Crush

by Tracy Wolff

  I expect him to laugh with me, but when he doesn’t, I realize there was nothing joking about his last statement. “Hey.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” But this time, his patented Flint grin doesn’t reach his eyes. When I keep looking at him, concerned, he shrugs.

  “What’s going on?” I drop my bag on the field and then take a seat on the bench, gesture for him to do the same. “Are you nervous about the game?” I don’t even know how to process a nervous Flint. He’s the epitome of optimism.

  Oh no. If Flint is having doubts… I almost choke on my next words. “If you’re anxious…that must mean you think we’re all going to die gruesome deaths today, don’t you?” I can feel the bubbles of panic start to rise in my stomach. “What was I thinking, that I could help us win? I’ve been a gargoyle all of six seconds. I’m like a weight around the team’s necks.” Sheer panic has me firing questions at Flint like a machine gun. “Can I quit the team? Will you get penalized if I throw myself down the stairs and break a leg? Is there someone available who can replace me on short notice?”

  He reaches for my shoulders, but I barely notice. “Grace—”

  “If the team only has seven, will they adjust the magical restraints? Can Jaxon use more of his strength without me?”

  “Grace—”

  “What if I develop a sudden shellfish allerg—”

  “Grace!” Flint’s voice finally seizes my attention, and I stop talking and blink up at him. “I’ve met someone.”

  Of all the things he was going to say, that is definitely not even top-twenty material. I swallow. “So you’re not nervous I’m an anchor, destined to drag the team down?”

  He chuckles. “Not remotely.”

  Okay. Then why the doom-and-gloom version of Flint? “Um, that’s great that you met someone, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” He looks away, pulling his hands back into his lap.

  “What’s her name?” I ask, trying to encourage him to talk. It’s clear he has something he needs to get off his chest, but I have no idea what it is. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want—”

  I break off when he laughs, because it’s a low and painful sound. “I’m gay, Grace. I thought you’d figured that out by now.”

  “Oh!” Now that he says it out loud, I feel like a horrible friend. All the times I’d seen girls coming on to him—even Macy, God bless her—and he’d never shown any interest. Was I really so caught up in my own life that Flint and I had never stopped to talk about him?

  Not to mention, yeah, Jaxon gets jealous sometimes when I hang out with Flint, but I always thought that was ridiculous. There’s no chemistry between the two of us at all—even when I thought he was hitting on me in the library that time, it felt off. Like something wasn’t right. Like he was trying too hard.

  Because I only saw what I wanted to see, and apparently, so does everyone else around this place. Yeah, I’m the worst.

  But that doesn’t matter now. All that matters is the fact that Flint is staring at me, waiting for some kind of reaction from me, and I can’t mess this up.

  “That’s awesome!” I squeal, throwing myself at him, wrapping my arms around his wide shoulders in a huge hug.

  His arms go around my waist, but he doesn’t really hug me back. “Wait. Awesome?” he repeats, confused.

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?” I pull back and give him a once-over. “I mean, look at you. Of course there’s a guy interested in seeing you. You’re smart, gorgeous, funny… It’s the trifecta, right?”

  He laughs, but there are tears in his eyes, and it breaks my heart. “Oh, Flint. Please don’t cry. There’s nothing to cry about in being gay. You know that, right? You are who you are. You love who you love. Besides, I think the Circle could use a really kick-ass gay dragon couple on it, don’t you? Give those asshole werewolves a run for their money.”

  “Oh my God, Grace.” He rubs a hand over his face, and then he’s hugging me, too. For real this time. Eventually we both get all the hugging out of our system and he leans back again. “I figure once we start dating, well, everyone’s going to know. But you’re the first person I’ve told, and that was not the reaction I expected.”

  “What?” I ask. “Is it not normal for me to hope you show the werewolves up in all the ways? Every werewolf I’ve met so far—with the exception of Xavier—is fucking awful. I say take them down with your awesomeness.”

