Vivi suddenly reached over, grabbing his arm.
“Pull over.”
Rhys eyed her suspiciously. “You’re not going to vomit, are you?”
“Ew, no,” she said, pulling a face, then pointing out the windshield. “Right there.”
Rhys followed her instructions, bringing the car to a stop on a dirt pull-in at the edge of a hillside, looking down into a valley. The moon was bright enough that he could just make out the field below them, the surrounding hills dark shapes against the navy-blue sky.
“This is where we met,” she said softly. “The summer solstice. Right down there in that field.”
Rhys had known that from the moment he’d parked the car. He remembered those hills, remembered sitting with her and looking up at them, remembered that flower crown that sat crooked on her hair, and her sweet smile.
“Can I tell you a secret?” she asked, her voice quiet, her mood a little more subdued.
“It’s not that you didn’t actually reverse the curse, and you’ve brought me here to kick me off this hillside, is it?”
She laughed, lower this time, her hair brushing her shoulders as she shook her head. “I loved that summer,” she said. “I held it up as this perfect, wonderful moment, and told myself it’s only because it was a first, you know? First magical rite I ever went to, first summer of college, first boy I ever fell in love with.”
When she turned to him, her eyes were filled with something Rhys couldn’t name, but whatever it was, it warmed his chest, his heart.
God, he loved her.
“But this time was even better,” she said, leaning in close. And then she smiled.
“May I kiss you?”
Rhys’s heart jerked almost painfully against his ribs. “Now?”
“I’m open to whatever your schedule allows.”
“Well, lucky for you, I am currently free as fuck,” he replied, and she laughed as he pulled her in, clambering over the seat so that she could straddle his lap.
It had been a while since Rhys had shagged someone in a car, but somehow, they managed, her dress pushed up to her waist, his fly undone, and they only hit the car horn twice.
And when he was inside her, her arms around him, her hair in his face, this gorgeous, magical woman he’d fallen in love with twice now, he knew he had to tell her how he felt.
After, he’d promised himself, and this was after.
But first, he wanted to feel her come apart around him, wanted to hear her make those soft little cries and feel her teeth nip his earlobe.
He did all of that and more, and when she lay panting against his chest, he pushed her hair back, kissing the sweaty skin of her neck.
“Vivienne,” he started, and she sighed, sinking even deeper against him.
“I’m going to miss you, Rhys,” she said, her voice soft and dreamy.
That’s when he understood what this was. Bringing him here to this place where they met, making love to him.
She was saying good-bye.
It was past midnight by the time they made it back up the mountain to Elaine’s, and as she and Rhys walked up the porch steps, fingers loosely clasped, Vivi nodded up at the sky. “Samhain is over. Officially All Souls Day now.”
“And I am officially uncursed, and you are officially the most impressive witch I know.”
Giggling, Vivi gave a little curtsy, still slightly high from magic and sex and some mystical combination of the two.
In fact, she thought, as they stopped in front of Elaine’s door, she could maybe go for a little more of both.