CHAPTER TEN

 

 

Race knew his mistake from before. He’d attempted to hunt the Durant brothers on the full moon, when he’d be able to catch them in their shifts. He’d wanted, more than anything, to see that vulnerable, disgusting moment when their human bodies shifted into wolves. He wondered what would happen if a creature like that got a bullet through the brain mid-shift. Would they fall dead just like that? Would they be forever frozen in that unnatural transition?

Either way, he’d been greedy before. Gone for the money shot when really what he’d needed was the first date.

So, he wasn’t tracking them on the full moon. He was tracking them in their everyday lives. It made sense to him as a hunter. He was getting to know his prey. He was getting to know their likes and dislikes. Honestly, he was kicking himself for not doing it earlier. It was so freaking obvious what was important to these people.

Their little ridiculous unit was what was important. They barely did anything without one another! The twins had their pretty little wives. The mother had her sons. And Jackson had… well, Race wasn’t sure what Jackson had except for his veterinary business.

Which was where Race was sitting in his car. The complex where Jackson worked had a large parking lot, so technically he wasn’t even violating his restraining order. He watched Jackson’s clinic. He watched as a pretty nurse in scrubs walked from one end of the complex and entered the clinic. He watched as, half an hour later, she stormed out, a frown on her face. There was something familiar about her.

He leaned forward over the steering wheel. He’d definitely seen her before. Right. She was the sister of the one who was married to one of the twins. She spent more time with the family than Jackson did.

He frowned as he watched her stride back into the wellness clinic where she apparently worked. That wasn’t the only reason she’d looked familiar to him. The fact was, there was something about her walk, the graceful stride, that reminded him of—

“No,” he muttered to himself. He pushed all thoughts of Michelle out of his head. “Not today.”

Thinking of Michelle was enough to have Race spiraling downward for days. He’d disappear into his own thoughts, his own memories, his own mistakes, and he wouldn’t surface. He couldn’t risk that now. He shoved those thoughts aside. He needed to focus on the here and now.

The afternoon light changed while he waited for Jackson to emerge from the clinic. Clients came and went, people dragging dogs on leashes and carting cats in their arms, wincing as they got scratched to hell.

Race had never understood why the hell people kept pets. Animals were meant to be wild, meant to live outdoors. And they were certainly not meant to be coddled. He was a true believer in natural selection. May the best man win. If a dachshund couldn’t survive a winter on its own in this terrain, then it shouldn’t be surviving a winter in front of its owner’s fireplace. What a waste.

He waited a few more hours and was rewarded when Jackson emerged from his office and slid into his black Jeep. He didn’t have any qualms about following Jackson because he was in Bill’s green Subaru and the vehicle was not recognizably tied to Race in any way. He followed Jackson to the other side of town, away from the mountains. He frowned as Jackson pulled onto a dirt road from the two-lane highway they’d been traveling on. That wasn’t great. It would be much more suspicious if he followed him now.

Making a mental note of where he’d pulled off, Race just kept right on driving back to Bill’s house. He didn’t want to drive the Subaru to his own house because he wanted to keep it unassociated with him. Besides, Bill’s lonely ass was sure to have dinner there. It was an annoying price to pay, Bill’s friendship, but it was necessary. Bill was pliable and easily convinced into almost anything. Race pulled into the parking lot of Bill’s apartment complex and sat behind the wheel for a long minute. He closed his eyes. In his mind’s eye, a pure white wolf lay on its side, a scarlet pool leaking into the snow beneath it.

 

 

***

 

 

By the time Jackson got home that night, his life was good and truly flipped on its head. He’d gone to Ben and Shelly’s farm and seen everything through new eyes. A shifter haven. A place for shifters to come and receive medical care. It had both energized and depressed him. The level of secrecy that his kind were forced to live their lives in was devastating.

Even then, meeting with Shelly face to face, knowing that she, too, was a shifter, Jackson didn’t admit anything about who he was. It was a secret he left their farm with still intact.

He stayed for a few hours, providing medical care and examinations for each of the shifters housed there. In their animal forms or in their human forms, whichever they were most comfortable in.

He’d promised to come back.

