Chapter Twenty-Eight
Emerson
I lie in wait for Jamie that evening. Perhaps I shouldn’t. Perhaps it’s cruel to ambush him like that—and it feels like an ambush, what with the way his expression twists in surprise when he walks in to see me sitting in the living room—but I don’t want him to run off to his room again.
I think I’m angry. I mean, I understand that last night was a lot. For all of us. I still need to text Patch back and let him know I’ll meet him, but I want to talk to Jamie first.
“Em,” Jamie says. He pauses, and for a second, I’m sure he’ll turn tail and run up the stairs. He doesn’t, though. He meets my eyes and squares his shoulders. “I… Have you eaten?”
“Not yet. Thought we could all eat together.” I mean Nick. He texted me earlier, too, to let me know he’d be back tonight. Jamie pales, though, like he thinks I mean Patch.
“I—”
“Nick’s on his way back from work, I think,” I say. “But I wanted to talk to you before he got here.”
“Em…”
“What happened?” I can’t help the faint thread of desperation in my voice. I don’t want it to be there, but it is, and Jamie takes a short step forward because of course he hears it. “I don’t… I don’t understand why you left.”
“I just wanted to get some sleep. I wasn’t hungry. It’s not a big deal.”
He’s lying. I swallow down an unfair flash of rage. He can lie to me all he wants. He’s his own person.
“Did I do something?” I ask instead. “I know… I didn’t handle the responsibility well. I should have looked after you afterwards. Both of you. And I just fell asleep, I…” I trail off, waving my hands around uselessly.
Jamie shakes his head, then he breaks all at once, crossing the room and falling to his knees in front of me. He doesn’t touch me, not at all, but we’re of a height like this, and he can look me properly in the face.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Jamie says, then just as firmly adds, “Neither did Patch. I mean it. I woke up and needed space. I couldn’t… You two are perfect together, you know? I don’t think I can do it again.”
My head spins. “I’m not… We…”
“It’s okay, Em,” Jamie says. He does touch me then, grasping my hands and squeezing once. “It was a fun night. I’m happy you both shared it with me. But I can’t do it again. I can’t.”
I don’t understand. I don’t understand what happened between him and Patch—because they’ve all talked about his stalker, but even Dax and Drew today didn’t mention anything that raised my suspicions when it came to Jamie and Patch—that is making them both pull away like this.
They haven’t dated. They haven’t fucked, save for last night.
Judging by that kiss, the desperation behind it, I don’t think they’d done that before, either.
Jamie leans in and presses his lips to my cheek. “Let me get changed. I’ll come help you with dinner. Okay?”
“Okay.” My voice sounds distant even to my ears. Jamie nods and squeezes my hands again before he gets up and heads out into the hall. His footsteps sound out on the stairs. I lean back on the sofa and stare ahead at nothing.
I just don’t understand.
That night, I sneak out. I need to walk anyway, and maybe I need to get my head back on straight and focus on the true reason I’m here. It’s not to romance two hot guys. It’s to find this werewolf.
I ring Cate once I’m ten minutes or so from the house, out by a main road. I’ll head to the park in a minute, but I want to investigate where I saw that wolf last time.
“Em?” She sounds alert, which is about right for one in the morning. Jamie went to bed early, though I heard him moving around until midnight. Nick might have heard me leave, but I’m pretty sure he knows something is up—he was shooting me and Jamie suspicious looks all through dinner.
“Hey. What’s up?”
“Not much. About to go to bed. Are you out?”
“I have to find my wolf again.”
She huffs. “This is so dangerous. I told you, I bet that was someone’s exotic pet. Or one of those wolf-dog-hybrid things. People have those, you know.”
“I know.” I do. I researched it afterwards and spent a couple of hours fantasising about having a wolf-dog of my own. Yeah, they’re dangerous, but at least I could have it lying on me like a living blanket through the winter.
“So what’s going on? You’re out searching?”
“Yeah.”
“And…?”
“And what?”
“Em. You think you can hide anything from me?”
