Read A Little Night Magic for Free Online

details!”
    He gently pulled my hands down from my ears, and it took him a moment to release them entirely. I could see that there was pain on his face, and I hated it. He could either love me entirely, or not at all, but this in-between, just-as-a-friend stuff was going to kill me dead. It probably wasn’t doing him much good, either.
    “I figured you already knew,” he said. “I thought she had told you.”
    “Well, she didn’t.” I took a step back from him; the mere proximity of him hurt. “Not until yesterday, and it’s been driving me nuts ever since.”
    He grabbed my hand suddenly, but not in a romantic way; he quickly examined the palm, then looked up at me. “What’s the matter with your hands?”
    I pulled my hand back. “Nothing.”
    “You keep shaking them out.” He eyed me. “What’s going on?”
    “Nothing,” I said again, and crossed my arms over my stomach, tucking my hands under my elbows. “I’m just…” Insanely, stupidly, unjustifiably jealous. I sighed. “You have to understand what it’s like growing up with someone like Stacy Easter. She’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s thin. Confident. Strong. She’s got that whole sexy librarian thing going on…”
    Tobias’s mouth quirked at the edges. “Maybe you should have slept with Stacy.”
    I gave him an unamused look, and he dropped the smile.
    “Sorry.”
    “I’m always ‘the friend’ with her,” I said. “She’s the hot one, and I’m the one men talk to to get access to her.”
    He stared at me for a moment, his eyes narrowing. “That’s crazy.”
    “Oh, please. On my best day, I’m average looking. I eat waffles all day and I look like it. I’m wishy-washy. I have freckles. No one should be almost thirty with freckles. I’m graceless and my hair is the weird kind of curly and I just thought that…”
    He waited for a moment, then prodded. “What?”
    I huffed out a sharp breath. “I thought that maybe, just once, at least with you, maybe she was the friend. And to find out that I’m just the consolation prize after things didn’t work out with her—”
    “Okay, shut up.” He took a sharp step toward me, his eyes blazing. “You’re nobody’s consolation prize.”
    “Right,” I said. “I’m not even that.”
    He put his hands on my shoulders, gripping them hard. “Listen to me. The way you see yourself is completely messed up, and I put up with it because arguing with you about this stuff is like talking to a brick wall, but I’ve had it. Stacy’s … just Stacy. Yeah, she’s pretty, but she’s the kind of woman who makes a man want to get a blow job under the pool table at Happy Larry’s. Women like that, they’re a dime a dozen. You, Liv … you’re the kind of woman that makes a man just want, and that’s rare. And amazing. A guy finds that maybe once in a lifetime. If he’s lucky.”
    His eyes moved over my face, and his breath was a bit ragged, and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me, but then he took a breath and released his hold on me, blinking a couple of times.
    I stared at him, dumbfounded, and then in a sudden fury put the flat of my hand against his chest and pushed as hard as I could. Taken off guard by the assault, he stumbled back a bit, and I advanced on him, poking my index finger into his solar plexus.
    “See, that’s what I’m talking about! You say stuff like that to me and then you don’t kiss me. And then when I kiss you, you treat me like I’m insane. Well, you know what? I’m not insane, and I’m not making this all up in my head! Stop gaslighting me, Tobias.”
    “I’m not trying to gaslight you, I’m just…”
    I stood there, tapping my foot but as usual, he went silent just as things got interesting.
    “Okay, you know what?” I said, cutting into the dragging silence. “This suddenly silent thing you do was cute for the first fourteen months or so, but now, it’s getting old.”
    I started toward the alley to make my way out to