Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-eight
JASON
Jason sat among the trees, overlooking the long, sloping field down to the house. Up here, he could be on his own but was still close enough to see the pack coming and going and know he wasn’t completely alone. Except in the way that he was.
Riley had barely been in his life a heartbeat, yet the emptiness without him was unbearable. Had his life always been this hollow? He couldn’t even cling to the faint hope that one day his mate would find him.
His mate. How could his mate have been that sort of person? What did it say about him? Misery filled every corner of him, until he tore at the grass with his fingers, driving dirt deep beneath his fingernails—anything to make him feel something else, to stop him thinking.
He flinched as a shadow fell over him, and he looked up to see Karl, his broad shoulders emphasized by the softly clinging gray t-shirt he wore. Karl settled quietly on the ground beside him.
Jason liked Karl, a lot. He didn’t speak unless he had something to say, he didn’t pry, and he wasn’t temperamental, not like Christian. But it was unusual for Karl to seek him out, and so he stopped digging into the dirt and waited to see what he wanted.
“I hear the reporter’s still here, sleeping in his car,” Karl said conversationally.
He might as well have punched Jason in the gut, because he suddenly couldn’t breathe. Riley was still here. But why?
“I guess I know as much as anyone about making bad choices,” Karl said.
He picked a long blade of grass and rolled it gently between his fingers, easing it open at the seam as if his whole concentration was on that rather than his words.
“You convince yourself it’s the right choice, and by the time you realize your gut knew better than your head all along, it’s too late.
And it doesn’t matter how much you want to, you can’t go back and undo what you’ve done. ” The blade tore, and he dropped it.
Jason stayed stubbornly silent.
“Maybe he’s an asshole, and that’s all there is to it.
” Karl looked sideways at him. “That said, he wanted you enough that he didn’t back down from Matt, even when he thought I was going to rip his throat out, but he’d have gone in a heartbeat if you’d told him to leave.
Seems to me, someone who’s just a selfish dick wouldn’t have done either of those things and wouldn’t still be here now. ”
Jason’s fingers dug into the dirt beneath him. “He lied,” he said, his voice low and desperate. He didn’t want to believe Karl. He couldn’t risk opening himself up again. “He was only ever with me because he wanted a way in to the pack. He was going to betray all of us.”
“And maybe now he wishes he hadn’t done that,” Karl said. “Or maybe he doesn’t care. There’s only one way to find out.”
“How am I supposed to believe anything that comes out of his mouth?” Jason shot at him, furious at Karl for making him do this.
“You tell him that if he lies to you again, I’ll tear his throat out, after I’ve chewed on his liver a while,” Karl said, getting lazily to his feet.
“You didn’t see what he wrote,” Jason said, his voice breaking. “He doesn’t even like shifters.”
Karl looked down at him, amusement gleaming briefly in his dark eyes. “Seems to me, he likes you plenty,” he said. “There’s a hell of a lot about you to like, Jason, if only you’d see it.”
His lips twisted briefly in self-mockery, as if he’d embarrassed himself by talking about emotions, and then he was abruptly serious. “Maybe he is a complete asshole, but don’t risk missing out on something amazing if he’s just a guy who made some wrong choices along the way. Listen to your gut.”
Jason stared after him, his heart pounding unevenly. Something was writhing unpleasantly inside him, and he couldn’t tell what he felt, other than wrong.
As the sun reached its zenith, and he watched pack members come and go from the house that had become his home, Karl’s words kept circling around him. Jason had always judged himself against what he wasn’t. But if Karl, the perfect shifter, the archetypal wolf, thought there was something to like…
Maybe he was worth wanting. There was something important here—some truth he’d never let himself believe.
Now, maybe it was time he did.
RILEY
After a dinner of chips, bread, and cheese, which had gone soft in the heat of the day, Riley went back to the public restrooms to have a quick wash and brush his teeth.
He put on a clean t-shirt and wondered if there was a laundromat in town for when he ran out of clothes.
He might be broke and out of options, but he refused to be broke, out of options, and dirty.
Once it was finally dark, he drove to the motel.
He knew there wouldn’t exactly be a huge demand for parking spaces there, and hopefully it would count as legal enough for Sheriff Urban, who might not feel the same way if he slept in his car in the street.
He pulled into the farthest corner, where the brick wall at the end of the lot had crumbled onto the asphalt and made it an unattractive place to park.
That way, he hoped the manager wouldn’t run him off if she spotted him.
Almost as soon as he curled on the back seat with his head on a rolled-up t-shirt, Riley was cursing his choice. A streetlamp seemed to be shining directly into his eyes no matter which way he faced. It felt like it was trained on him deliberately, punishing him for still being here, still hoping.
If he were less tired, he would do something about moving the car. But he was tired, the sort of weariness that came from heartsickness as much as from lack of sleep, so he pulled a shirt from his bag and put it over his face, hoping it would blot out the light.
JASON
Once the rest of the pack had settled for the evening, Jason slipped quietly around the side of the house to his car. Letting them know he was leaving would only mean a crowd waiting when he got back, full of questions he wasn’t ready to answer.
Doing nothing wasn’t an option. If he didn’t at least try, he’d always wonder if he’d given up on Riley too soon. He’d always regret not knowing for sure.
In town, he parked at the diner out of habit. He’d called in sick that morning. He should feel bad for letting Sam down, but all he could feel was the mixture of wild hope and terror that Karl’s words had caused.
He’d thought about simply driving around town looking for Riley’s car but realized he had a better way to find him than relying on luck.
His wolf’s senses would be able to track down Riley’s scent in a fraction of the time it would take him in human form.
And if it were somehow true that Riley did want to be with him, he needed to find out if Riley could ever fully accept him as a shifter.
As a wolf. So he left his clothes in a tidy pile in a dark corner of the park and shifted.
Scenting the air, he trotted out of the park and went hunting.