Chapter eighteen
KIT
Iwoke to the sound of the shower running. I threw on a jumper and the scarf I’d worn yesterday over my pyjamas. While Lucas dressed in his room, I hurried into the bathroom and brushed my teeth.
I hadn’t set an alarm, felt like that was too needy, but I wondered if I’d somehow programmed my enhanced senses to alert me when Lucas was up and about.
I’d barely seen him yesterday. He’d come home late in the evening after a day of seal watching, eaten his dinner, hugged me tight, then rushed off to bed.
I didn’t want to commit too hard to the role of a neglected housewife, but I wanted more than a few moments of contact with him today.
Running my tongue over my minty teeth, I walked downstairs. Lucas was slotting a hunk of bread and an orange into his dog patterned Tupperware. He froze when he turned and spotted me.
‘Morning.’ I resolutely ignored both his wide-eyed gaze – the kind of look I associated with people who didn’t expect to get caught nicking a book from the shop – and the warm wave of want that washed over me. ‘Where are you off to today?’
Lucas unfroze to shove his lunchbox into his backpack. ‘I’m spending the day at the farm. Oscar has a few animals he’s concerned about.’
I nodded absently as I walked closer. It felt like moving through the wood scented air of a sauna. I didn’t know specifically what was doing it for Lucas this morning, whether my sleep-mused hair or crumpled pyjama bottoms really got him going, but his desire pulsed anew with each step I took.
‘When do you think you’ll be home?’
I purposefully kept any emotion from my voice, but apparently Lucas knew me well enough to see through that. His eyebrows pinched together. He rested his backpack on the dining table and pulled me into a tight hug.
‘Yesterday was a one off,’ he murmured into my hair, arms firm around my waist. ‘I should be back early enough today to visit you at the shop.’
I smiled, my arms looped around his neck. Lucas wasn’t the sun, but I basked in the warmth radiating from him. He liked me and saw me and wanted me. The unerring desire in his scent loosened something inside my chest that had been coiled tight for too long.
I’d been leaving Lucas to figure out his attraction alone. I didn’t want to push him before he was ready, didn’t want to frighten him by forcing him to confront desires that were too fresh and new.
But before his attraction had coiled around me for brief moments, whereas for days now I’d been spending hours with it winding through the few spaces between us. Every time he stepped into the shop, his heart rate kicked up. His scent grew heated whenever I caught his eye and smiled.
It was impossible to ignore. His want permeated every moment we spent together.
Surely he’d had enough time to think about it alone. He was so considerate and unsure. Maybe he was waiting for me to make the first move.
Carefully, I took half a step back. I left my hands cupped at his nape, my arms trailing across his shoulders. I had to suppress a shiver when his hands moved from my back to my hips. The pulse of desire from him was stronger than ever as his thumbs pressed into my sides.
Lucas looked at me with wide eyes, his brown irises almost black. His damp hair fell in tangles around his ears and across his forehead. His skin was a deep toffee colour, hours spent helping the animals across the island as the sun beat down deepening the tan he’d arrived with a month ago.
I took one last breath, assuring myself that all I could scent was want and need and a hint of nerves, before asking, ‘Lucas, can I kiss you?’
It was like a car crash.
One moment, everything between us was soft and light. The next it was cold and sharp.
I had to stop myself recoiling. Scents that had filled the room since I’d entered battled with this new cacophony.
Lucas’s eyes remained wide, but not with what could be confused desire.
Shock. Horror. Dread. His scent battered me, zinging with panic.
I’d never smelt anything like this on him before. His gaze strayed to my mouth, but there was no flash of want. All that emanated from him was curdling sadness and fear.
I stepped back, forcing his hands off me. ‘You want to say no, right?’
Lucas cringed, like even confirming he didn’t want to go along with a request hurt him. Well, tough. It would hurt me way more if he kissed me when he didn’t want to.
‘I’m sorry, Kit.’
