Page 30 of Bad Witch

“Yeah, peaches, I do,” I rasped.

Chapter

Eight

Tempest

* * *

No one had ever called me lovely before. No one had ever looked at me the way Fender was, the way he often did, either.

He was watching me now, waiting for me to reply, and I had no idea what to say. What did lovely mean to him? Did he think I was lovely, like a friend? Or did he think I was lovely, in a “more than a friend” kind of way?

There was no way for me to know without asking, and I couldn’t do that. “Thank you,” I said, because I had no idea what else to say. “That’s…so nice.”

His throat worked. “You’re nice.” His gaze dropped to my lips before his eyes, now gold and glinting, slid back up.

This whole interaction was beyond the scope of my experience. This felt more than friendly, but I’d been wrong before. I placed his prosthesis back in place and rolled the leg of his jeans down. “Does that feel a little better?”

“What?” he said roughly.

“Your leg. Has the pain reduced?”

He looked down as if he’d forgotten I’d been massaging oil into it. “Uh…yeah,” he said. “Yeah, much better.”

I smiled. “I’m so glad. Just because we’re…out here,” I said, motioning to the forest around us, “doesn’t mean we stop the work we’ve been doing. You’re making such great progress.” And blurring the lines between us wouldn’t be wise. I had to remember that. Fender’s recovery was more important than anything else. “I have the potion that helps with sleep in my bag as well⁠—”

“No,” he said. “I need to be alert while we’re out here.”

I took his pain elixir from my bag. “Fine, I’ll let that go, but you have to take the one I made for your pain.”

“You’re stubborn, has anyone told you that?”

“Yes,” I said. “Ma…Maria said it to me many times.” Slipping up and saying Matilda would be really bad, and I already had a habit of saying way too much around him. Fender knew a lot of witches, if he mentioned the name to any of them, my cover could be blown. Fender made me feel safe, and that was a rare thing. Because of that, I tended to blurt things I’d never told anyone else. He might not know who or what a Matilda was, but Willow and Magnolia and any other witches the hounds knew could.

I busied myself serving up our meal, and we settled in around the fire.

At least one Matilda, the only one I knew of, had tried to break out and live a normal life, and she’d been condemned, despised, and chased back into hiding. Witches only wanted Matilda for one thing, to do their job, then leave. They didn’t want a reminder of what they’d begged us to do. They certainly didn’t want us sitting on their couch during their movie nights or working in a clinic healing their loved ones. No, they wanted nothing to do with us when we were done with the job we were bound to do. And it was one of the reasons we were forbidden to even try.

I had no choice. If I wanted to continue with the life I was building, I had to keep my secret. At all cost.

“So, after you went to live with Maria, I’m guessing somewhere in the forest, you both hunted and kept to yourselves?” he asked me.

He really wasn’t letting this go. “Yes,” I said. If I kept my answers short, there was no chance of me saying more than I should.

“Where did you live before that? You said your mother died, what about your father?” he asked in that low, calm voice, gently pushing me for more information.

Had I done something to make him ask me all these things? Did he suspect me of something? “We lived on a kind of farm, I guess. He died as well.”

“How?”

Fear spiked through me, hard and fast. “I realize you have limited emotions, Fender, and might be missing it, but I don’t like to talk about my childhood at all, okay? It wasn’t good. It was the very opposite of good. I’m not sure why you’re asking me all these questions, or why you’re looking at me like that, but I assure you I can be trusted. I am trustworthy,” I blurted before I could think better of it.

He lowered his fork, an intense expression transforming his face, his eyes darkening as that gold shimmer slid over his amber irises. Danger. He was broadcasting a whole lot of danger. “Did your father hurt you?”

The growl in his voice sent ice down my spine. I shot to my feet, everything in me screeching for me to run, alarm bells ringing through my skull so loudly I struggled to hear anything else. “I don’t want to talk about this,” I said.

“Tempest,” he stood.