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Chapter Fourteen

I blinked my eyes open. Thoughts hovered just beyond my reach as I shifted back into being fully awake. In front of me were the beautiful windows that led out to the view of the Atlantic. The waves pummeled the shoreline time and time again. We were in the room I dubbed as mine upstairs. The one that was a mirror of the living room downstairs, only this one was slightly smaller and a little more perfect. My head ached, and the shakes started to take over my body again. I tried to hide, digging myself into the couch, but instead, I came up against a hard body.

I inhaled, and cinnamon coated every inch of me. Travis.

I lifted my head slowly up, trying to ignore the pull toward him. He was asleep, or had been, too. He was just now waking up. The sun from outside shone in on the both of us. “Hey,” he said. His hair was all out of style, and I resisted the urge to make it right. I hardly ever saw him like that.

I sat up, inching myself away from him and pulling my knees to my chest. “Where is everyone?”

He rubbed his face. “They headed back out to look for Liam. They knew you were out of it, so they left us here. You practically fueled that whole locator spell, Norah. You can’t do that.”

My hands shaking only reinforced that idea. I tried to hide it, but Travis noticed anyway.

“Here,” he said, sitting forward and moving a candy bar into my view. “They said you would need this when you woke up.”

I smiled down at it, then tore the wrapper open and took a piece. The chocolate helped soothe me a little, but it wasn’t just that right now. It was everything else, too. It was the frayed nerves, and Liam missing, and being this close to Travis without being close to Travis. I chewed the chocolate bar and swallowed.

“Better?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Not really. Liam’s gone. Someone is stealing witches’ magic. It may even be Liam, but not Liam because he has a familiar on him, Travis. A familiar.”

Travis took my shaking hands in his. “You were trembling when we laid you on the couch, so I sat here with you. That seemed to calm you.”

Why was he telling me this? Why did he care?

“I lost a friend once, Norah. I know how this feels.”

“Jax?” I asked, curious. He’d never talked about it with me before. I dared a glance at him. His face was pale as he stared out at the breaking waves.

He nodded, an almost invisible movement. “He was my best friend. Him leaving us was—” He broke off and shook his head. “When you think you’re going to have someone forever, the thought of not having them doesn’t even enter your head. I know what Jax did was wrong. I know he had to be punished, but stripping him, sending him away, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Sometimes, I still wish he was here.” He looked away and blew out a breath. “I’m telling you this because I won’t let the same thing happen to Liam. We’re a coven. There are five of us. You, me, Randy, Gabe, and Liam. Nothing is happening to any one of us like it did with Jax. I won’t let it.”

“How can you be so sure, though? I mean, it happened to Jax, and you were a coven then.”

Travis wiped a hand down his face and then squeezed my hands again, staring me straight in the eye. “I’m not blind. I’m not dumb. It kills me to admit this in one way because Jax and I were so close, but the coven didn’t feel the same with Jax as it does with you.” He swallowed, his green eyes drawing me in, and the tug in my stomach tightening. “With you, Norah, it feels complete. I don’t know how else to describe it. You know I feel it. From the other night in your room…”

Yeah. That. My heart lifted up through my throat and my fraying magic bubbled at the surface. It was shimmering and aching.

“Listen, I know I’ve been a dick. I can be a dick. It’s kind of my thing. I was—”

“Broken,” I offered, moving closer to him. “Losing Jax broke you.”

He nodded. “And with my sister on top of that, and…” He trailed off, troubled, looking like he didn’t know what words to say.

“There’s something else?” I asked. “The rest of them, they say you won’t talk about it, but they think something else happened when you were with your sister.”

A small smile lifted the corners of his lips. “It’s so stupid. It seems even ridiculous to say anything right now, but yeah, something did happen.” He took a long pause and then stared at me. “I thought I was in love with this girl.”

My heart constricted. I tried to pull away, but Travis held on tight.

“I thought I was in love with this girl. I was broken up about it because she didn’t choose me, Norah, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because of the Order. Then, you came. You came and there was an immediate attraction. I resisted it because I was mad at everything. Mad at Jax. Mad at the Order. Pissed at the girl. But she doesn’t even matter anymore because it hasn’t been about her since you showed up.” His throat worked. “It’s just you now, Norah.” His gaze burned into mine as my heart did flips. “I hate that it’s taken me so long to figure any of this out because I was so fucking stubborn, but I—”

“You want me?” I asked, my eyebrows raising.

He half laughed. “Not just like that.” He swallowed. “When you had a knife sticking out of you, I thought I knew what it felt like to lose someone, but I didn’t know a damn thing until then. That was the moment I realized what a fucking ass I’d been this whole time.”

A smile worked its way to my face. “I could’ve told you when you were being an ass.”

“You actually did tell me, a lot, when I was being an ass.”