Chapter 17 #2
“Jackson isn’t sexist. He’s just a little protective of you, but not for the reason you think.
” His fingers balance the beer bottle, rolling it against the table’s surface.
“It’s more about protecting that big heart of yours, rabbit.
He worries that you give so much to others, that you don’t leave enough for yourself.
That, with the right person, they’d help you with either holding onto some of that or give you some of theirs to replenish you. ”
Tapping my fingers against the table’s surface in rhythm with the slam of axes, I mentally flip through my life’s big and little decisions.
My plan to attend Lena and Will’s wedding.
My decision not to study English. One may argue—at least I know Jackson would—most of my relationship with Will found me sacrificing my wants and needs for his.
“A friend of mine recently said I’m a little too fixated on endings,” I say.
“Of course you are. Call it people pleasing or an overwhelming sense of duty, we’re both obsessed with how things turn out.
We do what’s needed to ensure everyone else’s happiness, and the best way to keep them that way is to know it’s their happy ending.
It’s not right or wrong, it’s just who we are. ”
“And which one am I? People pleaser or just uber-responsible?”
He studies me. “Based on what Jackson has shared, and my own observation, you’re a little of column A and B.”
I open my mouth to protest, but close it without speaking. He’s not wrong, but he’s not entirely right.
“Which are you?” I ask.
“Definitely column B.” Chuckling, he curls his fingers around the bottle, lifts it to his mouth, but stops. “Though, it doesn’t matter because whatever the reason, it costs us the things we truly want, because we’re so focused on everyone else.”
“And what about you?”
For the first time, Lars can focus on what he wants rather than what’s best for his pack. Jackson may want me to find someone who replenishes me, but what if I’m meant to be that for Lars? Not in a romantic way, but as a friend.
“You already wrote my happy ending.” He leans back, taking another swig.
“But if you could rewrite it, what would you want? Not what you think is best for the pack or anyone else. What do you want?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” He places his beer down, his violet eyes studying me.
So many wants tangle inside me, each fighting for dominance. Like a greedy child in a candy store, I want it all. My book boyfriends’ happiness. Break my writer’s block. Davis.
They may not be mutually exclusive, my lady.
James’s statement about our individual happy endings echoes inside me.
In this, he’s right. Without their happiness, I cannot secure my own.
No matter how I slice it, I could never be happy if those I’m responsible for aren’t. It’s just not how I’m programmed.
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” A laugh rumbles in his chest.
“So hard!” I whine, lowering my forehead to the table.
“For the record, I don’t think you should choose any of us to marry. But, if you’re going to be all self-sacrificing about this, you should pick… Jackson ?”
“Jackson?” Nose wrinkled, I jolt up. “I’m not marrying my brother. Eww! What kind of werewolf did I write?”
“No.” He pulls a sour face and then motions toward the entrance.
Spinning in my seat, I shake my head. Jackson and two other random men stroll through the front door.
His attention fixed on the phone in his hand, Davis walks in behind them.
A statuesque woman with chestnut curls is beside him.
They don’t seem to notice us as they claim a large table near the axe ring.
“That sneaky bastard is totally checking in on us.” I roll my eyes.
It’s the classic “I’m not paying attention, but I’m totally paying attention” stance.
Jackson’s focus appears to be on the axe consultant going over the waivers, but the quick flick of his eyes toward our table betrays him.
Davis, on the other hand, is enthralled with something on his phone.
Each time the attractive woman beside him speaks, he nods and mumbles something I can’t quite make out.
To others, it may appear that he’s not paying attention to her, but I know otherwise. He’s likely stimming. He may even be looking up something she’s asked about. She may have his complete attention, even if it doesn’t appear so. Or, he could be ignoring her. Which I am hoping for.
She places her hand on his bicep, drawing his focus to her. Her red-painted lips lift in a large grin as he looks up.
We’re just friends. He can do whatever he wants. I grip the table’s edge,
Loud snapping fingers cause me to twist back in my seat to face Lars. “Oh, rabbit,” he sniffs the air, accusation lighting his features.
I glower. “You’re not supposed to smell me, remember.”
“I’m not smelling you.” He tips his head toward where Davis sits, his back to us. “You’re all over him.” He inhales deeply. “Mates.”
