that vulnerable.
So I hadn’t tried with them either.
But with Winter, it was different. And not only because he was a null.
I had a feeling that even if Winter had no magic of his own at all, he would’ve been happy to hug me.
