Tre bounced on the balls of his feet like he was about to step into a basketball game. He shook out his hands and then his shoulders. He really didn’t want to do this. He really, really didn’t want to do this.

And he really had to do this.

“Where you goin’?” he asked Caroline as he walked up to the driveway where she was pumping up the tires on an old bike she’d found in the shed around the side of the house.

“Just thought I’d go for a ride. I love biking.” She wore neat little navy blue shorts, a fancy, light blue T-shirt, and the whitest sneakers Tre had ever seen in his life. “Wanna come? There’s another bike in there. It might fit you. Though you’ve got long legs.”

He shifted a bit to one side as her caramel eyes zipped up his legs. “Ah, sure. Be right back.”

He’d go on a bike ride with her and then he’d tell her about her husband. Maybe it was smarter to do it somewhere away from the house. Where she could have a little privacy from everyone if she needed to cry about it. Oh God. He really hoped she wasn’t going to cry about it. Any woman crying was enough to have Tre’s neck going bright red, but to witness Caroline Clifton crying? That was like watching the sun itself somehow start to produce rain. It just went against the laws of nature.

He wheeled the bike around and they fixed up the tires. “I’ve gotta be back in an hour or so,” he told her. “Bear practice.”

“Oh! Okay, no problem.”

They set off together, Caroline in front and Tre bringing up the rear. And speaking of rears. Jeez. Tre did his best to keep his eyes on the greenery and the blue sky whipping past them, but holy Moses did this woman have an ass. She was tiny up top and had the ass of two women on the bottom. The most gorgeous little pear he’d ever seen. She looked back over her shoulder and he immediately did an exaggerated half circle with his head as if he’d just been animatedly enjoying the scenery and not the up and down of her ass on that bike seat.

“I know an ice cream stand on the edge of town if you wanna pull over there before we head back?”

He hadn’t realized they were quite that close to the edge of civilization, but he nodded.

They pulled up to the stand and it was definitely busy, but there were some empty picnic tables dotted around the lawn that Tre figured was as good a place as any to break the horrible news he had to break.

Caroline got in line, her hands in her pockets and her chestnut ponytail long enough to rest over one of her shoulders. Tre stood next to her and frowned when he realized that pretty much every dude, young and old, was looking at Caroline. Whether they were stealing glances between helping their kids with their ice cream cones, or they were just out and out staring at her, every single one had noticed her. Annoyance curled in Tre’s belly. He was not a fan of this phenomenon.

Tre stepped a touch closer to her and for the first time, realized that he was really a lot taller than she was. The top of her head was well below his chin. He looked down at her and—whoops!—immediately looked away, realizing that he had the perfect vantage point for seeing down her shirt. He cleared his throat and attempted to forget about the edge of the lacy pink bra he’d caught sight of. Fat chance. 

They ordered their ice cream and sat down at the farthest picnic table. Tre put Caroline’s back to the crowd of people back at the stand so that she wouldn’t have to worry about hiding her face if she cried. The side effect was that her perfect, peachy ass was on full display, but he figured he couldn’t win them all right then.

“Caroline? I wanted to talk to you about something.” He planted his spoon in his chocolate and wiped his mouth with a napkin.

“Oh?” She licked at her strawberry cone.

“Yeah. And I just wanna say that you’re probably gonna be mad at me. And that’s okay. I deserve it.”

She furrowed her brow in confusion. “I really can’t imagine being mad at you, Tre. You’re so kind. And funny!”

“Yeah. Look. I’m not gonna drag it out. But I just think there’s something that you need to know. About your husband.”

“About Peter?” Now she looked really confused.

“Yeah. Ah, I hate so much to tell you this, Caroline. But I think he’s been cheating on you.”

She froze, her eyes wide. She tried to put her ice cream cone down, but realizing that it wasn’t going to balance on the table, just passed it from hand to hand. Tre leaned over and gently took it off her hands.

He figured that he’d delivered the blow, now he needed to explain. “I hacked into his accounts, while we were still in Michigan. I wasn’t looking for it exactly, but I found evidence that he’s been using some dating sites. And, uh, some hookup sights.”

“You hacked into his accounts?” she asked, her eyes still wide.

