I smiled and kissed him back, wrapping my arms around him. We hadn’t seen or spoken to each other since yesterday, and it was nice to know I wasn’t the only one missing him. His thumb softly grazed my cheeks, making me melt into him more.
“Your phone has been unreachable since yesterday. I left a few missed calls.” I pointed it out, and he nodded in agreement.
“I know. I haven’t picked it out of my car since yesterday. I’ve been busy with the arrangements for this meeting. I’m sorry you couldn’t reach me. I hope you’re not mad at me?” He said that, glancing at me with curious eyes.
“I’m not. I’m here for something else.” I tightened my grip on the books in my hand. “But it might take a long time, and you’re needed at the meeting.”
He clicked on his wristwatch and turned away from me. “Please continue without me; I won’t be coming back,” he said before turning his attention to me. “Now we have all the time in the world.”
I immediately felt nervous, and I nodded. “Okay, very good.” My stomach growled louder than it had done all morning.
Aaron’s eyes narrowed towards me, but I didn’t let him speak. “I didn’t eat before leaving the house to see you. I’ve been to your place. Ivan told me you were at the company having a business meeting, and he told me where to go. I’ve been waiting for over two hours,” I finished, touching on all the important questions I knew he had in mind.
“I’m sorry; I didn’t know you waited that long.” His eyes dropped a little.
I shook my head. “I was, but it’s fine. I’m just hungry.”
“What do you care for? I can get it for you. It’s your first time at my company, and you deserve to be treated like a queen.” He moved to the table and picked up the desk phone.
“A simple breakfast would do.”
He dialled a number and requested breakfast. After a little while, breakfast arrived, and I took my time to eat the toasted bread and tea with creamed milk. I didn’t fail to notice the unwavering eyes of Aaron, who sat at his desk with his arms folded across his chest. He stared at me with fascinated eyes, but I was too hungry to care. Once done with breakfast, I thanked him, but he shrugged it off as nothing.
He leaned his weight against his mahogany desk and folded his arms across his chest. “So what was so important you forgot about breakfast?”
“You are,” I answered, and though he looked taken aback, he remained silent.
Usually, he’d take the opportunity to flirt and try to say impressive words, but right now, he just watched me. Then I told him everything that had happened last night at the bookstore and how I ended up with the books in my hand.
“So you saw a ghost?” he asked with narrowed brows.
I shrugged. “I don’t know what I saw, but according to the salesgirls, the woman who gave me these books from the store didn’t exist, and these books that the woman brought from their store didn’t belong to them.”
“That’s weird, and I say this as a supernatural creature,” he said.
“What’s even weirder are the things in these books.” I placed them together on his desk. “I think they hold the key to your curse of power.”
I saw the look on his face. He was trying not to look down on my findings or laugh, and that didn’t sit well with me.
“I am serious, Aaron.” I insisted.
“Okay, you think the key to my curse is in a children’s book?”
I groaned. “This isn’t just a children’s book. According to the girl at the store, they were taken down a few years ago after parents filed a complaint that they were too mature for kids. They are right because a child would not understand the context. They also glow in the dark, just like your eyes. If that doesn’t answer our question, then I don’t know what does.” I searched out his eyes, and they looked anything but convinced.
He ran his hand over his face. “Okay, let me understand this. A ghost saw you at the bookstore, gave you these books, and you read them and believe they hold the answers we need because they glow in the dark.”
My heart clenched in my chest, and I stepped back from him. “You do not believe me.”
“I do believe you believe this.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t patronize me or treat me like a child.” I snapped at him, getting irritated at his approach.
“That’s not what I’m doing, and I am trying to understand you at this point.”
“Then sit down and read them.” I stepped towards the table and pushed the books towards him.
He said nothing else before picking up the first book and taking his seat, and I did the same. He read through it, then the second, then the third, and when he finished, he dropped the book and glanced at me.
“It’s a nicely crafted storybook.” He answered, and I wanted to pull at my hair.
“What?!” I exclaimed and rose to my feet. I didn’t know if he was making fun of me at this point or being serious.
