Page 57 of The Underachiever’s Guide to Love and Saving the World

brYCE

I woke up in the middle of the night with an aching dread in my chest telling me something was wrong. The space beside me in bed was empty. The panicked feelings of a nine-year-old boy consumed my body. It was irrational, I knew. Courtney could’ve just stepped out for a second.

Still, I sprang out of bed. At the last minute, I grabbed the pebble she’d given me off the nightstand, clinging to it like I was trying to hold on to hope. A knot formed in my throat. Images flickered in my mind. Scraped knees and slugs on rough concrete. Slammed doors, angry screams.

I ran outside. Turned in a circle. Saw only emptiness.

She’d left.

I fell to my knees.

It was all very dramatic.

Since the day I’d started to care, our relationship had been on a timer. Happiness was the beginning of the end. Always was. Always would be. Not even a potion could keep her from leaving me. Not even magic could keep her loving me.

I tried to slow the frantic spinning of my thoughts. I was jumping to conclusions. Courtney wouldn’t have gone far.

Unless she went to save the world without me. That would mean only she could open the portal. That would mean she was planning to leave me here.

I’d already been left once by someone who I assumed would never leave. If I didn’t know my own mother well enough to see the warning signs, I couldn’t know Courtney well enough either.

“Are you all right, Sir Bryce?” a voice asked.

A strangled noise left my throat as I whirled around. The blacksmith stood there in the shadows like he’d been waiting for exactly this key moment to step in with critical information.

“I’m quite all right,” I said, even though I wasn’t.

“Nay. Your face speaks of love lost,” the blacksmith said. “Your lady friend left you?”

“What makes you think that?”

“I saw her leave you.”

I snapped to attention. “What do you mean? Did she say anything? Where did she go?”

“She were looking so sad, you see,” the blacksmith began, and my gut sank. “So I told ’er what you told me earlier today. ’Bout how smitten you were with her while she was battling the dragon.”

A wash of relief mixed with dread swept through me.

No wonder she’d left. She’d thought I couldn’t love her without the potion, and I’d accidentally confirmed her fears. She thought I found her amazing because she was battling a dragon, not that I simply realized it while she was fighting a dragon.

We’d miscommunicated.