Warlock Brothers of Havenbridge 01 - Spell Bound (20 page)

Drake smiled at the park sign and then beamed back at me.

“I figured we might see if we can find some more butterflies or something.”

“You’re full of surprises, Mason Blackmoor.”

I shrugged. “Not really. What you see is what you get.”

He turned in his seat to stare deeply into my soul. His turquoise eyes peered straight through me, breaking past the layers of bravado I’d carefully constructed around me. He was seeing the real me, the person no one else had ever gotten a chance to see. “That was what I first thought, but you proved me wrong. You keep doin’ that, actually.”

“I don’t understand.”

He glanced away and chewed on his lower lip.

“Just tell me,” I said as I squeezed his hand. “I won’t get mad.”

“Well, if you want me to be perfectly honest.” He stared intently at me to make sure I spoke the truth. After I nodded, he continued, “The reason I first walked up to you at school was that when I was lookin’ for a place to sit down, I looked all around for someone who I felt might be just like me. When I saw you, my first impression was that there was somethin’ about you—I don’t know, familiar, I guess you could say. It didn’t make no sense, but my daddy always told me to follow my gut, so I did. But after I went up to you, I regretted it because you were such a jerk.”

I had no defense for the way I’d acted, so I nodded.

“And then in the woods, you couldn’t stop starin’ at me. But that cockiness that pissed me off was still there, and there was no way in heck I was gonna give you the time of day. But then when we ran into each other again—”

“You mean when you slid your ass across my car?”

Drake laughed. “Yeah. I’d had trouble sleepin’ the night before. I tossed and turned somethin’ dreadful, but when I woke up, I had this need to just run. As fast as I could. So I did, and I ran right into you. And when you chased after me, that was when I realized why you’d been such a jerk. You were a stupid dumbass guy who had a crush on someone and didn’t know how to express it. But with your friends not around, you just went for it and chased me. I thought it was kinda cute.”

That explained his devilish grin at the time. “So then why did you act like such an ass when you came up to me after all that?”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t just roll over because a hot guy chases me around town. I’ve got some self-respect, you know?”

I pulled Drake’s hand to move him closer to me. “You think I’m hot?”

Drake’s eyes fluttered, and he looked everywhere but at me. He evidently hadn’t realized exactly how honest he was going to get.

“Don’t worry about it.” I rubbed my thumb across his light pink lips, which trembled beneath my touch. His response to me set free a tornado of butterflies within my soul. “I think you’re pretty hot too.”

He closed his eyes and tried to shake his mortification away. “So when you got confrontational again, I didn’t know what the heck was goin’ on. And then you saved my life, and I felt like I was on a carousel that was spinnin’ out of control. That’s why I went over to your house that night. I don’t like not knowin’ where I stand with someone. I’ve always been an up-front, in-your-face kinda guy. I tell it like I see it, and I am the way I am. I understand if you have problems with who you really are. I get that. Believe me. It can be a real ball twister havin’ to hide who you are from everyone else.”

No shit. Who could understand that better than a warlock and were?

“But it doesn’t have to be that way, you know? One thing I’ve learned since I lost my parents was that I have to live life my way. By my rules. Life’s too short for anythin’ else.”

He was right. Life was too short to give one flying fuck about the consequences of being with Drake. To hell with everyone else
and
the Conclave. They might not approve of a mixing of the species, but I wasn’t going to live my life by what they wanted, so I pulled Drake all the way to me, nuzzled my forehead against his, and ran my fingers through his silky golden hair. A strong, earthy scent hung in the air between us, and it set my flesh on fire.

I bit my bottom lip as I leered down at Drake’s delicate pink mouth. His lips called to me like a flower to a butterfly, and like the insect, my only desire was to settle upon them and drink till I was drunk.

So when I backed up, I surprised him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just time to go.”

“I don’t understand.”

I grinned at him and opened my car door. “Maybe not now, but you will.”

