Then one day, while I was standing outside of Ruben’s bookstore on Magazine, a woman stepped out of a shop and walked down the street, her lengthy blond hair streaming down her back. I’d felt it like a punch to the gut. I remember sucking in a painful gulp of air the second I laid eyes on her, knowing at long last I’d found my butterfly garden again. Only, she wasn’t a garden. She was a woman. A witch. A breathlessly stunning, beguiling one who began tormenting my dreams with aching frequency from that very day.
