CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

Jackson drove away from Kaya’s house at least forty miles per hour over the speed limit. He’d always loved driving fast but this wasn’t because he wanted it. It was because he needed it. If he didn’t get away from her as fast as he possibly could, he was going to ruin everything. He was going to drive back to her house and fall on his knees. He was going to beg her forgiveness. Worse yet, he was just going to tell her everything.

It killed him that he couldn’t even tell her the truth. That seemed to be the very least that he owed her.

And what was with the whole refusing his apology thing? He replayed her words in his mind over and over again. She wouldn’t accept his apology because she thought that doing so would be a cosign on his own personal self-hatred? Of all the ludicrous—

“Shit,” he grumbled as he pulled into his own driveway. “She’s totally right.”

He dragged his things into his house and didn’t bother looking around. It was too quiet in here. It was too sterile. Too lonely.

His family was all stuck upstate until they got dug out of the resort, so for the day, at least, he was alone in Boulder.

Not that it wasn’t a fully populated town, but he couldn’t help but feel like he was trapped with Kaya again. First in the cabin and now in his own hometown.

On autopilot, he got into his running gear and took off down his usual running path. He and Sarah, who was an Olympian, did a fourteen-mile loop once or twice a week. That was usually enough exercise for him to keep the demons at bay. He’d never done it alone before but he was going to now.

Every pounding step he took he replayed the night again and again. His memories as a wolf were foggy and strange. They weren’t classifiable the way that human memories were. He could see her face. Hear her voice. He’d known that she’d been speaking to him, but couldn’t make out any of the words. He’d known she was scared and had done his best to hold still so as not to scare her. Eventually she’d fallen asleep and he’d known it was his duty to watch over her. He’d even gotten a few hours of shuteye. Something that was almost unheard of in his wolf form.

One memory that wasn’t foggy at all, that was painfully clear, in fact, was how it had felt to shift back to his human form and have her there, all blue eyes and messy hair and the blanket up to her chin. He’d been overcome, more overcome than he’d been as a wolf, even. Her scent was everywhere, the memory of how calm and sweet she’d been the night before, all of it swamped him and he’d had to go to her. He’d been mindless of the fact that they were not really friends who hugged. Mindless of the fact that he was naked. Mindless of the fact that he was lying on top of her and holding her as close as a lover. All he’d known was that his brave woman had made it through the night with a wolf at her side and she wasn’t screaming at him or skittering away. She was hugging him back.

“Why the heck did she hug me back?” he asked himself as he jogged back up his lawn a few hours later.

He spent some time stretching, showering, and eating half the pizza he’d ordered. Then, because his body demanded it, he fell into bed and slept a dreamless sleep. When he opened his eyes, it was 8 p.m. and dark as midnight.

He knew immediately what had woken him. Loneliness. His house was too quiet, too dark. He was still tired, but there was something else thrumming through him that wouldn’t allow him to roll over and go back to sleep. He hauled himself out of bed, brushed his teeth, and pulled some clean clothes on.

He frowned at himself in the mirror when he realized that he was fixing his hair. This was ridiculous.

Without thinking too hard on his actions, he called in an order to a Mexican restaurant he’d always liked and headed over there, that foreign thing still thrumming through him.

He knew what it was.

He was thrumming with the reason that Kaya had hugged him back. Because Kaya was truly a kind and sweet person. She was not playing games with him. She was just going to treat him well. Probably no matter what. No matter how much of a dick he was.

He stopped at a fancy grocery store after picking up the food and came out with a bag of goodies. Not ten minutes later, he was idling in her parking lot, trying to simultaneously talk himself into and out of this idea.

In the end, it was the fact that they were both alone in this town tonight that had him turning his car off and grabbing the bags he’d brought with him. He checked the list at the front door and saw that she was apartment 4R.

He took the stairs two by two and was slightly out of breath when he got to her door. His heart was tight with each beat as he stared at the wooden door that looked like every other wooden door in that hallway. The only difference was that it was her wooden door. Which made it irrevocably precious to him.

Finally, he let out a long breath and knocked on her door. A few seconds later there were footsteps. “Who is it?”

“Jackson.”

There was a pause. “Jackson who?”

