Chapter Five
Running Wild
Holly
I wake up with my hand on my mouth.
Which is dramatic. Accurate, but dramatic.
The memory of Daniel’s kiss lingers there like a bad decision wrapped in cinnamon sugar. Warm. Sweet. Dangerous. The kind of thing a woman with sense would avoid.
Naturally, I press my fingers harder against my lips and sigh like an idiot. My wolf stretches beneath my skin, smug and entirely too pleased with herself.
Mate.
“No,” I whisper into the dark bedroom. “That was a kiss. People kiss. Humans kiss. Drunk bridesmaids kiss strangers behind reception halls all the time. It doesn’t mean anything.”
My wolf gives me the emotional equivalent of a slow blink. Rude.
I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling. The apartment is quiet, washed in the blue-gray light before dawn. Below me, the bakery waits. Ovens cold. Counters clean. The repaired mixer is probably plotting another breakdown because apparently appliances love drama.
Everything is normal. Except my mouth still remembers Daniel. My waist remembers his hand. My body remembers the rough scrape of his voice when he said, Good girl.
Heat floods me so fast I kick the blanket off. “Nope,” I tell the room. “Absolutely not.”
The room does not answer because it has manners. My wolf does not. She presses closer to the surface, restless and aching. For the past two years, she has been quiet in the mornings. She wakes with me, breathes with me, watches the world through my eyes, but she rarely pushes. Rarely asks.
This morning, she wants out. I feel it in my bones. The need to run. To stretch beneath the trees. To feel dirt under paws instead of tile beneath feet. To move so fast the past can’t catch us.
My throat tightens.
I have shifted since the rejection. Of course I have. A girl can’t keep her wolf locked away forever without damaging both halves. But I do it alone. At night. Far from town. Quick little runs through the woods behind my apartment, always close enough to return before dawn.
Never with another wolf. Never beside someone.
Pack runs used to be sacred. Then they became unbearable.
When you lose a mate in front of everyone, people don’t only watch you fall.
They watch how you stand afterward. Every shift.
Every stumble. Every moment your wolf moves slower than she used to.
They whisper about strength and weakness and whether rejection hollowed something out of you permanently.
I learned to run alone because alone has fewer witnesses.
My wolf presses harder. Not alone.
I close my eyes. “No.”
She shows me amber eyes, broad shoulders, and a mouth soft with patience until it isn’t.
Daniel standing at the bakery door, walking away because I said slow.
Daniel keeping his hands on the counter until I put one on my waist. Daniel pulling back because he felt the fear flicker through me before I even understood it myself.
My chest aches.
“Oh, this is manipulative,” I mutter. “Using emotional evidence before coffee is low.”
My wolf is not sorry.
****
By six, I’m in the bakery, and Patricia is already being difficult.
The oven runs ten degrees too hot, the mixer coughs twice just to remind me it’s technically alive but resents everyone, and Maisie walks in wearing a shirt that says Ask Me About My Boss’s Love Life.
I stare at her, and she beams. “Morning.”
“No.” I point at her clothing.
“You didn’t even read it properly.”
“I read enough.”
“It’s marketing.”
“It’s workplace harassment.”
“It’s support.”
“It’s treason printed on cotton.”
She places two coffees on the counter and spins, showing me the back. Team Handyman.
I point at the door. “Leave.”
“You need me.”
“I need fewer enemies.”
“Same thing.”
I take the coffee because I may be betrayed, but I’m not stupid.
“Did he text?” she asks.
“No.”
“Did you text him?”
“No.”
“Did you dream about him?” I choke on my coffee, and Maisie’s eyes light up. “Oh, my God.”
“I burned my tongue.”
“You burned your dignity,” she counters.
“You’re so fired.”
“You keep saying that, yet here I remain, employed and emotionally invested.”
The front bell jingles before I can threaten her with a baguette, and Daniel steps inside. My heart, that treacherous little moron, trips over itself.
He’s wearing dark jeans, work boots, and a faded green t-shirt that makes his eyes look warmer, more golden. His hair is messy, like he ran his fingers through it too many times. There’s a cardboard box tucked under one arm and a paper bag in his other hand.
He stops when he sees Maisie’s shirt. Then he slowly reads the front. His gaze lifts to me.
I point at Maisie. “I had nothing to do with this.”
Daniel’s mouth twitches. “I like it.”
“Don’t encourage her.”
“She seems very committed.”
“She’s a disease.”
Maisie presses a hand to her chest. “A disease with excellent instincts.”
Daniel’s eyes move to mine, and the bakery tilts the way it always does now. Less violently than that first day, but deeper. Like the bond has stopped crashing through the door and started settling into the walls.