W
E
STROLLED
down a boardwalk trail that cut through the dense woodlands and deep thickets that covered much of the area. Water from the nearby marshlands collected under the trail. Bees buzzed, and cheery birds sang in the trees all around us. Even without closing my eyes, I could see the magic all around me.

The green of the leaves glowed like emeralds, and the water shimmered like glass. The wildlife around me turned into a chorus, and our footsteps across the soggy wood thumped to its beat.

I’d never been this in tune with the wonder around me before. Had my feelings for Drake somehow unclogged whatever had been holding me back?

“It’s beautiful out here,” Drake said. He took in everything around him, and as he did, his eyes seemed to turn as blue as the sky around us. Did being out here in nature in relative peace call to his inner animal and make him want to shift? It was something I would certainly like to see.

“You can if you want to. It won’t bother me.”

He knitted his brows together. “Now just what are you givin’ me permission to do?”

“You know. What you do.”

“Oh,” he said with a nod. He surveyed our surroundings, no doubt trying to verify if we were truly alone. When he returned his attention to me, he shook his head. “Nah. Not now. Not here.”

It was hard to hide my disappointment. “How come?”

He laced his fingers with mine and smiled. “Because then I wouldn’t be able to enjoy this with you.”

That was a really good answer. “Okay. But you’ll have to show me how you do what you do real soon.”

He nodded. “I can teach you if you want.”

Teach me to be a shifter? “What? How?”

“It’s hard, but it’s not impossible to pull off. With practice and dedication, anyone can get used to
parkouring
.”

I scrunched up my nose. “Did you say park whoring?”

Drake scowled and bumped into me so hard he almost sent me flying off the boardwalk. Thankfully, he still held my hand and pulled me back. “Not park whorin’.
Parkouring
. It’s a French word. You’ve never heard of it?”

So shifters used a French word to describe their shifting ability the way we used the derivation of the French word
grammaire
to refer to our book of spells. “Never,” I answered. “But language isn’t really my thing.”

He chuckled. “I’ve noticed.”

How the hell did a nonshifter learn to shift? Was it just a complicated, secret spell they somehow mastered? I was about to ask when the delighted squeal of a child caught our attention. We turned around to see a five-year-old tromping down the boardwalk to us with his parents, who were trying to catch up with their speeding kindergartener.

Drake crouched down in front of the little guy and smiled. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“Birds!” he yelled as he pointed to the tree to our left. Two yellow-and-green birds sat on a branch, staring at us.

“And they’re pretty birds too,” Drake replied in exaggerated awe.

The boy tweeted at the pair just as his parents finally caught up to him.

“Jordy, what have we told you about running ahead of us?” his exasperated father asked.

“Birds, Daddy,” little Jordy replied, as if that explained his actions.

His mother picked him up and held him in her arms. “He loves birds,” she said as he struggled to get out of her grasp.

“Me too,” Drake replied.

“I’m kinda partial to butterflies now,” I added. Drake glanced at me and smiled.

“We actually saw some down toward the beach,” the father said.

“Really?” Drake asked. He looked around as if he could see the beach from here.

Jordy’s dad nodded and pointed down the path we were on. “Just keep going about another quarter mile and take a right at the fork in the path. It’ll eventually drop you off by the beach. Hopefully those little guys are still there.”

“Thanks,” I said as we waved good-bye to Jordy and his family.

We trotted down the trail. How awesome would it be to run into the same swarm of butterflies I’d summoned the other day? I turned to say that to Drake and noticed his expression had changed.

Grief fell across his previously cheery blue eyes, and the smile he’d worn most of the day had become a thin line. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why. Seeing a family together had reminded him of his family, the one he no longer had.

I’d tried bringing up his past before, but he always managed to either distract me with a hot make-out session or change the course of the conversation. He did that with most things about his past. It was why we still had yet to discuss being magical creatures.

Respecting Drake’s boundaries had been difficult, but it was time to get around them.

I stopped and pulled him close, letting the strength of my fingers around his jaw and neck communicate what I hoped was the comfort of my presence. “It’s okay to miss them and get sad when something reminds you of them.”