How many Jacksons could she possibly know? “Durant.”

The door opened a crack, still on its chain, and he was treated to a view of just one of her striking blue eyes, tropical blue in the middle and navy blue around the iris. The door closed, he heard the chain clacking, and then it swung open. She was revealed. She wore leggings, an oversized sweatshirt, wool socks up to her knees and bunchy slippers. Her hair, which was still damp from a shower, was piled onto her head in two messy buns that reminded Jackson of cat ears. The scent of coconuts wafted over toward him. He cleared his throat and reached into the bag he’d set on the floor.

He pulled out a bouquet of purple mums and held them out to her.

“You have to let me apologize,” he started.

“You can’t be serious.” She was looking at him like he was a complete and total whacko. Maybe he was.

“The flowers aren’t doing it for you? All right. That’s fine.” He shoved them into her hand and then reached back into the bag. He resurfaced with vegan chocolate ice cream.

She squinted at the label. “Is that dairy-free ice cream?”

“You’re a nutritionist so I figured you’d want the healthier stuff. Especially after all that crap you had to eat at the cabin. No to the ice cream? I brought healthy cookies, too. And, like, a fruit salad thing.”

He shuffled it all out of the bag and into her arms. Next came the mixed six-pack of beer. “I know you like sour beer so I got you a variety. And of course, pretzels to go with the beer.”

She struggled to hold all of it. “What the hell is all of this?”

“I brought a bunch of stuff hoping that at least one of these things would get me through your door so that we could talk.”

She sighed, looking down at everything with a rather bemused expression. “Jackson, you’re kind of a freak.”

“Tell me about it. If that doesn’t do it, then I brought this.” He held up the takeout bag of Mexican food and she sniffed the air.

“Is that…”

“Enchiladas from Tio’s? Yes. Yes, it is.”

She sighed, her face pinched in suspicion, but then she stepped aside. “Fine. You can come in. Bring the Mexican food.”

Resisting the urge to pump a fist in the air, Jackson followed her into her studio apartment. He’d known that it was a studio, but he’d never been there before and he hadn’t exactly mentally prepared for being in her space. She was everywhere in the apartment: propped open books, coffee cups in the sink, her messily made bed not more than fifteen feet from him. He quickly turned his back on the bed and started unpacking the food onto her table. She put most of his gifts away, propping his flowers up in the sink as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.

Then, she cracked two of the beers he’d brought and sat at the table with him.

“Just because I let you come in doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind about the apology thing,” she informed him, opening her takeout box.

“Understood.” He was quiet for a minute. “For the record… I think you were right about that.”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Which part?”

“That any apology I made right then wasn’t going to mean what I thought it was going to mean. It was just going to be a way for me to confirm that I’d been terrible to you.”

“You weren’t terr—”

“Hold on, I’d really like to get this out.”

“All right.”

“Kaya.” He set his knife and fork down and took a swig of beer, wincing as soon as he realized it was a sour. Not his taste. “Look. I’m not going to apologize for what happened when I was a wolf because, as far as I can tell, that was all kind of a freak accident. The door was accidentally open, your scarf, you having to get up and move around… all of it was the perfect storm. But it sounds like having me there in my wolf form wasn’t traumatizing for you and I was actually pretty well mannered, considering. So, yeah. I’m gonna skip that apology.”

She looked pretty intrigued by him and so he took that as a sign to continue.

“I definitely owe you an apology for the way I talked to you in the car. It’s just that sometimes, when I’m around you, I feel like I might… explode. And I need space right away. But I was rude to you. And for that, I apologize. It’s not the man I want to be.”

He opened his mouth to keep going, but she held up a hand.

“What do you mean that I make you feel like you’re going to explode?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Just like the scarf thing was hard to explain.”

“Right.” He looked down at his food and pushed it around a little bit. “The other thing I need to apologize for is jumping on you this morning. I should never have done that. I pinned you down, I was naked. God.” He dragged a hand over his face. “I just hope that it didn’t screw you up or something.”

“Screw me up? Jackson, it was actually kind of nice.”

He frowned. He had not expected that to be her reaction. “Oh.”              

A quietness descended on them.

