Page 50 of Autumn Ritual

But the masked devil was too injured to come and take care of me.

By Friday night, I broke down and called my mother. She was there with a care package an hour later.

“You have to tell him, cara mia,” she said, smoothly my hair back.

I sipped the electrolyte drink. “I know.”

“We’re here for you, whatever you need!” Mamma leaned into the mirror, lifting her cheeks to pull the wrinkles taut. “I don’t look that old.”

I rolled my eyes. “I think I’m going to spend the winter out here. Stay at the lake and keep writing.”

My mother spun round in horror. “You’ll freeze!”

“The cabin is insulated,” I drawled. “Without Wi-Fi to distract me, I’m able to get words on the page. I want to get these books ready to publish before the summer solstice changes…everything.”

Mamma looked at me as though I’d grown a second head. “But who’s going to look after you?”

“Not that this is a good representation, but I’m fine.” I gestured to myself. “I just needed a bit of help getting through a rough patch.”

Looking out the small window to the lake beyond, Mamma pulled a face. “I can stay here. Maybe I’ll draw something melancholy. In charcoal. The winter goddess ascending from the lake—yes! Just like Botticelli’s Venus!”

“You don’t use charcoal,” I muttered. “It’s too bland.”

“I can adapt,” she countered.

The thought of having my mother here was scarier than the uncertainty of the future. Her energy was vivacious. Even if she was holed up in another room, I would feel her. No…for this plan to work, I needed absolute quiet.

“I’ll be fine. But you can come check on me whenever you want,” I promised and squeezed her hand.

Mamma sat on the edge of the tub, kissed my knuckles, and smiled. “So! The writer comes to town. Falls for the boy next door. But after a few plot twists, she has to decide how their story will end.”

That was up to forces beyond my ken.

I knew one thing for sure: I didn’t want to write him out of the story. Not now that the romantic subplot had thickened. But there was still the business of him hiding behind masks and shadows, and the teeny, tiny bomb the don dropped. Those might take a bit of groveling. Of course, I was one to talk. I had a life-changing secret growing inside me.

Chapter 18 – Cam

Hobbling through the dusk, I crept to the den window. Between the left arm wrapped with gauze and the right shoulder that ached when I moved it wrong, I managed to grip the pane. But the glass didn’t budge.

Sara had upgraded the security on the property.

A brief smile fluttered across my lips. No one had been here or messed with her.

Good girl.

That left me in a bind. I could knock. We could have a civilized interaction.

But that wasn’t what my girl liked. She craved the thrill of the mask. Hell, the things we’d done this fall between the pumpkins and the ropes and the pagan ritual…she was into a darker kind of romance. And I could be that dangerous, psychotic lover.

Sara wasn’t a white picket fence, suit and tie, having dinner at the club kind of a girl.

She craved something more.

I wasn’t going to let a little thing like an altercation that turned into a hit-and-run stop me from giving that to her. I fisted my hand and slammed it against the window.

Pain ricocheted up my arm.

The window was solid. A double pane, modern contraption, it didn’t crack under the pressure.