11. Paul #3
Ugh. I wasn’t going to be able to get past that, was I? And why should I? In truth, I barely knew the woman, and any pull I felt toward her was just the result of her con.
Is it just that?
I didn’t know. Just a week earlier, I’d been a middle son with a middling name, and I’d thought my life was set.
Now, I had no alpha, his heir was gone, and we were still notifying all the members of our pack while also trying to figure out who had killed him and broken into our manor without so much as tipping a single magical alarm off.
It was too much. How could one single man be expected to make a reasonable decision in this sort of situation? I felt like I was going to be devoured by the turmoil going on inside of me, like the sheer amount of feelings and thoughts could cause me to explode.
Peace. Serenity. Control!
Breathe in. Breathe out. You can only control what you can control.
Peace. Serenity. Control.
My inner mantras weren’t doing much. I felt my gums start to itch and my hands creak. How had I gone from not having shifted into my wolf form in months to nearly losing control and bursting into it twice in just a week?
Two of my family members being murdered and someone trying to finish the rest, my mind supplied bitterly.
But I couldn’t think that way. I needed to… needed to…
“Hey, it’s okay.”
I blinked, realizing I’d completely let my concentration slip, and looked down at the table to see that Cherry had stopped drawing. She put her hand on mine.
It was so alien to me how easily touch came to Cherry. She never appeared to worry about doing it wrong or being overly familiar. It was as natural to her as breathing.
“It’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling, and it doesn’t have to make sense. You don’t have to justify it, explain it, or anything. It’s okay to just be in it, and eventually, it will pass.”
It was a bit strange to hear therapy speak from a woman whose default was flippant and snarky, yet the words were a comfort. It was terrifying being caught up in an emotional storm, but I was sitting in a house, safe and sound, free to process every feeling one by one.
I… I can do that.
Despite a cruel voice in the back of my head whispering that I was weak, that I wasn’t masculine, I took a deep breath and rode out the storm.
It wasn’t the easiest thing to do, but after the last week of my life, it wasn’t the hardest either. Surprisingly, the gentle scratching of Cherry’s pencils over her sketchpad centered me as I sought my peace.
Don’t forget the serenity and control, the bitter part of my mind taunted.
The moment stretched out for maybe ten minutes, maybe twenty; I couldn’t really say. All I knew was that, by the time she cleared her throat, I didn’t feel like I was being torn in two directions between my inner wolf and my grieving human form.
“I’m done, if you wanna see,” Cherry said, her voice practically a whisper. “I ended up drawing two.”
“Two?” I asked, opening my eyes to see the not-a-psychic looking almost bashful.
“Yeah, what I see when you think about your mom or protecting your siblings, and one right now. It’s… I know it’s silly, but I just wanted you to see.”
I nodded, because I understood. I couldn’t imagine living in a world where my entire reality was colored by other people’s emotions and having absolutely no one to share that with.
“Okay, here goes nothing.”
She turned her sketchbook around, holding it so I could see both pages at once. Both sketches of me were just gray silhouettes with no defining features, but that was okay because it wasn’t the point.
The point was everything behind me.
One side, the background was all sweet, subtle colors: warm yellows and corals accented with baby pink and shimmering gold. I didn’t even know pencils could be metallic like that.
It was so soft. There were shimmering little clouds and bubbles, flower petals and buttery rays of light.
Then, at the bottom, a puddle of blue. And despite the fact that I wasn’t an empath in the slightest, not even in the pop-culture sense, I knew exactly what that was.
That was me missing my mother. The grief heavy yet fluid, not a drowning pool at my feet threatening to swallow me.
No, it might have once been that, but it wasn’t anymore.
Now it was just a melancholy presence. A bit of necessary darkness to remember her brightness and all the wonderful things she’d filled my childhood with.
“That’s…” I shook my head, unable to find satisfying words for what I meant. My gaze moved to the second page, and I was enthralled all over again.
Because Cherry hadn’t drawn the calm, always practical third son. She hadn’t drawn an alpha shifter ready to do anything he needed to protect his family. She hadn’t even drawn a businessman. All those things were how I would expect a stranger or casual acquaintance to see me.
But not her.
The second picture was the antithesis of the first one in every way possible.
