Page 19 of Hopelessly Teavoted

Azrael looked like his heart was breaking, and it made sense. It was tragic not to see them himself to say goodbye.

Goddess, why couldn’t she and Az have just let go and loved each other the way the Harts did?

Like an old-fashioned movie or slow music that wound its way around the table of a record player, pumping out blood and passion and sensations.

She was caught in a memory, the temptation to want that with him.

To dance a tango in the grand ballroom of Hart Manor under the moonlight.

To share passionate kisses like the ones she’d witnessed between Benedict and Persephone from inside a claw-foot soaking tub when she and Az would sneak around the house as kids.

All that and more.

Her words had fallen short in showing how his mom had reached for his tearstained face, or how his dad looked both formal and welcoming in a suit as always, white hair brushed back and clean in death.

If only she had real magic to show him how much his parents cared.

If only she and Azrael hadn’t been so perfect and so awful together for that one day.

Then she could at least touch him and distract him from the grief and loss winding into his soul.

But he had been absolutely clear. After two years of late-night clumsy phone calls, confusing texts, and summer internships keeping them on their respective coasts, one day, he had just shown up.

She had been dreaming of him, and in the dreams, she ran through flames and called his name.

The next thing she knew, he was on a red-eye flight.

He walked from the train station near her school in the rain.

Said he’d used what was left in his bank account on the round-trip ticket.

Told her he had just needed to be there.

That he had to see her in that moment, even just for the weekend.

That he’d heard her calling to him in the universe.

Summoning him. She had thought, for a foolish instant, that it was the soulmate-level love that his parents had.

When she asked why Benedict and Persephone didn’t pay for the ticket, he laughed. Thunder booming overhead, he told her that when you finally decide to seize your destiny and go for what you want, it ought to be on your own terms and with your own money.

It had been so perfect then.

Before he’d changed his mind.

They had stood in the rain awkwardly for a few moments, six years ago, chests heaving in a tense pause while they decided.

Droplets gathered and fell from his long lashes.

She remembered all too well how his lips had pressed against hers, gentle at first. How he had cradled her face, how desperate she had been to give in to the inevitability of the moment.

Kisses turned harder. Hands wove into soggy hair.

The feel of his mouth against hers had been like coming up for fresh air after breathing smog for her entire life.

His hands had traced her sides, his fingers warm, stable, and unwieldy all at once.

She had wanted him to touch her everywhere.

The imprints of his thumbs felt tattooed into her hips.

His fingers slipped under her shirt to the dimples where her back met her ass.

Venus dimples, he’d called them, kissing them reverently in her room later and then moving lower, while she thanked her lucky stars her roommate had agreed to clear out for the weekend.

She wished she didn’t remember the slick drawl of those moments quite so accurately.

Somehow, on the creaky and uncomfortable twin bed of her dorm room, Azrael had touched her like they were more than two brash twenty-year-olds hooking up in a dormitory.

It had been a homecoming, his lips on hers and the taste of his name on her tongue, and then the way she came undone when he moved that lush, magical mouth lower and lower.

Afterward, she had thought this was it. That this would be forever. She woke up to the smell of him, woods and tart lemonade, and she had wanted to tell him she loved him. To make him scream her name and beg and profess his love for her.

But he got up to go get them coffee, promised that he could never let her want for anything, and he came back an hour later, with two cups gone cold and a strange expression on his face as he explained that this was just one time, just to get it out of his system, and that they had no obligation to each other.

We’re just friends , he had said.

I don’t think of you that way.

It doesn’t mean anything.

She’d have to be pretty fucking desperate to start the heartache up again after they had confused lust and a lifetime of building physical attraction with actual feelings.

She had forgiven him for misunderstanding, but she might never forgive herself completely for loving him.

And she had resolved to pretend that it was just friendship between them now.

They had been doing so well.

Clingy Vickie, almost latching on where she didn’t belong again, but this time to the one person she had ever truly fit in with. The one person she couldn’t stand to lose again.