And then he’d gotten in his car and driven home, realizing that from now on, his life was going to be completely different. He felt a duty rising up in him. He could actually make a difference for shifters. He could actually change their worlds. If he was working with Ben and Shelly in his spare time, he could go from impotently hiding, cut off from the shifter world, just like the government wanted him to be, to being an active, helpful participant in a community of people who needed him. Who were just like him.

What had struck him the most was that almost all of the shifters at Ben and Shelly’s farm were traveling alone. Jackson had always thought of himself as cursed. But now he could see, with startling clarity, that he was part of a pack. His family would always, always be there for him. He couldn’t think of a greater gift than that.

And Bauer would be there, too. And so would Natalie. And so would Sarah. And so would Kaya.

It was the last name that cracked his heart in two as he trudged into his dark house and stripped his clothes off for a shower. Because for a long time he’d gotten a sick kind of comfort out of the fact that she’d rejected him. He knew she was safe from him. But now he could feel the tides shifting within her. He knew that she wasn’t going to hold him back forever. At some point, she would understand what he’d said about them being mates. At some point, she’d want to be with him the way he wanted to be with her. He knew it was arrogant and mansplain-y to have these thoughts, but he couldn’t stop them. He knew it in his gut.

Only, if they were together now, she wouldn’t just be implicated in keeping Jackson’s shifter secret, and Raph’s and Seth’s and Bauer’s. No, now she would be implicated in Jackson’s role in a ring of shifter medical care. If they were together now, he’d essentially be burdening her with the potential of life in prison.

Could he possibly do that?

Could he live with himself and do that?

No. The answer was an unequivocal no.

Jackson sagged against the shower wall until the water ran cold. He was going to have to push her away again. He’d had her for a few brilliant, high-def, full-color days. The best days of his entire life. No question. But he couldn’t keep her. What he’d always suspected was finally coming true. She was too good for him. Too special. Too perfect.

He dragged his ass into some joggers and a sweatshirt, knowing he should eat but not feeling anything resembling hunger. He was standing in his dark kitchen, staring into the abyss of the open fridge, when someone nearly banged his front door off its hinges.

Startled, he flipped on his porch light and almost laughed when he saw the expression of pure ire on Kaya’s face. He hadn’t expected her to show up at his door at all. And he certainly hadn’t expected her to show up looking like she was attempting to burn his house into matchsticks using nothing but the power of her own anger.

“Kaya,” he said in surprise as he pulled the door open.

She pushed into his house, kicking off her shoes and tossing her bag on the floor. Next came her coat, which Jackson caught before she laid it over her bag and took a minute to put everything in his hall closet. When he turned back to her, it was to see her stalking through his house, her arms crossed over her chest and a sour expression on her face. She wore jeggings, socks almost to her knee, and a huge, oversized sweater. Her hair was piled on top of her head in those two buns that always reminded Jackson of cat ears.

He had to fight back a choppy breath at the sight of her inside his home. She’d never been here before.

“To what do I owe this honor?” he asked her.

She finished her queen-like survey of the first floor of his house before she rounded on him. Her eyes flashed brighter than he’d ever seen them before, her temper clear in every tiny movement she made. “You’re not seeing anyone else right now.”

He felt his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. Her words instantly catapulted Jackson into some of the highest, giddiest clouds he’d ever known. Never in his life had he imagined that Kaya Chalk would be in his house at night, jealous as a cat and making demands about their relationship.

He wasn’t the most experienced at relationships but he knew better than to let on that this interaction was making him extremely, wildly happy. He kept his face as neutral as possible and slid his hands into the pockets of his joggers. “Are you asking for a rundown of my dating status?”

She re-crossed her arms over her chest in the other direction, jutting her hip out to one side. “I’m not asking.”

He bit his bottom lip to keep from outright laughing. She was so unbelievably desirable when she was making demands.

“Are you hungry? I was about to figure out dinner.”

She didn’t answer, just eyed him as he stepped around her toward the kitchen. She followed him in there. He took her silence as a yes that she didn’t want to give.

He winced when he looked in his pantry. “Yikes. Maybe we should order in. I pretty much only have ramen.”

Her face was still rigid with some sharp emotion and she didn’t answer.

“I’ll order in from Costello’s,” he decided. “That way we can have salad with our sandwiches.”

She frowned even harder. “You’re not going to even get one order of fries? You’re insane. They have the best fries on this side of town.”

