Page 40 of Blood Magic (Ariel Kimber 3)

I wasn’t about to strive towards something I could never, ever be, so I wasn’t about to even try.

What I was going to do was embrace the me I was turning out to be. The one with the new, extra layer of hardness to her eyes. The one who proudly wore her scars on her face for the whole wide world to see.

Nothing had made me happier than seeing that fragility in my eyes hidden away from view.

I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was still there and the hardness was only the outer shell.

But it was a good start.

Chapter Thirteen

Even though I had wiped all of the goop off my face, unfortunately, the hideous smell had remained. That was not going to work for me. Not to be ungrateful towards Julian and, not to sound like a bitch, but I hoped I never had to have the stuff on my face again. In fact, I hoped to be able to avoid Julian and his magical talents in general.

Except, I kind of needed him to help me out with my own. But I wasn’t going anywhere near anyone else until I got rid of the smell.

Therefore, I took a long, burning hot shower. Before getting in I didn’t stop to think about where my shampoo and other things would be in the boxes, if they were in there at all. All I could think about was getting the smell off of my skin.

If I had to buy new shampoo, conditioner, body wash and all that good stuff, I would. But I had had a bunch of it in my bathroom at Marcus’s house and I would be upset at the extreme waste if it had been thrown in the garbage. As far as I knew, Marcus had instructed the movers to pack up everything for me so my toiletries were more than likely in one of the boxes.

I didn’t realize I’d forgotten about those things until my hair was already soaking wet and I didn’t want to get out of the shower and drip all over everything while I dug through boxes searching.

I used Dash’s products and ended up smelling like cinnamon when I was all done. It wasn’t a bad smell and I kind of even liked it. I would most assuredly like it more coming off of Dash than myself, but I wasn’t complaining. Beggars couldn’t be choosers and all of that.

I really hoped he didn’t get a whiff of me smelling like his shampoo and body wash and think I was here to mooch off of him and use up all of his things. I really didn’t want that.

Tomorrow I would need to go through my boxes and unpack them. And I needed to keep track of all the things I used that belonged to Dash so I could replace them before he took notice.

I turned off the shower and wrapped a big fluffy black bath towel around my body and climbed out of the shower. I immediately turned around and bent over at the waist. I twisted my hair up in a tight rope and wrung it out over the bathtub. Water poured out and I continued squeezing until no more water hit the bottom of the tub.

I dropped my damp hair and let it hang down my neck, thankfully I had taken the time to wring the water out so it wasn’t dripping down my back.

I hit the switch on the light, flipping it off as I walked out of the bathroom. I clutched the towel tightly to my chest as I practically skipped to my bedroom.

My mood was on the rise and I felt better than I had in days, weeks even.

I tucked the upper corner of the towel firmly in place in order to make sure it wouldn’t slip off my body and moved towards the small pile of boxes.

I knelt down on the hard floor beside a box. I picked at the tape on top with a fingernail until I got the corner peeled back. I pulled on the tape and got it all the way off. I lifted the flaps of the cardboard box and peeked inside. My laptop was in there, sitting on top of a bunch of paperbacks.

I closed the flaps on the top of the box and gave it a big shove towards the bookcase. The box was heavy and didn’t make it very far. A box full of books weighed so much. Oh well. At least it was in the general vicinity of where the objects inside would go. Except for the laptop. The laptop I would sit on top of the dresser; there was really no other place for it unless I wanted to toss it on the loveseat.

I scooted closer to another box and repeated the whole peeling of tape process and lifted the flaps. What little makeup, nail polish and other girly things like headbands and hair ties that I owned was inside this box. I was surprised the movers hadn’t needed to use a smaller box. I liked my nail polish, my black eye liner and all of my bright and funky headbands. I could definitely use some more of these things and penciled in searching for a job into my mental planner for the week even though I knew I’d probably forget by tomorrow.

I shoved the box aside and in the direction of the dresser. It slid further across the floor than the first box had made it. This one hit the dresser and decided to stop moving. Normally, these were things I would put in my bathroom, but no way was I clogging up Dash’s bathroom with my girly things. He was a guy and I didn’t think he would appreciate that.

I was impatient as I moved on to the next box. This one had better have something good and useful for me inside of it because the longer I sat here wrapped up only in a towel with my wet hair hanging down my back, the colder I became. If I sat here like this for much longer my body would start shivering and then my teeth would start to chatter.

I removed the tape again, and once again opened the flaps. I struck gold with this box. It was filled full of fuzzy socks, underwear, bras and pajamas.

It was exactly what I needed.

I pulled out a pair of black, cotton panties and dug around in the box until I found a matching bra. I set those on the floor by my knee and routed around in the box, looking for something to put on over top of the underwear. I found a pair of short, white drawstring sleep shorts. They were covered in open tubes of red lipstick and I thought they were cute. I found a white tank top in the box with an open tube of red lipstick in the center of the chest and pulled it out of the box.

I picked everything up from the floor and stood up. I didn’t bother shoving that box anywhere, it was good where it sat in front of the bed.

I got dressed in a hurry and put the towel away in the hamper in the closet in the bathroom. If it were just me and I had the bathroom all to myself I would have hung the towel up over the shower curtain rod to dry and I would have used it after my next shower. I didn’t know how Dash would feel about drying off with my used towel so in the hamper it went.

I went back to my room and I closed the door behind me this time.

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