His mind felt like it was working much too slowly. It was confusing to be in her space. He was almost high on her. After so many years of depriving himself of her, even the smallest exposure was liable to send him to the clouds. But this? Alone over dinner in a colorful apartment that smelled like her and looked like her with her hair in a messy pile on her head and her feet tucked under her as she ate? Yeah. He was kind of spinning.

“Are you done apologizing?”

He cleared his throat. “I feel like there’s more. But… I can’t really think of it right now. Actually, I can’t really think at all.”

 He scraped his hand over his face again, over his hair. He needed a cup of coffee and a swim in a frigid lake. He needed fresh air. He needed ice water. Preferably the kind he could dump over his head.

“Jackson?”

“Yeah?”

“Look, don’t take this the wrong way or anything. But why the hell are you in my house right now?”

He pressed his fingers into his brow and downed half the swamp beer in one go. “I have no fucking clue, Kaya. I wish I could explain it. Even to myself.”

“Because,” she cleared her throat and pinned him with those tropical blues, “it doesn’t really feel like you came over here to apologize. It kind of feels like you came over here for another reason.”

His blood formed icy spikes in his veins. Was he really that transparent? Was she reading him like a book right now? Could she see something that Jackson himself couldn’t even see? “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “You tell me. Why don’t you explain my scarf, or why you feel like you’re going to explode, or why you show up at my door bearing gifts?” She pushed her plate away. “I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me, Jackson. Like there’s something that if I understood it, all this stuff would make sense to me. But you won’t tell me, so I’m stuck with all these disparate pieces.”

She was very, very perceptive. And she was also making Jackson very, very nervous. He pushed his plate away and white-knuckled his beer. He shouldn’t have come. It was a mistake. She was totally right. He’d tricked himself into thinking that he had to come over here and make sure she was all right, apologize to her and mean it. But really, the whole time, in his heart of hearts, he’d just wanted to see her. He’d gotten greedy over the last 24 hours, having her in his car, in the cabin, falling asleep next to her, hugging her, holding her. And now he wanted more. He couldn’t be trusted. Anything he said might just be him trying to convince himself that more Kaya was a good idea.

“It’s better if we just leave it alone,” he said eventually, his voice gruff.

“Jackson.” Her voice was so gentle that he somehow felt even more pinned in place. Her eyes were trapping him, her sweetness. And then, oh God, her hand landed on his wrist. “You’re the one who isn’t leaving it alone. You’re the one who showed up here with dessert and flowers and whatever the heck that thing your face is doing right now.”

He had to laugh. Because he could feel how hard his face was pulled into a frown, how tense his jaw was. “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”

“I don’t know how to make it easy for you. I don’t even know the rules to this game.”

It was that honesty, that patience, that intuition of hers that was breaking him. He didn’t stop himself from setting down his beer bottle. He didn’t stop himself from flattening his fingers against the table, and then he didn’t stop himself from flipping his arm over and sliding his hand down so that he was suddenly palm to palm with her.

Kaya looked alarmed and unsure as a bright pink blush popped up on her cheeks. They sat like that for a long minute, just holding hands and looking at the exact spot where they touched one another. Jackson took long breaths but he wasn’t calming down; in fact, he was gathering up, racing toward something, his blood pumping liquid metal.

He was going to tell her.

Holy fucking shit.

Almost forty years of stranglingly tight self-control and tonight he was finally going to lose his grip on himself. Tonight he was apparently just gonna say fuck it and pull the rip cord, pray there was a parachute somewhere in his heart.

He could feel his heartbeat in his palm and he knew that she could, too. Her eyes jumped up to his.

“My wolf reacted that way to your scarf because it had your scent on it, Kaya.”

“It made you… hungry?” she guessed, her teeth pressing into her bottom lip.

He chuckled, though he wasn’t any less nervous than he’d been before he’d started confessing to her. “In a way. But not for food.” He took another deep breath. “I feel like I’m going to explode when I’m around you, I’m here with gifts tonight, I’m always pushing you away, all for the same reason.”

She still bit her lip. He wasn’t sure she was breathing. It was like she didn’t want to disturb a single thing about the moment lest she ruin something and not be able to find out the secret.