He really couldn’t tell, even remotely, what she was feeling. “Yeah. Yes. Caroline, I’m so sorry. I know it wasn’t any of my business. But I had this weird feeling. Like something wasn’t quite right. It was before you told us about your divorce, and I just kind of knew you were hiding something. But I didn’t want to completely invade your privacy by hacking you. So I looked into Peter and…”

He scraped his free hand over the back of his neck, pushed up his thick glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Caroline. About all of it, but especially that I invaded your life like that and—”

He cut off when her hand came across the picnic table and squeezed at his elbow. “You were protecting the group, Tre. You sensed I had a secret, which I did, and you did what you had to do to protect the group. I’m not mad that you hacked Peter.” She ducked her face behind her hands. “I’m just really embarrassed about what you found.”

Embarrassed? She was embarrassed? Tre leaned forward and gently tugged one of her hands away from her face. “Caroline, why are you embarrassed?” He read the expression on her face, the chagrin, the little shrug of her shoulders. “You knew about all this already?”

She nodded, looking miserable.

“Is that why you’re getting a divorce?”

He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but suddenly she looked twice as miserable. He deserved to get punched in the dick for sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. He was stirring up some really private shit and dragging her through some muck that she definitely didn’t deserve to get dragged through.

“No,” she whispered. “That’s not why we’re getting a divorce.” She took a deep breath. “And Peter wasn’t cheating on me.”

“Uh, without going into too much detail here, Caroline, I can pretty much completely assure you that he was.”

“No.” She waved her hand through the air. “I know that he was with other women. I’m just saying that it wasn’t cheating.”

She ducked her head down and traced a knot on the picnic table. Tre stared at her, uncomprehending. He jumped when her ice cream started to drip down his fingers. He licked the strawberry drips off his hand and she smiled a little, reaching forward and taking her cone back.

“So…” he tried to understand. “You’re saying that you and he had an understanding.”

She sighed. “Yes. We had one of those,” she twiddled her fingers in the air, “open marriage thingies.”

Tre had excellent intuition, but even a rock could have figured out that there was something very off about this picture. “You were in an open marriage with your husband.”

She nodded and avoided his eyes, licking at the cone.

“Was it open for both of you?” This was so firmly in the none of his business plot of land that he would need a passport to get back to the place where his business lived. But still, he had to know.

Her eyes met his, for just one, bright second. “No. I never wanted anyone else. He was the one who needed… that.”

“And so you and he decided that he could have that. Other women.”

“Yup.” She looked so sad, tracing that knot on the picnic table again. “I was so young when we got married. I had no idea how a marriage actually worked. And sometimes you have to do stuff you don’t want to do in order to keep everything in working order. It makes sense when you think about it and—”

“Bullshit.”

She reared back from him, her eyebrows furrowing. “What?”

“Caroline, that’s bullshit. Look. I know that open marriage is a thing that works for a lot of people. And there are all kinds of it. But both people have to want to make it work. It has to be right for everyone involved. It doesn’t work if one person isn’t comfortable.”

Her eyes filled, to his great horror. Seriously, he was about half a second away from punching himself in the dick.

“I know. I know it’s my fault. I couldn’t give him what he really needed and I ended up taking everything so personally and just wrecking everything and—”
“No! Honey, that’s not what I’m saying at all.” He took her cone from her hands and just smashed it ice cream side down into his bowl of chocolate ice cream so neither of them had to hold it. “I’m not saying that it didn’t work because you couldn’t get on board. I’m saying that it didn’t work because he was making you do something you didn’t want to do. That is not your fault, Caroline. Not at all. You can’t force something like that on someone.”

She blinked and the tears that had been pooling in her eyes skipped down her cheeks and onto the picnic table.

“Marriage is really complicated, Tre.”

“I’m sure, honey. I’m sure it is. But I seriously cannot sit here while you cry into your ice cream telling me that your marriage ended because you couldn’t figure out how to shake pompoms for your assclown husband while he slept with other women.”

She laughed then, a bright, complicated noise that was also filled with tears. Tre could have fallen to his knees and thanked God. He handed her a scratchy paper napkin and she wiped at her eyes, blew her nose.

“How did you know that I used to be a cheerleader?” she asked.

And it was his turn to laugh. “Wild guess,” he told her and reached forward to toss around the ends of that high ponytail, still over her shoulder.

He looked down at the mess of soupy, pink and brown ice cream. “I ruined our ice cream.”

She leaned forward and peered in. “Looks good to me. Just get another spoon and we’ll finish it off together.”

He came back a moment later with an extra spoon and sat down across from her.

She took a scoop of the ice cream and studied his face for a second. “I have to sign the papers, don’t I?”

