by Nova Nelson
And now, I had his back against the wall.
“Well, this is unexpected,” he said, grinning at me through piercing blue eyes as I held his shoulder to the bricks. His black V-neck tee was surprisingly soft, inviting me to rub my hand over it a bit. But no.
No rubbing Donovan’s chest! Bad, Nora!
Donovan continued to grin at me. “I was starting to give up hope that you’d come around, what with the ‘I love yous’ flying back and forth between you and Tanner.”
“Knock it off. It’s not that.”
He frowned. “You should stop being such a tease, then.”
I refrained from smacking him, which should have earned me some kind of a reward. “I’m not a— just listen. I’m going to tell him.”
Donovan’s dark eyebrows pinched together above the bridge of his thin, sharp nose. “Tell who? And what?”
I lightened the pressure on his shoulder. “I’m going to tell Tanner. About us. About what happened.”
His soft, rosy lips parted slowly, and his eyes widened. “You can’t.”
“I have to. I can’t keep holding onto the secret. Come on. You had to have known I’d tell him eventually.”
He laughed dryly. “No, I didn’t have to know that. Honestly, I never saw it lasting this long between you two. I figured your relationship would have already ended and I would … That what happened between us would be water under the bridge, just something we looked back on and, I don’t know, reminisced about.”
I shut my eyes, feeling more sympathy for Donovan than I’d like. I shook my head slowly. “No, Donovan. I told you. We were never going to be a thing.” I let my hand fall from his shoulder. “I thought I ought to give you a heads up before I tell him, since he’s your best friend, and he’ll probably confront you about it. If that happens, I don’t want you to feel set up. You’re free to tell him the truth. I won’t tell him all the details, just that it happened and that was it. A one-time thing.”
“Two time.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I kissed you, and you loved it, by the way, and then you kissed me a second time. You didn’t have to, but you did.”
“Stop.”
“And actually,” he said, “I’m going to do you one better.”
I took a step back. “Huh? What do you mean?”
His gaze was so intense, I struggled not to look away. “I’m going to tell him first.”
He slipped to the side and marched back toward the entrance to Sheehan’s.
“Swirls!” I shouted, realizing what was happening. I took off at a sprint. “Don’t you dare, Donovan!”
He cast a glance over his shoulder, saw that I was gaining on him, and sped up to a sprint, too. But it was too late. I grabbed him by the back of his annoyingly sexy tee and slung him around behind me. He yelped in surprise, and I sped past him.
Ten feet to the front door.
It was heavy, but with a grunt, I flung it open, took two hurried steps inside and—
Something caught at my ankles like a lasso, and I went down fast and hard. Donovan scrambled past me, and when I looked up at him, he was tucking his wand back into his waistband.
Cheater.
“Tanner, can I talk to you real quick?” he shouted.
Sheehan’s had gone silent thanks to my graceful entrance, and Donovan’s question echoed through the space.
Tanner and Eva shared a confused look with each other from their barstools, then Tanner hurried over, brushing past his best friend to help me up. “You okay?” he asked. “Are you drunk? I hardly saw you drink anything.”
I brushed off my front as I stood. “No, I’m not drunk. Just clumsy.” I glared briefly at Donovan. “Hey, Tanner, can I talk to you for a second?”
“Of course,” he said, still holding my arm even though I was steady on my feet.
“Outside?”
He nodded and walked with me toward the door, his arm sliding protectively around my shoulders.
I looked back just long enough to flash Donovan, who was planted in the same spot, looking defeated and horrorstruck, a victorious grin.
Trying to beat me to it. Nice try, jerk.
But as we walked into the cool air, my victory felt incredibly hollow. My prize was that I got to be the one to tell Tanner that his girlfriend and his best friend had gone behind his back and lied to him.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Let’s go to Fulcrum Park,” I said. “It’s only a few blocks away, and we don’t have to worry about drunks stumbling into us.”
I’d hoped that the walk would clear my head and give me a chance to remember what it was I planned on saying.
The night before, the few hours that should have been spent sleeping were instead spent trying to piece together the perfect combination of words to say, putting them in the precise order, so that I could come clean and Tanner would say something to the effect of, “Nobody’s perfect. Want to go back to my place and renew our bond with one another like your transgression never happened?”
Needless to say, I hadn’t quite achieved that goal before I fell asleep, but I was definitely closer to it then than I was now.
We sat on the circular stone edge of the fountain where just over a month before we’d discovered Zoe Clementine floating facedown. If I wasn’t careful, every landmark in this town would trigger murder or attempted-murder memories for me.
“I think I know what this is about,” Tanner said.
“Wait, you do?”
He nodded, but he was smiling just a little too warmly. “I wondered when you’d want to bring it up. I figured it would be sooner rather than later.” He chuckled. “I have to admit, I didn’t think it would be so urgent.” He snapped his fingers, and blinked quickly, remembering something. “I walked my tab. Fiona’s not gonna like that.”
“I think you’ll be okay,” I said. “I’m confused. What do you think I wanted to talk to you about?”
“Your parents. And what happened to them.”