“I’m connected to you, whether I like it or not. And sometimes I try to fight it. For your own good. Like when I kicked you out of the car today. Or when, last year, I told you we couldn’t be friends. But sometimes I just can’t fight it anymore. Like last night.” His eyes caught on hers. “Or tonight. I should be able to fight it. I should be stronger than this.”

“What do you mean? Fight what? What kind of connection are we talking about here?” She bit that lip again and he could feel heat pumping from her hand. “You mean, like, a crush?”

He laughed, almost bitterly. “No, Kaya. I don’t mean a crush. I mean that you’re my mate.”

She opened and closed her mouth. She looked like a beautiful tropical fish with those eyes of her and her golden skin. Shock gave way to befuddlement. “Mate,” she repeated dimly.

“Mate.” He punctuated it with a nod and felt goosebumps rise all over his body. It felt freakily good to freely say the word out loud. He’d known for years, kept it a secret for years, because he’d never seen the upside to telling her. But now, upside or not, he’d told her and he felt as if he were a hermit crab who’d just shed a shell that was much too small for him. Perhaps he was a little freaked out and vulnerable without protection, but he couldn’t ignore how good it felt not to be constricted by his own secrecy for even a second longer.

“Mate?” she asked one more time, her brow furrowing down.

“Mate,” he confirmed, chuckling a little at the expression on her face.

She cleared her throat. “I think you might be confused.”

He chuckled again. She was so cute it hurt. “Trust me, you can’t be confused about this kind of thing. It’s really clear for a wolf.”

“Well, just because it’s clear to you doesn’t mean it’s clear to me.” Her eyes left his and she studied the table. “I don’t believe in that sort of thing. Just because you might want to—I don’t know—sleep with me doesn’t make us mates, Jackson.”

The idea that this burning, elemental need for her in every cell of his body could be reduced down to ‘wanting to sleep with her’ was insultingly basic. He wanted to sleep with underwear models on billboards. But Kaya? The need for her was in his blood, she was in his dreams, every instinct he ever forced himself to ignore was begging him to go toward her. Faster. Harder. To be with her, close to her, next to her, as much a part of her life as she would let him be.

But sure. Kaya was human. He supposed that explaining the whole mate thing might leave more questions than answers. He thought of all the ways he could try to make her understand, but there was only one that was really coming to mind right now.

“Would you be opposed to me proving it?”

She cocked her head to one side. “Prove it how?”

Carefully, he lifted their joined hands from the table. She looked down, startled, as if she’d grown so used to holding his hand that she’d forgotten she was doing it. He gave her a gentle tug and she stood up from her chair, coming around the corner of the table. He pushed his chair out from the table and tugged her forward so that she stood at his knees. Finally, he let her hand free but immediately placed both his palms on her shoulders; he stroked her arms down to her wrists and back up.

“I want to kiss you, Kaya, because I think then you’ll understand. I think you’ll see what I’m talking about better than if I just try to explain with words.” He cleared his throat. “What do you think?”

“You want to kiss me?” She looked a little dazed.

“Very much,” he answered honestly, not allowing himself to look any further beyond his mission of showing her the truth that lay hidden between them. If he looked any further than the actual moment, then he would see just how suicidal this was, how counter-productive for his end goal of staying away from her. But he’d put his blinders on. Because there she was, warm and sweet and blinking down at him and blind wasn’t the worst way to live if it got Kaya Chalk standing at the foot of his chair.

“On the mouth?” she asked.

He swallowed back a pained groan.

“Yes.” And everywhere. Your entire body. But yeah, let’s start with mouth.

She chewed her bottom lip for a second and then let one of her shoulders rise and fall. “I… would be willing to try that.”

Holding in his smile, because, like her, he didn’t want to do anything to upset the fragile balance of this moment, he drew her forward again. She bent at the waist to lean closer, one of her hands resting her weight on his shoulder. It had been his idea to kiss her, but he wanted her fully on board if this was going to happen. From where he sat he tipped his face up to hers but didn’t push forward.

For a moment, they just hung there, him sitting, her leaning over him. He was looking up at the only pair of eyes that had ever made him feel utterly and completely lost. Her eyelashes were thick—he’d never been close enough to her to really notice that before. She was hesitating, he could tell, nervous to take the plunge to lean in and obliterate the distance between them. Well, he knew how to help with that.

