Chapter Ten
Two weeks later
Angel Falls, Idaho
Cara
“Again?” I asked. “But it hasn’t been Christmas for two weeks, and I already celebrated my birthday in October.” By myself. With a double shift. While panicking about midterms.
Nyria scowled at me. “He’s going to leave Christmas trees on my doorstep every morning until you forgive him and the damn pine needles are getting everywhere.”
“They’re getting bigger each time, too.” Clutching my mug of coffee, I shuffled over to the open front door. Sure enough, there was a gorgeous pine tree sitting on Nyria’s front steps, and yes, it was bigger than the one that had been there yesterday. As always, a small, sloppily wrapped gift nearly equal parts shiny paper and tape was tied to the top of the tree with a gray ribbon. “Isn’t his foot still injured? He shouldn’t be dragging trees around.”
“So as much as I support you walking away when he was healed enough to take care of himself because he has some issues communicating boundaries and you shouldn’t let him get away with that at all, this is kind of disgustingly sweet.” Nyria had been an unbelievable ally since I’d told Wyatt I was glad he was on the way to full recovery, but that I needed time alone to process just what being mated to him would, and should, mean given my own needs.
The look on his face had nearly destroyed me as I walked out of his bedroom where I’d nursed him through the worst of it, and as much as I put a good face during the day, it was the nights that were the worst. If he had ever poured his own loneliness through our connection, I probably would have cracked, but he didn’t. He’d told me as I walked out, sobbing, that he would do what it took to earn my trust back. And so far, he’d stuck to his word.
Thankfully, Nyria had opened the door to her spare bedroom to me, and didn’t complain about the dozen boxes full of stuff piled up wherever there was room. I suspected other shifters had given her a lot of grief for it. When I asked her, though, all she said was that as long as her Alpha didn’t give her a direct order to cease harboring me, everyone else could go fuck themselves.
The fact that Wyatt didn’t take that easy route either meant a lot to me.
“How do I know he’ll respect my boundaries now?” I stared at the gift and wondered what was in it. Every day it was something new. Sometimes something horrifyingly extravagant, like a gorgeous wolf-shaped Christmas ornament made with some serious rocks, or sometimes something so ridiculous it made me laugh. Yesterday it was a rubber duck. Nyria and I had given it an honorary seat at the dining room table and named it Squishy.
“Look. He ain’t perfect. He won’t ever be perfect. But shifter packs tend to be obnoxiously patriarchal at times. Throw in that he’s biologically programmed to protect his mate and that he’s the freaking alpha of our pack and I truly, truly think he’s trying.”
“So I should walk over and fall in his arms?”
Nyria shook her head. “Well, I mean, if you want to. I saw the way the two of you looked at each other when you thought no one else was paying attention. The mating heat’s there. But why don’t you figure out a compromise that allows you to get what you want while not losing sight of what’s important to you?”
I stared at the gift box. It was small. Very small. “I’m not sure where my boundaries are anymore. You don’t have a mate, do you?”
Nyria scoffed. “Hell, no. I wouldn’t mind meeting one in a few decades, but I love my life right now. I love that I get to meet so many men who underestimate me constantly, and I love proving them wrong.”
“Wyatt treats you fairly, right?”
“He’s a bit more obsessed with keeping me out of harm’s way than he is with the males, but after seeing that burn on his side… guess I can’t complain too loudly.” Nyria shuddered. “Fucking hate fire. Always have. None of that romantic fireplace bullshit for me. As long as I don’t get some super controlling asshole of a shifter, I’m good.”
“And if you do?”
“I will run him into the ground,” she said loftily. “Are you going to open the box or what?”
I flipped it over and slid my finger under the taped edges. The wrapping was always a bit of a mess. Was it because he was a better cook than a gift wrapper? Or was his hand still burned? For the millionth time, the memory of him wrapped in bandages, eyes shadowed, lying on the bed with his arm stretched out to me as I backed away went through my mind. For the millionth time, I fought back tears.
This time I succeeded. Didn’t always.
There was a small envelope inside with a card. I opened the envelope first. Two keys. “Oh, boy…” Nyria said, delighted. “I think I know what that is.”
“What is it?”
“Not telling in case I’m wrong. Read the card.”
I did. Then read it again. “What the hell?”
Nyria was practically bouncing up and down. “What is it? Tell me!”
“It’s… a house. The keys to a house in the area.”
She whooped. “Called it! The house next to his has been empty for a few months now. We’ve been letting Brigit stay there for now, but she’s ready to move out.”
I skimmed the rest of the card for the third time, unable to believe what I was reading. “He says it’s mine. All mine. And I want to sell it and buy another one, I can. And if I want to keep it, he’d love to be…” I coughed. Blushed. “Um, neighbors.”
She tried to snatch the card from me. “It says ‘fuck buddies’ doesn’t it… oh, hell, girl, stop crying.”
“I’ll cry if I want to, damnit.” I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose. “I wanted space, he just gave it to me. No strings attached.”
“I’m pretty sure if you tried to sell it and move to Australia, he’d buy a house next door, so there are still some strings attached. But not bad. Not bad at all. Brings you all the Christmas trees you never had as a kid, gives you dorky gifts, gives you expensive trinkets, arranges it so you get the the privacy you wanted while still giving you guys room to learn to trust one another. And it means two whole houses full of surfaces to sully.” She waggled her eyebrows at me.
