Chapter 24
Callum
Torin’s fingers are tight around the steering wheel, and I swear Archer hasn’t blinked since Juniper hugged the guy outside the hardware store.
“I’m going to kill him,” Torin hisses.
I grip Torin by the arm and yank him back, holding him to keep him in his seat. “Stop.”
“He hugged our mate,” he growls.
“Technically, she initiated the hug.” The guy looked startled when Juniper threw her arms around him, but he smiled and hugged her back.
Torin glares at me.
Archer is too busy staring at the hardware store, and the intensity of his stare has me concerned that he’s planning where to bury a body.
“Don’t, Archer,” I tell him quietly, waiting until I have his eyes. “We fucked up her life before. Let’s not do it again.”
He holds my gaze for a beat, then nods once, a jerky motion.
I’ll never get over my dad paying Archer to spy on me. I watched every word around him, kept my eyes and ears open, knowing he would report on me. Years later, he’s like a brother. Not in blood. By choice.
Torin squirms out of my grip while I’m distracted by my stare-off with Archer.
Reaching over, I slap the back of Torin’s head, and he twists around to scowl at me. “What. The. Fuck.”
“She already hates us,” I remind him cooly. “What do you think charging out there to punch the guy she does like is going to do? Remind her of how fantastic her scent matches are?” My voice is thick with sarcasm. But when Torin doesn’t want to listen, I have to be a prick to get through to him.
“But he—”
“I get it,” I cut in. “I didn't exactly enjoy watching Juniper hug another guy on the street.”
A guy who wasn’t nearly as ugly as I wanted him to be. But maybe it’s what we all deserve: we made her miserable, and now we get to watch her with someone who makes her happy.
Torin stares at me for a beat. Then he sits back in his seat, still scowling, but he doesn’t get out and do something stupid, which was the point of the head slap and the heavy sarcasm.
“Fine,” he mutters. “I won’t tell him to keep his hands to himself.”
My attention swings back to the red brick apartment building halfway down the street.
Juniper had stood outside it, on the top step, one hand around the door handle, a tiny frown between her blonde brows as she stared toward us. She’d felt us watching. We’ve stayed hidden. For now, parked behind a guy flirting with a pretty redhead.
Juniper looks beautiful. She looks… happier than I thought she would.
I hadn’t expected that.
I don’t feel good admitting this, but a tiny part of me had been hoping that she’d need us to save her.
That we could swoop into her life, find her struggling, and give her everything she needed and wanted.
That she’d be grateful we’d reappeared. We’d apologize and explain how we got things wrong.
She’d forgive, and we’d make things right.
But she ran from Archer when she saw him. And from what we’ve found out, she has a job, friends, an apartment, and maybe even a boyfriend.
“What do we do?” Archer asks me.
I sit back, my head against the seat rest and my eyes on her apartment building. “I have no fucking clue.”
We hit up every hotel in the city, trawling for a particular maid’s uniform, hoping we’d find Juniper.
Eventually, we found the right hotel. A budget three-star that looked like a two-star.
All it took was a wad of cash passed to a guy on the front desk to confirm that yes, there was a hot blonde maid called June, and for a hundred more, he’d take a peek in the employee files and tell us where she lived.
I’d held Archer back before he could break the guy’s nose.
“That’s June’s address he’s handing out to anyone prepared to pay for it,” he’d snarled at me.
I arched my eyebrow at him and waited for him to start using his brain. Thankfully, it hadn’t taken too long before guilt swirled in his gaze, and he stopped needing to be held back. So now we’re outside her apartment building, in Torin’s black Audi, and I saw something I never expected to see.
“Juniper looked happy,” I say, hoping Torin and Archer will tell me it was just in my head.
Torin and Archer don’t say a word. They stare off toward the building that looks so tired and old, it’s a wonder it’s still standing. The thing is old.
For the last two weeks, Archer has been like a starving wolf, trawling every city street. Torin has barely slept, driving around for hours at a time, sometimes falling asleep outside the house with his head against the steering wheel. Now that we've found Juniper, none of us knows what to do.
I can’t stop thinking about her nest. Every time I close my eyes, I see the torn silk. The shredded cashmere. The destruction of a space that was meant to bring her comfort.
“Maybe we should let her go,” I eventually say.
“She’s ours,” Torin growls.
Furious, I jerk my head toward him. “She nearly died trying to break the bond between us. Don’t you think maybe we should respect that?”
But the bond is still there. It has to be. Why else am I as drawn to her as I always was? Why else does she still feel like mine?
He stares at me, bristling. He slams his arm against his door. Then he drops his head back, massages his forehead, fighting to get control of himself.
Archer turns to look at me, his expression knowing. “Then why are we here? Why were you as determined to find her as we were?”
Juniper’s apartment door swings open before I can respond to a question that makes me a hypocrite. Because I’m as bad as Torin as Archer. Just as hungry and desperate to find Juniper and explain all the ways we messed up.
She’s still wearing the pink lace dress with white sneakers, but she’s thrown a blue denim jacket over the dress, and holds a small white purse.
Her hair flows in long, gold waves down her back, tempting me to reach out and touch the soft strands.
Soft pink lipstick makes her plush lips more kissable.
This is a woman going out on a date.
Tamping down the need to fling open the door and drag her inside as an almost primal possessiveness floods my body, I sit back in my seat when she glances toward us. She can’t see us, but she can feel us watching.
She runs down the stairs to her apartment and walks down the street. Not back to the hardware store and the guy she hugged before, toward the stores in the distance.
“She’s dressed up for a date,” Archer says blankly, the corners of his eyes pinched with barely suppressed emotion: jealousy, anger, possessiveness, or a heady combination of the above.
He’s looking at me. So is Torin. I know what both are thinking.
I take a breath and release it with a sigh. “Fine.”
