If there had been a doubt in my mind before, there certainly wasn’t anymore as I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling. My mind was reeling from the events of the previous two hours, and butterflies had turned my stomach into a mosh pit.

Spending that time alone with her was all I needed. It didn’t matter what Daniel thought, or what other people would think. There was no longer any question about it. I was madly in love with Cecilia Confussée.

I ran my hand slowly through my hair, letting out a long sigh. That trip to the café…it had been, to put it simply, amazing. Seeing her smile, hearing her giggle, it had nearly driven me insane.

My happiness allowed me to practically forget that Daniel had even arrived. Gods, I wanted to rip him apart.

There was no way that she felt the same way. Sure, she’d made the effort to come to the café with me and spend those two hours talking and laughing, but I simply couldn’t believe that she held the same feelings for me.

I remembered her giggling at a light joke that I’d made, her cheeks rosy. I thought back to how her green eyes had sparkled at that moment.

I chuckled gently.

‘You bastard…’ I breathed. ‘You fall in love way too damn easy…’

Her eyes looked nothing like the cold blue ones of her brother. Cecilia’s eyes were warm and welcoming, and the sight of them alone made me feel fuzzy. That may have been due to the whole ‘love’ thing.

My chest ached from the desire to see her again. We’d been separated for mere minutes, yet it felt like hours. I yearned to hold her hand again. Even if it had been an accident on my end, that moment would stick with me until I died.

Emma had held my hand, too.

That unwelcome thought remained in my head for a singular second before I saw enough sense to push it away.

Maybe it was because she was a granddaughter of Aphrodite, but she looked damn good. Like, insanely pretty.

But that couldn’t have been it. Natasha was a granddaughter of Aphrodite as well, and she was nowhere near as good-looking as Cecilia.

Thinking about Aphrodite and Natasha made me remember something Natasha had told me nearly a month ago. When I had mentioned to her that I had met Aphrodite, Natasha had told me that the Goddess of love appeared to you in your personal epitome of physical attraction.

What was so important about that fact? When I had met Aphrodite, she had had dark brown hair that was slightly curled towards the ends, sparkling green eyes, and a face shape that was now familiar. Cecilia had all of these traits, and was the reason why Aprodite’s face shape was now ‘familiar’. The more that I thought about it, the harder it became to distinguish Cecilia from the Goddess of love herself.

I let out another long sigh, closing my eyes slowly as I did so.

‘How’s that, then? The girl of your dreams is your epitome of attraction. It’s like it’s meant to be, huh?’

It wasn’t long before the act of closing my eyes led to me drifting off to sleep. It didn’t matter that I was still in school uniform; I was out like a light.

***

I first dreamt about Cecilia, which I had predicted. The two of us stood in a flower field, our fingers intertwined. She looked back at me as she skipped forward through the flora, a cute smile spreading across her face.

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Then, of course, it had to go wrong.

My dream shifted, and all I could do was watch as Cecilia shattered like glass right in front of me. She was replaced by somebody who I had never seen before. And even though I did not recognise the man, his appearance made my body go cold.

He was slightly taller than me, with a long, narrow face complimented by his pointy nose. His beady brown eyes stared at me with such a look of horror that one would have been safe to assume that I had just declared something so outlandish that it would have shocked the Gods themselves. The short black hair atop his head had an abnormal amount of gel in it, and it was slicked back, completing his overall stern appearance.

‘What did you just say, Alfonso?’ the man breathed, making it immediately clear who I was.

I did not respond for a moment. When I did, my voice was surprisingly firm and clear. ‘I asked if we have to give my power to Albert.’

The man before me turned fully so that now the two of us faced each other properly.

‘Are you…Are you questioning me?’

I continued.

‘The power will harm Albert more than it will help him. I don’t want it interfering with-’

A swift blow was delivered to my left cheek. Pain soared across my face, but I didn’t even flinch.

‘The decision was out of your control when it was made many months ago, Alfonso,’ the man said coldly. ‘Albert will be given your power, whether you like it or not.’

‘Don’t you think-’

‘Know your place. Your power is all that boy needs to become a threat unlike anything the world has ever seen before. It will be given to him. Case closed.’

The man resumed walking, the glass doors before him automatically parting as he got closer. I remained perfectly frozen in place.

‘I’m sorry, Albert,’ I murmured, clenching my fists so tightly my hands turned white. My voice made it sound as though I was completely destroyed. ‘I tried. I really tried.’

***

I found myself sitting upright in my bed, feeling both at ease and completely restless.

Alfonso had said my name. He had directly addressed me after evidently trying to save me from something. I had an incredibly dark feeling about what that ‘something’ was, but if my gut feeling was correct, it meant something so incomprehensibly bad that my fatigued head panged just beginning to think about it.

Then I questioned who the other man was. It certainly wasn’t George, who had been present in plenty of my dreams where I became Alfonso.

I rubbed my eyes gently, yawning as I did so. It was no good dwelling on the negative things like that, at least after just waking up. I knew as well as the next person that it was better to wake up feeling positive, no matter how rare of an occasion that was.

It should come as no surprise that I, instead of thinking about the contents of my dream about Alfonso, began to reminisce about the café trip with Cecilia.

Ethan was going to have a field day when I told him. I had told him at the beginning of IT that we were going, and he had been over the moon, to say the least.

That’s why the two of us were a bit shocked when Cecilia exclaimed that it was not a date. Well, Ethan was more shocked than I was. He defiantly told me that it was in fact a date, it was just that Cecilia, like I, was denying that it was to prevent embarrassment.

The prospect of going on an official date with Cecilia made my heart pound against my chest. It would solidify that there was at least some sort of feelings going on behind the scenes.

I thought happily, for a moment, about the dream that I had before the Alfonso one. The one where Cecilia and I had been walking through a beautiful flower field. I wondered if that would one day become a reality. If it did, I would most likely die of happiness on the spot.

Gently easing myself out of bed and onto my feet, I let out another yawn. I wasn’t even entirely sure whether it was time to wake up or not, but I’d rather sit there at five in the morning thinking about Cecilia than risk falling into another dream where I became Alfonso.

I glanced at the photo of my parents on my bedside drawer, smirking at it. My mom’s warm smile shone back at me, as did my dad’s hazel eyes.

‘Huh, well guess what?’ I said quietly. ‘I might have found you two a daughter-in-law.’

As I said that, it became clear to me what I had to do. If Cecilia didn’t have feelings for me at the moment, I had to do everything in my power to create those feelings. I wanted to be able to call her mine, and I felt more passionately about this than I had with Emma.

‘Imagine that,’ I continued, my smirk transforming quickly into a manic grin. ‘‘Cecilia Santrrer’. I quite like the sound of that, don’t you?’

I hoped they did. Because, in that one moment, I was filled with nothing but motivation to make that a reality.

All this from one trip to a café. It was crazy. I hadn’t even known her for two weeks, and I was already more determined to love and care for her than I had ever been with Emma.

It was clear to me. I, at the very least, had a fat crush on Cecilia. No questions asked.