Page 20 of Take You Home (Redwater Demons #3)

Even Desi seems to like him. She’s been sitting contentedly on his shoulders for the past half hour, and even though Chester occasionally peeks up at her like he’s trying to figure out what she’s doing there, he hasn’t asked her to get down.

It’s almost like he really does fit here.

Obie’s chest twinges. Even though Cass and Ez were obviously blindsided by Obie’s sudden boyfriend proclamation, he can tell by their smirks that they’re going to corner him for details the second Chester is out of earshot, and they both seem genuinely happy for him. JJ and Roma do, too.

Too bad none of it is real.

Not that Obie wants it to be?—not with Chester Locke, at least. But his friends are so enthusiastic about his fake boyfriend that he thinks they almost might’ve been… worried about him.

Which is ridiculous, of course. It doesn’t bother him when his friends bring their ex-hunter partners to hangouts, and it certainly doesn’t bother him that he’s the only one without an ex-hunter partner. He’s never felt like a third wheel.

But having Chester here is a reminder of what could potentially be. Of what life would be like if Obie managed to find a romantic partner who wasn’t bothered by the fact that he’s a fifteen-thousand-year-old demon god.

Like that’ll ever happen.

Chester finishes the last of his chicken pad thai and looks around the table expectantly. “So are we doing dessert, or…?”

Desi throws up her hands excitedly. Chester hastily grabs her ankles to keep her from falling backward. “Dessert! Ooh, Uncle Kyle, we should do pavlova for dessert! ”

He tips his head back to peer up at her. Obie hates to admit how adorable he looks. “From Pavlova Forever?”

“Yeah!”

“I’m always down for pavlova,” Cass says, fishing around in his pocket. “Kyle, do you want to grab a dozen for us? My treat.”

He holds his credit card across the table like it’s perfectly normal to hand your payment information to someone you just met. Chester looks thrown. “Oh. Uh, sure, Cass,” he says, gingerly taking the card. “Desi, do you want to stay with JJ and Cass?”

Desi pouts. “Okay,” she says moodily, crawling off his shoulders to plop down on the seat next to him. “Auntie Roma, can I have the rest of your steak pad thai?”

“Sure you can, kiddo,” Roma says, sliding it across the table.

Chester pushes himself to his feet, his eyes flickering in Obie’s direction. “Do you, um, want to come?”

His tone is pointed enough that Obie glances towards Pavlova Forever, gauging the distance.

It might be just on the edge of twenty feet, but he thinks they should be fine?—and, if worst comes to worst, he can always claim that he wants to add something extra to his order and follow Chester later.

“Nah, I have to keep these bozos in line. Thanks, puppy.”

Chester’s jaw twitches at the pet name, but he manages to smooth it over quickly. “Cool. Be right back,” he says, striding off towards the food truck.

Ez waits until he’s out of earshot before rounding on Obie, her eyes narrowed. “Spill, Obadiah.”

Obie raises his eyebrows, taking a long sip of his drink. “Pulling out the full first name, huh? You mean business.”

“Obie,” Cass says, exasperated. To Obie’s surprise, he looks almost as eager for details as Ez does. “Come on, man! Where’d you get the human? ”

“Yeah, Kyle seems cool,” JJ adds. “You two met at bowling, you said?”

Obie’s heart twists. Even though he knows he needs to keep Chester’s identity a secret, he still hates hiding something so important from JJ and Roma. “Yeah, we met at the alley. It was, uh, a pretty vanilla meet cute, to be honest. We were just at adjacent lanes and got to talking.”

Roma’s lips twitch. “After you admired his bowling throw, you mean?”

“I should clarify that bowling better than me isn’t too much of an accomplishment,” Obie says. “The bar is pretty much on the floor already. But yes, his ability to actually knock over pins was part of it.”

Ez squints at him, clearly unconvinced. “Seriously? That’s it? Obie, you’re one of the most untrusting demons I know. There’s no way you’re already comfortable enough with a human to introduce them to?—?” She gestures meaningfully around the table. “?—?to family without extenuating circumstances.”

Oh, if she only knew. “Well, it’s true,” Obie says, feeling the slightest bit defensive of the lackluster origin story for his himbo boy toy.

“Look, not all of us can have dramatic enemies-to-lovers romances, okay? And not all of us want them. Some of us are perfectly content to meet people the normal way.”

Cass grins. “As in, the ‘not attempting to kill each other at first sight’ way?”

“Precisely,” Obie agrees.

Ez still looks suspicious. Obie’s smile starts to feel forced. There’s no way she could ever guess the truth, but if she thinks Obie is faking this relationship for another reason, she’ll be more primed to notice any slips when they inevitably happen.

Especially since Chester is an atrocious actor. To be fair, Obie didn’t give him much time to prepare for his role, but still .

Maybe Obie just needs to up the ante a bit. Right on cue, Chester wanders back to settle two trays packed with pavlova on the table, and impulsively, Obie drags the stupid hunter into his lap. “There you are, puppy.”

Chester freezes, mortified. “Obie,” he hisses, jabbing his elbow into Obie’s ribs. “What are you doing?”