He wrapped one hand around her wrist that leaned against his shoulder and his other hand against the small of her back. He didn’t tug her forward. He just stroked his hand over her back, soothing her, calming her, reassuring her.

He watched as the nerves melted from her eyes and a sort of dozy desire took its place.

Internally, he was all sorts of hell yes; externally, he kept his expression calm, his eyes patient.

She leaned forward and just breathed against him, the side of her nose stroking against the side of his, but their lips not yet touching. She leaned forward more and took a sip of his lips. Jackson felt as if he’d been struck by lightning. As if he’d picked up a pot off the stove and didn’t yet know if it was ice cold or burning hot. His body went rigid.

She, on the other hand, was going soft. Soupy. Her other hand came around his neck and her palm planted on the back of his head, as if she’d have to hold him still to get what she wanted from him. As if he wasn’t statue-struck by her, his muscles gone to concrete and his blood like icy metal.

Her mouth was hot against his and she kissed at him once or twice before Jackson opened his mouth and twisted his head, deepening the kiss irrevocably. His tongue slid against hers slowly. He wanted to remember every moment of this. He wanted to absorb it all into his soul, he wanted this to be a memory of the body as much as of the mind. He didn’t just want to reflect on how this had once happened with her. He wanted to feel it again. Over and over. He wanted to tap back into this moment in twenty years and experience it all over again.

He was kissing her slowly, but so deeply, and when he pried his eyes open, he saw that hers were gently closed, her expression as lost as he felt on the inside. He still had a hand on her back and he could feel her softening even further. She was sinking into him, leaning in, both of her arms around his neck now. He guided her forward, spreading his legs so that she stood in between his spread thighs.

She pulled back just enough to toss one of her legs over his lap and then the other and then, holy mother of God, she was straddling him in the chair and both of his hands were fully around her. Their heads twisted as she leaned back and he followed her backward. She pressed forward, pushing him back, not letting him up for air.

She made an irritated little sound in the back of her throat, like a cat who wasn’t getting her way, and the sound almost pushed him over the edge. Jackson broke the kiss and landed his forehead against her collarbone.

“See?” he asked her. “Do you get it now?”

“Get what?” she asked, sounding utterly confused before she dipped her head and caught his lips again. He went willingly where she led him. This time he was the one groaning when she scraped her teeth against his bottom lip, dragged her palms to his cheeks and held him in place while she tasted his tongue over and over, her eyes half-lidded, her expression untiring and insatiable.

Minutes passed in this manner and Jackson felt lightheaded. He was dizzy with the taste of her, the weight of her on his lap, and frankly, there wasn’t a ton of blood left in his brain.

“You feel that?” he asked her. “Have you honestly ever felt that with anyone else?”

“What?” she panted against him, their foreheads pressing against each other.

“This feeling, this is what it feels like with a mate, Kaya.” He kissed her first this time, opening her mouth under his and slicking his hands down the hourglass of her figure to fasten her more tightly against him. Her heat against his hardness. He groaned and adjusted his hips, momentarily lifting the both of them off the chair. It gave him ideas.

Holding her tightly, Jackson stood, taking a step forward and laying her back on the dining room table, leaning over top of her. Just like he’d hoped they would, her legs clasped around his back, holding him to her.

“This is how I feel about you. Can you feel it? It’s deep, it’s in my body. I can’t fight it. No matter how hard I try. I know it’s all wrong.” He was kissing her between words, swirling his tongue around hers, biting at her bottom lip, moving down to kiss her neck and pinning her hands up by her head. “I’m not made for a mate. I know that. But here you are, tempting me for years. I’m dangerous but everything about you lures me. Your scent, your laugh, everything calls me to you. It’s all wrong. I know it is. You’re too young. You’ve always been too young and I’m too dangerous, but damn, Kaya, how bad I fucking want you. You’re my mate.”

“Hold on.” She laced her fingers through the wavy hair at the crown of his head and lifted him from where he’d been making out with her pulse point. “You think we’re mates and you also think we’re a terrible match for each other?”
They were both breathing hard. Jackson tried and failed to get some oxygen to his brain so that he could figure out exactly what he’d just said to her and exactly what she was expecting him to say now. “I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious that we have a connection.”

