Chapter 3

Kate

Brooks takes over my kitchen, reorganizing my pantry and fridge in such an efficient and intelligent way that I can’t even complain. Tanner takes care of Flick, feeding him, brushing out his knots, and then playing frisbee with him in the backyard until the dog is too tired to stand. Coincidentally, Flick is happiest when he’s been worked to the point of collapse.

That’s a herding dog mix for you.

It seems to me that Brooks is just being Brooks (aka a homemaker/alpha-hole), but I still swear that Tanner is making himself scarce on purpose. Marlowe is … also being himself which, apparently, means being weird and confusing. He’s a hot, volatile mixture of good looks and stubbornness.

“Should I organize the garage so that we can park our truck in it?” Marlowe asks as I stand beside him in the foyer, peering through the garage entry door at the mass of boxes and junk I’ve accumulated since my grandma passed. She would never have allowed me to keep it looking like this. I almost feel ashamed by the mess.

Yep. First, junk in the garage. Then, cum in the cast-iron. It’s too much.

“My truck,” I correct, pointing at myself. “You guys have been in my life for a week. This is still my house, and you’re living here on my empathy and good graces.”

“ Our truck. Our garage. Our lawn that needs to be fucking mowed.” Marlowe takes off down the wood steps and starts opening boxes, frowning at what he sees. “How many goddamn Christmas decorations do we have?”

There it is again: we.

I follow him, crossing my arms and trying to get his attention. He kissed me. I don’t think about that. He punched me. I flex the fingers on my injured hand. He fucked me, and I didn’t know. My skin blazes with heat, but I don’t acknowledge it. He assaulted me.

Long exhale.

Does it make it easier to cope with knowing why he did it? Not really. I should probably follow up on my previous resolution to stab him. Instead, I’m having a domestic disagreement with the bastard.

“I came into this relationship with a paid-off and furnished home, a truck, a business, and a small nest egg of savings. What did you bring with you?”

Marlowe smirks, wearing his witch hat—there’s something more to that than fashion, I suspect—and pulling out a plastic Santa before rolling his eyes. He shuts the box, lifts it up, and moves it to a spare spot against the far wall.

“A big dick,” he tells me, not bothering to correct the term relationship. That’s what we’re in, isn’t it? I’m … I think I’m officially dating these guys. And living with them. And having sex with them. How did that happen?! Against my will, surely.

“A big dick,” I repeat, my eyebrow twitching as I watch Marlowe move all my Christmas boxes into a neat tower against the wall. Carefully, efficiently, and quickly. Why is he so good at doing boring house chores? “Well, I brought a wet pussy into the relationship, so your argument is null and void.”

“Don’t be selfish.” He slaps his hands together, creating a cloud of dust. With a path to the button on the wall cleared away, he taps the red plastic square and the garage door opens. I lost the remote long ago, so … you know … there’s that. “You got three cocks for the price of one, and don’t even act like you don’t like it.” He squints at the late evening sunshine and then turns to narrow his eyes even further on me. “It’s weird that you keep pretending you don’t.”

I narrow my eyes right back at him.

“What did I tell you? I’ll keep pretending so long as you do.”

He marches right up to me, a move that I didn’t expect.

“I’ve stopped pretending. Can’t you tell?” He doesn’t wait for a response, digging his fingers into my hair and leaning down to kiss me again. A zing ricochets from my lips to my toes and back, until my head is swimming. My fingers curl into Marlowe’s sweaty shirt, the one he worked in all day today, and I cling there as his tongue obliterates my brain. The brim of his witch hat is folded between our foreheads, trinkets and charms clinking and swaying.

He releases my mouth, flicks his eyes from mine to my swollen lips, and then turns away and starts working on the garage again. He sighs when he finds the lawn mower buried behind a stack of plastic totes, each one packed with random holiday decor.

“A push reel mower?” he says, and then sighs again. I’m still standing there, kiss-struck and confused. He keeps kissing me, but then he acts like there’s nothing else going on. His hat has a tiny green frog on the brim and way too many pink roses. The fragrance is intoxicating.

“If you’re nervous about seeing Miriam, we can talk about it.” I take a few steps closer, but Lo ignores me, squatting down and brushing old, dead grass from the blades of the red mower. It’s one of those old-fashioned ones, not electric or gas, just elbow grease and pain for power.

“I’m not nervous about Miriam.”

But Marlowe doesn’t look at me, standing back up and grabbing the mower by the handle. He drags it after him and across the driveway, over to the front lawn. I follow slowly behind him as he pauses to fiddle with it again, trying to dislodge a month of disuse and years of poor upkeep on my part.

Lo swipes an arm across his forehead and nearly knocks his hat off.

