Page 10 of A Moth to the Flame (Utopia #1)

Chapter

Seven

DUKE

This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and that’s saying something.

Worse than when my mama died. I knew there was no light at the end of that tunnel.

Worse than the first time I woke up in a cold sweat after dreaming about Cordelia, when my mind showed me how dark I was inside. Worse than the night I realized?—

“Why are you so convinced this is something I did?” she snaps at me, slapping me out of my anxiety and back into the worst present of my entire fucking life.

“You’re the sadist. Your modus operandi has always been to make my life a living hell.

If this isn’t the worst nightmare I’ve ever had, then you did this to us.

Why isn’t our horrible past good enough for you, Duke?

Why can’t you just let sleeping dogs lie? ”

Fuck. What if she’s right? What if me touching her for the first time on the night of her Granny’s wake started all this?

I couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t thinking straight. Or at all. In that moment when her grief was the sharpest thing I ever tasted, I wasn’t me anymore. Worse—maybe I was more me than I ever let myself be.

I swallow thickly. Whatever’s wrong with me is getting worse.

Being inside her skin is a whole different ballgame compared to fantasizing about marking every inch of it. What am I going to dream about now? Brutalizing my body while I’m stuck in hers, or having free rein of her body while I’m inside of it in an entirely different way?

She narrows my eyes. Looks fucking weird to see my hands on my hips like that. That’s a woman’s stance. “Cat got your tongue, Duke? Afraid to admit you went a little too far with the voodoo doll you made of me in eighth grade?”

Why does she think I’d do that? Why does she think I’d know how to do that?

I take a deep breath then lick her lips.

Goddamn.

That’s the softest, plumpest thing I’ve never felt with my own tongue. It takes every ounce of my willpower not to bite into her flesh.

Focus, Duke.

I can’t, though. How am I supposed to focus when it feels like I’ve finally lost my mind at the same time as getting a reward?

I’m well aware that makes no damn sense. Would I feel this way if I woke up in anyone else’s body? Something tells me no.

I try to imagine it, but I can’t. Even when I wished to be someone else—someone smarter, someone richer, someone more successful—I couldn’t quite give up on myself. Couldn’t quite kick the hope that I might be normal someday.

I’ve worked hard to keep anyone else from getting dragged down with me. Even my family is ignorant of what my life is really like.

Maybe I’m not the only one with dark secrets.

“Delia,” I start as nice as I can, but it sounds wrong. Never in my life have I used that stupid nickname that only a few of the old ladies in town call her. “Have you ever…had any strange thoughts about me?”

She scoffs. “If by strange you mean murderous, then yes.”

All right, so this sickness is a one-way street. Good to know.

Kind of new to realize she hates me as much as I hate her. Not sure what I’ve done to deserve that. She has no idea why she makes my skin crawl. That’s a secret I’ll take to my grave, a secret she obviously doesn’t share .

“Wait.” She pins me with a glare so sharp it could cut glass. “Have you ever had strange thoughts about me?”

I shake her head. Nope. No way. Nothing to see here, Cordelia. Except me wearing all your curves that I’m finally going to?—

“I’m gonna throw up,” I mumble.

She rolls my eyes. “Oh, sure. You’re allowed to have a mental breakdown, but when I pass out in the middle of town, that’s a problem for you.”

“We’re not in public here,” I hiss.

This is the other reason I can’t stand Cordelia McCoy.

She’s always acted like she’s the only one with problems. There’s no way this isn’t her fault somehow.

She’s the one who’s never been happy with what she has, always reading about something better in those big books of hers.

Untouchable, with her big words and her bigger ideas.

She rubs my hand over my forehead. “Passing out or throwing up isn’t going to help either of us. Do you have any pennies?”

That’s a random question, but Cordelia has never made sense to me. “Why?”

“I made a wish that you didn’t exist anymore,” she mumbles, “last night. Let’s just go back to the well, and I’ll wish that everything was back to normal.”

A flare of pain sears her head and chest.

She wished I didn’t exist.

I can’t explain it, but that knowledge feels like she stabbed me in the heart.

“Hate to break it to you, but I’m still here. I just exist in your body instead of mine. What else did you do?”

She winces. “Got drunk with Neveah at The Flame and made a list of all the ways you probably disappoint the people you sleep with.”

This fucking woman.

It’s just like her to think that I’m not capable—of anything. I might not have gotten straight As in school like she did, but I’ll be damned if she’s going to insult the way I treat other people.

