Chapter Ten
Jamie
I’m hyper-aware of Patch, even if he is feet away, standing behind the bar. I’m even more aware of Em, who moves from my side occasionally to talk to the others before he returns, always with a faintly bashful smile as he pushes his glasses up his nose.
Patch is watching us. Him. I’m not an idiot. He looked gut-punched when Em walked through the door, and I wanted to throw up. Still do.
I don’t really understand it. Sure, I’ve been moping around because he didn’t want to sleep with me, but I figured I’d get over it. I was being honest when I offered. I didn’t want a relationship. I don’t.
Another wolf is sitting at the bar. They’re easy to pick out now that I know what I’m looking for—they watch a little too intently, for a little too long. I sidle over to Dax when Em slips into conversation with Cecile again.
“Who’s at the bar?”
“Flynn. He’s Patch’s new flatmate.”
Dax studies me with quiet intensity. Does he know what Patch realised? Am I right? I don’t dare ask, not with everyone so close.
“Oh. Is he nice?”
As if he can hear me—and oh, fuck, he probably can—Flynn gets to his feet and comes ambling over. He’s got nothing on Dax’s size, though I think no one but Drew truly does, but he’s big in the way wolves are, and his sunny grin is disarming.
“I’m Flynn,” he says, sticking out a hand for me to shake. “And I promise, I’m lovely.”
I snort but shake his hand all the same. Vince glances at us once, lips pursed as his gaze travels between Flynn and Dax, but then drops back into conversation like he never looked at all.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I reply.
Flynn’s grin widens, but there’s no spark of attraction at all, which is honestly a relief. He takes a sip of his beer and then looks around the group. “You’re all celebrating?”
“You’re not the only one who just moved.” I gesture at Em. “We got a new housemate, too.”
Em catches the gesture and looks up, eyes widening. Flynn grins and gives him a little wave. “Welcome.”
“Um. Thanks.”
“How are you finding the place?” Dax asks Flynn, and Em smiles gently before he answers a question Cecile asked. I’m sure I can feel the heat of Patch’s gaze—looking at me, looking at him, I don’t know—but I don’t check to see if I’m right.
“It’s nice. Haven’t lived with a buddy for a while, but Patch is easy-going, right?”
Dax laughs. “Right.”
I do look at him then. And Patch is looking right back at me, eyes dark, but I know that heat isn’t meant for me. I know it. My stomach clenches all the same and I drop my gaze to my glass, nerves getting the better of me.
Maybe I’m coming down with something. I remember the way I backed him up against the wall in the alley. He went so easily, but he said no, and I need to—
“Jamie?” Dax says. He sounds concerned, and when I glance up, I realise he and Flynn are both looking at me.
I clear my throat. My cheeks flame. “Sorry. Uh, what did you ask?”
“Just if you want another drink.” If Dax is concerned, Vince will be too, and sure enough, he is pointedly avoiding my gaze.
I let out an irritated breath. It’s not their fault. No reason they shouldn’t believe I’m having much darker thoughts.
“Yeah, please,” I say, and he smiles when I do, though I’m fairly sure he doesn’t believe it. “Just gonna get some air for a minute, okay?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll be back in five.”
I leave before any of them can stop me and suck in a lungful of city air once I’m out on the street. Fuck. Fuck! I need to get my head on straight. If Em is Patch’s mate, then that’s that. I have no claim on him. He’s made that clear.
“You seem upset.”
I whirl around to see Flynn standing there, hands deep in the pockets of his jeans. He isn’t smiling, but he isn’t wearing the same look of pitying concern I’m used to, either.
“They sent you, did they?”
He snorts. “I sent myself. You think I let anyone tell me what to do?”
I stand a little straighter, meeting his eyes. I’m far shorter than him, of course, but his gaze slips away after a second or so and colour rises to his cheeks.
“Yeah. Sometimes.”
Flynn laughs and rolls his eyes before he settles against the pub wall. “What about you? You let people tell you what to do?”
Tim. Not like that, but I let him get away with far more than I should, far more than I was comfortable with. I lean against the brick next to Flynn.
“Not really.”
“That pretty new housemate of yours?”
“What about him?”
“You’d let him do it, wouldn’t you?”
I’m glad I’m facing the street so I don’t have to see whatever expression is on Flynn’s face. Not that his tone is lascivious or anything like that. No. He sounds certain.
“I don’t think he…” My throat goes dry. Em is steady, though, isn’t he? He might be a little awkward sometimes, get flustered, but my skin tingles at the memory of how he asked if I was safe when we first met. “I don’t know if that’s his thing.”
Flynn hums. “I don’t know if it’s Patch’s thing, either.”
I jerk my head to look at him when he says that, but I can’t read his placid expression. I let out a bitter laugh. “Doesn’t matter, does it? It’s not for me to find out.”
Flynn doesn’t reply. He stays standing there, quietly breathing, and I huff in frustration.
“I might leave soon anyway,” I say, voicing for the first time the feeling that’s been encroaching on my periphery for the last few months.
“Work has been… None of them know what happened because, fuck, I don’t even know what happened, you know?
I don’t want to ask. But they knew he was around because I told them, and then they didn’t see me injured because I got all healed up, but they knew, somehow, or at least my boss knew that something had happened and now they all walk around me on fucking eggshells even though I’ve told them everything is fine! ”
Flynn says nothing.
“And it’s the same here, too. Nick wanted all these big fucking guys, even the ones who were clearly more dangerous than they could have been helpful, just because he’s scared of—what?
—someone breaking in and trying to kill me?
That’s not even how it happened. It’s my shitty judgement that caused everything.
Put Vince in danger too and nearly broke up him and Dax for good because it all came out, like Dax wouldn’t have told him when he knew Vince wouldn’t run.
And then I thought—I thought Patch would be different and I thought—” I shake my head.
A bitter taste floods my mouth. “I don’t know what I thought. ”
We’re silent for a while. I don’t know if the others inside will have heard any of that and for now, I don’t care. That will come later.
After a few minutes, Flynn takes a breath. “Sounds shit,” he says, and I blurt out a wet laugh.
“Yeah, it was. Is.”
“And the leaving?”
“I’ve got an interview next week. Haven’t told anyone. The company is in Edinburgh.”
“What’s it like?”
“The company?”
“The job.”
I shrug. “Fine, I guess. Executive assistant—it’s what I do now, but slightly better pay. No one there would have a clue that anything happened to me.”
“You have friends where you’re going?”
I bite the inside of my cheek, then sigh. “No.”
Flynn scratches his cheek. “Well. When you get it, and if you take it, let me know. I’ve got friends all over the place. No point sending you out into the cold alone.”
I gape at him. I don’t even know him, and I just dropped all this shit in his lap and—
He grins. When he claps me on the shoulder, I almost tip over from the force of it. “Like I’ll be the only one,” he says. “You can go where you like, but that pack of yours will be right on your tail.”
“Because they worry about me. And they’re not my pack. I’m not a wolf.”
“Because they care about you,” Flynn corrects, poking me in the centre of the forehead. I bat his hand away and rub the spot. “And like that matters; you’re one of them all the same. Don’t write them all off. That goes for Patch and your new housemate, too.”
“If they are—” I glance at the door and I don’t dare say the word, just in case. “Then you know what that means. No point getting my hopes up.”
Flynn’s smile doesn’t seem fragile, not quite, but there’s some flickering hesitance in his gaze. “The only way I know how to live,” he says, and I reach up and squeeze his forearm without thinking about it.
He claps me on the shoulder again but holds back some this time. “Come on. Dax should’ve got you that drink by now.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. I shake my head with a rueful grin before I follow him back into the pub.