Chapter 2

Andrea learned a lot that night that she didn’t know only several hours previous. It was the kind of thing that made her grateful she’d managed to down an entire bottle of wine at her disaster of a date night dinner, but also made her wish she had more.

“How is this not what I think?” she said, standing up with the hat in her hand. “I heard the news broadcast, Diego.”

“It wasn’t dangerous, nobody was hurt,” he said.

She didn’t know what she wanted to focus on first: the fact that her boyfriend missed their date because he was busy robbing a store, or the fact that he was somehow involved with the shifter movement. More than involved. He wore the logo of a known terrorist organization, one linked to some of the most violent shifter extremist activities in history. And according to the news, he’d been stealing road flares, flammables.

“You have three seconds to explain it to me or I call the cops,” she said, reaching for her phone. He dove across the room in a violent launch, grabbing the phone right out of her hands and yanking it in. She let out a yelp and he shushed her, slapping his hand over her mouth, and she recoiled. He’d never touched her before, never so much as laid a hand on her. But now she could feel the tension rippling underneath. If she didn’t watch herself, she thought he might actually deck her, knock her out, remove the threat.

“I’m sorry,” he said, instantly, pulling his hand away. “It’s been a trying day. I’m sorry. I would never hurt you.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“I’m a shifter,” he said. “I think that’s obvious by now. That’s the first secret out in the open.”

“You mean the first lie,” she said darkly.

“I never lied. You never asked.”

“And what about when you said you’d be at the restaurant for dinner?”

“I thought I would. We got held up.”

“No, you were holding someone up.”

She was more than a little proud of that play on words but he looked positively ready to burst with nervous energy. He growled and got to his feet. Taking his frustration out on some old, empty beer bottle instead. It shattered hard against the wall, leaving both a skid mark and a stain from the minuscule amount of beer that had been sitting at the bottom. The pieces fell to the floor, one by one.

“It wasn’t supposed to go this way,” he said, turning back to her with that pleading voice again.

“What was the end game, Diego? Were you planning on telling me on our wedding night? When our kids suddenly started sprouting claws or wings or God knows what else?”

“It’s not like we were engaged,” he said, darkly.

“I told you I just needed time to think about it; it wasn’t a no,” she said. “And you’re not turning this around on me. You’re wanted for robbery and battery and I’m sure five other things they didn’t say on the news. You didn’t make it to our date. You’ve been lying to me for years—”

“Okay. I get it. I fucked up.”

“Do you get it? Do you get how scary this is for me?” It was her turn to stand, her turn to feel powerful. She got to her feet and walked right up to him, making him seem smaller than he’d ever been before. “I was considering marrying you, Diego. And now I’m finding out everything about you was a lie the entire time.”

“Was considering?” he parroted back with such hopelessness, she thought she might cry just a little bit but held it in.

“You think that’s the first thing on my mind right at this moment?”

“If I can explain it all to you, would you let me? If we sit down—it can be somewhere public. You pick the place, you’re not in any danger—and I can just explain to you what’s been going on. Would you listen?” he asked, taking her hands in his shaking ones.

She looked at him. It was hard not to see the boy she met all those years ago in school, sitting there in front of her. He’d looked just as vulnerable the first time he asked her out and she had to decline because she’d been dating a boy from her English requirement at the time. But he waited for her with that pining look on his face. He never asked twice. She asked him out the next time.

She remembered their first date, their second date, several dates in between. She knew Diego was a good person. She knew he had a good heart. How could he not? But people could also change, they could become something terrible or different or wrong. Just look at Voldemort for God’s sake. But she owed him the chance to explain. They’d stuck by each other’s sides for so long, she had to see this through.

“I’ll give you an hour,” she said. “After that, if I want to disappear, you don’t follow me, you don’t look for me.”

He looked devastated at the mere idea of it but nodded and said okay. He offered to walk her home, but she vehemently declined. Despite how late it was, how dangerous she knew it could be, she needed the time alone and away. She took the long way back to her apartment, going over several residential streets. It wasn’t the smartest thing she ever did but she needed to work out at least some of the energy or she’d never be able to sleep.

She didn’t like lies. Diego knew that. He’d been by her side the day she’d found out the truth from her father. He’d held her while she cried and promised that as long as she wanted him around, he would be there. Yet there he was, lying to her himself now, and she had no arms to run to. The one person she wanted to comfort her was the exact reason she needed it. How terribly that all worked out. Her boyfriend committed crimes and she was the one left to pick up the pieces of it on her own.

It might have been the copious amount of wine she drank or how late in the night it was, she’d never been a good decision maker when those two things combined together in her brain. She never cheated on a single partner in her life. It had been the one thing she said would completely break a relationship for her, even if they were ten years deep with a mortgage. But her fingers were already going through her phone; she was already moving through the contact list to find his name.

She called him. He answered on the second ring. He agreed to come over ten seconds later and her night was spent tossing around naked in her bed with a man who wasn’t her boyfriend, though he had been once, long ago. She pushed the thoughts of Diego’s betrayal out of her mind, humming another man’s name, feeling another man’s skin, and letting another man see all the vulnerability she let run wild in the moment she orgasmed.

It felt like a fitting punishment. But in the morning, all she wanted was Diego and the clock to reset.