Page 62 of What The Hex (The Family Spells)
Our father.
I’d never known my sperm donor. Never cared to either, if I’m being honest. Fuck that guy. If he didn’t want to get to know me then I sure as shit didn’t want to know him either.
My eyes drifted to Grace, and I found her looking at me already, watching me. Waiting, I think. For me to what? Grow some balls? To be a goddamn man and get over myself?
I stood up suddenly, and they all turned to look at me.
Two familiars, three husbands, a demon half-brother, and the woman that I …
“I’m ready to commit to this,” I said, feeling my stomach knot and twist with fear.
Terror, actually. Fear was too light a word for me. I was fucking terrified.
“You’re ready to commit to … what?” Graceley asked, blinking huge green eyes at me. She swallowed and turned away, as if maintaining eye contact with me was too much. I saw that guy—Monster—tense up, and then he was snatching the dead owl in his hand and taking off with it. I didn’t know where he was going or what he was doing with it; I was just glad to have a break from the intensity of his copper-eyed stare.
“Let’s go inside a minute,” Spectre suggested, putting a hand on Grace’s shoulder as he passed. Caine growled at me, but Bastet and Connard were more than happy to flounce off together into the dark. As if we didn’t know what they were doing.
Fucking cats.
Literally, I guess. Hah.
Argent was the last to go, looking me over with a blank expression before his gaze shifted to Grace, and he finally, blessedly left us alone.
The back door shut, and then it was just me and her.
Pretty witch woman. No, not just pretty … Grace was beyond pretty. She was …
I looked away again and slid a hand down my face.
“What does that mean, exactly?” she asked, coming over to sit in the chair that Spectre had just vacated. He’d left the second half of his beer behind, and she reached for it automatically before pausing and then pulling her hand back to rest it in her lap.
“Can I explain something to you?” I began, feeling my chest get tight. I wasn’t used to talking emotional shit through with other people. The only constants I really had in my life were my grandmother and my best friend, Angelina. Even then, we didn’t exactly talk about feelings. Here I was, standing on the deck of this chick’s house—the house she shared with three other men and four kids, mind you—and even though none of that was outside the norm for witches, it was still weird for me.
Those kids didn’t know me; they knew the other three men as their fathers, biology be damned. Would Grace’s husbands hold and kiss and cuddle my baby, too? Would I learn to hold and kiss and cuddle theirs?
“Of course you can, Hex,” Grace replied with a gentle sigh. She was wearing a witch hat and dressed in a long black satin nightgown. With heels and the right hairdo, she could wear it to a gallery opening or something. As she was, sitting there with her hair loose and waving around her shoulders, the color of fire, she was a goddess.
I flopped back into my own chair only to blink through the blurry haze of my feelings to see that Spectre had made me a sandwich. A turkey sandwich. Huh. Happy late Thanksgiving, I guess. Usually, I got dragged to a luncheon with Lulu and her fancy coven friends.
My stomach knotted, and I resisted the urge to ask for Grace’s phone or laptop or whatever. My own phone was back home. But I had Lulu’s number memorized. If I wanted to call or text her, I could.
I wasn’t ready for that just yet.
Her betrayal was still biting me in the ass; it hurt. It fucking hurt so bad.
“I don’t like fate or prophecy,” I began, sitting back in my chair. I looked up at the stars instead of Grace’s face. “Never have. Just as your coven runs on soulmates and oracles, ours runs on duties and tradition. My life was never supposed to be just mine. It belonged to the coven; it belonged to the cabal; it belonged to Violet and my grandmother. It wasn’t mine.” I dropped my attention back to that damn sandwich, mouth watering. Screw it. Never had a guy make me a sandwich—or a girl either for that matter, except for my grandma—but I was eating it.
I picked it up in both hands and stared down at it while I tried to figure out how to say what I needed to say without sounding like a total asshat. Pretty sure I was one anyway; Connard was convinced of it. Disloyal fuckface.
“I didn’t want soulmates for the same reason I didn’t want to be promised to a demon princess before I was even born.” I took a bite of the sandwich, chewing and swallowing before setting it down. I finished off my beer and then stole Spectre’s. Figured if we were going to live in the same house …
