This Coven Won't Break - Isabel Sterling Page 0,62

meets me by my locker before homeroom with a mischievous smile on her face. I’ve spent the last two days distracting her with kisses whenever she asks how I’m feeling, and I spent an hour last night sketching her as she practiced for her dance solo.

She glances over her shoulder to make sure no one is in the hall before she plants a kiss on my cheek. “So . . . my dad wanted me to invite you over for dinner.”

I raise an eyebrow at her. “Why is your dad inviting me? Isn’t that your job?”

“Well, I was trying to spare you from my parents’ interrogation, but now they’ve got this whole Meet the Girlfriend dinner planned.” She sighs dramatically and leans her head on my shoulder. “Any chance you’re up for an awkward night meeting my family?”

“Honestly? That sounds perfect.”

The bell rings, and Morgan hugs me tight. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” She slips away to her first class, leaving me a smiling mess in her wake.

But when we get to Morgan’s house after school, she shuffles me off to her bedroom, calling to her parents that we’ll see them when dinner is ready.

“So, are you embarrassed of me or them?” I ask when the door closes behind us.

My girlfriend freezes halfway across the room. She glances back at me, a mixture of shock and embarrassment on her face. “What? No, not you. Never you. My mom and dad are just . . . super dorky. I’m trying to spare you their weird parent humor. Especially Dad’s. That’s the one downside to having a bisexual dad. You get Dad Jokes and bi puns.”

I laugh, and it might be the first real one since Ithaca. “Do I look like someone who minds?” I gesture to my T-shirt and the LET ME BE PERFECTLY QUEER slogan across the front. I spin to show her the back, which reads I’M SUPER GAY.

“Well, when you put it that way.” Morgan reaches for my hands and draws me closer. “Maybe I wanted an excuse to make out with you.”

“Now that is a plan I can get behind.”

She’s still in her jeans and a flowy sleeveless shirt from school, and her exposed skin is warm against mine when I trail my fingers up her arms. My lips meet hers, a soft, barely there kiss. “But all of this stays on with your parents home.” I gesture to our clothes.

Morgan blushes and bites her lip. “Deal.”

It’s a delicate dance, this thing between us. We collapse into her bed together, and with her legs interlocked with mine and her lips warm against my neck it’s hard not to get carried away. I want to lose myself in her. I want to replace all the bad memories with new imprints of joy on my skin. But when we’re both breathless and desperate to do things we know we shouldn’t without more privacy, we force ourselves to slow down. And when we start to get carried away again, we stop.

I grab the sketchpad from my bag and find a new spot on her bed, my back against the wall. Morgan lounges with her legs draped over mine as she reads another book. This one has armored hands grasping a glowing pink sword on the cover. I flip to a fresh page and sketch her as she reads, trying to capture the focused, earnest attention she gives the characters inside.

“Have you thought about homecoming on Friday?” Morgan asks, flipping to the next page in her book.

“What about it?” I sketch the basic shape of her face and focus in on her eyes.

Morgan lays her book down on her stomach. “Should we go?”

“Should we go to the aggressively hetero school dance when the world is falling down around us?” I ask, lowering my graphite pencil.

“Umm, yeah?”

I bounce the unsharpened end of the pencil against her knee. “If you want to go, then yes. We definitely should.”

She grins and dives back into her book. Homecoming is the last thing I want to do this week, but if it’ll make her happy, I can put on a smile and dance. I go back to my drawing, and once I’ve finished her expression, I move down to sketch the lines of her shoulders and forearms. I’m working on her delicate fingers when there’s a knock on the door.

“You girls decent?” her dad asks. The ten-day-old runes still mark the frame, and I have to suppress a shudder remembering Morgan’s panic and fear as