“Being cute,” Obie says, raising his eyebrows in challenge at Ez. “See? Just because we never adopted a child or combated a magical crisis together doesn’t mean we can’t be cute.”

To his relief, Ez looks both highly entertained and slightly more convinced. “Never said you couldn’t.”

“Obie was just telling us how you two met,” Roma explains to Chester. “It was… a lot more tame than how I met Ez and how JJ met Cass.”

“Really?” Chester says, deliberately elbowing Obie again as he turns to face her. “Tell me more.”

To JJ’s clear indignation, Roma immediately launches into a wildly overdramatic version of how he met Cass. He protests over her descriptions, Cass and Desi jump in at periodic intervals, Ez sits back with a proud smirk??—

Chester looks like he’s hanging off every word.

Obie’s good mood sours at the sight. He wouldn’t put it past Chester to be mining their stories for any details he??—or the Sanctum?—could use against them, and barring that, he’s probably trying to figure out when Cass and Ez “brainwashed” his friends.

Vindictively, he pulls Chester tighter against him, close enough that Chester’s arm ends up wedged between them. Chester shoots him a glare as he tugs it out and reluctantly winds it around the back of Obie’s neck.

“What?” Obie asks innocently. “Come on, puppy. We can cuddle in close, can’t we? ”

Cass and Ez both laugh, and JJ and Roma look amused. And as for Chester himself??—

We don’t have to be this close, asshole.

Obie stiffens, his heart slamming against his ribcage and the beginnings of a headache starting next to his left eye. Roma jumps back into JJ and Cass’s epic love story, and Chester doesn’t seem to be paying the slightest bit of attention to Obie, but??—

But Obie just heard something. He heard something in his head. He’s always abstractly known that his internal monologue “sounds” a particular way, and that was most certainly not his internal monologue.

Actually, it sounded a lot like Chester. But why would Obie hear Chester’s voice in his own head? Why would he??—??

And then, like a lightning strike from another life, Obie remembers.

You made it bidirectional, lackey. Instead of binding me to you, it bound the two of us together.

Oh.

Oh, no.

Heart plummeting, Obie focuses on the sensation next to his eye. Now that he’s paying attention, it feels less like a headache and more like a tingling.

Less like testing the limits of the binding spell and more like something entirely new. Carefully, he presses into the sensation. Locke? Can you hear me?

Chester goes rigid on Obie’s lap. His arm tightens around the back of Obie’s neck, his eyes sweep around like he’s scanning for threats??—

Obie sighs internally. Thought so.

Chester stops dead. The tingling intensifies. Obie? Is that you?

Yeah.

Dude, what the hell ?

I don’t know! You started it! You called me an asshole.

I didn’t? ? —

Abruptly, Chester cuts himself off. Obie takes the opportunity to argue the point. Yes, you did. You said that we didn’t need to be this close, and then you called me an asshole.

When Chester’s voice next floats into Obie’s head, he sounds more petulant than anything else. Fine. I guess I did. So what’s going on? Can we read each other’s minds or something?

Idly, Obie tries to see if he can access Chester’s memories through this bizarre new connection, but he’s not surprised when he comes up blank. No. At least, I still can’t push my way into your head. I guess it’s just… a communication method.

Why didn’t we know about it before?

Obie’s eyes flicker down to Chester sitting awkwardly in his lap. Maybe we have to be touching? We don’t have a lot of skin-to-skin contact right now, but I don’t think we’ve ever been this physically close before.

And it looks like we actually have to concentrate to use it. Chester is sounding more intrigued and bewildered by the second. That’s good, at least. No risk of us accidentally projecting our thoughts into each other’s heads.

You accidentally called me an asshole.

No, I called you an asshole on purpose. And, to be honest, I was kind of hoping you heard it. So maybe that’s what opened the connection.

Dickwad.

“Obie?” Obie jerks to attention to see Cass frowning at him from across the table. “You good, man? You look like you’re a million miles away.”

Is Obie good? Well, no, Cassius, he really isn’t. He’s currently spellbound to, not only a Sanctum hunter, but a Sanctum interrogator, and they can’t be more than twenty feet away from each other at any time, and apparently, they have a telepathic link when they’re touching .

What’s the point of being alive for fifteen thousand years if shit like this can still surprise him?

“Yeah,” Obie says, unceremoniously shoving Chester off his lap. Chester makes a disgruntled noise of protest. “Yeah, I’m good. Just figured I should let Kyle have one of the desserts he so kindly bought for us. And that I should let Desi get back to her perch.”

“Hooray!” Desi cheers, and she immediately starts climbing up Chester’s torso, almost kneeing him in the face in the process.

“Don’t encourage her, Obie!” JJ says, exasperated.

Desi settles herself contentedly on Chester’s shoulders again.

Chester holds on to her ankle with one hand and reaches for a plate of pavlova with the other.

“Anyway,” he says, pointedly turning away from Obie and back to his human friends, “that’s a pretty wild story.

Roma, can yours and Ez’s even top that?”

Roma scoffs, leaning forward. “Oh, just you wait,” she says, and as she launches into trying to one-up her own dramatized version of JJ and Cass’s love story while JJ and Cass protest in the background, Obie looks at Chester’s tense shoulders and has the sinking feeling that this just got a whole lot more complicated.