Instead of being a pleasant blend of comforting colors and tangible evidence of the sweet feelings that my mother had left behind, it was a cacophony of bold yet conflicting hues.
Angry red lightning, green gaseous clouds that looked keenly foul.
Blue roiling shapes with sharp angles of deeper mazarine and black within it.
Slashes of gray going this way and that, mirroring my scattered thoughts whenever I lost control.
And Cherry saw it. She saw it all.
She saw me.
I looked at one page, then the other. One page, then the other. I probably should have felt uncomfortably vulnerable to have someone be able to map out the confusing storm within me so easily, but it didn’t feel that at all. It felt...
It felt freeing.
As if the cat herself was gifted, Hudson stood up from where she’d curled on Cherry’s lap and came over to me, purring up a storm as she rubbed up against my chest.
“She’s asking you to hold her, if you want,” Cherry said. The slight quiver in her tone betrayed her uncertainty.
I got the distinct feeling that she was also feeling a little exposed, a little raw around the edges. I could tell her that she was full of shit, or say that the drawings didn’t matter to me, or even that she made them up.
But, crazily enough, I believed her.
I petted the cat, letting her purr and make biscuits on my shoulders as Cherry and I sat in silence.
It couldn’t have been easy for her, especially if what she said about her ADHD was true. Suddenly, the inordinate amount of caffeine she consumed made a whole lot more sense. She was likely self-medicating.
Did oracles not have health insurance?
Something to ponder another time, because I was at capacity. I was feeling things I was never prepared to feel. I couldn’t deny this connection I had with a strange woman who had been lying to me during every interaction we’d had. It didn’t make sense, yet it also made perfect sense.
I liked that I wasn’t a VanMarche to her, not really. She didn’t see me as a rich heir or possible mate who could secure her an esteemed position in the East Coast shifter hierarchy. To her, I was just Paul, and she could see exactly who Paul was like no one else. Not even myself.
“I hope the drawings were okay. You can rip them up if you want. They’re not?—”
I didn’t know what possessed me, but the slight panic permeating Cherry’s scent had me reaching out and resting my hand on her knee. I could feel the solid muscle of her thigh through her black leggings. That explained how she’d managed to jump onto the tavern canopy so easily back in the market.
“I like them. I don’t appreciate that you lied to me, but I get it. I can’t imagine living your life with this kind of gift but not really having anyone who understands it. I can see why you let people believe the psychic thing.”
“You… you forgive me?” she asked, eyes going wide. The shock on her elven features was so endearing. “Even after I screwed up so royally?”
“I’m not thrilled about how our collaboration has gone so far, but I am willing to give you another chance,” I said.
“But there can be no more secrets, no more lies. If we’re going to solve my family’s murders together, then we need to be equal partners.
No longer a psychic and the client, but an oracle and your?—”
“Watson?” she suggested helpfully.
“Sure, let’s go with that.”
“Hell yeah!” She jumped to her feet yet again. Yeah, I definitely understood why she had such strong hamstrings.
Suddenly, her arms were wrapping around my shoulders as she pulled me into a hug.
It wasn’t the most natural position, considering that I was seated and she was standing, but there was enough of a height difference between us that it wasn’t awkward. At least, it wasn’t until she started talking to me, her face just an inch away from mine.
“You won’t regret this, I swear. And now that I don’t have to worry about trying to pussyfoot around the emotion stuff, we can really get down to brass tacks.
I’ve already got a plan of how to get more information out of the cross-stitching woman and the biker with the kitten, and I think I can get in touch with the guitar witch too.
We’re going to find out who killed your father and brother, and we’re going to make sure that not a single hair on your siblings’ heads will be touched. Even Chris’s!”
She said it with such passion, such joy, that it was hard not to be swept up in her fervor.
Maybe her mother was right, and I was being subconsciously influenced by her emotions, but I didn’t really care.
I was coming off adrenaline, anger, and an emotional cocktail that normally took a therapy session and some shifter-grade alcohol to get through.
And maybe that was why I kissed her.
I didn’t make a conscious choice of it. One moment I was looking at her, amused by her joie de vivre , the next our lips were crashing together. I was caught up in the wild woman in front of me in a way I never could have expected, but at the same time, I wasn’t resisting.