Chapter 3
CLIO
“I’m really sorry, Mommy.” JT swirled his arms back and forth over the bubbles in the tub, his blue eyes focused on them.
I sat on the lowered toilet seat lid while he took his bath.
“It’s okay, lovebug,” I said, ruffling his hair. He’d been apologizing the rest of the afternoon about climbing up onto the rafter. Even over dinner a little while ago. After I closed up the shop, we came upstairs, and I made his favorite dinner, spaghetti and meatballs.
In the tub, I’d gotten the sauce off his face that the napkin had missed.
“But we’ve got to be careful.” I wasn’t going to tell him how scared I’d been.
It was in his nature to do these things that would be considered reckless in regular children.
Regular, as in human. The bigger he got, the more I learned about what he thought was fun. He hadn’t been reckless, he’d been… JT.
Half the bubbles had popped, but he kept trying to tower them up. I scooped a handful and placed them atop his head.
He giggled. “I wasn’t going to fall.”
I rolled my eyes. “You fell out of that tree before we moved.”
“That’s ‘cause there was bird poop, and I didn’t want it on my hands.”
“What if there was bird poop on that rafter in the shop?”
He looked up at me and giggled. “There’s no bird poop inside!”
“Mouse poop?”
“Mouses are afraid of high places.”
I sighed. “You’re probably right. But I meant we have to be careful showing people how amazingly fast and fearless you are.”
He cocked his head, the bubbles not even tipping off his wet hair. It was like a dollop of meringue.
“I can’t help being so fast.”
“I know. It’s tough being so incredible, isn’t it?” I slid to my knees and rested my forearms on the edge of the old tub.
“I don’t climb to the top of the jungle gym at school even though I want to because I’m nice and don’t want to make the other kids feel bad. Bobby Sanchez and I like the swings better.”
“That sounds fun.”
“Mommy?”
“Yeah?” I reached for the shampoo bottle.
“How come I’m so ‘credible? I mean, Remy in my class is pretty ‘credible, too. She smells special. Like cookies Miss Edna makes. But she says she doesn’t like to climb things. She likes to paint pots.”
“Pots?”
He nodded. “Yeah, her mommy makes things with clay, just like in art class!”
He’d only been in school in Cooper Valley a few weeks, but he had settled in well. I’d hated to take him away from California, but the job here opened up. Fortunately, he mentioned different boys and girls all the time.
“That sounds fun. But you’re incredible because…”
I trailed off. Someday, I was going to have to tell him his father was a wolf shifter and that he probably was one, too.
But not today. Even though he was showing more and more shifter abilities, I couldn’t tell him he was part wolf. Or he had one in him. Or… I had no idea what it was exactly because I didn’t understand it myself. I didn’t have anyone to ask.
I wanted him to be normal or whatever JT’s normal was. But if he was seen doing something crazy at school? I wasn’t sure how I’d explain it.
Ted, my ex and JT’s father, had made a huge deal about nobody knowing about his kind.
I definitely wasn’t supposed to know, so he’d sworn me to secrecy.
He’d said if it got out, his kind would be hunted and either captured for study or killed.
Supposedly, that had happened in various times of human history.
I had to protect JT from that because that scared the shit out of me.
I didn’t know enough about what it meant to raise a shifter, let alone a half-shifter, because I wasn’t one.
Having JT toss tires and climb rafters, that was doable.
Kinda. But what came next? What if it wasn’t something I could control?
Like hitting the ball too hard at T-ball?
What if he turned into a wolf? JT would have more and more questions that I couldn’t answer.
But I’d be damned if I ever called Ted for answers.
He didn’t know about JT, and that was the way I intended to keep it.
He’d made it perfectly plain to me when he ended things that humans didn’t belong in his world.
The motherfucker said he’d found his “fated mate” or some bullshit like that as the reason for dumping me.
Basically, he wanted a she-wolf and not a human.
He’d probably thought he was being kind when he gently explained that we were never meant to be long-term. That he couldn’t have children with a human because it would dilute the bloodline, and the children–or as he called them pups–might never shift.
I’d had guys dump me in the past, but this? This excuse was the craziest one of all.
That was the night I was going to tell him I was pregnant but didn’t in the end.
