“It wasn’t that obvious!”
“To you, maybe.” She smirked at him over the rim of her cup. “It’s nice to see you coming back to life.”
Alistair scowled. “Maybe you should all keep your whiskers out of my business.”
“Unlikely to happen, but you can dream. Now break out the champagne; I think it’s time to celebrate.”
As Alistair moved toward the bar, there came a knock at the door. He peered through the peephole and saw Joel carrying a newspaper. “Special edition,” he said when Alistair let him in.
GANG LEADER DIES IN FIRE, shrieked the headline. And, in smaller print: Shootout between beer war rivals ends in deadly blaze.
Sam sat up as Philip and Doris left the pile. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then put on his glasses. From across the room, he met Alistair’s gaze and offered a timid smile.
Alistair crossed the room and helped him up. “Good morning,” he said.
“Morning.” Sam glanced at the others. “Can we talk a minute? In private?”
“Sure.”
They went to Alistair’s room. He shut the door and sat down on the bed, clasping his hands in his lap. “What do you want to talk to me about?”
Sam leaned back against the closed door. “I just wanted to ask…now that everything is over, what’s my place here? What do you want from me? I know you said you love me, but…you really hurt me, Alistair.”
Fur and feathers, he’d messed up so badly. “I just wanted you safe. I thought I’d do right by you, the way I didn’t with Forrest. And you were going to leave me anyway, so…”
Sam left the door and sat down beside him, the bed dipping beneath his weight. “Why did you think I was going to leave you?”
Alistair’s throat constricted. He couldn’t say this aloud…but he had to, he owed it to Sam. “Everyone always leaves,” he whispered through his tight throat. “I’m not enough. I’ve never been enough to make anyone stay.”
“That isn’t true.” Sam tenderly cupped Alistair’s face in his hands. “Wanda stayed. And Philip, Teresa, Doris—all of them stayed.”
Tears welled in Alistair’s eyes, and his voice cracked. “Forrest didn’t…I wasn’t enough. He left, and even that wasn’t far enough away from me, and I couldn’t—I wasn’t worth living for—”
It was as though an ice dam shattered inside him, all the feelings he’d refused to let himself acknowledge rushing out in a torrent, sweeping everything away before it. He sobbed and tried to pull away, to not let Sam see him like this.
But Sam was already hauling him close, holding him tight, refusing to let him run. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said, his voice cracking too. “The war hurt Forrest, and it wasn’t something you could fix. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Alistair crumpled onto Sam’s wide shoulder, tears soaking into his sweater. “Maybe if I’d tried harder, if I’d followed him, if…”
Sam held him with one arm and used his free hand to stroke Alistair’s hair. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said again, with absolution conviction. “Forrest needed help from doctors.”
“If I had just gone after him, instead of being hurt when he left—”
“You were allowed to be hurt. And you don’t know if he would have spoken to you, if you’d gone after him. It might have made things worse.” Sam pressed a kiss into his hair. “You’ve been carrying this burden of guilt so long, haven’t you? But it wasn’t your fault. What happened was terrible, and tragic, but it wasn’t. Your. Fault.”
Alistair was crying too hard to form words. Years of guilt and grief poured out, until Sam’s sweater was soaked against his face. Sam merely held him, solid as a foundation, stroking his hair and murmuring reassurances. “It’s all right. I’m here.”
Eventually the well of tears ran dry, for the moment at least. Alistair pulled back and wiped his face with the back of his hand. Sam produced a handkerchief from his pocket, and Alistair dried his face and blew his nose.
“Do you feel any better?” Sam asked.
“A little.” He felt…lighter. Still sad, still hurt, but no longer as if he was carrying quite so heavy a weight. “I don’t think I let myself realize how responsible I felt over his death. How guilty.”
“So you pushed me away.”
“Tried to, anyway.” Alistair managed a smile. “But it turns out you’re a stubborn mule who keeps coming back. When I saw you last night, in the casino, and realized you’d come back for me, for us…” He shook his head. “I can’t describe how much it meant to me.”
Sam framed Alistair’s face with his hands. “Of course, I came back. I love you.”
Their kiss tasted of salty tears, but Alistair didn’t care. “I’m so sorry I hurt you,” he whispered against Sam’s lips. “I was a selfish ass, and I swear I’ll make it up to you, or spend the rest of my life trying.”
They rested their foreheads together. “Okay,” Sam said. “Like I said last night. Second chance.”
“Thank you. As for what I want…” Alistair swallowed against the sudden lump of fear in his throat. “I want you to be my lover, my friend. I…I want you to be my witch. I’m not ready to bond yet, I don’t think, but I do want that with you.”
Sam pulled back to look into his eyes. “It’s okay, Alistair. It’s okay if you’re never ready. But when and if you decide you are, then my answer is yes.”
Alistair had never imagined he could feel such a mix of fear and elation at the same time. He hugged Sam again, and they clung together quietly for a long time.
When the embrace was done, Sam laid back on the bed, silently urging Alistair to join him. They cuddled together, Alistair’s head on his chest, arms wrapped around each other.
“Was it true about the hex?” Alistair asked after a while. “Or was that just a clever ploy to fool Ursino?”
“No, it was true.”
Alistair lifted his head. “What did the hex do?”
“I don’t know if it would have worked,” Sam cautioned. “But basically, it was meant to turn water into wine.”
Alistair let out a long, low whistle. “Wow. If the Irish are right about the Holy Familiar, that hasn’t been done in a couple of thousand years. I can see why Sullivan and Ursino wanted it so bad. All of the risks of bootlegging would have been eliminated, short of police raids on casinos or clubs. Not to mention the amount of money it would save. Whoever had it would have won the beer war without breaking a sweat, and gotten fabulously wealthy doing so.”
“Exactly.”
“So…could you recreate it?”
“Maybe?” Sam frowned. “I don’t like the idea of handing it over to Sullivan, though. Or anyone, for that matter.”
Alistair laid his head back down. Listening to Sam’s heartbeat through his sweater. “Agreed. If Sullivan asks, we’ll pretend you just tricked Ursino. And that Vescovi admitted to destroying the hex when he ransacked the house.”
Sam traced light circles on Alistair’s back. “So are we safe, now? Ursino’s dead, and so is Vescovi and his new familiar. At least I assume the familiar died.”