Lucas raised his arms, but I stepped out of reach.
For the first time since he’d arrived on the island, I didn’t want him close.
Not because he didn’t want to kiss me, as humiliating as that was.
More that I didn’t know what he would have done if I hadn’t stepped back.
The thought that he would have kissed me when he didn’t want to made my chest ache.
‘I must have interpreted things wrong,’ I said, almost to myself.
Lucas couldn’t know I’d been scenting him for weeks, slowly cataloguing what I’d thought was the attraction between us growing.
I scanned his face. His eyes were crinkled and his mouth downturned.
‘You don’t need to be sorry. I’m sorry.’
‘Please don’t be.’ Lucas shook his head. His scent turned hot, like he was angry. It passed as he looked at me. His eyes flicked to my lips once again. ‘I wish I wanted to kiss you.’
His face flamed, but I was less concerned with his embarrassment over another of his blurted statements and more confused by whatever the hell had gone on with his heart as he’d said it.
The beats flattened. Skipping, but also not. Hammered and strange.
Lucas’s words were earnest. He certainly believed what he’d said, but somehow it wasn’t completely true. It wasn’t an outright lie, he wasn’t telling me he wished he wanted to kiss me to be nice when actually he was resolutely straight and always would be. Something else was going on.
‘I should go.’ Lucas grabbed his bag. I thought he would flee the cottage without another word, but he paused at the top of the stairs to the ground floor. His shoulders rounded like he was trying to make himself small. He didn’t look up as he said, ‘Is everything going to be okay?’
Fighting the instinct to run up to my bedroom and sob into my pillow because the boy I liked didn’t like me back, I walked over and placed my hand in the centre of Lucas’s hunched back.
‘Everything will be fine,’ I promised, eternally grateful Lucas wasn’t a werewolf so couldn’t detect the faint bump to my heartbeat. It wasn’t a total lie, but was more something I wanted to be true rather than what I knew to be.
Lucas nodded, his shoulders loosening as he took a deep breath. ‘I really care about you,’ he said in a rush, before pelting down the stairs.
My hand fell to my side. Lucas didn’t look up as he yanked open the cottage’s back door. It slammed shut behind him, caught by the wind.
‘Oh god.’ The air around me swam with a horrible mixture of want and sadness and need and fear. I sank down to the floor to escape the worst of it, my knees pulled to my chest.
Hope was a cruel bastard. I shouldn’t have let myself get caught up in the warmth of Lucas’s scent, should have kept a level head and concluded that if he wasn’t acting on his feelings, there was a reason.
I gripped my legs tight. He’d said he wished he wanted to kiss me with that weird murmur in his heartbeat.
I didn’t know what it meant, but I wouldn’t allow myself to believe he did like me deep down and it was only a matter of time before his wish came true and then we would kiss and everything would be perfect.
‘No.’ I wiped my leaking eyes with my jumper sleeves. ‘No more hope.’
The cat flap clattered. Seconds later, Kat bounded up the stairs. She hissed when she spotted me on the floor.
It was testament to how pathetic I must have looked that she didn’t punish me for not having her breakfast ready. She padded over and nudged her head into my elbow.
I swallowed and raised a watery smile. ‘Thanks for being nice to me.’
She rubbed her face along my forearm, then nibbled the exposed skin of my wrist. A gentle warning; she would allow ten more seconds of wallowing, but then expected me to resume being her food provider.
I stood and dusted myself off. Taking a deep breath, I straightened my back and walked over to the kitchen to prepare Kat’s latest disgustingly gooey meal.
She was right. I shouldn’t wallow. I had more in my life than Lucas. I had a cat who tolerated me and a bookshop to run. I had a pack who loved me.
As always, I would have to put up with having slightly less than what I wanted. Lucas didn’t want me romantically. He would never pick me over everyone else. I would never be his person.
But Lucas did like me. A lot. As a friend. That was wonderful.
It would have to be enough.