Chapter Twenty-one

That’s Just Hysterical

RILEY

After dropping Mila off, Riley drove himself home, his fingers curled around the wheel like talons, digging into the leather to avoid punching something.

He felt like the worst kind of ghoul for deceiving her. Riley hadn’t exactly lied, but he had omitted the truth and now he’d have to live with the consequences.

He parked his car in the driveway and sat for a moment, still clutching the steering wheel, still hating himself. Riley lay his head backward against the headrest and closed his eyes, taking a moment to remember how kissing Mila had felt. Magical, exhilarating, real . The way she’d tasted, the way she’d felt pressed against his chest, the little noises she’d made.

Good thing they hadn’t gone any further than kissing, or Riley wasn’t sure he’d have had the strength to do what needed to be done. Not that keeping away from Mila was going to be any easier as things stood.

Riley sat there in his car in the cold, alternatively regretting what he’d done and then convincing himself it had been the right choice. These thoughts circled over his heart and brain, their contrasting reasonings an endless loop that was threatening to drive him insane.

Right decision or not, Riley punched the wheel in frustration and finally got out of the car, trudging through the snow to his front door. The moment he stepped inside the house, he was greeted by the smell of the Chinese food they’d eaten that still clung to the air and the faint smoke of the dying embers in the fireplace.

The smells were no bother. They could be easily dispelled. He opened a window and the frigid winter wind took care of purging the air in a few minutes.

But the silence that greeted him was almost suffocating.

After tossing his keys on the kitchen counter, Riley ignored the carton boxes a while longer and went into his study to retrieve the magical tome he’d borrowed from his mother’s library earlier that day.

He sat at his desk and opened the book, flipping the pages until he reached the section on the possible reasons why unrelated witches might experience mental bonds.

Being under the influence of a shared spell was a prominent one. Good, that would only reinforce Mila’s theory if she did some research.

But that wasn’t what he was looking for. Riley kept reading until he reached the passage that interested him and which confirmed his worst fears.

He snapped the book shut. No matter what the fine print said, he and Mila couldn’t be together. It was for her own good.

Riley threw the book into a drawer where it landed with a heavy thud. In a fit of frustration, he slammed the drawer shut and locked it, out of sight, out of mind. Then he went to the living room to clear out the take-out boxes. On his third trip to the bin, a tiny slip of paper caught his attention. It was the message Mila had found inside the fortune cookie and had refused to share with him.

Riley picked it up from the floor and read it.

Sometimes love is staring you right in the face.

Oh, that was just hysterical. So much for Glenda’s mistrust of fortune cookies. Apparently, they were spot on.

Pity it wasn’t meant to be.

Riley crunched the tiny slip of paper in his fist and then threw it on the dying embers in the fireplace.

The paper twisted, darkened, and soon caught fire, disappearing in a blink just like his future with Mila had.