"I'm parked just down the street," Calen said. "You're sure this is alright in the middle of your day?"

"It's fine," I said with a shrug as I packed up the supplies on the counter. "I close the shop for lunch around this time, anyways. We'll go out and be back before my normal hour is up."

I didn't often step out for lunch, but this felt like a special occasion.

A little overexcited, I walked towards the front door so quickly that I almost walked into a customer trying to come inside. That's what I got for not taking down the "Open" sign before closing things up.

I yelped and backpedaled, finding myself staring into the face of a middle-aged man. He had tawny skin and dark brown hair with a silver streak, and he looked just as shocked as I did when we nearly collided.

"I'm so, so sorry—" I stammered, pressing my hand to my chest.

"You're fine, you're fine," he said, waving me off. "Is everything alright, though?"

"It's fine! I was just about to lock up for lunch," I explained. "Can I get you something before I leave, though?"

He'd come all the way here, and I knew I'd seen him before. That silver streak was hard to forget, and I certainly didn't want to do anything to lose a regular customer. Not to mention, he was a nice regular customer, one who was always polite and good-natured when he came in.

"Oh, I really just came in to browse because I was in the area," he admitted. "If you need to go, I can come back tomorrow."

"It's okay, I can wait a few minutes," I said, casting an apologetic glance towards Calen.

The man turned, looking back and forth between us, and then nodded slowly in understanding, a small smile spreading across his face.

"Tell ya what, I'll see you later this week, hmm?" The man said, reaching out to pat me on the shoulder. It probably should have felt more awkward than it did, but it was comforting in the moment. "Can you package up a bigger order of my usual herb blend?"

I thought for a moment. He tended to favor my shop signature earth-aligned blend, if I remembered correctly, but he also liked...

"Earth blend plus honeysuckle, yeah?" I asked, smiling.

"You got it." He nodded once, then turned to leave. "Y'all have a nice lunch date."

Embarrassing, but... Well, at least we could leave in peace.

For a minute I wondered what the man's name was. I was sure I'd seen it on order slips before. He sometimes called and placed a pickup order at the shop, and it was...

Nope. Not coming to me.

That one was going to bother me.

"Now, where are you... parked...?" I asked slowly, turning to look down the street. The only vehicle on the road in the direction he'd indicated, though, was a large, black Harley-Davidson.

Of course. Of course, he rode a motorcycle. Was it even possible for him to get any cooler?

I probably shouldn't have been surprised. That was sort of the nature of soul mates, right? You were supposed to find things about them that you didn't even know you needed or wanted, that fit into a life that would make things better for you both.

Granted, that was probably reading a lot into a motorcycle.

"Before you ask, yes— I do have an extra helmet." Calen smiled, pausing for a moment to take in the look of... Well, probably awe, shock, and a little bit of unadulterated attraction splashed all over my face.

"I... um, haven't exactly ridden one of these before," I said, already feeling heat rushing up my neck, over my cheeks, and towards my ears. My voice became softer and softer the longer I went on. "I mean, it looks cool! I'd love to try. I just don't know what I'm doing."

I really did try to put on the persona of something like a space goth, but I wasn't very edgy at all. I liked flowers, pastels, and bright colors, all splashed together with tattoos and strong makeup. If there was trouble, I could handle myself, but I was a softie at heart, and I was afraid of a lot. Taking risks wasn't my forte, especially after...

Story for another day.

"No motorcycle adventures for you, hm?" he asked playfully, nudging at my shoulder in a way that made some of the awkwardness melt away.

"No time, really," I said, wrapping my arms around myself, too-long cardigan sleeves threatening to cover my hands entirely. "The shop is pretty much my life at this point, so it's a good thing it's going well."

And it was. I could survive, pay my bills, and afford to live in a separate place from my mom and grandma. Moving back somewhere close to family was great. Moving back in with family? Not so much. Things smoothed over once I got the apartment, but it was rough for a minute.

"You've lived here your whole life, then?" Calen asked quietly, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets.

Yes. No. Sort of? I grew up in this town, for sure. I still wasn't certain this was home, though.

"I moved back to town maybe... three years ago? Something like that," I said, shrugging. I couldn't remember the exact date, but it was after I finished my undergraduate degree and subsequently figured out that living on my own as everyone slowly moved away just... wasn't fun. "I thought being somewhere with a bigger witch population might help me make friends, but it just kind of... didn't."

It was a lame way to finish, but that was the long and short of it. My friends from school were great, some even accepting of "witchy" practices, though none of them quite understood the full extent of what real magic meant.

... Except Callie.

I tried not to pout, but I could feel the frown settling and my posture stiffening. She was my best friend at one time, and now she wouldn't even answer my texts. I still wasn't sure what happened.

"What?" Calen asked, brow furrowing. "I know I can't read minds, but I can read a face just fine."

"It's..." I paused, sighing. "It's not like I never had friends, you know? I did. They just all sort of split apart and dropped off the map after we graduated."

"When was that?" Calen wrapped his arm around my shoulders as he spoke, and it felt grounding and comforting.

"Um... I graduated when I was twenty-four?" I frowned, trying to do the mental math. "Double majored in creative writing and biology. It took a couple years for me to give up on finding jobs in those fields, though. That was when I scrambled back home and started the shop."

It was honestly one of my better decisions to start the apothecary, but it was also a stroke of luck that there wasn't one here already. When you lived in the Bible belt, small town apothecaries with a sprinkle of witchy vibes weren't exactly common. And, with a booming underground witch and Sylvan population in rural Virginia, the town really needed a place for herbs and medicines that wouldn't set off too many local alarm bells.