His phone already in hand, he blinked up at her. “You know, I never noticed before, but for a nutritionist, you kind of eat like crap.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a nutritionist who’s still paying off her college debt. Crappy food is cheaper. I’ll eat healthier when I don’t cry at the sight of my bank statements.”

She’d already turned away from him to inspect his kitchen and the adjoining dining room. So she didn’t see Jackson absolutely wilt. He’d never been rich, but he’d grown up never having to worry about money, which he knew meant he’d been unbelievably lucky. He’d gotten a full ride to undergrad and had taken loans out to pay for vet school, but he’d lived in California long enough to qualify for in-state tuition and with his vet’s salary, he’d been debt-free for the last few years.

Even when he’d had debt, he’d never had to make sacrifices like whether or not he could afford to eat healthy food. It killed him that Kaya had to.

He called in four sandwiches, four salads, and two orders of fries.

“Lot of food,” she said as she came back in from the dining room.

He shrugged and tried to look nonchalant. “I figure we’ll both need lunch tomorrow.”

She frowned, as if she could sniff out his game from a mile away, but she didn’t comment on his charity.

He noticed her hands had migrated from crossed over her chest to sitting on her hips. God, she was cute.

“What the heck is up with your house?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Are you moving soon or something?”

He frowned again, fearful that he knew exactly what she was getting at. “No.”

“Well, it looks like a model home. Or like a display in an Ikea showroom or something. Where do you live?”

His stomach sunk. He knew exactly what she was referring to. He sagged backward onto the counter. “Yeah. I know what you mean. Seth and Raph say the same thing. I don’t know. I would have been better off, happier, in a studio like yours. But I just thought of buying a house as like a status symbol or something. A way to show everybody that I was on the right track and that there was nothing to worry about.”

She looked around. “But then you made everyone worry because your house is so depressing?”

He laughed. “Yup. I guess so. I’m not naturally neat like Seth. I mean, I’m not a total slob like Raph and Natalie either.”

Kaya laughed and Jackson continued. “But I knew that I wanted my house to seem like an adult’s house. So I hired a decorator and tried not to screw up what she did.”

“So, you never really go in those rooms?”

She pointed back toward the living room and dining room.

He shook his head. “Not really. You asked where in my house I actually live? Well, yeah. I work out in the garage, go for runs in the neighborhood, use the bathroom, obviously, eat dinner over my sink most nights, and I sleep in my bedroom. The end.”

“Where do you watch television?”

“I don’t, really.”

She frowned at him. “Where do you read?”

“In my bed.”

She scowled at him. “When the food gets here, we’re going to eat it on your humongous couch in your sterile living room in front of your TV. Like normal people.”

He laughed. But he immediately sobered as an enormous wave of tenderness and affection rose up within him. He liked this irritated, prickly side of her. He liked ordering her extra sandwiches and he liked her bossing him around about the proper way to live in his own house. This was what it would feel like to have her in his life in a real way.

His heart crumpled like a cereal box that had just been stomped on. Because this was going to be his last night of having her in his life. He’d feed her, send her on her way with lunch for tomorrow, and firmly kick her out of his life again.

“Are you still mad at me?” he asked softly.

She was leaning against the opposite counter, her arms crossed again. She scowled. “I was never mad. I was simply informing you that as long as this is happening,” she pointed between the two of them, “then none of that is happening.” She pointed outside.

“That? What’s ‘that?’”
She scowled harder and took a step toward him. “Other women. I… don’t know what your habits have been.” She said the word ‘habits’ like it was something disgusting she’d found on the bottom of her shoe. “But for as long as this is going on, I’m the only woman in your life.”

At this point, she was just a few feet away from him and even though his hands had been fisted in his pockets, he couldn’t resist swiping out with one arm and dragging her into him. He knew it ran counter to his ultimate goal for tonight, but he couldn’t stop himself from telling her the truth. “Kaya, you’ve been the only woman in my life for a very long time.”

She rolled her eyes.

“That’s not a line!” he insisted.

“I don’t expect you to have been celibate, Jackson. I’m just saying, I don’t share very well. It’s a deal breaker for me.”

