Hold Tight

my backpack, I then followed the sound of Kaylee’s and Chase’s laughter down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Kaylee leaned against the counter near the sink. Dad and Chase sat at the table. It was cooler downstairs than it had been upstairs, though, and while I knew heat rises, I didn’t want to take a chance that Reed was there.

Let’s go, I mouthed when I caught Kaylee’s eye.

“Thanks for the soda, Mr. Riley.” She put her glass in the sink. To my brother, she said, “Later, dude.”

“You girls stay out of trouble,” Dad said.

“Always,” Kaylee replied as I waved over my shoulder.

The MINI idled quietly in the Addingtons’ driveway. I hugged my backpack. The jitters that had snuck up on me had nothing to do with faeries or demons. It was easy to say that tonight was no different than any other time I’d hung out with Isaac, but it didn’t feel that way.

“If you’d like, Josh and I could hang out for a while,” Kaylee offered.

“Thanks, but I’m good,” I said.

“You’re going to tell Isaac that you think Reed was at your place again. Right?”

Nope. The moment I’d told Kaylee I thought Reed had been listening to her and my dad, she’d gone quiet. The more I thought about it, the more I was sure he’d been there. But he hadn’t joined us in the car, thank goodness.

“Yeah, of course,” I lied. No need to have Kaylee escorting me inside and spilling the beans herself. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll call you in the morning.”

Worried that Reed would show up at any moment, I sprinted up the walk, poked my finger several times on the doorbell, and proceeded to bounce impatiently on my toes as I waited for someone to open the damn door. Isaac answered. I could hear his mom in the kitchen asking if his friends had reverted back to being five years old.

“Hi!” I gave him a peck on his lips.

We went downstairs to his room.

“Any problems with your dad?” he asked.

“No. He thought it was a great idea, actually.” I breathed in deeply. Spearmint, vanilla, and fried food filled my lungs and eased my nerves. Well, the first two did the easing; the last made me realize I was starving.

“I borrowed a couple movies from my parents and got us take-out from The Grill.”

“Perfect.” I grabbed our dinner from the dresser and made myself comfy on top of the blankets on his bed while he popped a movie into the DVD player.

He handed me a bottle of lemonade and joined me on the bed with a soda for himself. An upbeat jazz song announced the start of the movie, followed closely by the deep vocals of Louis Armstrong.

“Serendipity?” I asked, my fingers loosely covering my mouth to hide the French fry I’d been munching on.

“It’s one of your favorites, right?”

“Yeah, but how did you know?”

“Kaylee,” we replied in unison.

“I know we planned tonight as a way to get Reed’s poison out of your system, but I wanted it to be special.” He flashed a grin and took a bite out of his bacon cheeseburger. I noticed Isaac’s hair was combed a little neater than usual and he had changed into a white button-down shirt and dark jeans.

My grin had to have taken up half my face. I gave a nod to the stack of DVDs on top of the TV stand. “What else is in the pile?”

“You’ll have to wait and see.” Isaac beamed, obviously pleased that I was happy.

We ate as we watched the movie’s two main characters debate who would get the pair of cashmere gloves in the opening scene. When they reached the restaurant scene, Isaac asked, “Do you believe in fate?”

I wanted to, I really did, but believing in fate meant accepting I had little control over the things that happened in my life. If I thought too hard about it, I’d have to admit I wasn’t the one directing the movie that was my life—Fate, if there was such a deity, was. She’d taken my mom from me when I was eleven. She’d ripped Kevin out of my life. She’d made Paige so jealous she had resorted to dark magic to try to get me out of her way. So then believing in Fate could mean Reed was right and I was meant to end up with the prince of faeries.

But it would also mean Fate had given me a father who held our family together and a little brother who had Mom’s eyes. She would have been the one to put me in the same kindergarten class as Kaylee and then plopped Josh in our fourth grade one. She would have been the reason Isaac’s parents had bought the house across the street from Josh, and why I’d discovered my powers. So did I believe in fate or in coincidence? Given the long list I’d just rattled off, my answer became obvious.

“Yeah, I do,” I replied just as the actress on television said she liked the sound of the word serendipity, which means a fortunate accident. She ran down her feelings on accidents and fate, and I decided she might be right: Fate sent us signs, and it was how we interpreted them that determined whether we’d be happy. Somewhere along the line, I really misinterpreted one of those signs, but I’d fix things. Eventually. “Do you believe in fate?”

“Nah. I think our choices determine our destinies, but the movie isn’t half bad.”

When Serendipity ended, we cleaned up our take-out containers and started the next movie. We stretched out across the bed, my back to Isaac’s chest and his hand resting on my side. His thumb slid under the waistband of my jeans and back out in a slow, steady pattern. I shifted and met his smoldering gaze as his hand moved to my stomach.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. I was pretty sure he meant how were the cravings and not Is your heart fluttering a gazillion miles a minute?

“Good. I think the detox is working.” As I said it, I realized I did feel better. The only emotion brewing inside me when it came to Reed was annoyance at what he’d done to me.

“I’m glad.” Isaac tugged me closer to him. The movement caused my jeans to slide a little lower on my hips. He licked his lips as his fingers traced the white lace of my underwear. “These are pretty.”

“Thanks.”

He kissed behind my ear. My cheek. My lips. My heart did a tap dance in my chest as his fingers followed the lace waistband one more time on their journey up my side, over my sweater, and down my arm. I became aware that my hand rested on his upper thigh, but I didn’t move it. My powers danced on the tips of my nerve endings, and I begged them to retreat to the safety of the locked room in my mind.

“I think you may have caught me,” Isaac said, his voice low and husky. His warm hand rested on my bare stomach again.

“Caught you how?”

“The whole detox scheme was a ploy to get you to spend the night with me.”

His lips met mine, saving me from having to answer. Our tongues did a slow tango, and the voices from the TV grew distant. Isaac kept our kisses brief, giving me every opportunity to keep my powers under control and to slow things down if I wanted to. My hand journeyed under his shirt and traced the hard lines of his chest as he rubbed the tender skin on my ribs, brushing my bra with each stroke. I pulled my sweater over my head. Isaac practically ripped his top shirt off and then grabbed the back of his T-shirt with both hands and tugged it over his head. With his body pressed against mine, we continued our dance of brief kisses. He rolled me on top of him.

“You taste amazing,” Isaac whispered. He trailed a line of kisses down my neck and then met my gaze. His powers trickled through me like the warmth of the sun until they found mine, only this time they didn’t collide.

“Did your powers just caress mine?” I asked.

He smiled. “They did, compliments of a spell I recently found in my grandfather’s grimoire. I’ve been dying to try it.”

I giggled and kissed him again. Most of my powers remained at bay, but what did escape seemed to merge with Isaac’s, eliminating the shock that usually happened.

“You should have tried this spell the second you found it.”