"How about you?" I asked, forcing a smile as I looked back up at him, eager to change the subject. "When did you move—"

"Look out!"

The world spun around me as Calen yanked me to the side, pressing me against the window of a neighboring shop as a deafening crash sounded from the street. I screeched almost against my will, eyes squeezed shut as Calen kept me upright. All my weight rested against the shop window as dust and dirt filled my nose and mouth. Though I tried to breathe through the sleeve of my cardigan, it wasn't enough to totally filter the air.

I squinted through the dust to try and see what was happening, eyes watering and vision blurry, Calen's broad form still holding me against the window.

"Wha— what's happening?" I choked out between coughs. The door to the little boutique we stood outside clanged open as I finally managed to see what was on the sidewalk where I'd once been standing.

"Everybody okay?" someone called, but I couldn't tell who it was.

I was too focused on the broken concrete flowerpot on the middle of the sidewalk, crashed in a heap of stone shards exactly where I'd been standing only seconds ago.

The whole street was called Gardenia Avenue, so concrete flowerpots decorated the upper floors of buildings where gargoyles or animal statuary might otherwise stand. They were carved and cemented in place, and I'd never seen one of them even begin to fall in my life... but now here it was, shattered on the pavement, only moments from shattering me.

"Sunday?" Calen asked, taking my face in his hands to block my view. "Sunday, say something."

I couldn't, though.

My eyes flicked between Calen's face and somewhere beyond it, wondering how the pot could have even fallen in the first place, wondering why someone hadn't seen the structural damage before. It didn't make any sense that it had fallen, but then again, it also hadn't made any sense that a fireball came through the window of my apothecary barely a week ago.

This wasn't an accident. It couldn't be. Someone was out to attack me, and maybe they were still there, and—

Nope. That was it. Last straw.

So much for going back to the shop after lunch.

"Can you take me home?" I asked, eyes locked on the broken mass of concrete that had barely missed my head. I was shaking, my legs threatening to give out, and thankfully he seemed to see that.

"Yes," Calen said. "Yes, we're going. Now."

Rather than arguing, he took my hand and pulled me towards his motorcycle, steering us around the shattered rock and on down the street. He looked behind and around us as we moved, as though he might be able to spot someone trying to drop something else on us, but there was no one.

"Address," Calen demanded, pulling out his phone. "I'll navigate, you just hold tight."

I rattled off the address of my apartment complex without thinking about it consciously. In a daze, I let Calen strap a helmet on my head, slip his own leather jacket around my shoulders, and get me settled on the bike.

The image of the rubble on the sidewalk flashed through my mind as we rode, my arms around Calen's waist like a vise. The wave of nausea and dizziness and strange familiarity washed over me again, and it was all I could do to stay grounded while we rode.

I hadn't seen that coming, and just at the moment, my lack of caution and foresight scared me more than the falling rubble.

After years and years of practice, I very intentionally developed the ability to ignore my own Threads. It was difficult to see and move around during the day if I didn't consciously "turn off" my vision when it came to my own future. Rather than going about my life, I felt like a puppet pulled in too many directions at once, and I didn't like it. When I was younger, I had panic attacks over it, over feeling claustrophobic and stifled in wide open spaces.

Now, only big and obvious Threads caught my attention. Strange things caught my attention, like Dante's Threads stopping entirely... but not this.

So, clearly, near death experiences were on the docket... but my own death hadn't been written yet.

This was supposed to be what I was good at. I should have been able to predict something like that and dodge. Maybe. Probably. I'd been so careful not to touch the Threads for years that it was a little unclear how a situation like that might even work, or if it could have been avoided more smoothly.

As Calen pulled into my apartment complex and parked, I was still shaking. We dismounted the motorcycle, and I unsuccessfully tried to dig in my purse for my keys.

It took me far too long to retrieve them. I was focused on calming my breathing.

"Someone is trying to kill you, Sunday," Calen said firmly, his hands on my shoulders. "Please. Let me take you somewhere we can keep you safe— or even call the mundane police!"

"You can't," I said firmly, shaking my head. Calling the normal people police would be probably the worst decision possible. I'd already had trouble explaining to my business insurance what exactly had happened to my window.

"Why not?!" Calen practically roared, eyes wide and distressed.

"Because—" I cut off suddenly, hands balled into fists. I clenched my teeth, eyes squeezed shut momentarily.

Rule Five: Never tell anyone about the Threads.

"Get inside," I finally said. I grabbed his sleeve and pulled him up the stairs towards my front door. I could hear some kind of jumble of half-formed sentences coming out of his mouth, but I ignored them flung open the door, and yanked it closed behind us.

Then I locked it.

"Sit down," I said, gesturing at the sofa.

My apartment was small, just one bedroom, the bathroom, and the combination living-area-and-kitchen, but it was big enough for this conversation. I hoped.

Maybe the whole world wasn't big enough for this.

Calen did sit, if a bit hesitantly. I kicked off my shoes, still wondering if it was a good idea to bring this up. But... Well, the universe or magic or something else had seen fit to throw us together, so I thought it was probably better to get it over sooner rather than later. At this rate, he'd need to know for his own safety.

It was time to tell him.

Tossing my purse to the side, I clicked on the overhead light and joined Calen on the dark blue sofa in my living area. I wasn't sure how to broach the subject, running my hands through my pink-and-purple dyed curls until I was sure that the silence had gotten very, very awkward.

"I'm going to tell you something, and I need you not to freak out," I finally said, my voice too soft and certainly shaking.

Hopefully this would go better than it had the last time I tried to tell someone.