Witch Is The New Black (Paris, Texas Romance #3)

Winnie kneaded her shoulders with a sigh, grinding her knuckles into her flesh. “You’re so tense. Relax already. Just for a little while. You’re always so on edge. It’s nothing bad. I try to make all my surprises happy ones.”


Bernie blew out a shuddering breath. Winnie was right. She did always expect the worst. “Sorry. Okay, I’m ready.”

Winnie squealed with excitement before she said, “Open your eyes!”

Bernie opened them to a set of keys dangling in her face.

Just beyond the keys, a car…shaped like a bubble…with a Summer’s Eve douche—no, really; a douche—on the side.

Winnie spun her around, her eyes glittering. “Okay, so I know, I know. It has an advertisement for a douche on the side of it, and it’s a hundred years old, but!” she said on a breath. “It works, and I just can’t bear seeing you walk in the bloody heat every day if one of us can’t come and grab you from the farm because Lola has a ballet class or you miss a ride with Calla because you want to finish one last chore. Plus, all that really matters is that it works, right? And it does work. Promise.”

A car. She was letting her use a car? She’d robbed a bank, for the love of Cheetos, and Winnie was just handing her the keys to a car? Okay, the car had a douche on the side of it, yes. It was ancient, too. But a car?

She was stunned into silence.

Winnie winced, her gorgeous face crestfallen. “You hate it, don’t you? Damn, I was afraid of that. I know it’s not much to look at, but I drove it cross-country, from prison here to Paris, and it runs great. Well, mostly, but we had Guthrie Adams give it a good once-over before we put it back on the road, just to be sure.”

Bernie instantly regretted hurting her feelings. “I robbed a bank.”

She planted her hands on her slender hips, peering down at Bernie. “And?”

“And you’re trusting me with a car?”

Now Winnie’s face went soft, and she curled her fingers under Bernie’s chin. “It has to start somewhere, Bernie, right? I was in magic-abuse jail, too, remember? Listen, I’m going to give you one long-winded speech here. You in?”

Bernie nodded.

“Someone once trusted me, and I did some pretty shitty things—like blowing up my now-husband’s warehouse because I thought he was cheating on me. Look, Bernie, at some point, you’re going to have to accept that we like you. We like the shit out of you. You’re reliable, hardworking, kind to all those seniors, good with the animals on the farm. Along with liking you comes extending the hand of trust. Trust is just as important on both our parts. I want to help you be the best witch you can be. You have to trust that I’m making decisions based on who I believe you really are. Not the person you showed everyone to get into prison.”

Goddamn these people and their nice. Her eyes filled with tears. She’d long forgotten what it was like to interact with other people without doing so for the sake of survival. She’d forgotten what it was like to forge friendships. But she wanted to remember how to let someone in again after Eddie.

Rather than say a word, because she almost couldn’t speak if she tried, she threw her arms around Winnie’s neck and hugged her hard.

Winnie tugged a strand of her hair and smiled, thumbing away one of Bernie’s tears. “Now off with you. Bingo calls. Goddess knows, you don’t want to be late or Roscoe Brown gets so jittery he might miss the eleven o’ clock news, he conjures up an earthquake. I lost a perfectly good set of dishes the last time he did that.”

Bernie laughed as she grabbed the keys. “Got it. Curfew?”

She waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, whenever. I’ll probably be up when you get in anyway. Benny’s teething is killing me. So we can dish on whether Flora finally gives it to Clive while my little man takes another ten years off my immortality, screaming his little brains out.”

Bernie squeezed Winnie’s hand once more before she hopped down the steps, feeling lighter than she had in more years than she cared to count.

“Jacques, the GPS, is set to take you to the senior center,” Winnie yelled as she waved. “Have fun!”

As she climbed into the car, the lingering smell of pork rinds and Schlitz Malt Liquor assaulted her nose, but it didn’t matter. Someone trusted her enough to let her borrow a car.

She’d been in prison longer than she’d been anywhere else since she’d become an adult. Because she’d had no choice during her incarceration. She couldn’t run away when everything went sideways—and it always went sideways.

No one had ever specifically blamed her for all the strange things that happened when she was around. How could they? They didn’t know magic existed. But certainly she’d heard her fair share of jokes about the evil cloud hanging over her head or her bad-luck spree.

Maybe if she just opened up, explained, shared something instead of keeping this all so close to her chest, trusted just one person, maybe this time she wouldn’t have to run away.