His scent reaches me. Cedar. Rain. Wolf.
My wolf sighs, and I grip my coffee tighter.
Daniel lifts the box. “Parts came early.”
I blink. “You said three days.”
“Carl found someone driving through from the city. I bribed him with cinnamon rolls.”
“My cinnamon rolls?”
“I paid for them first.”
“That is the only reason you’re still alive.”
“I value survival.”
Maisie coughs, “Team Handyman,” and then ducks into the back before I can throw something.
Daniel sets the box on the counter. “I can do the repair after closing.”
“You work all day and then want to come fix my mixer at night?” Even I can hear the surprise in my voice.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it needs fixing.”
“That is not an answer.”
His gaze holds mine. “Because it matters to you.”
Oh. No. Not before seven.
I look away first, because apparently I have limits, and one of them is a man casually saying emotionally devastating things while holding machine parts.
“Fine,” I say. “After closing.”
His smile is small, warm, and victorious in a way he’s trying not to show. “Also,” he says, lifting the paper bag. “I brought breakfast.”
“I own a bakery.”
“I heard that somewhere.”
“And you brought me breakfast?”
“It’s from here.”
I narrow my eyes. He opens the bag and pulls out one of yesterday’s apple fritters wrapped neatly in parchment.
“I bought it yesterday,” he says. “Saved it for this morning.”
“That’s not breakfast. That’s theft from your past self.”
“Past me was generous.”
“Past you has excellent taste.”
His smile deepens. “Present me agrees.”
The way he looks at me when he says it makes the air leave my lungs.
Maisie peeks from the back. “I hate to interrupt whatever new dating ritual this is, but customers are approaching, and I refuse to run this place alone while you two eye-fuck over fried dough.”
I close my eyes. “I’m going to jail today.”
Daniel laughs. The sound follows me through the morning rush. I should be annoyed. And I am, but I’m also lighter, which is disgusting.
****
By the time we close, my feet ache, my hair is falling out of its knot, and Daniel has somehow become part of the bakery without trying.
He comes and goes throughout the day between jobs, checking the mixer, carrying heavy flour sacks, fixing a loose hinge on the back pantry door, and letting Maisie bully him into taste-testing a new lemon frosting.
He likes it. I can tell because his eyes close for half a second.
That image is going to haunt me.
After the last customer leaves, I lock the front door and turn the sign to closed. The bakery settles around us, warm and quiet. Maisie has already disappeared, claiming she has “plans,” which probably means she’s lurking somewhere nearby with binoculars and poor boundaries.
Daniel is in the kitchen, sleeves pushed up, forearms flexing as he works on the mixer. I should not watch, but I can’t not watch.
His hands are capable and sure, moving with easy confidence. He takes the machine apart like he knows exactly how every piece fits. It occurs to me that I understand that feeling. Taking ingredients, parts, broken little things, and making them work together.
“You’re staring,” he says without looking back.
“I’m supervising.”
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
“Yes.”
“Good to know.”
I lean against the counter. “Do you need help?”
His head turns, slowly, and one brow lifts.
I roll my eyes. “With the mixer.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t sound disappointed.”
“I would never.”
“You absolutely would.”
He grins and hands me a wrench. “Hold this.”
I take it. “Is this important?”
“Very.”
“What does it do?”
“Currently? Keeps your hands busy.”
I gasp. “You gave me a decoy wrench?”
“You looked dangerous.”
“I’m dangerous.”
“I know.” Something in his voice changes when he says it. Not teasing or mocking.
Warmth spreads through my chest. I look down at the wrench because staring at metal is safer than staring at Daniel. “You’re very annoying.”
“I’m told it’s part of my charm.”
“By who?”
“Mrs. Bell.”
“She flirts with the mailman.”
“She has range.”
I laugh, and Daniel looks up at me. That look again. Like my laugh is something he wants to hold in both hands. I stop laughing because my heart is being stupid and I refuse to encourage it.
He returns to the mixer, but the quiet between us changes. Softens. Deepens.
Outside, the sun sinks behind the buildings, turning the kitchen windows dark. My wolf rises beneath my skin, restless again. She has been waiting all day, patient only because there were people around and dough to knead and work to do.
Now there’s only Daniel and the pull of the woods beyond town. My fingers tighten around the wrench and Daniel stills. Of course he senses it.
His nostrils flare slightly, his gaze lifting from the mixer to my face. “Your wolf is close.”
My breath catches. “Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
There it is. Not what’s wrong? Not control her. Not don’t shift here. Just, are you okay?
I hate that a simple question can feel like tenderness.
“She wants to run,” I admit.
Daniel sets down his tool slowly. “Then you should run.”