You Will Be Mine (New Horizon Book 3)

Chapter 17: Jeannie

I genuinely wanted to tell Gabe that I need him to step back and leave me alone, but as soon as he was standing in front of me seeming so excited about all the things Stella and I bought while out shopping and wanting me to show it all to him, I couldn’t do it. And then Simon showed up again that night, and I let him sleep with me. And then again the next night. And the next.

I honestly don’t know if I’m capable of telling him to back off and focus on pursuing his mate. Gabe seems just as affection-starved as his wolf, even though he strikes me as the sort of guy who should have no trouble pursuing women. And the honest truth is that I’m enjoying his company. His attention and affection leave me feeling a bit conflicted, but when he relaxes his attempts to charm me and just talks to me more genuinely, he makes for an excellent companion.

Although I have noticed something interesting. When it’s just the two of us, he tends to resort to the incessantly flirty and charming version of himself. But when Garrett is with us, he tends to settle down and act more like the version of himself that feels real, the one I can connect to.

Even though they’re triplets and not twins, the two of them together remind me of their twin brothers with the way they seem to read each other’s thoughts and complete each other’s sentences. I can tell they’re extremely close, and though they have that teasing rivalry between them, they’re also best friends. And I like Garrett, so I really don’t mind spending time with both of them.

But now I’ve gone and gotten myself into a bit of a pickle. Yesterday, Gabe asked me if I’d like to come with him so he can take me around to some of his favorite places in the area. We made plans to go see a play at the local theater today, and then he’s taking me to a diner he likes for dinner afterward. It didn’t click for me then, but then after talking to Stella about it this morning, she helped me realize that it’s a date.

He asked me on a date, and I said yes because I didn’t even know what I was agreeing to. It does explain the look he gave me when I asked if Garrett would be coming along, though.

It’s a problem, and one I don’t know what to do about. If I go, I’ll be sending all the wrong signals. Hanging out with him is one thing, but he’s not free for me to be dating, and it’s wrong of me to even be considering it. Then again, if I try to back out now, he’ll probably be hurt. The time to tell him no was yesterday when he asked. But no, I stupidly went along with it, and even admitted how much I’m looking forward to it.

And now here I am digging through the clothes Stella laid out for me on my bed, her suggestions for appropriate date attire. All of them come from our shopping trip the other day. For some odd reason, I’m most drawn to a dress that I remember Gabe raving about, but that hesitant part of me is trying to talk myself out of it. It’s bad enough that I’m still considering going. I most definitely should not be dressing to impress on top of it.

I eventually settle on a pair of dark jeans that Stella calls “skinny jeans” and a black top that I actually picked out for myself. I like that it’s essentially just a shirt, but the way that it’s cut to fit makes it look kind of fancy. Dressing up isn’t something I’m used to doing, so wearing something comfortable that looks good seems like a smart plan. I’m already going to be uncomfortable enough worrying about what I’m even doing with him.

“Did you want me to do your makeup?” Stella asks, knocking on the doorway as she’s already coming into my room.

“I don’t wear makeup,” I remind her, pausing when I realize that I could also just as easily have said, “I don’t go on dates,” and she’s probably about to call me out on that.

“Sure, and for normal everyday stuff that’s fine, but it’s your first date, Jeannie,” she argues as expected. “Just sit down and close your eyes, and I’ll do the rest.”

I decide not to fight her about it, though it does occur to me that if I’m going to go to all this trouble, I might as well have just worn the dress. She sits me down on the bed, arranging me the way she needs so that my face is turned into the light, and then I close my eyes as instructed. I just hope she doesn’t go too crazy with the makeup.

My grandma once told me that with a skin tone like mine and the intense color of my eyes, makeup would only make me look like a clown. As much as I’m trying not to seem too eager for Gabe, I also don’t want to scare him away entirely. I really hope Stella knows what she’s doing.

The makeup brushes tickle their way across my face as she works, quietly humming to herself the whole time. I feel them on my eyes, my cheeks, and even my forehead and chin, and the more she works, the more I’m worried about how much makeup she seems to be putting on me.

“Okay, I need you to open your eyes and look up,” she instructs, and I do as she asks.

She uses a small brush and some sort of pencil to draw on me for a bit before eventually stepping back to admire her handiwork.

“I never noticed how gorgeous your eyes really are before now,” she gushes, stepping closer to examine them again. “You don’t wear contacts or anything?”

“What? No,” I answer, confused why she would even ask me that. I don’t even wear makeup, so why would I bother with that?

Oh. But there’s the issue of my hair, which she probably thinks I dye to get it this color, so I suppose it isn’t that far-fetched to assume I also modify my eye color.

“Stella, has Gabe or Garrett said anything to you about my hair?” I ask her next, deciding to take a chance on another Bentley. I haven’t told anyone else yet.

“No,” she answers, drawing the word out as if she’s not following why I’m even asking her. “I like it though. I actually kind of envy your smooth, well-behaved hair because a color scheme like that on mine would look ridiculous, but it totally works for you.”

