Chapter Eleven
Two days. Hayley would have thought she could settle down and focus enough to fill out an application in two days, but the stack of papers on her little card table hadn’t been touched. She’d gone on several runs in her mountain lion form, even hitting the area by Mount Rainier. The entire time, she’d told herself she wasn’t hoping to run into Marius.
Because she wasn’t hoping for that.
Nope.
Her apartment made her claustrophobic. It was her lion, really. The mountain lion inside of her wanted Marius, and sitting still in a tiny studio would simply not do.
But her lion didn’t know what was good for her, apparently, because Marius certainly wasn’t the answer. She’d have to trick her lion again with a long run, maybe on the family property.
Ignoring the application packet, she hurried out of her apartment and climbed into her little VW Beetle. Her goal was to forget Marius, but the drive to Paris Lake had the exact opposite effect. As she pulled up to the ruined, half-burnt house, all she could think about was coming up here with Marius. She’d wanted to show him the site for her house, close to a giant Alaska yellow cedar that she’d loved from childhood.
She recognized Jackson’s new car, an SUV with plenty of leg room. She missed seeing him in the little Nissan Spark he’d rented when he first came back to Huntwood. Okay, fine, she missed teasing him about the Spark.
“Jackson?” she called, walking up to the destroyed house.
It was quiet—too quiet. Hayley froze in place, engaging her strong shifter senses. There was the humid feel of the air close to the lake, the rotting scent of old wood from the house, the fresh pine and cedar scents. She could smell Jackson, too, but he smelled more animal than human—
Something landed just behind her and she bit back a shriek. Turning, she faced her brother in his lion form.
“Listen, dickhole, I came here for…for distraction.” She trailed off. This was distraction. “No, I came here for some peaceful demolition. Not—”
He whacked her with one of his paws, claws retracted.
“Jackson,” she growled.
He whacked her again. His hit left a streak of mud on her jeans. Fuckballs, he wasn’t going to leave her alone until she ran with him. Sighing, she stripped out of her clothes and shifted into her lion. She turned to face Jackson, her ears back and tail twitching. His eyes grew wide as she lowered herself to the ground and prepared to spring.
They chased each other through the woods of their childhood, racing halfway up trees and banking off them to return the chase. After half an hour, they came to a standstill next to each other, panting.
This was fun, Hayley thought, but there was one thing—one person—missing. Will. Their trio was incomplete because that stubborn assbrat still wouldn’t come home, for reasons he wouldn’t share. But she missed him.
Jackson raised his head and gestured toward the lake, which was about a hundred yards away from here. Hayley knew exactly what he was asking. Race?
She shook her head to the side and lowered her eyes, like she was too tired. Jackson let off a low growl of indignation and started to turn toward the house, when Hayley took off like a shot in the direction of the lake. Ha, sucker.
He yowled but chased after her.
She reached the lake before he did. A small, neon green bit of fabric was tangled in the grasses at the lake’s edge and Hayley realized, with horror, that it was her panties from Tuesday night.
Jackson was already barreling out of the trees, and he skidded to a stop in front of Hayley, poised to take a playful swipe at her face. Then his attention went behind her. To the panties.
She backed up. Maybe she could kick them back into the water and they’d sink like a rock. Maybe he was looking at something else.
No, he was going straight for her underwear. She tried to block him, but he nudged past her and sniffed the air. Hayley growled.
Before her eyes, her brother shifted to his human form. “What the hell, Hayley? Why is your underwear in the lake?”
She tried to shrug, but it was hard to do as a lion. Let him think what he wanted. This was none of his business. She started ambling back to the house, head held high.
“I smell Marius here, too,” he said.
Inwardly, she groaned. None of his business.
Jackson jogged to catch up with her and walked at her side. Sighing, he said, “You know I don’t want to think about any of that stuff. You’re still my baby sister. But Marius isn’t half bad.”
Hayley growled. She didn’t want to talk about it. If she did, she’d be in her human form and talking, obviously.
“You could do a lot worse, you know,” he said.
Her community college application was sounding awfully tempting right about now.
“He feels bad about teaming up with Dan Clausen. I don’t know the details, except he didn’t know what he’d gotten into.”
They’d reached the house. Hayley gave him another growl, this one laced with warning. If he opened his mouth again, she was gonna—
“I’m just saying, he seems like a nice—”
Before he could get the rest out, she was on him and he was flat on his back on the ground. She released her claws slightly on his shoulders so he could feel it, and she gave him her meanest glare.
“Jackson? Hey. Hey!”
A leather work glove sailed through the air and hit Hayley in the forehead. She looked up, startled. Summer was striding forward, looking like she was ready to take Hayley down.
Hayley backed off of Jackson and shifted into her human form. “Sorry, Summer.”
Summer threw the second glove at Hayley, but missed. “You scared me.”
“I’m sorry,” Hayley said again, finding her clothes and yanking them on. “He just needed to be taught to mind his own damn business.”
Laughing, Summer said, “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
Jackson stood up. “Well, she’s the one leaving her freaking underwear in our lake.”
“What?” Summer asked, laughing harder.
