When I still didn’t see anything, I chalked it up to an overactive imagination and exhaustion. What I’d seen was probably a squirrel or bird, or maybe even a leaf being blown across the yard. In other words, nothing I needed to worry about.
“You get lost in there or something?” Asher called from the living room.
Taking one last look at my yard, I backed away from the window and turned to where my guest was waiting. My very cute guest, who seemed to like me. Well, enough to make out with me, at least.
When I got to the room, I tried to hide my smile as I saw Asher cuddled up under my mom’s fuzzy red blanket. He’d wrapped it around his body and up and over his head like Little Red Riding Hood. Between his innocent expression and the fuzzy material framing his face, he looked absolutely ridiculous.
And I so wanted to kiss him again.
“You are such a geek,” I said as I walked over to him and placed our drinks on the coffee table. Plopping down on the couch next to him, I pulled my legs up to my chest and cocked my head to the side. “Are you cold or do you just like the look?”
“Well, I definitely think I can pull this off,” he answered coyly. He moved slightly closer to me. “But I might be a little cold.”
“Oh, yeah? Well we can’t have that, can we?” I leaned toward him and began rubbing his arms through the blanket to try to warm him up.
“I’m still cold,” he said slowly. “Hey, I’ve got another idea of how you can warm me up.”
“Oh, right. Subtle, Asher. You may be a good kisser, but you’ll have to take me out on a date before I do whatever you’re thinking,” I said, feeling myself start to blush. Because the truth was, I was thinking it too. Maybe not tonight, but possibly (hopefully) sometime in the future.
“I was talking about kissing!” he exclaimed, feigning shock. “Why don’t you get your mind out of the gutter.”
I snorted and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Okay, well then there is something else you can do for me,” he continued.
“I’m not doing that, either.”
“You can tell me exactly what happened back at the mall yesterday,” he said, suddenly serious.
My smile faded and my mouth went dry. He had brought up the one subject I didn’t want to talk about. I knew it was naive to think that maybe he’d forgotten all about it, but after spending this whole time without mentioning the fight, I thought we were going to just pretend it never happened. But now he was bringing it up and I had no idea what I was going to say.
So I said the first thing that came to my mind.
“Okay, we can kiss,” I said quickly, and moved toward him.
Asher leaned away from me and placed his hand in between us. “No way—you’re not getting out of this one,” he said. “Now what was with you going all G.I. Jane and running headfirst into that fight? It looked like—”
“It was a gang fight,” I said quickly, blurting out the lie before I had a chance to think about it.
Asher blinked at me. “How could you tell they were a gang? They didn’t look like gang members. Some of the people were old. Like thirty or something. And things were sparking,” he said. Then he lowered his voice like he was sharing a secret with me. “I think some weird stuff was going on. I don’t exactly know how to explain it—”
“They were a gang of magicians,” I said. Even as I said it, I wanted to kick myself. What an incredibly stupid answer. Where the hell was I going with this? It’s not like he’d believe magic was real, and that people were casting spells on each other, in public no less. “I mean, I read in the paper a few weeks ago that there are gangs out there who use the kinds of tricks that magicians use to distract their enemies. That’s probably what you saw.”
No way was he going to fall for this. No way.
“Do they have gangs for everything now?” he asked incredulously. It seemed like he was actually pondering the idea.
No. Way.
“I guess so,” I mumbled.
“But that still doesn’t answer why you ran in there,” Asher said, turning the spotlight back on me. To my dismay. “You could’ve been hurt or something. They could’ve sawed you in half. It’s not like you’re some kind of secret superhero or something…”
“Um, I don’t know why I did it,” I said, starting to chew on my bottom lip, but then stopping when I realized I was taking off my lip gloss. “It was just my first instinct, I guess. I thought maybe someone could use my help.”
“Well, did they?”
I looked down at the ground guiltily. “Yeah, they did.” I immediately made a mental note to call the hospital and check in on Jasmine and Jinx once Asher was gone.
“Well, I’m glad you’re okay, Hadley.”
“You too,” I answered.
At least there was that. Somehow Asher had managed to disappear during the fight and avoid the kind of damage that was inflicted on the rest of my coven. Come to think of it, I couldn’t remember seeing Asher at all during the fight. Which was weird because he was right behind me when I first got to the courtyard; I had no idea what had happened to him after that.
“Where did you go during the fight, anyway? I was kind of worried you’d gotten hurt when I couldn’t find you,” I said, lowering my voice.
“You thought the evil magicians had kidnapped me?” Asher asked with a chuckle.
“Go ahead and laugh, but that fight was intense. A lot of people got hurt, you know,” I said sincerely. “I’m glad you left before they got to you, too.” I wasn’t accusing him of bailing. In fact, being that he wasn’t magically inclined like me, it was much better that he’d taken off. He would’ve been so out of his league if he’d jumped in.
“Well, it looked like you had everything under control,” he said.
He obviously hadn’t stuck around long enough to see much, because I’d never had anything under control. That’s what I’d wanted everyone to believe, but I’d just been trying my best to get everyone out of there alive—myself included. For someone who was used to excelling at pretty much everything, the fact that I’d failed at keeping everyone safe was incredibly frustrating.
Before I could dip back into another funk—one that I couldn’t pull myself out of—I tried to change the subject. Attempting to put as much magical persuasion into my words as possible, I silently willed Asher to forget about earlier and focus on right now.
“Let’s talk about something a little more… sexy,” I said, giving him a suggestive smile.
He smiled back. “Like?”
“Like how hot you look in that furry red blanket,” I said, giggling.
Asher rolled his eyes and pulled the blanket tighter around his face. “Wait, this is what does it for you? Are you sure you’re not just trying to hide something from me?”
I leaned toward him boldly, until my lips were once again touching his. The butterflies in my stomach began to flutter and my head started to swim with feelings I’d never experienced. As our kiss deepened, Asher pulled me closer until I was lying flat against his chest on the couch. My brain started to question my heart over what was right and what was safe. What was I doing here, in my empty house, with a mere high school boy, when so much was already going on? Logically I knew that starting to date a relative stranger was potentially dangerous, but maybe that was part of what attracted me to him. The fact that it was the opposite of what I should’ve been doing might be the very reason I was doing it.