Still, Azrael was grieving, and she told herself that was why she stepped closer, letting the ash fall from her fingertips to the floor. They could clean it up later. It was a friendly thing. A hug to cure sadness, and she wrapped her arms around him before she could think better of it.

“Az,” she whispered into his shirt, trying not to breathe in the scent that undid her resolutions. “I’m so sorry.”

He held still, and she wondered if she’d misread, but he moved his lips closer to her ear.

“Atta ghoul, helping me say goodbye.”

The tension cracked, and she was giggling now.

For a moment they were both laughing, arms still around each other, and then he was pulling her toward him, hazel eyes shadowed and still a little red. He looked like he might kiss her, but it would be too fucked up to let him do that without clearing the air.

As much as she might want to. For friendship alone, of course.

“Az. I want to tell you something about the time in college.” He pulled away, and the chill of their bodies separating brought with it the weight of what she needed to say. She tried not to notice how he flinched and ran a shaky hand through tousled curls.

“I am not honest with myself about how I feel a lot. But you broke my heart that day, when you came back with cold coffee and told me you didn’t want anything serious.” The words poured out in a deluge of shattering truth. This was the worst time to tell him. She couldn’t stop.

Vickie swallowed, eyes watering. He opened his mouth, but she went on, and he shut it.

“Wait, Az. Let me get it out or I might never. I try not to think about it. When you changed your mind, you broke my fucking heart. And I am sorry if that’s awkward. I should have told you then how I felt. That’s why I kept my distance. That’s why I didn’t text. Or call.”

He stepped closer to her, bracing her with his hands, and she couldn’t help it. She leaned forward, pulling toward him. Her heart hammered in her chest.

“I was lying,” he said, gripping the counter on either side of her. His forearms flexed, and the dread pooling in her twisted despicably into longing. Hope. “I… I panicked and broke the law. Broke my own code. I used gravedirt on your roommate. And Natalie.”

“You WHAT?”

It hit her in sharp waves. He hadn’t talked to her.

They were friends, best friends, and he had tricked her roommate and her ex with magic—the kind that was illegal for him to use on mundanes—instead of talking to her.

She dug bitten-down nails into her palms to keep her hands off him; whether to stop pent-up affection or anger, she didn’t know.

“They told me you were fucking your way through distractions. Hooking up with your hot neighbor to get it out of your system.” He was only a few inches away from her, but the distance was insurmountable.

Her eyes followed the path of his hand running through his hair again, and this time she grabbed the counter behind her.

“I said that, but I didn’t mean it.” Her cheeks were too hot now.

“I didn’t want her to think I was dumb enough to like someone else so soon after I got out of a messy relationship, but I also didn’t want her to think that I was uninterested and you were free for the taking. ”

Vickie paused, the reality setting in. They had an opportunity two people didn’t get twice in one lifetime. Something had stretched between them, beautiful and then cruel, and before she could find out if it was good magic or the sort that cut too deep, they had snapped it in half. Severed it.

It was too late now, six years later. They had been so young.

Azrael reached into his pocket, but then shook his head and drew it out again, empty.

“I didn’t want to burden you with attachment you didn’t ask for,” he whispered.

“And I didn’t think I could hide how I felt, hide it all, if I was around you.

If we talked.” She covered her eyes, just to break from the intensity of his gaze, and the maelstrom of conflicting emotions it summoned.

He stepped forward, thumbs gentle on her pulse points as he pulled her wrists toward him.

He bit his bottom lip for a moment, and his cheeks flushed as he went on.

The years slipped away. She was as breathless for a moment as she had been before.

“Fuck, Victoria, this isn’t how I want to tell you that I used to love you since before I could remember.

Since before I could name it or make myself tell you.

I longed for the way your hair smelled and the way your body felt next to mine and the way our magics sang, actually sang , to each other when we touched.

I loved you, and I needed you, and lied to you anyway.

I used magic to avoid the possibility of rejection. I did not deserve you.”