I sigh, then finally tell her everything that happened over the last few days. Well. Not in detail. She doesn’t need all that.
Still, she can read between the lines. She’s quiet for a few seconds when I finish speaking, so I wait for it to sink in.
“What are you going to do about it?” Cate asks, and I sigh.
“I don’t know.”
She laughs. “Yes, you do. Gotta say, Em, you never struck me as being interested in a polycule.”
“I don’t think there are enough of us to qualify for that,” I say. Yeah, I did some research today, too. Only a little, and then I pushed my laptop away because the search made it all real and the reality is that I don’t think Patch or Jamie want this. “I need to talk to them. Again.”
“They’re scared, huh?”
“I don’t know if that’s what it is.”
Cate snorts. “I think it is, like, ninety percent of the time, you know?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re scared.”
I sit with that for a moment, letting it sink in. Cate knows me better than anyone, and despite everything, I think she always will. “Yeah, I am.”
“So get it together, Hartford,” she says, and I jerk at the use of my old surname. Then I laugh. She only uses it to annoy me. “You’re going to have to sort these boys out, so sort them out.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ugh. I’m younger than you.”
By two weeks. “Don’t remind me.”
“You’re going to be safe tonight?”
“Of course.”
“Text me once you’re home?”
“I will.”
Cate says goodbye and I hang up, then lean back against the outside of a dark, closed pub. I feel more settled than before. I just need to sort things out. If neither of them wants this, neither of them wants it, and I can’t change that, but I can choose what I do next.
And what I want to do next… I open up the text thread I have with Patch and type out a quick message. I’ll meet him tomorrow—today—if he still has time. If he doesn’t mind it being such short notice. And if not, I’ll meet him another time. I want to do that.
I want Jamie with us, too. I want him to know that he has that option because I think he thinks he doesn’t. But maybe I need to talk to Patch about that first, too.
I make my way down the street, then over to the spot where I saw the wolf the other night. There’s nothing there, of course, just shadows and I think, at one point, a hedgehog, which scurries away before I can get a close look at it.
Maybe this was useless. Maybe using my savings on renting a place down here, trusting money from a source I don’t even know, was literally the worst choice I could have made.
I shove a hand through my hair. No big life decisions after ten at night. Except the one where I’m going to talk to Patch and Jamie, but I’ve been thinking about that all day, so it hardly counts.
Never mind. Time to go to bed. Things will be better in the morning.
I turn to go, and the wolf comes prowling out of the shadows behind me. I press the camera clipped to my jacket. I want to take my phone out, but it’s looking at me—It’s looking at me like it wants me to pay attention, which is a silly thing to think, but I think it anyway.
I hold out a hand. I don’t know if I mean to ward it off or if I want it to come closer. “Easy,” I murmur, keeping my voice low, quiet. “You’re okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The wolf cocks its head to one side. My eyes dart down. His head, sorry. His ears go back, but his hackles don’t rise. He doesn’t show his teeth.
“I think I know you,” I murmur, and the wolf whines, taking a step closer.
I can’t run. My heart is beating so hard it might burst and my limbs are all shaky, fear making me feel sick, but I can’t run. If I run, the wolf will chase me, and there’s not a chance I’ll get away.
The wolf whines again, making that strange little inquisitive sound like dogs do. It comes closer, step by step, and I want to pull my hand in, but I don’t. I don’t.
Not even when a wet nose presses against it, amber eyes staring up into mine.
Fuck.
The wolf stands there for a moment, and its breath is hot against my palm, but then its ears flick back.
It turns its head, letting out a growl, but just as I think it’s going to head for the shadow making its way up the street—a person returning home from work, maybe, or a night out—it instead sprints into the darkness again.
I try to catch my breath. I feel suddenly bereft, like despite everything, I’m alone in the world, and I want to chase the wolf, to follow it back to its den, even if that’s obviously the worst idea I’ve ever had.
I shake my head instead and dart out of sight. Time to go home. No more chasing wolves; at least not tonight.