“Nothing,” Hayley said. “I might’ve come back here with Marius the other night. But I do not want to discuss it. Okay?”
Summer held her hands up. “Okay.”
Hayley retrieved Summer’s gloves and handed them to her. “So, I guess we’re all here to work?”
“Yeah,” Jackson said. He’d put on his clothes, too. “And I have good news—we’re clear to start building our houses, got our permits and everything.”
“We’ll have to wait until spring, though,” Hayley said.
“Yeah. But we can at least keep pulling apart this place.”
Hayley had already been through it a couple of times, searching for any items worth salvaging. There hadn’t been much. After winning the pride war, the Clausens must have cleared most of it out.
She grabbed a sledge hammer from the front entrance hall. They’d gotten the necessary permit to demolish the house, and they’d opted to do it by hand. This way, they could salvage building materials as they went. In the end, both Hayley and Jackson wanted to use materials from the old house while building their new ones. Hayley liked the practicality and she liked working with old materials. And Jackson was a sentimental sap.
They worked for hours, and afterward, Jackson retrieved three beers from an ice chest at the back of his car.
“I gotta go, actually,” Summer said, kissing Jackson’s cheek. “I promised Becca I’d hang out tonight.” She hugged Hayley and a few minutes later, Hayley and Jackson watched Summer’s car driving away.
Hayley leaned against the side of Jackson’s car and tilted her head back, soaking in the beauty of the surrounding trees.
“It was fun, running around with you earlier,” Jackson said, clinking his beer bottle with Hayley’s. “You barely won that race to the lake, cheater.”
“I’m up for a rematch any day,” she said. “But I couldn’t help thinking there’s something missing.”
“Will,” he said.
“I just don’t get why he won’t come home,” Hayley said.
“Remember how hard it was on him, after we left?” Jackson asked.
Hayley nodded. “It was hard on all of us.”
“No,” Jackson said. “It was worse on him. I don’t know why, but he changed that day. He used to joke around more, remember? He’d play with us on our runs, and he was funny, and just—he used to be a fun guy, Hayles.”
She felt her nose scrunching as she tried to remember it. Yeah, there had been some fun times with Will. All three of them had mourned their parents’ deaths, and they’d mourned losing their territory. But while Hayley and Jackson had seemed to adapt to their new reality, Will was never the same.
“I think,” Jackson said slowly, “that leaving this place killed a part of him. Yeah, I know it sounds fucking melodramatic, but bear with me. And now I think that he’s afraid that if he comes back, he’ll grow attached all over again, and there’ll always be a risk of losing it. And I think that might destroy him.”
“Melodramatic is right,” she said, knocking into his shoulder.
*
Back at her apartment, Hayley settled into her couch and pulled a blanket over her legs. Another day that she’d successfully avoided the college application. She picked up her phone and pulled up the text message app, then typed in a message to Will. Jackson and I miss you.
A few seconds later, his response appeared. Miss you, too.
Hayley: I know you don’t want to come back and I don’t really know why, but you belong here, Will.
Will: Good night, Hayley. I love you.
She sighed and typed back, I love you, too.
Stubborn shitstick.
Her phone buzzed in her hand, but this time it wasn’t Will—it was Marius.
Marius: Hey, wenchface.
Hayley felt her eyebrows skyrocket up her forehead. What did you call me?
Marius: Isn’t that how you play that game? Find an offensive word, put it together with something else?
Hayley snorted. Dude, insult trading is an art, and you are nowhere near ready to be set loose on the world.
Marius: Then tutor me in your ways, insult master.
Hayley: You should be so lucky.
Her hand hovered over the screen as she thought about Marius, and the other night with him. Fuckballs, she couldn’t resist this guy. What are you up to? I’m getting ready to binge-watch Stranger Things. Wanna join me?
He didn’t respond right away, and she cursed. Then he wrote, Are you asking me to watch Netflix and chill?
Hayley: Would you say yes if I was?
Marius: Hell yes. But I’m out of town on work. That last job of the season.
Hayley muttered a curse and frowned at her phone. Just when she’d started feeling frisky. Just thinking about him already had wetness gathering between her legs. While she tried to think of something to say back to him, another message popped up on the screen.
Marius: Are you thinking about Tuesday night? Because I can’t stop thinking about it.
She didn’t want to admit it, but she wrote, Yes.
Marius: You were so hot, the way you held me with your legs.
She giggled to herself even as tendrils of lust spread through her body. Were they really doing this? She wrote, Where are you right now?
Marius: In my tent. We won’t be in range tomorrow, too far out in the wilderness.
Hayley: Are you alone in your tent?
Marius: Yeah. Are you alone at home?
Hayley: Uh huh.
Marius: Touch yourself, and imagine it’s me.
He’d never know if she didn’t do it. Except she wanted to do it. She reached into her sweatpants and touched herself. Wetness gathered around her finger. If that were Marius’s hand, hell, she’d be coming already.
Marius: Did you do it?
She took her hand out of her pants and wiped it on a tissue.
Hayley: Hard to do that and text at the same time.
Her phone rang a second later.