It was barely a question.

He leaned across the table and landed a warm palm against her shoulder. “Yeah. You do.”

 

***

 

After their little breakfast club in the kitchen, Celia didn’t see Jean Luc for the rest of the day. She knew that the boys spent the whole morning working on the whole shifting thing with Martine, and then, after lunch, they split up for a while before reconvening to work straight up until dinner. They were going to exhaust themselves.

Feeling like she needed to be doing something to contribute to the group, Celia had downloaded about 700 different books on demon and shifter lore, trying to get a handle on what they were working with here. She spent the day hacking through some of the literature.

Around 6 pm, she walked into the kitchen to see Jack and Tre making pasta and chopping up veggies for a salad.

“Are you boys seriously making dinner for us after spending the entire day in bear practice?”

Jack looked up from where he was tearing lettuce. “I think we needed to prove to ourselves that we were actually good at something.”

Celia winced. “So, no luck with the shifting?”

“Not even close,” Tre sighed, stirring the pasta. “We’re all out there, sweating our asses off, giving ourselves hernias trying to make this shit happen and nothing. Just. Nothing.”

“That sounds really frustrating. Where’s Jean Luc?” Celia asked, in what she hoped was a casual transition.

“He went to pick something up in town. But he should be back soon. Dinner in fifteen, okay?”

“Sounds good.” Celia played drums on the countertop for a second. “Another movie tonight?”

“No.” Tre shook his head. “Caroline decrees that a game night is in order.”

“Ah. Okay.” Celia tried not to sound disappointed that she wasn’t going to have an excuse to curl up with Jean Luc again.

They were all sitting down to dinner when Jean Luc got back. “Sorry I’m late!” he called, passing through the dining room with a small plastic bag in his hand. “Gimme one sec.”

He disappeared down the back hall for a moment and came back with a curious little smile on his face that only Celia really noticed.

The group all deftly avoided shifter talk, as it was clear that Martine and the boys were all pretty frustrated with it. But with the good food, the mood lifted considerably. Caroline talked them all into a rousing game of Apples to Apples, which included quite a bit of shouting and pleading of cases. Celia had to admit, it was a lot more fun than she’d thought it was going to be. Even if she hadn’t gotten to sit next to Jean Luc.

And he’d barely looked at her all night. She’d tried to catch his eye once or twice, but he hadn’t noticed.

After three rounds, she stood up and stretched, and so did Jack and Thea. They said their goodnights and went back to their rooms.

Celia flipped on the light to her small guest room and closed the door. She froze when she turned back to her bed. There, sitting on top of her quilt, was a brand new, unopened pack of men’s boxers. Size XS.

She laughed out loud. Delight and nerves and something else raced through her bloodstream. He’d… bought her underwear. Men’s underwear, but still. Because he’d wanted to give her a gift? Make her laugh? Because he hadn’t liked her wearing an ex’s boxers?              

Any of the above answers made her stomach flip. No matter how she sliced the pie, she came up with the same answer. Jean Luc had made a special trip to town to buy her something. Trying not to hyperventilate, she quickly brushed her teeth and ran through a shower before bed.

This was moving quickly. Much more quickly than she’d anticipated. She’d figured they could keep up a light flirtation for a long time. Expend some of the tense energy they were all experiencing. But this thing with Jean Luc was accelerating.

This thing with Jean Luc LaTour. Hottest guy on the planet. World champion athlete. Crush since she’d been in seventh grade. She changed into a tank top and popped open the plastic tab on the pack of boxers, sliding on a pair. Perfect fit. Her stomach clamped down and goosebumps rose on her arms. In a way, it was almost like she was wearing his boxers. Was that the way he’d wanted her to feel?

God, this was not happening to her. There was no way on earth that she, of all the women he had to choose from, was the one who was regularly getting his attention.

Celia knew, at this point, that she was setting herself up for sleepless night part deux. So she was very surprised when she pulled the covers up to her chin, rolled over and woke up with the sunrise.

Wow.

She sat up, perfectly rested and awake, and stumbled out to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She grimaced at the craziness that was her hair anytime she slept on it wet. She braided the long silver section of her fade and then tipped her head this way and that. She needed, really needed, a trip to the barber shop. The lines of her haircut were almost embarrassing at this point.

But first, coffee. This morning she had her contacts in when she stepped into the kitchen barefoot. Her stomach flipped. She’d known he’d be there at the counter. Somehow, she’d known.