He suddenly, desperately, needed her to understand. He tightened his arms around her waist. “Kaya, I’ve hooked up here and there over the years. But I’m dead serious when I say that being faithful to you would not be an issue for me in the least.” The wolf inside of him wanted her to tell him the same thing. He wanted her fidelity, her focus, her time. But he knew how unfair that would be when he was going to kick her out of his life after dinner.

She pursed her lips more.

“What brought this on, Kaya?”

She straightened out the collar of his sweatshirt and scowled at his neck. “Your receptionist mentioned other women who have come to see you at the clinic. And I just… I don’t know. I wanted us to be on the same page about exactly what’s happening here.”

“You were jealous,” he said in amazement.

She frowned and didn’t answer.

He dipped his knees so that she’d have to look him in the eye. She narrowed her eyes and frowned at him.

“You were,” he repeated, still amazed that she was possibly caring this much.

She shrugged. “Whatever. Like you’ve never been jealous of something that had to do with me?”

“Kaya, I’m currently jealous of your freaking sweater. Jealousy is a way of life for me when it comes to you.”

She cracked a smile. “So, who is she?”

“Who?”

“The supposedly pretty woman who visits you at work.”

Jackson screwed up his face and looked into the distance, genuinely trying to figure out who she might be talking about. “Gabriel said a woman visited me at wo—Oh! I remember now. A couple of years ago I… spent the night with a woman down in Denver but I accidentally left my cell phone charger at her house. She dropped it off, like, a week later when she was up in Boulder for business. That was the last time I ever saw her. We didn’t even exchange contact information.”

He looked back at Kaya’s expression and couldn’t even begin to interpret the myriad emotions that played across her features. Jealousy, sure. But also a sort of pleased expression. Fear, anticipation, trepidation, nerves, confidence. All of it was there for him to see.

“Jackson?” she whispered, leaning her weight into him and playing with the strings of his sweatshirt.

“Yeah?”

“You know I’ve never done that before, right?” She cleared her throat. “I’ve never slept with anybody.”

Hot and cold infused his body at once, even though this wasn’t news to him. “I know,” he said softly, stroking a hand over her hair.

He’d never forget the moment, two years ago, that he’d walked in on Kaya proclaiming to Sarah and Natalie that she was still a virgin. Before that, he’d sort of hoped, in a tortured way, that she’d had some high school or college experience. At the time, he’d assumed it would save his sanity to know that while she was incredibly off-limits to him, there were men that she was fair game for. He’d thought it would help him deepen that line in the sand that was so important to him. He’d even had the crazy thought that things might be easier for him if she brought a man around.

But then he’d discovered that she was a virgin, that she wasn’t interested in dating, and he’d known he was truly screwed once and for all. Because suddenly it was like he’d been wearing glasses that were intentionally foggy where she was concerned. He’d never let himself look very closely into her personal life. But now he had all of this crystal-clear information and he couldn’t forget it. He’d paid attention after that. As much as it had pained him, he kept his ears perked up for news of a boyfriend or dates. He’d paid attention to her in a way that his exhausted heart could barely afford.

Her face screwed up into a look that was somewhere between stubbornness and chagrin. “It’s not that weird, you know. Twenty-five isn’t ridiculously old to—”

He cut her off with a soft kiss to her lips that he couldn’t talk himself out of giving her. “I never said it was weird. Honestly, I think it is perfectly you. You always do everything at your own pace.”

For the first time since she’d entered his house, her expression softened. And it hit Jackson why. She’d been jealous of the other woman and she’d been self-conscious of her lack of experience. And now that he’d soothed her about both of those things, she was starting to melt toward him. She tied his sweatshirt strings in a big bow and then pulled them free.

“You were very cute today. In your office. With that puppy.”

He held in his smile. “Occupational hazard. The cuteness of the animals reflects well on me.”

She pursed her lips. “That wasn’t it. You were sweet with the puppy, sure. But also with the man. I just liked seeing you at work.”

Thinking of his work made him think of everything else that had happened to him that day and a wave of dread rolled through him. He knew it was going to be the hardest thing he ever had to do—

All thoughts were quickly wiped from his head when she went up on her toes and opened her mouth against his. Reason was immediately erased, along with his grip on reality. All there was, was the warm silk of her mouth. The flavor of her tongue. Her warm hands on the sides of his face. This kiss was different from all the others. There was a familiarity there, a comfort, because they’d done it before, but he could also taste the sharpness of all the emotions she’d come in here with. They were fading, but still present. He was suddenly overcome with the need to wipe them all free for her. He didn’t want her jealous or self-conscious. He wanted her satisfied and confident and completely clear on the fact that when it came to women, she was completely it for him.