It was the night I left Indianapolis. Left my job as a mechanic on Ted’s IndyCar racing team.
I could’ve gone to work on any other crew. I had connections, but that would have kept me in the same circles as Ted since he was a team driver. It was a small community, and a pregnant woman on the pit crew would get noticed. Plus, I didn’t ever want to see him again.
Instead, I’d taken a sabbatical from pit crew work and moved to Costa Rica, where my dad had retired, to have the baby.
But when JT was two, his nanny started freaking out over how fast his skinned knees healed, and she started talking.
Pretty soon, everyone in Playa Hermosa had heard her telling stories about JT and wanted to see the miracle baby, so we left.
I figured a place with lots of outdoor space was best, so I found a job in Texas Hill Country.
That had been a mistake. The men there couldn’t accept me as a mechanic, and their obsession with wild game hunting made me nervous about what would happen if JT ever shifted.
As it turned out, he got into a little preschool tiff that should’ve been normal and harmless, but with his super strength, he had pushed the three-year-old trying to pull him out of the giant plastic car, and the kid had flown three feet and hit his head on the playhouse.
JT got labeled as a problem child, and I took it as a big-ass neon sign we should get out of Texas.
Then we moved to Northern California. I made good wages there, and JT loved the trees.
But he loved them a little too much. I couldn’t stop him from climbing them. Every time I turned around, he’d run to a tree and scamper up.
I hadn’t thought it was a big deal until he fell and broke his arm. I hated it, but even that was normal kid stuff.
Taking the cast off by himself three days later wasn’t.
Hence, the third move.
Cooper Valley was a beautiful Montana town.
The other kids here seemed rambunctious, too.
There was lots of space for him to run and do all his wolf-y things.
A small community to be a part of. I hoped it was a great place to hide his inner wolf.
No one in this town would suspect, right?
They loved the outdoors. There were plenty of mountains to climb and space to run around for a little boy with endless energy.
We’d blend right in with all the normal, quiet, kind residents.
“Mommy, I’m ready to get shooed.” JT turned away from me, breaking me from my thoughts.
“Right.” Shampooed. I poured a dollop of shampoo on his wet head and started to lather it up.
If Sexy Sam was any indication of Cooper Valley’s residents, I’d say they were all outdoorsy and highly physical.
Physical. Strong.
And tan. With six packs.
Ugh. I wasn’t interested.
He was too cocky. Definitely a flirt. Young. He reminded me of Ted, so that was a hard pass.
I grabbed the plastic cup I kept on the side of the tub. “Tip back,” I said and rinsed the suds from his hair.
“Mommy, can Sam come play with me again? We had fun.”
My heart leapt in an unfamiliar way. Sam.
“He was really nice to help you get down, but we don’t want him to get hurt either, right?”
Sam seemed way too confident to get hurt, but JT had to understand the things he did could impact others, too.
Fortunately, Sam had kept a level head earlier, which was great because I lost my mind seeing JT up on that rafter.
Sure, my son healed quickly, but that didn’t change his getting hurt.
I didn’t want my baby hurt for anything.
Besides, the last thing we needed was a witness to an accident that healed too quickly, especially one as bad as falling from a height onto concrete.
I couldn’t move again. Leaving everything and starting over three times had done me in. I just didn’t have it in me.
After they’d gotten down, Sam had given JT a high five and me a wink before he got back in his truck and drove off, only after saying, “Later.”
It wasn’t until hours later that I realized he never gave me the part number for his tractor. Or his number.
Which, as he’d said, had been his plan all along. I had no doubt he’d be back–later–offering again to show me around town.
The answer would still be no.
No matter how hot and droolworthy he might have been, he was a terrible option for me–a single mom with a new job in a new town.
No doubt, I was a terrible option for him, too.
I was older by at least five years, maybe ten!
I had a baby when he was still only a teenager.
What young twenty-something wanted my kind of baggage?
But him showing up and having interest had been a good wake up for me. Wake up in my vagina, more like it. I had needs that I’d neglected for a long time while I focused on raising a tiny human. Well, half-human.
Meeting Sam was a reminder that I needed to get back out there and date.
Or just get laid.
Yeah, either one. I needed to get my hands on one of those ripped cowboys Cooper Valley seemed to have in spades.