Page 65 of Hexed & Hazy

Her cheeks flush. “Sorry. I know you were busy all night, but I’ve been waiting, and… I mean, it’s no big deal at all. I really just wanted to know if you’ll dance with me? So, will you? Dance with me?”

She’s practically out of breath by the time she stops rambling.

And I should say yes. Farrah has danced with plenty of other people. She seems to be enjoying herself, and the last thing I want to do is ruin that.

But I don’t want to dance. I want to go home.

And home isn’t a place. I’ve heard so many people say that—that home is a person, a feeling—but I don’t know it for sure until I look over Farrah’s shoulder and see Rowan leaving the party with someone else. She’s always been the first person to leave an event, but she usually goes alone.

Now, she’s going with someone who used to be one of my best friends. How am I supposed to feel?

My heart races. I don’t look away until her auburn hair is out of view.

I shake my head slowly. “Sorry. I was just about to leave. Next time?”

Farrah deflates. “Um. Yeah… sure.”

Guilt doesn’t have time to hit me.

I run from it, the same way I’ve been running from everything else and everyone else. For so damn long. So damn fast.

Nothing else matters. I need to talk to Rowan, but she’s already gone, and by the time I’m home, she’ll probably be in bed.

That doesn’t stop me from hopping in my car, grateful I stayed sober for the night. It’s too easy to speed through Starbrook when everyone else is at the party. I park, scramble out, and there she is—the back of her head, her hand on the doorknob, ready to disappear before I can catch her.

But I’m here, just in time. Again. I don’t worship her gods, but I’m starting to think the fates are on my side after all.

“Ro?”

She turns around, and I jog up, meeting her on her porch. Rowan spent the night dancing, laughing at someone else’s jokes, but she still looks like she belongs to me as her hair falls around her face and goose bumps form over her arms.

“I’ve asked everyone,” I blurt. “I found everyone. No one—they all say they didn’t do it.”

“Slow down.” She steps forward and takes my hands, her warmth meeting my ice. “What do you mean? The hex?”

“Tonight, I talked to everyone, and they all said⁠—”

She laughs—actually laughs, but it sounds exhausted. There’s nothing funny about this. “Have you considered that you’re sabotaging yourself? Maybe you want something serious, and that’s why what you were doing before didn’t⁠—”

“You’re right.”

She blinks. “I am?”

This isn’t how it was supposed to go. I was supposed to apologize, tell her how sorry I am that I’ve failed, that I want to be ready for her, to be right for her. Those words, the ones I practiced in my mirror, don’t feel like a good fit anymore.

“Maybe my heart belonged to someone else the whole time, and I didn’t realize,” I whisper. “Maybe… maybe I’m hoping she’ll give me a chance.”

And maybe that will be enough to break the hex. Or maybe I’ve always been hexed, from the time I was born, and that led to me pushing everyone away… including her. But I don’t want to keep doing that; I can’t keep living like this. Knowing Rowan as deeply as I do now, I can see everything clearly. Loneliness. Fear. Guilt.

I’ve been alone for long enough. I know that with certainty when her fingers weave into the front of my shirt, and she drags me closer, her eyes narrowed on mine.

“One chance.” That’s all she says before her lips fuse with mine.

I’ve never known Rowan to give second chances, and I wouldn’t expect her to change for me, especially not in this way. And that’s fine. One chance is all I need. I don’t intend to fumble it, not this time.

I feel desperately for the door, and we stumble inside, shutting it behind us.

“The fire,” she says, shuddering.