“I… We’re…. not mated.” I gesture wildly.
He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table, a lopsided grin flexing. “Maybe, but there’s been some mating-like activities between you two.”
“Just kissing. We kissed once…well twice—” my face twists “—well, technically it was more than twice, but it was only two instances of very short make-out sessions. But that’s it. We’re just friends.”
“ Uh-huh … Because friends look at each other like that.” Eyebrows raised, he makes a “turn around” motion with his index finger.
Spinning in my seat, my gaze slams into Davis’s.
He’s twisted and now sits facing our table.
Those beautiful eyes are locked on me, and the questions ‘what are you doing here?’ and ‘who is he?’ are almost audible in the wrinkles on his forehead.
Though I’m sure the jump of my gaze between Davis and the leggy brunette making bedroom eyes at him telegraphs the same exact questions.
Jealousy is absurd in this situation, and so is this awkward charge between us. Davis and I are friends. Lars and I are friends. Everybody is friends here.
Releasing a long breath, I offer a smile and wave at Davis. With a nod, he waves back.
Twisting, I face Lars. “You said you miss home at times. What do you miss?”
“So, we’re just going to ignore Glasses over there pining from across the room?”
“His name is Davis, not Glasses.”
“The guy from your date with Owen?”
“He really doesn’t keep anything to himself,” I grumble, leaning my arms on the table and rubbing at my temples.
“Yeah, but he bakes.” He huffs a laugh. “Well, as I said before, I don’t think you should pick any of us, especially when there is someone who looks at you like that.”
“Like how?” I keep my eyes on his, fighting the urge to turn around and see the like that look he alludes to shining back at me in Davis’s gaze. Even without turning around, the heat of his stare burns into me. I know he’s looking.
“Like a man in pain because he sees what he wants, but he can’t have it.”
“It’s not the right time for us,” I say, an ache quiets my voice.
“From what Jackson says, it hasn’t been the right time for a while.”
“Sounds like Jackson is as chatty as Owen,” I mutter, taking a gulp of my cider.
“It comes from a good place.” He leans back. “He worries that your dickhead ex and cousin hurt you so badly that you find any reason to hide from any chance you’d be hurt again.”
“I date.” I lean forward, my tone indignant, “I made out with and dry humped Davis.”
“I knew it was more than kissing.” He quirks one eyebrow. “But you’re still finding every excuse to not go for Davis.”
“I have you three to worry about.”
“Excuses.” Challenge glints in his eyes.
“I won’t take your happy endings away. I know what that’s like, and I won’t do it,” I say, a gentle tremor chokes me.
“That may be true, but I also think you’re more terrified to risk your heart again.”
“You’ve known me for barely a week,” I hiss.
He juts his chin toward me. “True, but I’m a hunter. I know when animals are scared and hurt. I know the ways they burrow into the ground or skitter through the forest to protect themselves.”
My silence and his words hang between us. They’re not all Will. You’ll find any excuse. Pilar, my brothers, and even, at times, Hope’s cautions over the last few years echo inside me.
“I don’t want to be a cliché.” My admission is quiet.
He reaches over, resting his large palm on my forearm. “You’re not. You’re just someone who got hurt.”
“I don’t recall writing a psychoanalyzing werewolf.” My snarky comment is half-hearted.
Just like Owen, my werewolf isn’t what I thought. Beneath the protective snark is an unexpected perceptiveness. Maybe it’s part of his wolfy traits that I didn’t realize I’d embedded into his character, or maybe he’s more than the words on the page.
“Sorry to disappoint.” He picks up his beer.
“You don’t.” I smile. “I like that even though I technically wrote you all, there are still things I don’t know.”
“Like your question from earlier about what I miss about home?” His wry expression seems to offer mercy, moving us away from unwrapping my issues. “Running in the woods. But Jackson has taken me on a few trails. They aren’t quite like Silver Falls but still allow the wolf in me to run free.”
The wolves in Shifted Heart change at will.
The moon heightens their wolfy tendencies, but they control the shift.
Still, that wolf sometimes needs to be exercised a bit.
Hence, the frequent competition. It’s probably good Jackson has custody of my book boyfriends, because Lars isn’t the nap around the house all day kind of wolf.