He let his hands slide down her back, over her backside, and down to her thighs. He picked her up and turned them around so that she rested on the counter, her legs around his waist. Her arms had clamped themselves around his neck in the process so when he breathed it was into her and when she breathed it was into him. His head tilted and so did hers.

His heart beat like a bird trying to free itself from his chest. He put his weight, his energy, all his focus into this kiss. Somehow his hands ended up on the bare skin of her back, her heat scalding him, beckoning him, punishing and rewarding at the same time.

He tore his mouth from hers and kissed his way down her neck. He bit at her pulse point, sucked at the hollow under her ear. The weight of her head fell into his hand and he knew she was completely boneless against him. She was losing the battle to stay on this plane of existence just as much as he was. He was drunk on the weight of her in his arms.

He bit at her skin again, soothing the hurt with his tongue. She buried her face in his shoulder.

“Jackson,” she moaned, the heat of her breath making goosebumps rise up all over him. She’d never moaned his name before and it damn near killed him to hear it. He gripped her even tighter, tilted her head back further, took her mouth in a kiss so deep it was almost obscene. He took from every corner of her mouth, their teeth clacking as he groaned into her mouth.

The doorbell rang. The food had arrived.

“Fuck,” he growled, balancing his forehead against hers and breathing very hard. He finally wrenched his eyes open to see her looking at him in complete and utter bemusement. Her eyes were wide and blurry, her lips kissed to perfection, her color high, her hair even messier than usual, the collar of her sweater pulled to one side.

He could have died right there, a happy man.

The doorbell rang again and this time his cell phone started to vibrate in his pocket. The delivery guy was obviously eager to drop this food off.

It wasn’t until Jackson stepped back from Kaya that he even realized how tightly they’d been clinging to one another. He felt like he’d just peeled off his own skin and now there was no boundary to his body. Stepping away from her, he felt as if he could just float off into nothing. She wobbled a little on the counter and he helped her hop down, steadying her.

“Choose something to watch,” he told her, brushing a piece of hair back behind her ear. “I’ll get the food.”

But apparently, she didn’t follow directions well. Because as soon as Jackson swung open the door to get the food, her arms snaked around him, her front pressed into his back, as if she didn’t want to separate herself from him for even as long as it took for him to retrieve the food.

The delivery guy’s eyes took in their show of affection with a rather bored pair of young eyes, counting out Jackson’s cash after he handed it over. But the kid’s expression became a lot more interested when Kaya actually peeked around from behind Jackson.

Jackson had to fight the urge to push her head back behind him, shielding her from the gaze of the horny delivery kid. “Have a nice night,” Jackson said, closing the door in his face and dragging Kaya to the couch in the living room. Still she showed signs of wanting to stay right there next to him, so he sat her down, figuring she must have been as dazed from that kiss as he was. “Stay here. I’ll get drinks. Anything you want in particular?”
“Wanna share a beer?” she asked absently as she started digging through the takeout bag. “And grab some napkins?”

Something tugged in his chest. “Sure.”

And so it was just a minute later, when Jackson came back with one beer for both of them and extra napkins, that he realized just how much of a fucking dumbass he’d been for the last few hours.

He stood there, wordless, and just looked at Kaya. She’d unpacked the bag, setting out all four of the sandwiches on the coffee table. She’d wrapped herself in one of the afghans he never used and set out two of his couch pillows for them to use as a makeshift tabletop while they ate. She’d flicked on the lamp next to her and was surfing the menu for something good to watch.

“Ooh! Indiana Jones. But we’d have to just jump in in the middle. Sound good?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly, realizing just how much of a goner he really was. Because it wasn’t just the mind-numbing kiss that had utterly wrecked him. It was having her in his space, ruining his living room for all time. If he were to kick her out of his life, he’d have to move now. He could never live in a house where she’d curled up like a shrimp on his couch.

What an idiot he’d been.

He realized, all at once, that he’d been very close to making the same mistake he’d been making for years.