Page 106 of The Puck Bunny

Letting her go, I shake my head and start the car before I make us later than we are. “I don’t know, my little puck bunny. What am I going to do with you?”

“I’ve been wondering that myself.” She pauses and then, as if deciding to go for it, she turns to face me. “You say I fit in here, but the problem is you don’t exactly fit in here, at least not comfortably.” She stares up at me, her words turning into whispers. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

“It’s a temporary problem, sweetheart. This is where my roots are, where I’m from. I’ll fit in because I belong here and because I want to be here. I want the peace.” I’m sure about that much. I feel like I’ve been through hell right now, but I feel whole enough to move ahead even if I’m limping.

“Temporary?” she says. “What do we do in the meantime while you’re shoe-horning yourself back into the genie’s bottle?”

I snort. “It’s not like that. I’ll fit in. I’m already feeling the pull of my roots.”

“It’s exactly like that. You think that, after you make it to the big time, you can come back and feel the same as before you left?”

“Probably not, but better than I have in a long while.” I stop at a stop sign with no traffic. A simple thing to do, basic and calming. The absence of other cars, the quiet, jiggles loose any remaining tightness in my chest. “I was lost, Sara. I needed to come home.”

“How long before you leave again when the big time comes calling?”

“Never. The big time will have to come to me from now on.”

She laughs and says, “You’re right. You’ve made it so big, you can live life on your own terms now.”

“I always could.” I pull her in and whisper in her ear, “So could you.”

She shivers and goosebumps rise on the delicate skin in the hollow beneath her ear.

We drive by a strip mall on the right and I swerve to pull in the parking lot.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Living life on my own terms,” I tell her. There’s a jewelry store in this mall and I’m going in.

CHAPTER 33

SARA

We’re parked in the fire lane in front of a jewelry store. I get out of the car and follow him in, reluctant to leave him alone. “Did you forget to buy your mom a gift?”

“No.” He reaches for the door and pulls me in with him. “Not for my mother.”

He stares at me. That jelly feeling takes over my belly as he kisses me. The kiss sparks through me like an electric shock, doing nothing to calm the jelly.

“How much do you like your job?”

He pulls me inside the store and my mind scrambles to figure out where he’s going with this question and how I should answer him. But then I realize I don’t need to figure out how to answer him; I need to give him my honest answer, regardless of how I think he’ll react.

I stop in the middle of the busy store, noticing plush the carpeting while he shows me that dimple. I exhale, then set the truth free. “I love everything about it. Even the boring stuff. Even Margaret and her knit Brawlers hats.”

“Margaret?”

“She works with me and is always wearing—it doesn’t matter. Why are you asking about my job?”

“I had a suspicion you like it more than you’ve let on. That your complaints are more, let’s say, a defense mechanism.”

“Maybe you’re right, but why are you asking?”

“Because… I want to see you. I want to go for a relationship between us, but without causing you any problems. Without causing problems for either of us,” he says as if it explains everything.

“And?” I wave my hand, waiting for more because I can’t for the life of me puzzle out what my job and our relationship have to do with a jewelry store.

“I have an idea.”