CHAPTER 5 #3
I really hoped she was right. The first thing I needed to learn was how to mute the connection.
I could see Michael gesturing in the car in front of me, clearly talking to someone on the phone.
Weirdly, the annoyance he felt now came through far stronger than any other emotion had.
To the point that it started to corrupt my own mood.
I took it out on traffic for a while.
“Nice blinker, asshole!” I yelled at someone who crammed themselves between my truck and the Range Rover. A few minutes later, to someone else, “What the fuck are you doing? What. The fuck. Are you doing?” And then, to Michael, “Why are we not even going the speed limit now? Whyyy?”
Needing a distraction, I called Gia.
“Layla, finally,” she said.
“Well, hello to you, too.”
“Sorry, hi. How are you? Do you need me to help you fake your own death? Natalie says she knows people,” she said cryptically.
“I’m about as good as can be expected. But thank Natalie for the offer.”
“I will. What’s all this about you going to Boston?”
“I’m going to stay with Michael down there for a little while. He can’t leave work, and as I’m sure you now know, the bond won’t let us get too far from each other.”
“Hold up. You’re moving to Boston? What the hell, Layla?”
“Just until me and Michael figure things out between us.”
“Why didn’t you come say goodbye to me?”
“I thought you’d need time alone with Natalie. I didn’t want to interrupt. I was trying to give you space.”
“Well, how about next time you ask first?”
Ooh, she sounded pissed. Whoops.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I screwed up.”
She sighed. “I guess I have to forgive you. I doubt you’re thinking straight right now, what with the whole surprise mate debacle.”
“Yeah. Who could have seen this curveball coming?”
“The Goddess clearly did,” she said.
After all the speechmaking I’d done to get her ready for the ceremony yesterday, I found I wasn’t in the mental place to hear it thrown back at me.
If I was being honest, I was angry at the Goddess—a feeling I wasn’t accustomed to.
Oh, I still trusted that there was a point to all of this, but that didn’t mean I was okay with being caught up in some divine scheme.
“How did your mom take the news last night?” I asked.
“Good. What about your parents?”
“They did okay.”
“How was Michael?”
“Better than I expected.”
She made a sound of disgust. “Not hard when the bar was set so low.”
A flare of anger burst through me. The judgment in her words grated. It wasn’t any worse than what she’d said yesterday, but for whatever reason, it made me want to snarl.
Ugh, the bond. Again. Mom and Dad had warned us about our need to protect each other, but I hadn’t thought that defensive instinct would extend to my best friend, a person who’d always been able to say anything to me.
I forced my tone to neutral. “To be honest, he’s handling it better than I am. He’s been incredibly patient and polite. And he was very respectful to Mom and Dad.”
“Well, that’s good, I guess.”
I was still annoyed, my own emotions mixing with Michael’s in a way that made them spike. I needed a subject change, pronto. “Tell me about Natalie. Where’s she from?”
“Virginia,” she said.
I spent the rest of the conversation focused on her and Natalie.
While Gia sounded happy, I could tell that there were bumps coming in the road ahead of them.
Natalie was pansexual and panromantic. Gia identified as asexual.
While she wasn’t sexually attracted to other people, she did form romantic bonds with them.
As a panromantic, Natalie might be able to satisfy her sexual needs elsewhere, but as far as I knew, Gia was monogamous, so if Natalie did have other sexual partners, Gia would need to find some way to be okay with it.
And then there was the fact that Natalie might still crave that physical connection with her mate.
It was a misconception that all asexual people were celibate.
How often and when they chose to have sex with a partner could vary greatly—another aspect of their relationship they would have to work out.
It was a lot to take in, but between the hopeful tone in Gia’s voice and the fact that she and Natalie were already so open and honest with each other, I had faith that they would make it through.
“What about you and Michael?” she asked toward the end of the phone call. “What do you think your bond will be like?”
“Honestly, I’d settle for the continuation of polite acquaintanceship for the foreseeable future.”
“At least you guys don’t hate each other.”
“Thank the Goddess for small miracles.”
“Are you coming back up anytime soon? I’d like to get to know him.”
“I’m not sure yet, but I hope so. I promise to let you know when we do. And I really am sorry for not saying goodbye.”
“It’s okay. I forgive you.”
“I love you,” I told her.
“I love you back. You better call me in a few days to dish on all the city shifter gossip.”
“I will.”
We said goodbye and got off the phone. I spent the rest of the drive trying to remind myself of all the things I had always believed in. This wasn’t just some random thing that happened. The Goddess had Her reasons. There was a point to it all. Michael and I had always been destined to be together.
I almost succeeded in convincing myself by the time we reached the city limits.