“A young wolf boy finds love. It’s a great story,” he answered, and if I didn’t know him, I would have said he was doing this to get under my skin. “That’s what the story I just read is about.”
“It’s so much more than that. Either you didn’t read it, or you’re just messing with me.” I yanked the last book from his hand and gathered the rest up.
“You’re pissed.”
“Of course, I’m fucking pissed. Do you think I’d bring myself here and wait for you for two hours without having breakfast, if this was a joke?”
He pressed his lips together and said, “I think you’re so invested in finding a way out of this curse that it might mess with your reasoning.”
“Fuck you!” I cussed. I hated how everyone treated me as if I were running out of my mind. First, it was the salesgirl at the children’s bookstore, and now it was Aaron. Of all people, I thought he would believe me. It hurt that I was appearing crazy and angry; those were two things I didn’t want to be.
“Zera Adams,” he called, and I cast him a glare for calling my full name. He raised his hands in surrender.
“I am sorry for interrupting your meeting. You can go back and meet with them, and I’ll carry my crazy self home now.” I turned to leave, but he grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me back, so my body collided with his, and the books fell to the floor.
“You’re not crazy, Zera. You’re just being concerned.”
I struggled to set myself free from his hold, but he didn’t let go of me and only tightened his grip more until I stopped struggling.
My eyes grew glassy. “Don’t say things to make me feel better.”
“That’s not what I’m doing. I promise.” He released me, but he did it slowly. “I think you believed what you read, and I want to believe you, too. I really do, but I think we are not seeing the same thing.”
I sniffed and blinked the tears back, saying, “I am sorry I cussed at you; I’m just frustrated. I guess you’re right. I’ve been so involved in this entire process, it’s clouding my perception.” I admitted, feeling light-headed.
He stooped down and picked up the books now on the floor before rising. “Read it to me,” he proposed, and he gave me one book.
I stared at him with sceptical eyes, and he nodded. I collected the book from him. “What do you mean?”
“What you read-I want to know what it was.”
I bit my lips and blinked a few times before asking, “You’re not saying this because you believe it’s what I want to hear, right?”
“I swear on my mother’s grave that I am genuinely curious about what you discovered in these books.”
I drew a deep breath and nodded, collecting the rest in his hands. “Okay, the first book in the sequence is ‘Finding the One’.” I flipped the pages open, and Aaron leaned against his desk again, his attention fixed on me.
“Young boy Ralph had wanted one thing for the longest time. His mother always told him that finding love was a beautiful thing. She would always say it was important to find the one on time.”
“I didn’t read that,” Aaron said, interrupting me.
I lowered the book in my hand. “I am not making it up.” I groaned.
“I didn’t say you were. I just never came across that line.” He insisted, approaching me. “I must have missed it.” He reached for the book and read it out, and what he read was an incomplete sentence. He had skipped many words that would have given more meaning to the story.
I drew closer to him, staring at the page he read and noticing he wasn’t omitting the words on purpose because he read with such ease.
He paused when he got to where I read before he took the book and turned to me. “We are seeing differently,” he said, and after what I just saw, I had to believe him. He handed me the book. “I think you should read the book, and I will listen.”
We spent almost four hours on the three books. Once the third was finished, I closed it up and glanced at him with my brow raised. “Do you believe me when I say this is what we’ve been searching for?”
He sighed. There was much conviction in his countenance, but he wasn’t fully convinced.
“We can’t put all our trust in this. For all we know, the writer had a very vivid imagination.”
“Yes, sure. He or she can also choose who their readers will be.” I pointed it out in a sarcastic tone.
“You’re right, and we will have to examine the book and speak to the wise one.” He rose from the desk he’d been leaning on since I began reading the first book.
“The wise one?” I repeated.
He understood my question: “They are those who are much advanced in knowledge. They understand and interpret better than others would. Every pack has at least one of those, and Ivan is the wise one in our pack.”
“So he would have a better understanding.”
He looked unsure. “I hope he does.”