“Morning,” she hummed to Jean Luc, before crossing the kitchen and pulling a mug down.

She could feel his eyes on her from where he sat at the counter. “Nice boxers.”             

She filled up her coffee and turned around once she had her insane smile under control. She probably looked like the Joker. She held her coffee cup in two hands and took a sip, her eyes on his. “Some guy bought them for me.”

Jean Luc smiled into his coffee. “He sounds like a creep.”

Celia laughed and crossed her feet at the ankle. “Actually, I get the impression that he’s a really good guy.”

Jean Luc went a little pink in the ear and he scratched at the back of his head. “You put your contacts in this morning.”

“Yeah. I generally try not to let those glasses out of the bat cave.”

“Hold on, are you referring to your bedroom as the bat cave?”

“Um,” she laughed. “Yeah. I guess I am?”

“Interesting.” He covered his smile with his coffee cup, which he promptly drained. He rose up and crossed the kitchen to put it in the dishwasher. Celia slid to one side to give him room.

He put the mug away and straightened. Jesus, she was tiny. The top of her head was mid-rib for him. He knocked one of his feet against hers. “Glad you like ‘em.”

She stared up at him, close enough that she could feel his gigantic breaths washing over her face. She could smell the morning on him. Yesterday’s deodorant and toothpaste and coffee. Frankly she was surprised she hadn’t drowned in a puddle of her own drool. They weren’t touching, but they weren’t breaking eye contact either. The hairs on her arms raised up, like they, too, were trying to get closer to him.

“Do you know of a good barber shop around here?” she asked him.

He jolted and his eyes lifted to hers. She realized that he’d been looking at her mouth. Jeez Louise. She was such an idiot! Jean Luc Freaking LaTour was eight inches from her, looking at her mouth and she’s gonna go ahead and panic and bring up a barber shop? What was wrong with her?

She just barely resisted the urge to bury her face in her hands.

“What for?” he asked.

“I need a haircut. The fade is growing out.”

“Oh,” he frowned down at her and then planted one finger under her chin, tipping her head from one side to the other. “I’ve got some clippers. I could do it for you.”

She was distracted by his nearness, his touch on her chin. She felt his thumb join his finger there. She felt his hand move, his warm palm cupped her jaw, his thumb at her chin, his fingers curled around the back of her neck. He was touching her like he was going to kiss her. Holy God. Her knees literally knocked together. Of all the extremely dorky moves she could have executed, she had to go with knee-knocking. She hadn’t even known that was a real thing until just now!

“Is that a yes?” he asked her, his voice low and his eyelids heavy.

Yes? Yes to what? Everything? In that case, seven million yeses to any little thing Jean Luc was asking her. She didn’t care if he was asking her to dance for him wearing nothing but strategically placed peanut butter cups. The answer was nine hundred gajillion yeses.

“Coffee,” she whispered, utterly befuddled. All she could think was that he was about to kiss her and she was going to drop the cup of coffee she was currently white-knuckling against her chest.

Apparently he understood what she was saying because his free hand whisked the cup of coffee away and slid it onto the counter. That same free hand came back to her and slicked down her side, so gently she barely felt it. The touch was all fingertips until he came to the boxers at her thigh, which he tugged at just a little, tangled his fingers in the hem.

“Is that a yes?” he asked one more time.

“Yes,” she whispered, caught by the high beams of his lazy-hot gaze. His light brown eyes were fuzzy and burning, he wasn’t looking away and she wasn’t looking away. She couldn’t ever remember a single time in her life when she’d been able to look a man in the eye like this. Like she knew what was about to happen and so did he and neither of them were embarrassed by it.

The hand at her thigh spread out and easily caught her up. In half a second, Celia found herself sitting on the cool kitchen counter. He was going to spread her legs apart, she just knew it. And then she was going to freak out and pass out and ruin everything. But he didn’t push between her legs. Instead he planted one huge palm on one side of her and the other on the other side of her. He planted his feet and leaned in. He was big enough that he barely had to invade her space in order to be close to her.

He wasn’t touching her at all when he closed the distance between them, his eyes on hers. And somehow, that made everything so much hotter to her. He wasn’t discombobulating her with all those sexy, warm muscles. He was making this very clear. He was leaning in to kiss her. His eyes on hers, no confusion.

When she could feel the warmth of his face, he cocked his head to one side and brushed the tip of his nose against hers. She gasped and pressed her legs together. Her hands, too, found the counter, needing something, anything, to hold onto. She was lost in that light brown gaze, spinning into it. He had a stubby set of thick brown eyelashes and for some reason, knowing that sent a jolt of heat through her.

