Bad Luck Charm (Witch City, #1)

by Julie Johnson

“You wouldn’t be annoyed if someone you’ve interacted with regularly for the past several years, someone who moves in your social circles and shares custody of your best friends, was walking around with an entirely skewed perception of who you are?”

can, actually. You were standing in the kitchen wearing some ridiculous dress with no back — dropped all the way down to your ass, even though it was barely five degrees outside.

“Designed to give every man in the great state of Massachusetts a case of blue balls, maybe,” he muttered.

“Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart. I pay attention to everything. I’m observant. Comes with the territory.” “As a fixer,” I guessed.

“Jeeze, I also read historical romance novels, that doesn’t mean I dress in whalebone corsets and reject all knowledge of antibiotics and refuse to be in the presence of a marriageable man without a chaperone.”

“And men say we’re the gossips,” I grumbled around a bite of egg roll. “They spill more tea than the Sons of Liberty did in Boston Harbor.”

Yanking me out of my dysfunctional childhood — which mostly meant yanking me away from my dysfunctional mother — long enough to show me a different sort of life, filled with art and music and books.

A life empty of yelling and crying and Mom’s parade of asshole boyfriends, each somehow worse than the last.

Those twelve weeks I spent with Aunt Colette each year were the only bright spots in the dark recesses of my childhood memory banks. They we...

“Sorry. Des thought the whole handyman thing was a hoot. He just called Graham to ask if he’ll come over and refinish our kitchen cabinets. I thought the phone speaker was going to blow out, Graham bellowed so loud.”

When it comes to Graham, your fight or flight instinct kicks in almost immediately. I can only imagine how fast you high-tailed it out of there. Tell me, did you break the sound barrier? I thought I heard a sonic boom over the harbor about fifteen minutes ago.”

“I know better, now. It’s not fate or predestination. It’s purely luck of the draw which cradle you wake up in. Some people are born with Lady Luck on their side; born into happy homes with stable parents. And some of us… aren’t.”

can’t even look at him without feeling unbelievably stupid. Unbelievably angry. Not at him — at myself, for wasting so many years believing he was something special, when he’s not. He’s just an ordinary guy I hung all my foolish hopes on,

you might be twisting things in your head to justify all the mixed emotions you’re feeling toward Graham right now?”

But the way I grew up, the way that I am… I just don’t think that sort of a relationship is ever going

to be in the cards for me. I’m not built for that longterm, lifelong, finish-each-other’s-sentences, can’t-eat-can’t-sleep-without-you, star-crossed soulmates sort of thing. I’m used to holding everything together on my own. To counting only on myself. I don’t know how to be any other way.”

A Gwendolyn who trusted easily. A Gwendolyn who let people into her heart without anticipating the pain that would result when they inevitably broke it. A better, stronger, more capable Gwendolyn. I was supposed to be her by now. Unfortunately, that version of me seemed just as fictitious as my mental vacations.

When you’re a kid, you think by the time you’re an adult, you’ll have it all figured out. Life, that is. As though you’ll turn eighteen and, with the simple flip of a calendar page, be somehow better equipped to handle everything that the world throws at you.

Of course, when you actually turn eighteen, you realize pretty quickly that you’re just as much of an idiot kid as you were at eight — albeit with slightly better sense of style and slightl...

There is no age at which you’ll ever have it figured out; no magic number where every missing piece falls abruptly

into place.

You will get older, there’s no stopping that, but there’s no guarantee you’ll ever get wiser. If anything, you merely get better at pretending. Acting like you have all the answers, holding all the loose threads of your life together in one fist, so they resemble a ...

I wasn’t that little girl anymore, lost and alone and so, so afraid of everything that went bump in the night. And yet, in many ways, I’d a...

me, an inner shadow locked away within my soul. I shared her same worries...

But that’s not what this is, and deep down you know

Gaslighting the shit out of her!!!!

I wasn’t his. I wasn’t anyone’s.

Yes, bitch!

“I’m only like this because of you,” I retorted, incapable of being reasonable in such a moment of weakness. He physically flinched, as though the words had dealt a direct blow to his heart.

I have no intentions of giving you enough time to twist this around in your head, change us into something we’re not.”

Forcing someone who isnt ready, wtf

Sure, I have a magic wand. It’s in my nightstand.

I hadn’t slept well all week. My chateau-chic bedroom, which once felt like my safe haven against the world, was now full of memories that attacked with a vengeance every time my eyes slipped closed,

Made her feel unsafe in her bed when he knew she has issued with sleeping and safety

“Shit that’s going to make it even harder for you to sleep at night when we both know you’ve got enough fucking issues in that department...”

So why did you break into her home in the middle of the night??????

“You decide to withhold any of that information, you even think about withholding any of that information, and I will toss you over my shoulder, take you to my bed, tear off your clothes, and quite literally fuck the truth out of you. And babe?”

Ewwwwww. Proving her point of using sex to manipulate

I wasn’t sure if it was sheer, instinctual panic or pure, animalistic attraction.

She's A dumbass, this is sooo toxic, doesn't she hate when he does this????

“Gwen, you’re upset. Maybe⁠—” “Please,” I whispered.

Oh that's his boundary? Guess he only likes when she i scared or angry

But I wasn’t raised in a trailer park with an abusive mother for nothing. If I knew one thing, it was how to stand there and take a verbal lashing.

It hurt like hell, knowing that’s what he saw when he looked at me. Damage. Hangups. Issues. Trauma. Even if it was the truth, I hated the reminder. It cut me, cut me deeply.

It pretty much crushed me.

“Then you should know — anyone who talks to me like that is dead to me. Dead. To. Me. You want references? Call my exes. Call my mother. Ask them the last time I spoke to them. Ask them if I went back for a second helping after they’d hurt me like you just did.”

“Maybe. Or, maybe you’re so used to people fucking you over, you can’t see what we’ve got is worth fighting for. Maybe you’re so braced for getting hurt, you’re determined to keep me at arm’s length like the parade of guys who came before me.”

“You aren’t mad about what I said. You’re using that grudge as an excuse to keep me from getting in there.”

Omg, I hate him. Telling her how she feels now, dismissive of her feelings, I wish he stuck his dick in a door knob

you flat on your back, screaming my name, begging me to let you come about five seconds after I put my hands on you.”

Ewwwwww

That was pure Graham. Pushy, but only when he knew you could handle it. I’m a patient man, he’d told me once. I knew now, from firsthand experience, that he wasn’t lying.

Bullshit!!!!! Anger and patience are the equivalent to oil and vinegar

alpha male badassery

Vom

“Wish I’d known two years ago I could kiss the bitchiness out of you.”

He's A bitch

“You’re going to be experiencing them again tonight if you keep being an ass.”

Ick!!!! I he makes me want to dnf

“Gwendolyn is mine. She’s been mine a while, you just haven’t wanted to accept that.”

He's a dick wad

Normally I would protest at being summoned like a dog,

So why you let him?!

char-spook-erie

something, I might add, I never fucking do — so I could get back here and keep your ass out of hot water.

Guilt Tripping her, doesn't care abou her opinion but will fuck her and say she is his....

Yeah, I do marathons. Mostly on HBO.