Page 27 of Flirty Fall Fling

He stares at the paper, and then he folds it and lets it go. The flame takes it, and I don’t think he blinks once. His hands rest on his knees, and he relaxes.

There are three more jars. I remove the lids and line them up for him.

“Now you’ll empty these three on top, concentrating on what you’ll gain when the curse is broken,” I explain.

One after another, he dumps them on the first. The smoke curls in the air, and the breeze shifts around us.

I throw the last of the salt in a wide arc over the coals and whisper the sealing words, “Let it be done.”

Those three things that hurt him are now ash. My breathing slows, and a calmness settles over us.

After the parchment and the clearing, I sit beside him.

“It’s quiet up here,” he says when I get up to add more logs to the fire.

“Escaping is the point. You can learn a lot about yourself without the noise of the outside world. This is bliss,” I say, smiling.

“Never thought of it like that,” he says, and neither of us moves.

My breathing changes, and everything that’s been running on a loop in my brain stops. His arm is close enough that warmth bleeds across the space without any contact.

“Blaire.” His voice is low.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

When I turn my head, he’s closer than I expected. Firelight catches in those blue-green eyes. He’s not guarding anything, just sitting beside me in the dark and looking at me like I’m someone he recognizes.

My hand rests on the bench between us. His pinkie shifts half an inch toward mine without making contact. The gap between our fingers says more than either of us could.

“We should consider heading back,” I say, standing, not wanting to find out what would happen if I didn’t move.

“Do we have to leave?”

I turn to him. “We can stay as long as you want.”

“Great. I think I need more of this.”

He tilts his chin toward the sky, and I sit beside him, leaving inches of space between us this time. The fire has burned to a bed of embers, and they’re pulsing orange. Darkness moves in around us. The coals warm my shins as the cold brushes across my shoulders. A shiver rushes over me.

Jamie stands, removes his jacket, and hands it to me.

“I can’t take it,” I say. “I can add more wood.”

He doesn’t allow me to argue, just places it on my shoulders. I smile, snuggling into the thick fabric. It smells like him.

“Appreciate it. I brought tea,” I offer. “Want some?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I walk to the Bug, grab the thermos from the back seat, and return to him. I pour steaming tea into the lid cup and hand it to him. We take turns sipping it.

“I used to keep the fire going until sunrise when I was a teenager,” I tell him, wishing for simpler times. “My aunt Flora didn’t believe in curfews.”

Just as we both look up, a star shoots across the sky.

“Make a wish.”