  He’s laughing full-out now, which is exactly what I was hoping for. “I love you, Grace.” He chuckles again when I raise a brow. “Not like that.”

  “So this is all amazing news. And you’ve met someone.” I shake my head. “I’ve gotta be honest—I’m not seeing a problem here. I’m all for finding your mate!”

  He sighs, and it’s like he’s trying to dislodge the weight of the world. “For what feels like my whole life, I’ve been in love with the same guy. But he was emotionally unavailable. And, well.” He laughs, but there’s absolutely no humor in his next words. “Now he’s really emotionally unavailable.”

  I’m starting to see where this is going. “So you’re giving up on him, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “It’s time. I always thought, if he could just let his guard down a crack, the magic could get in and he’d see we were destined to be mated. I just knew in my bones he was my mate.” Flint shakes his head. “I was so wrong.”

  I feel awful for Flint but also, I’m curious how this mating-bond magic works—since I’m currently a happy victim of it. “I’m confused. The mating bond doesn’t always mate soul mates?”

  Flint shrugs. “No one knows exactly how the magic works, but we do know it’s sentient—for lack of a better word. It won’t mate pairs too young, for instance, or same-sex pairs before both are self-aware of their sexuality. Or if you never meet. In fact, the bond only snaps in place when you touch your mate.” He gives me a rueful smile. “But hey, the good news is the magic also allows for you to have more than one mate in your lifetime—and a few times it’s even been between more than just two people.”

  He waggles his brows at that last statement, and I laugh. “Gives a whole new meaning to the saying ‘the more the merrier,’ eh?”

  I finally get a smile from Flint that reaches his eyes. “Definitely.”

  “So…you’re going to open yourself up to the magic finding you another mate, is that it?” I reach over and rest a hand on his arm. “I think that’s a great idea, Flint.”

  “Yeah. Like I said, I’ve met this great guy now who likes me back, and he deserves better than a lovesick dragon pining for someone who’s never going to notice him that way. But, well, it’s hard. I’m afraid I’ll forever be split in two. The guy who loved this one person most of his life and this new person. Even if he didn’t return my feelings—he was constant, you know? He was my constant.”

  Flint’s voice breaks, and his beautiful eyes begin to water again. His heartbreak is like a gaping, jagged wound, and I want to hunt down whoever this asshole is who didn’t recognize how amazing Flint is and kick his ass. Twice. Instead, I do the only thing I can do: I slide over and wrap my arms around Flint’s waist and give him another hug. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

  His big arms tighten around me. “Probably not.”

  “I say focus on the person who sees you for who you really are, and if you love him with all your heart, you can never go wrong.” I squeeze him again.

  “I’m sorry,” Flint says, wiping his eyes in that “I’m not crying, just got dirt in my eye” sort of way. “I never meant to start this now. We have a game… But he’s asked if he can come watch, cheer for us, for me, and, well, yeah. I had to shed some weight first.”

  He breaks off, his focus snagged by something across the field. And even before I turn to look, I know who I’m going to see.

  Jaxon
. Of course. Walking across the field with the rest of our team, all of them decked out in the colorful, cheerful jerseys that feel really out of place right now.

  I figure I should probably disengage from the hot dragon before Jaxon gets jealous, and I glance up at Flint to share the joke, but his gaze isn’t on mine.

  And suddenly I see everything I was too determined not to see before.

  Seconds later, when Flint has his trademark goofy grin in place, I wonder how it’s taken me this long to catch on to three very important facts: One, Flint uses that grin as a shield. Two, he lets real emotion break through that shield only when he can no longer contain it—namely when one certain person is around. And three… I swallow the lump in my throat, rub at the sudden ache in my chest. And three, the emotionally unavailable guy he’s giving up on, the one he’s waited so long for, is Jaxon.

