Page 97 of Whispers of Wisteria

15

Anthony walkedone step ahead of me as we made our way to the indoor gymnasium.

“Someone saw Miles on campus earlier,” Anthony explained as we approached the building. He touched the silver door. “So we’re going to see if we can catch him.”

I spotted Miles as soon as I stepped through the entrance.

The shirtless witch was running, gracefully weaving through the other players as he took control of the field with effortless movements. He was sweaty and a flush crawled over the base of his neck, creeping toward his face.

My breath caught in my throat—it felt like ages since I’d last seen him. He was, as always, delicious to look at, and that warm feeling was back.

But… should I be happy when he’d been getting up to some shady nonsense?

I clenched my fist. I wasn’t sure if I should be excited or annoyed.

He shouted at another player as he passed the ball, then stopped. The air stilled as he wiped his forehead with the back of his arm, and my attention wandered to the still-pink scar on his left cheek.

Guilt replaced my growing trepidation.

“Oh?” Anthony mused. His hands were linked behind his head as he peered down at me, and his grin made my hackles rise. “You like that? Don’t let your brothers know; they’ll never let you leave the house. They don’t believe you could have a serious sex drive.”

“What?” I pulled back, dizzy. “I do not!”

Have a sex drive, I meant.

I liked ‘that’ though—if ‘that’ referred to Miles.

“It’s okay.” Anthony was still smiling in that annoying way. He inclined his head in Miles’s direction. “Mostpeople find Miles irresistible—it’s part of his nature. He’s just so…” He pursed his lips, narrowing his eyes. It seemed he was trying to come up with an apt description. Finally, he decided on, “Good. He’s the most innocent of you five.”

I opened my mouth to protest—because, really, what wasthatsupposed to mean?—before I dropped my finger back to my side.

I studied the witch, who, at that moment, was making a rude gesture at another player.

It was true that sometimes he had his not-so-innocent moments, but Miles was quite good, wasn’t he?

He was much better than me, at any rate.

“Miles!” A piercing shriek cut through the rest of the chirping cheers, and—although they’d barely registered as more than a passing annoyance when we’d first arrived—the large gathering of Miles’s fans had finally become too obnoxious to ignore.

Around a dozen of them—both male and female—loomed behind a white card table topped with two orange Gatorade dispensers. For some reason that completely bypassed my understanding, some people were trying to hand him clothing. In fact, the offering appeared to be ritualistic.

While it was true that he should cover himself, I didn’t particularly like the idea of him wearing some peasant’s sullied linens.

I narrowed my eyes at Miles, who was—in my opinion—taking anobsceneamount of time to wipe his face with a tiny towel and drape it over his shoulder. As he preened, a lost-looking woman stumbled from the crowd. She held a bundled-up cloth to her chest and hesitantly moved towards him.

He paused as she approached.

What was this? What was he doing?

My mood darkened further when she blinked at him with wide, innocent eyes and offered him the package that now appeared to be a blue garment.

The little fool. Any true admirer would know that his favorite color wasbrown. If you were going to approach someone inappropriately, at least have the decency to do it right.

She was about to have her heart shattered into a million irreparable pieces.

“Is your eyebrow twitching?” Anthony chirped from beside me. “Oh my God, itis! You’re angry! What are you going to do?”

I didn’t even waste my attention on the necromancer. There was no time to address the vast depths of his wrongness.