His eyes dropped to her lips and she reflexively licked them. Because, in this new unbelievable world that he’d somehow found himself in, he was allowed to kiss her mouth, he leaned forward to do just that. Her palm found his forehead, however, and she pushed him back from her. “It’s obvious we have a connection, but you’re bad and I’m young and we also obviously would never work? According to you? Am I getting this right?”

This time, he could clearly hear the warning in her voice. He leaned up off of her and held a hand down to help her sit up. She sat at the edge of the table and when he was about to step back from her, she laced her fingers in his, as if she didn’t want to push him away completely. He stood between her legs.

“Yeah, I guess you’re getting it right,” he said gruffly.

“That’s an awful lot for one person to believe, Jackson,” she said in a low voice, her tropical eyes finally reaching his.

He didn’t know how to talk to her like this, when she was flushed and pink and soft in his arms. When he had the taste of her in his mouth. He barely ever knew how to talk to her, but now it was damn near impossible.

“It’s how I feel, Kaya. I have always, always wanted you. That’s why I’ve treated you this way. Because I want you and I know that I can never have you.”

Her soft expression seemed to fall away. She unlaced their fingers and leaned back on her palms. “You’re saying that you’ve been a dick for years because you feel so connected to me?”

He nodded.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m calling bullshit.”

“What?” It was inconceivable to him that after he’d finally, finally come clean and been able to tell the truth about how he felt, she didn’t buy it.

“I’ll concede that we have chemistry, but the rest of it is bullshit.”

“My feelings are bullshit?”

She pursed her lips. “You haven’t actually told me about your feelings. You say you want me, you say we’re ‘mates’, but you haven’t actually explained how you feel about me.”

He gritted his teeth and dragged a hand over his hair.

“Kaya, does it matter?” But even as he said it, it was like the essence of her was truly starting to absorb into his bloodstream. His heart was pumping pure Kaya through his veins. He pictured his car, his house, his lonely life, and his body automatically rejected them. Part of him knew that he’d done something he could never take back just by walking into her home. This was his home now. His hands weren’t meant to be in his pockets, they were meant to be fitted against her body.

He found himself in the strange position of wanting to convince her that they had no future whatsoever but also wanting to convince her that what they had between them was worth paying attention to.

“Yeah, well. It matters to me, Jackson. It would matter to a lot of people.” She placed her hands on his chest and pushed him back from her so she could slide down. “And since you can’t even think of the words to tell me how you feel, I’m calling bullshit. I think you have some petulant little crush on me and that’s all it is. So, that’s exactly how I’m gonna treat it. I’m not interested in men who pout about their crushes.”

“Will you stop calling it a crush?” Later, he’d realize that she was goading him, but right now he fell directly into the trap she’d perfectly laid for him.

“Then what should I call it?” She stopped stacking up the takeout boxes and put her hands on her hips.

“Why do you have to call it anything?”

“See?” She pursed her lips. “Bullshit.”

“What I feel for you is not bullshit, Kaya.” He strode after her and pulled open the fridge door for her, helping her stack things inside. The mums mocked him in the sink. “It’s strong enough that it’s been ruling my life for years. I have feelings for you, okay?”

She straightened up, her hands on her hips. “You have feelings for me?”

He cleared his throat. This was like swallowing knives. Why had he ever thought she was sweet? The woman was dragging him over hot coals and loving every minute of it. “Yes. I have feelings for you.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned into one hip. He did not view it as an improvement from the hands on her hips. She looked like she wanted to drag him by the ear to a court of their peers. “You expect me to believe that you have real, legitimate feelings for me?”

He threw his hands up in the air and paced to one side of the kitchen and back. “What do you want from me? I bring you flowers and dinner, I apologize as sincerely as I can, I kiss you, and then I tell you. All of that isn’t enough?”

It didn’t occur to him that he hadn’t actually meant to do any of that. He’d actually meant to keep it all bottled up inside, like he’d been doing for years, but somehow, she was a Jedi master at getting him to pop the damn romance cork.