“The women I sleep with are always satisfied.”

For a few hours at most, and that’s all. Not sure it can even be called sleeping with them when I never actually sleep beside them .

That’s not the point. This isn’t my fault. Wishing wells don’t work, and?—

Fuck. Body swaps don’t happen either.

Cordelia smirks at me. Do I really look like this much of an asshole when I make that face?

“Sure, buddy. Tell yourself whatever helps you sleep at night.”

The nerve of this woman. I’d love to tell her that she’s probably never satisfied a man in her life, but I’m above lying. Besides, I don’t want to give her a reason to tell me about all the men who’ve probably begged her to… Nope. Not gonna think about that.

“Okay. Maybe it’s not the wish,” she murmurs as she paces.

“The specifics obviously didn’t translate.

There was no flash of light, nothing magical happened when I threw the penny in the well.

I woke up in my own bed, but I didn’t realize anything was amiss until I got to town.

When did you realize you were in my body? ”

“When I went to piss this morning and didn’t have a dick to point at the toilet!” I never thought I’d miss my bastard dick until it was stolen from me.

“Did you have any unusual dreams?” she asks, like the worst kind of cop.

“No,” I snap.

Then I stop to really think about it. I’ve been having unhinged dreams about her for years. They weren’t necessarily triggered by anything specific. There’s no rhyme or reason to why I am the way that I am, no way to cure what ails me.

“Maybe you should find Neveah and make a list of all the ways that my partners enjoy my company,” I suggest.

Shit, if I thought it would undo this mess, I’d ruin my reputation in the middle of town and pray at the altar of Cordelia, the junior Witch of the Appalachians.

Wait a minute.

“You ever heard any rumors about your granny being the Witch of the Appalachians?”

Everyone in our little town knows all kinds of rumors. The ones about Granny McCoy didn’t make anyone treat her differently, though. They never avoided her like they do with some of the other town weirdos.

Cordelia winces again. That worries me for more reasons than normal. “Yeah. And since I’ve been cleaning out the homestead, I’ve found some…weird stuff that lends a little credence to that gossip.”

“What kind of weird?”

“Animal skulls, hidden in the deepest recesses of the cupboards,” she admits.

“Deer skulls?”

It’s not unusual for hunters to mount their prized kills on the wall.

Maybe Granny McCoy forgot she wanted to display her trophies.

She was really old and plain out of her mind toward the end.

About two weeks ago, she had showed up in town, hauling water out of the well, naked as the day she was born.

It had taken four of the town biddies to haul her back to her cottage, because she wasn’t backing down without a fight.

Cordelia shakes my head, snapping me back to the here and now. “I don’t think so. They look like some kind of big dog. Wolves, maybe?”

I’ve never seen a wolf around these parts. I’m pretty sure all the packs were killed off hundreds of years ago. Might have been a coyote, though. They’ve been making a comeback lately.

“Not that weird,” I insist.

“They were missing teeth.”

I shrug. “Even bones decay with age.”

“Only their pointy teeth, Duke. All four of them, every skull.”

Okay. I’ll admit it. That’s weird.

We have another problem to tackle.

I glance around the garage. It’s nearing nine. I should’ve opened for business an hour ago. For once, I’m grateful that I don’t have many customers.

“Until we get this figured out, we need to lay low. We might look like the same people, but the second anyone talks to us, they’re going to know we’re not ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not have the people I’m close to figure out what’s going on. ”

My own shoulders fall in a way that I’m all too familiar with. I look beaten down in the worst way. She clears my throat, croaking, “Yeah.”

That’s it. No argument. No backtalk. Nothing.

And then it fucking hits me. She just buried her only family. She’s not close to anyone in town, so no one is going to realize anything different about her.

“Let’s start with the most obvious option,” I suggest, gentling my tone. I might not like Cordelia, but I refuse to kick her when she’s down. “Even if your wish didn’t start all of this, that’s our best bet.”

“Oh, now you like my idea because you can’t come up with anything better?” She straightens my shoulders then glares at me. “Shocker. Give me a penny, and I’ll go back to the well.”

I don’t think throwing my entire change jar into that old well is going to help, but she’s right. I don’t have any better ideas, and we’ve got nothing to lose by trying.

She doesn’t, anyway.

Me? I’ve been lost for a very long time. Any hope I ever had of taming the animal that lives inside me feels like a pipe dream now. I have a bad feeling that I’m going to lose what little is left of the real me before this is all said and done.