“Oh.” Swirls. In no part of my planning had I anticipated that I would have to start this conversation from a point where Tanner expected me to talk about my murdered parents.
Life was funny like that sometimes.
Of course, in the moment, I didn’t see the humor.
“No, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. We can talk about that eventually, but, um, there’s something else.”
“What is it?”
I held my breath. This was it. I just needed to get it out and let him take it from there. He put an arm around my shoulders, leaning in. “What? You can tell me.”
“I kissed Donovan.” There. I’d ripped the Band-Aid off quickly. But as soon as I had, when the darkness fell over Tanner’s face, I knew in that instant that I’d made a terrible mistake.
Chapter Three
“When?” Tanner asked. “Just now?”
“What? Oh, no!” It made sense that he would think that, though, considering Donovan and I had slipped out together only to sprint back inside. The idea of the two of us sharing our first kiss before getting into a dirty footrace to be the first to confess was almost humorous. Part of me wished that had been the case because it was so ridiculous that there was no way Tanner or anyone could be mad about it.
And because it would mean neither Donovan nor I had let months pass before coming clean.
“I mean, no. It was a while ago.”
He stared at the cobblestones around his feet. “Like, before you and I were together?”
This was the part I’d dreaded the most. “Not exactly.”
He pulled his arm from around my shoulder and put both his hands in his lap. “What do you mean? When was it?”
“You remember that time I wandered into Medium Rare covered in blood and dirt?”
His eyes narrowed on me. “Of course I do.”
I cringed, bracing myself. “It was just before that.”
He exhaled like I’d just knocked the wind out of him, then he stood abruptly,
his back to me. Fulcrum Park at night was known as one of the most romantic places in Eastwind, with its well-maintained shrubs and twinkling streetlights reflecting off the bubbling fountain. I’d heard about plenty of marriage proposals that had taken place here.
And I could tell this was going in the complete opposite direction and picking up steam, and I couldn’t pull the emergency brake on it now.
“Why?” he said, turning just enough to cast me a sideways glance. “Do you … Does he … What happened?”
“I made a mistake. We both did. I think the connection ritual clouded our judgment—”
His mouth fell open and he interrupted with, “You did a connection ritual with him?”
I rose to my feet. “I had to! It was the only way we could banish the drought entity.” I stepped forward, jabbing him in the chest. “You were the one that pawned me off on him. You had to have known we’d have to join magic.”
He gently but firmly pushed my finger off him with a flat palm. “You’re saying it was just the connection ritual that led to you kissing him?”
This was the moment of truth. I could easily say yes and let him hold onto that state of denial as we moved forward. Maybe that was the right thing to do. Maybe that was the emergency break I was looking for.
But no. If I was going to be truthful, I needed to be all the way truthful.
I couldn’t meet his eyes when I said it, so I stared at his chest instead. “No. The connection ritual definitely clouded our judgment, but I don’t think it was just that. Whatever it was, though, it’s never happened again.”
“Have you wanted it to?”
Why? Why was he asking these questions he didn’t want the answers to?
I dug my fingernails into the meat of my palm. “I’ve thought about it, but I’ve never acted on it. And I don’t want to. I made my choice when I walked into Medium Rare, when I kissed you in front of everyone.” I looked him in the eyes, then if for no other reason than to get a read on him.
I regretted it immediately. His eyes held poison. The hint of a snarl curled the corner of his sandy-rose lips. “And all this time, I didn’t know there was a decision to be made,” he rasped. “Is that why you did it? Why you kissed me in front of all those people? You needed public accountability to keep you from going back to Donovan?” He looked away from me, staring vaguely at the air. “That was one of the happiest moments of my life. But now, now I see all this color behind it that I didn’t know was there … And with my best friend.” He swallowed and took a step back. When he spoke again, the pain was gone from his voice. He sounded almost calm, like he’d reached a conclusion and there was no going back. “You’ve made me look like an idiot, Nora. And worse, you’ve made me feel like one.”
“No one else knows about it,” I said quickly. I could feel him slipping away.
“No one?” he said flatly.
Fang and claws. “Okay, two people.”
He took another step back.
“Just Jane,” I said hurriedly. Then I grimaced and added, “And Stu.” Ouch. This honesty thing wasn’t winning me any points.
Tanner almost choked. “Stu Manchester knows? What, you sneaking into the Deadwoods with him, too?”
“Good golem, no.” The image of running into Manchester in the Deadwoods while he was in his elk form flashed before my eyes, but I decided now was not the appropriate time to mention it. “I just … it slipped.”
He covered his face with his hands, moaning, “I’m such an idiot. My best friend and my girlfriend.”
I closed the distance and tested the waters, laying a hand gently on his forearm.
He jerked from my grasp, and when his hands fell, the lights of the park shimmered off the moisture in his eyes. He spoke his next words like a clenched fist. “I’d convinced myself I was going crazy when I suspected something between you two. I even told you I’d been struggling with jealousy, and you said nothing. You let me believe I was being irrational.”
“I wanted to, Tanner, I just didn’t know how.”