  74

  A Whole New Kind

  of March Madness

  My newfound knowledge is reverberating in my brain like a gong that’s been hit way too hard as I walk over to Jaxon, a fake smile on my face. I’m focused on him, and on everything I just learned, but the building noise in the stadium makes me realize that while I was talking to Flint, the whole arena has filled up. It’s not time for the tournament to start, but teams are warming up and orders are being picked.

  “It works the same way the human March Madness does,” Jaxon tells me as we line up to sign in. “But on a smaller scale. We start with sixteen teams randomly assigned to play each other, and the winners of those games go on to play one of the other winning teams, and we keep doing that until we win or get eliminated. Which means—”

  “If we want to claim the bloodstone, then we need to win four games today,” I finish for him, even though I’m only half listening. Most of my brain is still focused on Flint and how just my existence is breaking his heart wide open right.

  It kills me, makes me feel helpless in a way that scrapes me raw on the inside. And having to hide what I know from Jaxon somehow only makes it worse.

  Especially as he grins down at me. “Exactly. Easy, right?”

  I roll my eyes and try to focus on him, for no other reason than to give Flint an extra layer of protection for his feelings. “Sooooo easy.” Yeah, right.

  “Not even a little bit,” I answer as my stomach churns with nerves. About the game, about Flint, about everything I’ve learned and everything I still don’t have a clue about.

  Jaxon laughs and hugs me close, but that doesn’t stop the nerves. In fact, it only makes them worse because I can see Flint looking at me out of the corner of his eye. But when I try to catch his attention or smile, he ducks his head or pretends to be looking somewhere else.

  Eventually, I stop trying, but when Jaxon gets busy talking to Mekhi and Luca, who is on the team behind ours, I bump my shoulder against Flint’s. He looks startled at first, but eventually he grins and bumps me back just as gently.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “I’m good,” he answers, and since he isn’t wearing that grin of his—and is instead looking as sincere as I have ever seen him look—I decide to believe him. Or at least not to keep poking at what I can imagine is an unbelievably painful subject.

  When we finally get to the front of the line, I realize it’s Uncle Finn who’s checking us in. He gives us a huge smile and hands each one of us a plastic bracelet we immediately slide on our wrists. Macy explained to me last night that these bracelets are charmed to prevent serious injury during an otherwise intensely rough game, so I tug on mine a couple of times, just to make sure there’s no chance it will fall off during the tournament.

  Uncle Finn wishes us all luck. It’s the same thing he says to each of the teams, but I think it’s pretty obvious that he’s rooting for us, especially when Macy pops colorful star stickers in the center of both his cheeks.

  After we all sign in, Jaxon holds out a black box to Flint and says, “Team captains need to draw.”

  “We don’t really have a team captain,” Flint starts, but Jaxon looks at him like he’s got two heads.

  “Dude, this is all you,” he says as he claps him on the back. “You’re the team captain. Now, draw the number.”

  Flint swallows hard at Jaxon’s words—or actions, I can’t tell—then nods and reaches into the box. He pulls out a little round ball with the number eleven written on it.

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  Jaxon points to a huge whiteboard free-floating on the sidelines, right in the center of the field. “It means we play team four first,” he answers with a huge grin as he points to a team dressed in black T-shirts.

  “Liam and Rafael’s team,” Mekhi whoops from behind us. “It’s going to be fun kicking their asses.”

  Liam and Rafael are looking right back at us, shaking their heads. “You’re going down, Vega!” Liam shouts.

  “I’m so scared,” Jaxon shoots back. “Can’t you tell?”

  “Children,” Hudson says. “They’re all children.” But he’s grinning almost as widely as his brother.

  “You need a star sticker,” I tell him. “For spirit.”

  “You mean like one of these?” Hudson turns his head, and I can see he’s already got one on his left cheek. Which I totally wasn’t expecting.

  “Looks good on you,” I tell him.

  “Everything looks good on me,” he answers, but the sparkle in his eyes makes it a joke.

  “So what do we do now?” I ask the group at large.

