Thump…thump…thump. Brody finally got the driver’s door opened and dropped the three feet to the ground, his legs wobbly.
“Mina!” He crawled to where he had last seen her.
“Over here,” Mina answered. She inched out from behind the dead tree. “I’m okay.”
She looked back to the tree line. The ominous figure was gone.
“Is it dead?” Brody asked, rubbing his hand up and down his left arm.
He refused to come any closer to either of the tree monsters. His cheek was swollen with reddish scratches across it from the airbags deploying. It was already starting to bruise. One of his eyes looked swollen, and blood trickled from a small cut on his forehead onto his white polo.
“Brody! You’re hurt!”
He was favoring his arm. She went to touch it, but he pulled it away.
“This will be an interesting tale to tell my insurance company.” He looked his totaled car over. “Tell me I’m not crazy.” He wiped at his bruised face and winced. “Those trees were attacking you…right?”
Mina scanned the scene before her. The ash tree had fallen over dead. It had apparently been out of the earth too long, and whatever Fae magic had kept it moving had worn off. The birch tree was quickly drying up as they watched. Within seconds, it was back to a regular looking tree.
Mina pointed at Brody’s arm.
“I’ll be fine. I just need to sit down for a second.” He looked at the mangled car, the puddles of mud, and the tree corpses. “Yeah, I think I need to sit way over here.”
He walked a few feet and almost collapsed as he tried to sit on the wet curb. Thankfully, it had stopped raining.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I was following you. I followed you to the Country Club, and then I followed the bus. I never expected dating you to be so dangerous,” he chuckled sadly.
“It’s only going to get worse,” Mina warned.
“I promised I’d protect you.” His eyes looked glassy. “I don’t go back on my promises.”
“What if I released you from that promise?”
“I don’t think I like where this is going.” He looked down at his shoes.
“A lot has happened in the last few days, but it feels like it’s been weeks.”
“I know. I feel like I’ve aged ten years.” He chuckled and grabbed her hand.
“You might have, thanks to Claire’s touch,” Mina admitted as she ran her hand over the back of Brody’s. “She took some of your youth to sustain her.”
Brody studied her, his eyes filled with sadness. He reached out with his other hand and covered hers. “Mina, what happened the night of the ball when you kept disappearing? Something changed that night, and I can’t figure it out.”
“I fell in love with someone else that night,” she admitted… to him and to herself.
“But you were only gone from my sight for a couple of moments.”
“And each of those moments felt like a lifetime on the Fae plane.”
“So he’s Fae? This person you fell in love with.” Brody didn’t seem angry. He seemed curious. Her heart swelled with relief that they could talk about this like friends.
She released a long drawn out breath, “Oh, yeah. Fae alright.”
“Does he love you back?” Brody asked.
“No.”
“Then he’s blind.”
“No, love is blind.”
“Love is Grim” Brody whispered as he gently touched her face. “Why do I feel like you’re saying goodbye? What are you not telling me?”
Mina reached into her pocket and pulled out his class ring. “You offered me something that, two years ago, I would have given anything for.” She couldn’t keep the tears of regret from creeping into her eyes or her voice. “But I can’t give you what you want, because really? I lost my heart a long time ago, to a prince in a story.”
“I may never get my happily-ever-after ending,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t have yours.” Mina placed the ring in his open palm. “You’ve given up so much for me, and I can never thank you enough. You promised to protect me, but I’m asking you to do something even greater. Protect Nan.”
Brody was about to protest when Mina put her hand on his lips, stopping him. Her hand grew warm with power, and she pushed her will toward him and commanded, Find your true love.
Brody froze for a second, and Mina watched as her compulsion settled inside him. Why had she never noticed what she could do before? She was the one who couldn’t control her own desire and kept compelling him to fall for her. And if her direction worked, she’d quickly find out if her instincts were correct.
He blinked a few times and looked at her, but there wasn’t any strong emotion behind his eyes. Just trust and true friendship. Mina stood up and shivered, deeply thankful for this moment of resolution. Brody may have been able to ignore the chill of the evening, but she couldn’t. The monster trees had wasted enough of her precious time.
“Let’s go back.”
Brody got up, and hand-in-hand, they walked the last mile to her house in silence. They took comfort from one another’s touch, but it wasn’t anything romantic. Mina was extra careful now to keep her feelings and desires locked up in her heart. She didn’t want any stray thoughts to influence Brody.
When they finally made it up the hill and stood in front of her front door, it opened as if someone had been watching from inside.
Nan stood there. Her gaze dropped to their clasped hands, and her face fell.
Mina groaned inwardly. That wasn’t what she wanted. She didn’t mean to hurt her friend’s feelings. How would she explain this to Nan?
She didn’t have to. Brody took two steps forward, picked Nan up, even though he was injured and bruised, and kissed her.
Nan squealed in surprise but sure didn’t stop him from kissing her.
Ever and Charlie happened to walk by, and Charlie stuck his finger down his throat and made barfing actions. Mina carefully squeezed past Nan and Brody as they continued to kiss. She silently closed the door and let them have privacy on the porch.
“Well, I think that was the fastest breakup and get-together in history.” Ever leaned over to pull the curtain aside so she could spy.
Mina swatted her hand away. “No, he was always meant to be her prince charming. I just got in the way, and she was too good a friend to tell me her true feelings.”
“So she lied to you,” Ever said.
Mina thought about it, about all the jokes Nan made about not liking Brody Carmichael, even though their families were great friends. How she hadn’t wanted to be the one to bring the folder to his house that fateful day when he ran over Mina’s bike. Nan had liked him just as much as she did and was probably even more nervous than she was. Plus, Nan would never let herself admit to liking the same guy Mina did.
“Yeah, she lied. Not just to me, though—she lied to herself.”
Ever nodded.
“Hey, you said you had a way for us to talk without being listened to?”
“Yeah. We need to get all the mirrors.” She peeked back out the window again.
Nix walked in and noticed Ever looking outside. He pulled the curtain back and whistled at them.