“I know,” he replied.

At least he wasn’t denying it. Maybe he was finally ready. “Talk to me.”

He studied me and then sighed in resignation. “Can we walk and do this at the same time?”

“I’m capable of multitasking.”

He smirked as we resumed our walk. “So what do you want to know?”

“Anything you want to share.”

He pondered in silence for a few moments. When the moments stretched into minutes, I figured Drake had decided not to say anything at all. When he finally spoke, I made sure he had my complete attention. “My parents owned and operated a ranch back home. We dealt in cattle mostly. We didn’t live high on the hog like you do, but we were comfortable and happy. I was their only child, but they didn’t want me spoiled or nothin’. They made me do chores before and after school, and I never got to sleep late on the weekends. There was always somethin’ to be done. I hated it at first, gettin’ up before the sun and workin’ till long after it set. The friends I had didn’t have to do that, and it made me real bitter for a while. But then my friends’ parents started gettin’ divorced. And my parents? Shoot! They were just as much in love with each other as I’d ever seen them. That told me they knew somethin’ the rest of the world didn’t. So instead of fightin’ their ways, I went with it. I learned what they had to teach me, and they sure as hell taught me a lot.” He closed his eyes to hold back the welling tears.

“So what happened to them?”

When his eyes opened, tears streamed down his creamy cheeks. I fought the desire to take him in my arms and tell him it was okay, but he had to cast the weight from his shoulders, or he’d never be free and he’d never stop running.

“Drunk driver,” he mumbled. “Speedin’ down the wrong side of a dark country road at eighty miles an hour without his headlights on.”

Shit. At those speeds, his parents probably never knew what had hit them.

His tears suddenly dried, and a fury that rivaled my father’s suddenly twisted his features. “And they never caught the fucker. He slammed into them and drove off.” His eyes were wild with rage. “Can you fuckin’ believe that?”

How the hell was that possible? At those speeds, both cars had to have suffered extensive damage. “That doesn’t make sense.”

He scoffed. “No shit! There was no wreckage from another car found at the accident site. It was like some phantom vehicle slammed into them and then disappeared. The police had nothing to go on.”

Fuck. That was unacceptable. “Maybe I can do something.”

He eyed me. “Like what? Use your power and influence to magically track down the bastard who did this?”

“Well, yes.”

A small smile threatened to erase the scowl from his lips. “That’s very sweet, but I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You’re not. I’m offering.”

Silence once again descended upon us, but Drake’s mood had changed. He was still angry, hurt, sad, and a whole host of other emotions I probably would never understand, but those emotions didn’t seem to hold him as tightly as they once did. Maybe now that he could talk to me, his pain wouldn’t get the chance to drown him again.

That was when I decided I was going to do whatever I could to give Drake the closure he needed.

“You know,” he said with my hand once again in his. “My parents taught me a whole heck of a lot, ’cause, ya know, that’s what parents do. But why don’t they ever teach us how to go on without them?”

“But we’re not without them.” I squeezed his hand and motioned to the natural beauty around us. “I believe your parents are with us now, just as my mother is. Their essences have become part of the world. They live and breathe all around us. We might not get to see them anymore, but they’re here. I know it. On the breeze, in the songs of the birds, maybe even in the swarms of butterflies.”

Drake’s grin pressed pause on his grief. “There you go, surprisin’ me again. I didn’t expect you to be so sentimental and poetic. You’re definitely not the tough guy you pretend to be.” He leaned closer to me as we walked, and I wrapped my arm around his waist.

“I’m very tough,” I said, jutting out my chin. “I’ll deny otherwise.”

Drake leaned his head against my shoulder. “Just so you know, you don’t have to be tough for me.”

“And neither do you,” I added.

He gazed up at me and smiled. “I think I’d like that.”

“Not being tough?”

He shook his head. “I’ll always be tough. That’s who my parents raised me to be. I just kinda like the thought of havin’ someone that I don’t have to be tough for.”

So did I, and strangely enough, the idea didn’t terrify me as much as I thought it would.