For some unknown reason, he decides to take his shirt off.

Oh.

We really needed that spell of foreboding. I can’t have this filmed on top of everything else.

Marlowe is a monster, yes, but he’s also the sort of pretty that makes people not care. I press my tongue against the inside of my cheek, staring at him. He’s gripped the mower and is on his way to murdering the grass, shafts of stray sunlight breaking through the clouds.

It’s a very pretty picture but weird as hell, too, with the witch hat. The roses growing out of it. The random frog. The intentional scar on his chest, the one with antlers, horns, wings, and double tails. Those inked arms though. He has big arms but not huge. He’s also a fuckhead, and he owes me.

We might be in a coven, but if he doesn’t give me what I need, I will stop sleeping with him. We can be a platonic coven at that point.

“Can you stop for a minute?” I ask when he passes by. He stops and frowns down at me before folding his arms on the mower’s handlebars. His hat brim droops low over one eye, and the obsidian slash of the other gives him the look of a ghost with char-edged pits for eyes.

“What?” Marlowe drawls, like we weren’t having a pretty important conversation. He knows exactly what he’s doing, what he looks like.

I shiver but hold my ground.

He might be a beautiful monster, but I need more than that.

“Don’t lie to me.” I stand at the edge of the grass, trying to handle the intensity of that stare. This is love spell Marlowe. That’s what he looks like to me. Holy shit. “You don’t get to lie to me, Marlowe, not after how we met.” I swallow as he stands up straight, one hand on the mower, the other pushing his hat away from his eyes. “You violated me, in so many ways. You even admit that you would’ve taken it further, would’ve …”

I can’t even imagine what might’ve happened if I hadn’t told him to stop. He would’ve kept going? Would’ve finished? Inside of me? What if I’d come back from the Witchwoods and had a baby with a man I’d never spoken a single word to?

It’s a horrifying thought.

He opens his mouth, closes it. Shuts his eyes. Leans his forearms on the handles of the mower again, face tilted toward the overgrown lawn. Nobody walks by on the sidewalk. Nobody drives past. Our spell is still working, which is a relief.

“I’m not that sort of man,” he says, like he’s talking to himself as much as he is to me.

“You are that sort of man because you did those actions.” I step toward him, and his eyes open, his head lifting to look at me. “You took me against my will, dragged me into the Witchwoods with no guarantee of escape. So, Marlowe, I’m going to ask you again: are you nervous about this meeting with Miriam?”

“I don’t think we should even go,” he says, the words bursting out of him like he never intended to say that. Once he has, the truth seems to empower him. He throws the mower down on the lawn and walks toward me, crossing his arms as we face off against each other in the front yard. “There’s no point, nothing to gain from this. I just want to start over.”

“I don’t think you understand. I need you to go do this.” I can hear the front door open, and then Flick is sprinting down the steps to join us. Brooks and Tanner wait on the porch, like they came out just to hear this conversation. Or hell, maybe dinner is ready or something?

“ You need me to go visit my ex-girlfriend?” Marlowe asks, like that’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard in his life.

“Yes.” I swallow my feelings, dropping my hand down so that my fingers brush against Flick’s ears. “I need you to visit her because you haven’t accepted it. You told me just yesterday that it feels like you’re having an affair when we have sex. Go see her. Finish it for real. Close this chapter.”

“I don’t want to go,” he growls back at me, teeth clenched.

“You’re going,” Brooks commands from the porch, but all that does is piss Marlowe off even more.

“There’s nothing to gain from this. It’s a waste of time.” Marlowe puts his hands on my upper arms, and I shiver. I like the touch, and I can see in his face that he’s surprised he even did that, touched me so casually.

“It’s not a waste of time. I need you to do this. I need you to be emotionally available, and you’re just … not.” There. I said it. I’m not having him live in my house and say things like our garage and our lawn mower and why do WE have so many Christmas decorations if he’s still holding Miriam somewhere in his heart.

“I’m not going,” Marlowe grinds out as Tanner laughs, like he can see where this whole thing is headed before it even gets there.

“Yes,” I tell him, looking into those dark eyes of his. “You are.”

“What’d I say?” Lo asks, all smarmy and smirky and overconfident. “Tie me up and drag me there if you can.”

Brooks and Tanner come down the steps, like maybe they might tie him up and drag him for me.

But they don’t have to.

I’ve got this.

“You broke my hand,” I whisper, lifting up on my tiptoes and putting my mouth near his ear. “You violated me in the woods, and you promised to take care of me. You’re going.”

“Like hell I am,” he says, and then Friday afternoon rolls around, and there we are, standing on Miriam Waverley’s front porch.