to be here? I’d stayed so long that it felt normal?
He stood, waiting for me.
I got out of bed, wishing I hadn’t worn the sleeping pants with all the stains. I took a few steps, feeling pathetic for more than my pajamas.
“You know, I can stay here alone. I’ll be fine. I know it’s causing you issues.” If he did want Belinda, had spent the night chasing her down, then I wasn’t going to get in between them. No. That wouldn’t be me, ever. I didn’t want to be the end of anyone’s relationship.
“I’m not taking any chances,” he said, waiting.
“I don’t want to be the—”
“You’re not.”
That didn’t tell me much at all. I wasn’t what? The thing that ended them, or had he been late tonight because he’d smoothed things over? Were they officially done or not? Another thing I shouldn’t want and definitely shouldn’t care about. It would just be nice to know if Belinda would be back at work tomorrow, trying to stab me. That was the only reason I wanted to know.
He didn’t have to wait long this time. I was done giving him an out. I’d tried. If this ruined his relationship, that wasn’t my fault when he was insisting.
We made our way up to his room, or the door that led to wherever his place was, and I knew it wasn’t actually in this building.
“Where are we, like, exactly?” I asked as I walked in and climbed into the bed, happy that Belinda had never been in it before. I reminded myself I didn’t care even if she had.
“It’s nowhere,” he said.
Nowhere was a safe place to be.
I cuddled deeper under the covers as Hawk stripped out of his shirt. I turned away but then glanced back a second later, watching the way his muscles flexed. Of the few men I’d messed around with, none had looked like him. Maybe I would’ve been more interested if more of them had. He turned, and I closed my eyes and rolled away slightly.
He was moving about the room again, and I was wide awake, feeling guilty. What if Belinda was right and I was the problem? They might not have had a perfect relationship, but it must’ve been better before me. And now look at me, sneaking glances while I slept in his bed. Maybe I was the desperado?
“I really didn’t mean to cause issues for you and Belinda,” I said.
“It wasn’t you. It’s been done for a while.”
It was done? Done for a while? Like, how long? Was it because of her, or was he just not the sort that would end up with any woman? A bachelor for life?
It didn’t matter. I couldn’t ask anything else without it getting weird, and he wasn’t offering anything else.
Maybe there was a simple reason anyway. Relationships didn’t work for people with a dump-truck loaded with secrets, and Hawk definitely had his fair share.
Now I needed to go to sleep and stop fixating on him and his relationships. I had big problems, like the evil in the Unsettled Lands that wanted me dead.
I was never getting any sleep tonight.
42
All good things must come to an end, and that seemed to include my magic. We’d been at it for hours. I’d repeated this paragraph so many times that it was going to haunt my dreams, and it still wasn’t working.
If it had, Hawk wouldn’t have been able to wrap his hand around my arm the way he was right now. He let go, shook his head, and walked away.
“Again,” he said, his voice so sharp that it could’ve drawn blood.
At least we were in the back room this time and I wasn’t freezing while I failed.
I got through one sentence and there wasn’t a single stirring.
“We need to try this a different way. Maybe we need to leave this part out altogether.” I was sick of rolling over every time he insisted. Did he think I was purposely screwing this up? He could insist as much as he wanted, but it wouldn’t change anything.
“If you can’t enact the Protectorate part of this spell, you leave yourself open. You need to be able to do it.” His eyes shot to the discarded paper on the table and then back to me.
“I would do it if I could, but that’s not how I’m made. It’s not how my magic works.” As green as I was to this world, and this way of life, I’d learned enough. This spell was falling flat.
“Do