Torin starts up the car, and as we follow Juniper, I add, “We’ll apologize, explain what we did and why, and we'll let her go.”
Hopefully, before this date starts.
Torin’s snort says he isn’t buying it, and he’s right not to. Can I see myself walking away from Juniper? My mate? No, I cannot.
Archer is silent as Torin drives up the road, slowing as Juniper walks into a coffee shop at an intersection of two blocks.
“See if the guy is already in there before you park,” Archer suggests, angling his head so he’ll be looking right inside the glass-fronted coffee shop when Torin drives past it.
“On it,” Torin mutters.
“At least it isn’t the guy from the hardware store,” I say. He went back into the store. “They must just be friends.”
“Or that was the boyfriend, and she’s meeting a girlfriend for coffee,” Torin suggests, his tone hopeful as he slows the car to a crawl and we peer inside.
It’s the weekend, so it’s busy inside and out.
I’m still hunting for Juniper’s pink dress amid the packed tables and chairs inside the coffee shop when Torin slams on the brakes and scrambles out of the car, ignoring Archer’s yell to come back.
A car blares its horn behind us. Ignoring it, I unsnap my seatbelt and follow Archer, who’s a couple of steps behind Torin when he rips open the glass door and lunges inside.
I don’t see what happens in the coffee shop after Torin charges inside, but I struggle to believe what I’m seeing when Torin drags a blond guy from inside the coffee shop and drives his fist into his face.
The couple, who were quietly enjoying their drinks at an outside table, drop them as they scramble up and away from the brawl.
Juniper is yelling. Archer is trying to pull Torin off the guy. Someone is threatening to call the cops as Torin slams his fist into the guy's face for the second time.
Bone crunches. Blood gushes from what is likely a broken nose. The guy goes down, slower to get up this time. More and more people spill out onto the street, clutching their coffee or holding up their phones.
“Stay the fuck away from her,” Torin screams at him. “Put your fucking hands on her and I’ll fucking kill you.”
I get hold of Torin’s right arm. Archer grabs his left, and together, we drag him away from the guy picking himself up from the ground. The next time I look for Juniper, she’s gone.
We wrestle Torin back to the car, and it’s a battle to get him into the backseat. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Let me go!” Torin yells.
I shove him into the backseat and climb in behind him, slamming the door shut and holding him to keep him in his seat. Archer rounds the car and jumps into the driver’s seat. As he puts his foot down, my gaze slides back to the coffee shop.
People are crowded outside. The guy is on his feet, smiling as he dabs at his nose with a tissue someone offers him. Something about that smug smile raises all the hair on the back of my neck.
“Who was the guy, Torin?” I ask.
Torin rips his gaze from the window as Archer pulls the car down a side road and parks behind a red Nissan. From Torin’s clenched jaw and tight fists, he would like nothing more than to go back and break more than the guy’s nose. “He was Juniper’s date.”
“We knew she was going on a date.” Archer cuts the engine and twists around in his seat to glare at Torin. “None of us were happy about it, but there was no need to drag the guy into the street and lay him out. And especially not right in front of her. Shit.”
“We had one chance to get this right, Torin,” I say. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“And she ran off, probably terrified we were there to hurt her,” Archer bites out.
That’s why going after her now is out of the question. Maybe tomorrow we can try to speak to her. Right now? She’ll take one look at us and climb out of the nearest window to escape us.
“That was Wilkes,” Torin says quietly, eyes on his bloodied knuckles.
“Who?” Archer frowns.
I work it out before Archer, since Torin and I went to the same school. Archer came into our lives later, when we’d just graduated high school and my dad was trying to assert control over me.
“Wilkes was Torin’s best friend,” I tell Archer.
Torin releases a sigh and rests his head on the backseat, eyes closed. “A long fucking time ago.”
Archer is silent for a beat, his forehead furrowed. “Didn’t you have a best friend who—”
“Yeah.” Torin sounds exhausted now.
I look at Archer, and he drags his gaze from Torin to focus on me.
A tiny line forms between his brows. Torin told us his mom sent a gardener into our house, probably intending to seduce Juniper.
It’s not the first time his mom has played a trick like that.
She did it so successfully before that it’s no wonder she’s trying it again.
“Do you think Juniper knows?” Archer asks quietly.
Torin looks at Archer. “What do you think?”
“She doesn’t know,” Archer says. “That’s the point, right? She won’t know until Wilkes has made her fall for him and he’s finished proving he can steal any woman away from you.”
“Sounds about right.” Torin twists around in his seat as if looking for Wilkes, then turns back around to say to Archer. “This was my mother’s work. Wilkes is greedy, and my mom has deep pockets.”
She hates him for tipping off the cops that his dad was involved in abusing omegas. He’s in jail for the rest of his life, and Torin’s mom is determined to make him pay for it any way she can.
“Do you think she’ll hurt Juniper?” I ask Torin.
Torin shrugs. “My mother wants to take everything away from me. Everything that matters. She tried to take my trust fund, but couldn’t. Tried to turn you guys against me, and failed. But Juniper is our scent match. There is no better way to hurt me than to use her to do it.”
Wilkes was Torin’s parents’ last attempt to get him involved in Asylum.
His dad thought he was refusing to join their sick private club because of the girl he was dating.
His mom turned his best friend against him, and Wilkes fucked the girl he fell for so he wouldn’t have a girlfriend to run to.
Now Wilkes is here, taking Juniper out on coffee dates.
“Whatever happened to the girl you were dating?” Archer asks Torin, a sign that his thoughts are mirroring mine, and my thoughts are going to dark places.
“What do you think happens to anyone who gets mixed up in this shit?” Torin says. “Wilkes ruined her life and tossed her aside after she served her purpose. Now he has his eyes set on Juniper.”