I held up the keys. “It’s too much.”
“Uh huh.”
“It’s perfect.”
“Yup.”
“I hate him.”
“As you should.”
Tears welled again. “I think I love the asshole.”
She gently pushed me toward the door. “Give me your coffee and go tell him what a mean shifter he is in person.”
***
I took Nyria’s car to avoid any pissy, glaring shifters I might encounter on the way. I was well aware I wasn’t a favorite, and that everyone here absolutely adored Wyatt. I parked the car next to his and sat there for a moment, telling myself that I was a grown ass woman who could march up there and press the doorbell.
It was like going to the gym. You have to just go and not think about it.
My finger hadn’t even hit the buzzer when it swung open. He said something, but all I could do was greedily drink in the sight of him standing there shirtless in sweats. Had he just worked out? He looked sweaty. Wet and dirty and sweaty, like…
“Cara?”
I was jolted back to reality, one where I had just stared at him, slack-jawed, for way too long. “Um. Sorry. What was that?”
Smooth. Real smooth.
“I said, do you want to come inside?”
“Do you hate me?” I blurted out.
In response, he reached out, grabbed me by the wrist, and tugged me in so he could shut the door behind him. “No. Not in a million years.” He walked off, motioning for me to follow. I did. I’d clearly caught in in the middle of making something in the kitchen.
“But I walked away from you. While you were burned.”
“I was healing rapidly, wasn’t in any danger, and you knew that. And now you’re in my house again. I assume you got my latest gift?”
“It’s too much.”
He smiled. “And here I thought it was perfect.”
“Well, yes. That too.” I bit my lip, unsure of what to do or say. “What do we do now?”
“We take baby steps. Together.”
“I understand why you went behind my back with the stuff. I do. I don’t agree with it, but given the context, I understand you had your focus on bigger things. But what really got my goat was you didn’t even tell me. You didn’t allow me to have a voice in it, and the idea of some random guy pawing through my underwear…” I shuddered. “And then you just had it dumped at your house, like you assumed I’d just move in with you.”
Judging by the look on his face, that was exactly what he’d expected. “I sent a few female shifters from Talin’s pack to pack stuff up for that very reason. Not that it excuses how I failed to communicate with you, especially after I made all those grand speeches about how I wasn’t going to be yet another controlling male in your life. I’m sorry.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Did she tell you what she packed?”
“Nope. Focus was on wizards.”
“So she definitely packed up any, say, vibrators I had.” I kept my face as straight and innocent-looking as possible.
I’d never seen the shifter speechless before, but his jaw was definitely a few inches lower than usual. “Oh, fuck. I didn’t even…” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “No, she would have done that. She packed that up.” He shot me a little glance, one significantly dirtier than before. “Need help unpacking it?”
A familiar heat started to build. “I didn’t come over here to talk about sex toys.”
“I’m a flexible guy.”
“I’m here to talk about these keys.” I held them up and jangled them between us.
He stepped in close, slid strong, sure hands over my hips and slowly started to pull me closer and closer to him. “How about we bring your boxes over from Nyria’s house and put them in yours? And I can help unpack any box I want.”
I narrowed my eyes.
He smiled winningly at me. “Any box you want me to unpack, that is.”
“A house is too much. I can’t accept this.”
He finally succeeded in pulling me fully against him, and his heavy sigh stirred my hair. My whole body felt like it was melting into his again, like nothing had happened in between now and when we’d last had sex. “It’s a fucking house. Who cares? I can afford it. If I didn’t think Nyria would have a meltdown about what it would do to her front lawn, I would have parked a brand-new car next to the tree. Maybe bought a bar in the nearby town for you to run as you want if I knew for certain you’d like the space. Give you a blank check so you could finish your degree anywhere you wanted.”
My breath caught at the last item, and I know he heard it, too.
“I just want you near me. My soul wants you near me. But I know you need your space, and I really hoped this could help bridge this. Prove I’m serious about respecting your wishes. It’s been difficult without you. Now that I know what it’s like to have you with me, it would be hell to go back to the way I existed before.”
I was wavering, hard. Also trying to not cry. Again. “What if… what if I paid rent?”
“Oh, I intend to collect,” he growled.
“That’s not what I… oh, fuck it,” I grumped as he picked me up and deposited me on his kitchen island. “I meant that I would find a job, chip in to cover any property taxes.”
“Mmm, I have a job for you.”
I pushed at his chest. Hard. “I’m not kidding. I want to contribute, and I will hold my own job. And yes, I’m sure you could provide for me, but it’s important for me to have my own source of income. And don’t make a mates-don’t-do-that comment to me. This one will.”
His hands slid under my shirt. “Are you saying you’re my mate?” he asked huskily.
“I haven’t decided yet,” I replied primly, then gasped as his teeth and tongue did wicked, clever things to my neck. “But if you keep that up, I think I’ll be able to make a decision in the next few years.”
“Days.” He licked lower.
“Months.”
“Weeks.” Teeth scraped, sank in.
I could barely choke out my response. “Months, and that’s my final offer.”
“We’ll see about that,” he said. “As long as you’re aware that I’ll do everything I can to seduce you into staying with me forever.”
“Oh, I’m counting on it,” I whispered. “But we can deal with the dynamics of forever later. For now, I just want to be with you.”