She stalked toward him and this time, when she laid her hands on his body, it was to poke a finger into his sternum.

“Jackson, you’re not nice to me. A year ago, just when we were starting to be friends, you cut me out of your life. You told me you don’t even want to see me around. You frown and growl and treat yourself terribly. No way. You think I’m just supposed to open my arms to you because you’ve supposedly struggled with secret feelings for me? That is not the way this works. A two-minute speech and vegan ice cream and mums do not erase the years of dicktastic behavior I’ve endured from you.”

He opened his mouth and closed it, feeling as if she’d just kicked the wind out of him. Her words were painting him in a very unbecoming light and he had the horrifying feeling that she might be right. Just like she was right about his reasons for the apology at the cabin. He had that hermit crab feeling again, but this time he wished he’d just kept the damn shell on. Her eyes saw everything and he’d never felt so exposed in his entire life.

“Everything I’ve done is what I thought was best for you,” he said roughly.

“That’s the biggest load of bullshit yet!” She threw her hands in the air. “Everything you’ve done has not been to protect me. It’s been in order to torture yourself. Because bottom line, you don’t believe you’re good enough for me. You’re so scared of someone else saying it to you, that you just go ahead and say it first, the loudest, so that no one will ever think you were fool enough to think you were good enough. For me. For your perfect family. For anything.”

He sagged backward and found himself sitting in the chair again. Jesus, her aim was true. When she fought, she didn’t pull a single fucking punch.

“You think you’re too dangerous, Jackson? You blame all this on your wolf? Well, guess what? Your wolf ain’t the problem. Because your wolf was a perfect gentleman last night. It was you who was the dickhead.”

He took a deep breath, refusing to hang his head. “What would you do in my position, Kaya? I’m an older man. Almost fifteen years older than you are—”

“Don’t exaggerate.”

“Fine. I’m fourteen years older than you are. You’re young and sweet and innocent and every month I go into a basement and want to literally eat animals alive. I want to hunt. I am not a nice wolf like Seth and Raph. I am a bad, untamed wolf. What am I supposed to do with that? Show up at your door with a rose between my teeth, like ‘I know you’re young and gorgeous and sweet and perfect but let me take everything I am and make your life a hell of a lot worse’? Seriously? That’s what you would have done?”

“You can’t even see that your wolf wasn’t scary. Your wolf was sweet to me. You don’t make anyone’s life worse, Jackson, and if I have to explain that to you then you’re gonna have to start at square one.”

“You know what? All of this is fine. Because I knew we could never be together anyways. So you can just not be with me for your own reasons and I’ll just not be with you for my own reasons and we can just go on with our lives.”

“That works just fine for me.” She huffed out a breath and started walking toward her door. He couldn’t do anything but follow her, shoving his feet into his shoes and tugging his coat on.

“You know what the worst part is?” she asked him, one hand on the doorknob and her eyes piercing him.

He didn’t want to know the worst part. All of this was the worst part. But he could tell from the look in her eyes that she was going to tell him anyways.

“The worst part is that you’re not even admitting to liking me. You’re just claiming to have some biological connection to me. Where…what? Your inner wolf is telling you to make babies or something with me? One word, Jackson: barf. Barf all over that. No way. No. When I finally decide to be with someone, he’s going to actually like me. He’s going to enjoy my company and not in some ridiculous tortured way. I don’t want to be worshipped, okay? I want to date someone. I want to get to know someone who thrills me. I want to be treated kindly. With care and affection. I want the person I’m with to like himself. I’m not looking for some cosmic, destined love, okay? I want normal love. I want the most ordinary version of love I can find. The end. So you can just get the frick out of here with this ‘mate’ crap. Because I’m not buying what you’re selling.”

She flung the door open and he guessed that that was the last word. Without looking back, he stepped through her door and into her hallway.

Every cell in his body was telling him that he was willingly leaving his true home. That he should turn around and fight with everything he had for the privilege of being wherever the hell she was.

But she’d already closed the door and he winced as he heard her throw the deadbolt and the chain lock.

He wasn’t going to force himself into her life or her space. No, the only thing he could do was go back to his house and try to forget that any of this ever happened.