I appreciate the compliment, but I’m also realizing that I don’t even know how to tell her what I intend to without going into a lengthy explanation that I don’t really have time for. It was easy with Garrett because he knew all kinds of stuff and figured it out on his own. We even did some more research in the pack library the other day based on a conversation the guys had with that other mage they told me about.

She told them she thinks I’m a special kind of mage, an innate caster, so we looked into that to see if we could find something more about my tree teleporting thing. We didn’t, but I did learn something cool, a new trick that might help me with Stella. Instead of telling her, maybe I should just show her.

She’s gone back to working on my makeup, doing something with my lips now. Lipstick, I would assume, though what she's using doesn't look like any I've seen before. It feels kind of wet and slimy, and I don’t know if I like it. But once she’s done and backs away to admire her work again, I decide that’s my opening.

“My hair and my eyes, I didn’t do anything to them,” I begin explaining to her. “It just happened, and Garrett and Gabe have been helping me figure out why.”

She looks confused, but also intrigued, so I keep going.

“Watch my eyes,” I tell her, holding my hand palm-up and concentrating on it.

She watches my eyes instead of my hand, even though it’s my hand where the literal magic is about to happen, but I figure she’ll be more interested in seeing my eyes glow. I imagine one single long-stem rose resting on top of my hand, tapping into the energy and connection to the natural world that I always feel when I’m outside. It’s weaker inside the packhouse, but if I really focus, it’s still faintly there. And after a few seconds, there’s a rose resting on my hand exactly how I imagined it.

“Whoa,” she squeals, glancing back and forth between my eyes and the flower in my hand. “That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, I’ve seen magic before, but not like that. Wait, it was magic, right? You’re telling me you’re a witch and that’s why your hair is that way?”

“Well, I don’t know much about all this stuff, but Garrett says I’m not a witch. He told me he doesn’t know for sure, but from all the clues like my hair and eyes and some of my abilities, it looks like I could be some type of mage.”

“I’ll say,” she laughs, still watching my eyes as if she expects something else to happen.

But that was my one and only trick without any other plants or animals nearby. Even a bee would do, but inside my room, all I have for her is this rose. I hand it over so she can examine it and see that it’s real, at least as far as I can tell anyway. I might have created it, but I still don’t know all that much about it.

“Does Mom know?” she wonders next. She’s finally stopped staring at my eyes, going back to putting all her makeup stuff away in the pouch she brought.

“I haven’t told anyone besides you, and Garrett and Gabe figured it out on their own. I actually don’t know who else knows, other than their mage friend that they talked to about it.”

“Clarice?”

“Yeah, I think that was her name. She had to leave town so I haven't met her myself yet, but the guys have told me a bit about her. We'll meet eventually.”

She zips up her makeup bag and tucks it under her arm, and then comes and stands behind me, locking eyes with me in the mirror where I’ve been brushing out my hair. The makeup she did actually doesn’t look half bad, brightening things up a little without being too over-the-top.

“How do you get to be nineteen and not even realize you’re a mage?” she wonders incredulously. “Wasn’t it a pretty big clue when you woke up one day with purple hair? And could suddenly do some pretty crazy things?”

“Well, yes, but I didn’t know what it meant,” I explain, placing my brush back on the bureau so I can turn around and face her. “I don’t think my grandparents were mages themselves, though as I’ve been thinking about it, I think they might have known that I was. They freaked out when my hair changed and tried to hide it. Actually, they’ve been trying to hide me my whole life.”

“What about your parents? Do you think one of them could be a mage?”

“I don’t know that either,” I hate having to admit. “I’ve never really met either of my parents, and my grandparents never told me much about them. All I know is my mom was sixteen when she left, and only came back once to leave me with her parents when I was a newborn.”

“Sixteen? You realize that’s when mages come of age, right?” Stella points out. “And she randomly up and left then? She probably got her magic.”

“Garrett did tell me about that, but I don’t see why she’d leave just because of that. I didn’t.”

“Maybe your grandparents freaked out on her too, but she wasn’t as good-natured about it.”

I actually have to take a few steps back and sit on my bed to recover from the force of that hitting me. That never even occurred to me as a possibility, not even after Garrett and Gabe were talking about the age of sixteen being when a mage’s power awakens. She’s right. My mom left directly after that, although my grandparents told me it was because my father came and lured her away.

But now that I think of it, Stella's theory still doesn’t make sense, even if it kind of fits.

“If that’s what it was like for her, and she hated it so much that she left, then why would she have brought me to live with them knowing that I was probably a mage too?”

“Hard to say,” Stella shrugs in that way she has of seeming entirely too casual about everything. My world might be imploding, and all she has for me is a casual shrug. “Maybe whatever she was dealing with wherever she ended up was worse than dealing with your grandparents freaking out, but she was in too deep to leave whatever life she’d made for herself.”

That’s not a comforting thought. It’s not the sort of thought I want running through my head when I go to meet Gabe either, but I’m about out of time to have much choice in the matter.