Page 83 of Boss Witch

“I’m sure you know how to mow a yard,” Leonard said, but he also couldn’t resist giving Gavin a few more tips. “I’ll have a beer waiting for you on the patio when you’re done. Maybe I’ll order some fried chicken too. You willing to stay for a late-­night snack?”

“Are you getting it from Gloria’s?” That was a little joint he and Leonard had ordered from before.

“Nowhere else.”

“Then I’m in.”

Gavin lost himself in physical labor for a couple of hours, meticulously going row by row to make Leonard’s garden as tidy as he could, and then he used edging shears to trim the hard-­to-­reach areas. He was sweaty and exhausted when he finally finished, but at least he felt marginally less miserable.

It was gone nine by the time he finished, but as promised, Leonard had a tin bucket of iced beers on the patio and a box of Gloria’s fried chicken. It was the juiciest, crunchiest he’d ever tasted, and he sank his teeth into it with a hungry groan.

Leonard laughed.“You act like you haven’t eaten in weeks.”

“I’ve been struggling,” he admitted.

“Financially?”

Gavin shook his head. “No, I wish it was that simple to solve.”

“You want to tell me about it?”

“I can’t tell you everything, but I can give you the gist if you’re willing to listen.”

“Always. I’ve enjoyed having you in town. You’re a good man, and I’ve wished more than once that I had a son like you.”

What would I have given at one point to hear such words from Da?

Just about anything. It was why he’d persisted on a path that bothered him down to his bones, after all. But that could only go so far as an excuse.I’m a grown man.

“Thank you.” Gavin cleared his throat, trying not to show how emotional he’d gotten. “The situation is this, I’ve been living my life all wrong, according to what I was taught. But now I’ve learned that it’s pretty much all hurtful and outright morally bankrupt. I’ve injured people by following those beliefs, and I can’t stand myself.”

“Bigotry is wrong,” Leonard agreed. “But sometimes we don’t realize how much poison we drank until someone comes along and says, ‘Hey, you’re hurting me.’ We shouldn’t need to hear that, right? We ought toknow. But we don’t because we’re human and humans are made imperfect. The best part about being human is that we can learn and grow and admit fault and do our best to change. People can change up until their dying day. It’s just that most of us are too set in our ways, and we’re too vain to admit that we can be wrong.”

“I don’t want to live my life like that anymore,” he whispered.

“So don’t. You can’t do anything about the people you’ve hurt, and you can’t force them to forgive you either. But you can do better going forward. Listen, I grew up in a time where I was taught all kinds of things I now know are hateful and untrue. I was a real son of a bitch, and I’ll die knowing that I was, but I do my best not to be anymore. It’s all we can do.”

Blinking, Gavin glanced up from the chicken leg he was holding and realized Leonard was probably talking about a different sort of bigotry, but the moral remained the same.

I can’t change what I’ve done, only what I will do.

Chapter 26

The next night, Clem couldn’t believe what she was about to do, but tomorrow was uncertain.

With no guarantees about what the next day might bring, she wanted one last night with Gavin. While the future was beyond their control, she could choose how the next eight hours unfolded, and it might distract her from all the untested magic she’d unleashed. The dissemination spell Clem had created—­there was no telling how fast or far the truth had spread. Already she’d read reactions in various private witch forums, branching discussions about the shocking reveal and arguments about how things should play out going forward.

Whatever, I left a few things at his place anyway.Nothing irreplaceable, but still. She used a rideshare app to call a driver, leaving the car keys on the side table by the door in case Danica needed it. Better for it to be parked here than at Gavin’s place where there wasn’t room for an extra car.

Howard Carruthers turned up in his sedan about ten minutes later. Clem was waiting in front of the house and hopped in the passenger seat with a wave.

“At this hour, it must be a booty call,” said Howard.

That startled a laugh out of Clem. “Don’t tell my grandmother.”

“I would never.” The older man offered a conspiratorial look. “What an adult gets up to is their own personal business. Be careful, though.”

“Understood.”

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