“How about friends? Ivy? Victor?” I sip my cider.
“If this is to deduce if I’m as mopey as Owen about Selena, sorry to disappoint.
Ivy is like no woman I’ve met”—his mouth quirks—“though, she’s a vampire, so I guess that tracks.
She’s gorgeous, fierce, and has this dry wit…
but I don’t think I really love her. Not in the way you’re supposed to love someone. ”
“How’s that?”
“Like they haunt you in a good way. No matter where you are, they’re with you. Your heart isn’t just consumed by, but beats for them. Outside of when you’ve mentioned her, or Owen asks me about something in my book, she’s not here.” He places his hand on his heart.
A dull ache pricks in my throat at the idea of a romance I wrote where the two people aren’t in love.
It’s almost too much to know that two of my books didn’t actually have happy endings.
At least, not the endings their main male characters want.
Owen thought the ending was wrong, and Lars isn’t in love with his leading lady.
“Did you ever love her?” I croak.
He reaches over and squeezes my forearm. “I did. I do, in my own way. It’s not the HEA that’s promised on the front of your books. And at least I know that at the point I left the story, Ivy was doing what she truly loves.”
With each man snatched away from their story right after the third act breakup, the ladies are living out that portion of the story.
At least, that’s what I believe. Selena is back in the big city at her corporate job.
Lady Cecily prepares to marry the marquis, who is a kind—if not a little boring—man.
Ivy is working with the human/supernatural alliance.
“What is he doing?” Lars mutters, his stare focused across the room.
I follow his gaze. A laughing Jackson wiggles his hips and does jazz fingers with one hand while holding up the axe for a video one of the men in their group is taking.
“He needs to be careful, or he could hurt himself,” he almost growls.
My right eyebrow ticks up. “What about Victor?” I ask, thinking of Kerry’s belief about the sexual undercurrent between Lars and Victor as they wrestled in the pond.
“What about Victor?” he asks, but doesn’t look away from my brother.
“Did you look at him with pining intentions?”
“No,” he says quickly. “But I did look at him.”
“How did you look at him?”
“If you’re asking if I looked at him the same way I looked at Ivy, the answer is yes. I like both.”
“But you didn’t pine for either?”
“No.” His mouth pursed, he motions frantically toward Jackson. “He is going to hurt himself if he tosses like that. Not to mention he’ll completely miss.”
“So, you didn’t look at them like you look at Jackson.”
“Yes… Wait. What?” Wide-eyed and jaw slack, his focus snaps back to me.
I smile. “You like Jackson.”
“I do not. He’s a pain in the ass.”
“I can smell it on you.” With a cheeky expression, I sniff the air.
“You really are his sister,” he grumbles.
“If it makes you feel better, I think he’s totally into you, too.”
Scoffing, he waves his hands in the air as if this is the silliest thing in the world. Even if Lars isn’t owning up to it, it’s clear they both like each other. Hell, the sparks kindled awake at their first meeting, and those embers have strengthened over the last few days.
A furrow forms at the center of his forehead. “Not that you’re right, but I’ll indulge you. What makes you say that he’s into me?”
I lean on the table and meet his skeptical gaze.
“He didn’t lecture you before our date. He’s also been radio-silent most of the day, which is classic sulking younger brother behavior.
He just happens to show up at the same place where we’re having our date.
Plus, no matter how he may be pretending, his gaze drifts over here every few minutes, and he isn’t looking at me, wolfy. ”
Lars turns his head. Jackson faces us, an axe in one hand, a big smile on his face as someone takes a picture with their phone.
As if on cue, his vision moves to Lars. In that moment, it’s like everything dissolves.
The loud voices, the slam of axes, and the hard rock music that booms throughout the bar all quiet as Lars and my brother’s gazes link.
Each man’s face is a little serene, a little scared, and a lot pining.
“You should go over there.” I nudge his knee with mine. “Show him the correct stance. You know… so he doesn’t hurt himself.”
“I should?” His tone is unsure.
I don’t know if Lars and Jackson are each other’s happy endings. What I do know is the way they look at each other deserves a chance to see what may happen.
“Yeah. You should.”