She tipped her chin forward and so did he. Their lips met with a shock of static electricity that had them both instantly pulling back. Jean Luc chuffed out a surprised laugh and then leaned forward again. This time, both of his lips touched her bottom one.

His eyes stayed on hers but Celia didn’t notice. She fluttered into the kiss like a bird out to sea. She was lost to it. The warm press of his lips, his breath fanning out over her cheek. She could feel the scratch of his beard, just a touch longer than stubble. A noise exhaled out of her, surfing on her breath. It was a sweet, hot, overwhelmed noise that also happened to open her mouth.

Jean Luc was going slow, moving carefully. He was, quite literally, more than twice her size. If she wanted to kiss him, he was all there for it. All in. Take the money and run. But a man his size couldn’t afford to rush things. So he fisted his hands on the counter and made his move nice and slow. But when she made that noise, that soft little yummy noise, he lost grip on himself just a touch. Her mouth came open and he couldn’t help but take a taste.

Holy mother of God, but she was sweet. And of course she was. It was just another one of those contradictions of hers that he found so appealing. Tough as nails on the outside, but pretty when you looked close, sweet as ripe fruit when she let you in. And damn did she let him in.

Both of their hands still gripping the countertop, Jean Luc used nothing but his mouth to tip her head to one side, to deepen the kiss. She made that noise again and he swept his tongue inside in a desperate attempt to taste that noise of hers. To taste her warmth.

She met his tongue with hers and she could barely believe that he tasted the way he did. Like bargain toothpaste and expensive coffee and something that was extremely distinct but also extremely familiar. Why was it so familiar? There was no reason for it to be familiar because Celia knew, in no uncertain terms, that she had never once in her entire life been kissed like this before. She’d had bad kisses and she’d had good kisses but all of them had been defined by one thing: separation. That was ridiculous, and she knew it, but it was also true. Every kiss she’d ever had had felt like the end of the game, of the flirtation. It was almost like flirting and build-up was in this warm fuzzy cloud and then the kissing came and somebody put a clear glass jar over her and over whoever was kissing her. She’d always felt that both she and her partner were alone with their experience of the kiss. He was kissing and she was kissing and afterward they could talk about it, but while it was happening, there was no communication, there was just lust and seclusion.

That was not the case with Jean Luc. She had absolutely no idea what brand of witchcraft he practiced or who he’d sold his soul to, but for once, Celia was not alone in a kiss. She was lashed to him, riding the exact same wave. When she opened her eyes, it was to see his eyes coming open as well. There was desire and heat and, most importantly, attention in his eyes. He was losing himself and taking her with him, but he was also taking her temperature, making sure she was ready to go where that masterful tongue of his was taking them.

He drew back, took a breath and rested his forehead on hers before he kissed her once more, and then again. And then again.

She was tilting toward him, dizzy, silently willing him to just drag her back to a cave and get her pregnant already, when they both heard footsteps in the hall.

Celia’s eyes grew round with alarm and that clued Jean Luc in to the fact that she was not ready to get caught kissing in the kitchen. Therefore he took a step back, jammed her coffee cup in her hands and ran some cold water in the sink. He plunged his hands under the faucet and dragged his cold fingertips to the back of his neck, trying like hell to get ahold of himself.

“Morning, earlybirds!” Caroline called as she basically skipped into the kitchen. “I thought for sure I’d be the first one up, but here you are!” She poured herself a cup of coffee and then looked up in alarm. “Celia, are you alright?”

Celia cleared her throat and tried to wipe off whatever expression she was positive was on her face.

“Um. Yeah. Totally fine. Still waking up, I guess.” What a crock. She’d never been more awake in her life. She could have run a 10k backwards, barefoot and uphill. Her heart was pumping gasoline. Every single cell in her possession was positively vibrating. “I’m… gonna hit the shower.”

She slid off the counter and steadied herself when her freaking knees knocked again. Her eyes shot to Jean Luc’s. He didn’t look smug, like he knew for sure that he’d just kissed her off her feet. No, he looked a little wonky himself, and he automatically reached out to steady her.

If she’d turned around before she strode out of the kitchen, she would have seen Jean Luc drag a hand over his face. She would have seen him let out a long, shaky breath. She would have seen him sag against the counter.

But she didn’t turn around.