“Didn’t know how? It’s not hard! You just did it!”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Ha! You go rolling around in the Deadwoods with my best friend and then say you didn’t want to hurt me? I can’t think of a clearer way to hurt me, Nora!”
“It wasn’t like that!”
Although you and I know it was exactly like that. The rolling part, at least. Especially when Donovan and I were on the edge of that cliff in the other realm. The doing-it-to-hurt-Tanner part, though, that was a mound of unicorn swirls.
He glared up at the night sky. “I always knew Donovan would screw me somehow. He’s managed to muck up every friendship he’s ever had. Why would ours be any different?”
“It’s not his fault, Tanner. I made him promise he wouldn’t tell. Blame me, not him.”
Tanner grinned viciously. “Don’t worry about that, Nora. I do blame you. Because this is your fault.” Then he turned, and I fought the urge to follow.
“Where are you going?” I asked. He wasn’t heading back to Sheehan’s, but this seemed like the wrong time to reminded him about his open bar tab.
“Home. Alone.”
He was already ten yards from me when I asked, “Are you breaking up with me?”
That made him pause. He stood there for a second, his back to me, his head bowed, then he cast a look back at me and said, “I don’t know yet,” before walking off.
Oh, for fang’s sake.
Now what? Where did I go after that? Back to the pub? I was too shocked to cry, plus, crying wasn’t really my thing. It might be my thing later on if I were to get a few drinks in before falling facefirst onto my bed.
I didn’t want to cry in front of Roland, who I’d told to stay in my room that night for obvious reasons. But I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to stop the waterworks, even if I tried.
Or at least that was the likely outcome if I headed back to Sheehan’s. The other option that came to mind was to sit there alone in Fulcrum Park, but the idea of that, of having to be alone with my thoughts and my guilt, made me want to take off at a full sprint and be anywhere else, so long as there were other people and distractions.
My head spun and my gut ached. No, I didn’t want alone time. Maybe Sheehan’s was the better option.
Going and partying it up when Tanner was at home hurting was just wrong, though. So instead, I returned to my seat on the edge of the fountain, listening to the rush of the spring that ran underneath Eastwind as it bubbled up, feeling the cool air on my hot face. Forcing myself to deal with the mess I’d made. This was my punishment. I should deal with it like an adult.
I don’t know how I missed the sounds of his soles on the street, but suddenly there he was next to me, holding a full, sweating tankard in front of my face.
“Mind if I sit?” Donovan asked.
I took the peace offering. “Might as well.”
He’d brought one for himself, too, and took a long drink before sitting on the curved edge of the fountain to my right.
“Fiona let you walk out of there with these?” I held up my drink.
“Of course not,” he said. “I had Eva distract her while I slipped out.”
I stared down at my boots. A conversation with Donovan wasn’t one of the options I’d considered. “How much did you hear?”
He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and cradling his drink between both hands. “Oh, you know … all of it.”
“Man, you’re a creeper.” I sighed, bringing the beer to my lips.
“Can you blame me?” he asked, totally unfazed by my jab. “I had to make sure you didn’t throw me to the wolves.” He paused. “Thanks for not.”
“I should have,” I said bitterly. “You deserve it.”
He drummed his fingertips on his cup. “Yeah, I do. But I’m still glad you didn’t.”
“Well, I’m not.” I thought about getting up, downing the rest of my beer, and heading somewh
ere that Donovan wasn’t. Before I acted on the impulse, though, I realized this was actually the only place I could be if I wanted to talk to someone about what had just happened. Donovan was the only person who I could be honest with about it. “I just got dumped. And I deserve it.”
He nudged me with his shoulder. “You didn’t get dumped. He said he wasn’t sure if he was going to dump you.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Thankfully, Donovan was also the only one who would take the slight abuse I had to give. Knowing him, he probably liked it.
“Hey, I never claimed to be great at consoling,” he said. “But to be fair, you’re not much better.”
There was truth in that. “Are we trash people, Donovan?”
He sat up straight, chuckling, “What?”
“Are we trash people?”
“No way. I mean, you aren’t. I might be.”
“Nuh-uh. You said in the Deadwoods that we were the same, and you were right. If you’re a trash person, then I’m a trash person, too.”
He shrugged, nonplussed. “Then that’s great news for me because it means I’m not a trash person, whatever that actually is. I’ll take it.”
“And yet, I feel like garbage.”
He stared straight ahead, saying wistfully, “Yeah, that’ll pass. Believe me.”
“It is weird that I kind of hope it doesn’t? I mean, I deserve to feel this way. It’s what I get for pretending to be a different person, a better person. Like dying would suddenly make me a saint. You gotta perform miracles to become a saint, and the closest thing to a miracle I’d ever performed was not murdering the servers I caught hooking up in the employee restroom.”
“Ah, yes, double homicide wouldn’t result in the best karma.”
“Not double.”
He looked at me, his eyes wide. “Triple?”
I shook my head and pointed up.
He nodded. “Yeah, that’s too many people to murder for a lot of reasons. But you’re wrong, Nora. You don’t deserve to feel this way. It’ll pass, and that’s okay. Tanner’s made mistakes, too. He’ll come around.”
