Page 64 of The Lovers

“Not even me?” she asks. When she looks back at me, I hear that siren call to lose myself in her ocean eyes and I can’t, don’t want to,won’tresist.

“Break the deck with your left hand.”

This is how it all started.

With one card, then another, then a promise that we would always find each other.

She breaks the deck into two piles, handing the cards back to me.

“Which pile?” I ask. We’re so close that I can feel her breath on my cheek; it smells of the wine, fruity and herbal and bright.

“Don’t you have a thing you do?” She hovers her hand over thepiles, mimicking what she must have noticed me do when I appeased Healer Arynne’s meltdown.

“I can do that, or we can choose together.” I take my lower lip between my teeth for a nibble.

She drops her eyes back to the two stacks in my hands.

“Okay. Together.”

“On the count of three?” I ask. She nods. “One, two, three.”

“Left hand,” she says.

“My left,” I say.

We grin up at each other.

I reintegrate the stack, putting the one in my right hand below the left. I wiggle my body, pushing my shoulders back to sit up straighter. I notice her glance at my neckline clinging to the edge of my bra.

“You’re totally checking out my boobs while I’m trying to be a serious tarot reader,” I scold, but it’s flirtatious, playful.

“Sorry not sorry,” she says, looking back at the card.

I brush my fingers around the edge before flipping it toward her.

My gasp hangs in my throat.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Julia

As my fingers brush the edge of the card, energy shoots into my heart, my pulse quickening.

The Lovers.

Two people stand naked facing each other. Behind them is a tree with intricate woven vines covered in crimson, orange, and fuchsia blossoms. The dark background of the card contrasts with the metallic strip that creates a border around the edge.

I don’t know what to say. This card is intense. Bright and full of love, but it also makes me feel like the wind has been knocked out of me. It makes me feel like fighting. It makes me want to reach out and hold on for dear life.

“The Lovers card is the more intense version of the Two of Cups,” she finally says, and she actually sounds like she’s struggling to breathe.

“From our reading with Madame Moira.”

She nods, holding eye contact. “Showing up in a reading between us is significant just because of all thestuff.” She pauses, letting the full weight of that normally unimportant word settlebetween us. “But our history with the cards makes this feel like more of a sign.”

I gave up on believing in signs before I ever really tried.

This weekend with Kit Larson has me questioning that steadfast lack of faith.