  “Now, we find a shady place in the stands and kick back to watch the action,” Eden tells us. “We’ll be playing fourth, and I can’t wait to watch some of these people out here get their asses kicked on the field.”

  “And by that she means, she can’t wait to kick their asses herself,” Xavier interprets as we follow behind her.

  “Yeah.” I laugh. “I got that.”

  He smiles and makes a show of bumping fists with me before jogging to the front of our group, so he can walk next to Flint…and Macy.

  Once we’re settled, I reach into my bag for a granola bar—I need the energy even if my stomach may be in knots right now—but Macy stops me. “They’ll be around with much better stuff in a few minutes.”

  I’m not sure what she means until I realize several witches from the kitchen are buzzing up and down the field with huge containers strapped in front of them—kind of like the ones vendors wear at football games, only much smaller.

  “Hot dogs?” I ask, a little surprised because they seem like such an incongruous food to be eating in the middle of Alaska.

  Macy laughs. “Not quite.”

  It takes a few minutes, but eventually one of the witches makes her way to us. Turns out she’s selling funnel cakes in the shape of the Katmere Academy crest. They’re smothered in strawberries and whipped cream and they look absolutely delicious.

  Flint orders about fifteen of them for the group. I figure she’s just going to take our order, but then she reaches into her box and keeps pulling them out, hot and fresh and dripping with strawberries.

  The next vendor who comes along is selling fresh lemonade, and Xavier gets what feels like several gallons of it as we settle in to watch the first match.

  Cyrus—in a fitted, three-piece pinstriped suit, hair tied back into a tiny ponytail at the nape of his neck and bloodstone ring glowing under the stadium lights—saunters his way to the center of the field, a microphone in his hand. Once there, he throws his arms wide and welcomes us all to the annual Ludares tournament, then goes through the rules “for anyone who might need a refresher.”

  Every player must hold the comet (a large ball about six inches in diameter that magically vibrates painfully and heats the longer a player holds it) at least once in every match.

  There are magical handicaps in place so that yes, one player can be faster or stronger than another, or b
e able to turn them into a turtle even (everyone laughs at that joke), but no spell or burst of speed or supernatural strength lasts more than ten seconds.

  The only exception is flight, which can last up to twenty seconds at a time. So clearly a team with good flyers is going to have a slight advantage. I glance at Flint, and we fist-bump on that one.

  All abilities that time out recharge every thirty seconds. I can tell from this rule, timing of when to use your speed or strength or flight or whatever so you have it when you need it is going to require a lot of strategy—and luck.

  Everyone has been given a magical bracelet to prevent any serious injury. Dragon fire or ice, vampire bites, wolf claws and bites, and even witch’s spells can all still hurt like a bitch, but there’s no actual damage.

  And of course, a player in mortal danger would immediately be magically transported to the sidelines and marked as permanently out of that match.

  Despite all the rules, the actual game play is pretty simple. Get the comet across your goal line before your opposing team does the same—without breaking the rules.

  Cyrus finishes his recitation of the regulations and then postures on for a while about interspecies cooperation, like he invented the game himself—which is made more entertaining by Hudson’s snarky comments about Cyrus liking the sound of his own voice more than anyone else in the entire stadium. He’s sitting directly behind me, the only one in the whole row, and I can tell he likes it that way. Even before he stretches out on the bench, sunglasses on, and heckles his father.

  His insults are so inventive that I’m a little sad I’m the only one who gets to enjoy them. Then again, I’m pretty sure they’d get our team ejected from the tournament if anyone else heard him call the king a slack-jawed numby, so there is that…

  Eventually, Cyrus calls the first two teams down to the field and blunders through introductions because he never bothered to figure out how to pronounce their names before he called them down. It’s the most arrogant—and also the most normal—school thing I’ve seen the whole time I’ve been at Katmere. I mean, besides having watched my uncle fidget with the sound system as he tried to get it to work.