Page 56 of The Mist of Stars
“We’ll be okay,” I assure him. “Aislin and I know how to take care of ourselves. We were trained, too.”
He scratches his forehead. “I know. I don’t like you guys being stuck here, though.”
“Well, if all else fails, we’ll hotwire a car.” I dazzle him with a grin, trying to lighten the mood.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He misreads my tone. “It’ll draw too much attention.”
“Alex.” I stop him by raising a hand in front of me. “I was just kidding. Aislin and I can figure this out. You guys go get this thing done so we can move on to the next problem.”
He nods, his gaze searing into mine.
Gemma Lucas, will you marry me?
Another version of him said that to me in a vision. It’s hard to believe that, in another life, we’re in love. And yet, the way he’s looking at me now causes my heart to pulsate with another force to dim my disbelief a smidgeon.
He decidedly extends his fingers to my forehead where the cut is. “You should clean this out better while we’re gone. Maybe you guys can go check the shop in the lobby for first-aid supplies.”
“Sounds good.” I disregard the erratic beating of my heart.
He lowers his hand and, with a nod, turns toward the door, motioning for Laylen to follow him. Then, with one more glance in my direction, he exits the hotel room with Laylen.
“Holy mother of all faeries, he’s becoming obsessed with you,” Aislin declares the moment the door clicks shut. She’s rummaging through her bag, tossing bags of herbs and candles onto the bed. “Not in a creepy way, though.”
I pick at my chipped fingernail polish. “He’s not obsessed with me.”
She collects a necklace from out of her bag. “He so is. But that’s okay. We can pretend that he isn’t, if that’s what you want.”
“Yes, please. I can’t deal with this right now.” I flop back onto the bed and stare up at the ceiling. “I need to figure out why I’m having these visions. I was putting a lot of hope in getting a hold of my dad and him having some answers for me, but that hope is starting to dwindle.” My chest feels tight as I say the reality aloud—that I have no clue where my parents are.
“We should do some research on everything, including the machine my father has in the basement.”
I nod, draping my arm across my forehead. I give myself a beat before pushing up and collecting my bag. “I have a book in here that Henry stole for me. It’s from the permanent reading section in the library, so maybe there’s something useful in there.”
“Why did you have him steal it for you?”
“I didn’t. I asked him for help researching these star dreams I was having.” I leave out the part about Alex being in them. “He made the decision to steal it.”
She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “He creeps me out.” She zips up the bag.
“Henry?”
“Yeah. He’s too into you.”
“Is that a thing?”
She twists and sits down on the bed with a book in her hand. “It is.” She flips open the book. “That’s what leads to being a stalker.”
“He’s not stalking me,” I protest as I scoot toward the top of the bed.
“Yeah, he just randomly happened to be at the diner.” She bites her lip as she turns the page. “I wouldn’t have thought too much about it, but then he showed up at our table and basically pressured you into going to dinner with him.”
“We were already going out.”
“I know that. Still, he’s intense.”
Part of me agrees with her. “He wasn’t always like that. He used to be shy around me.”
“Because he’s obsessed with you. Once you were nice to him, it was like opening a door for him to use that niceness to force you to get close to him.”