Chapter 4
Chapter Four
The cabin is cute as all hell, but it is way too small to be sharing it with a man as attractive as Vaden Rowe.
On my left, a partially open door shows a dark wooden bed frame.
Opposite is another door, likely the bathroom, as the living area is open-concept with a couch, TV, wooden coffee table, small bookcase, and a kitchenette with a refrigerator, microwave, oven, and a two-seater bench by the dining table.
It’s a cozy space for one person or a couple.
The fireplace isn’t lit, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s warm enough that I stop shivering.
Vaden pushes the door closed behind us, then walks over to the couch and sets me down. “Wait there.”
He doesn’t see the glare I shoot at him because he turns away and disappears into the bathroom, emerging with a blue towel, which he hands me. “Here. I have some dry sweatpants and a T-shirt you can change into.”
“It wasn’t raining that hard,” I say, taking the towel from him and drying my hair. “It’s just my hair that’s a little damp. You’re not putting clothes on,” I say when, instead of veering toward the bedroom, he walks to the kitchen.
He’s in black low-waisted sweatpants and nothing else.
Outside, it was dark, and it was easy not to get distracted by his chest. Inside, where there is light to bounce off every muscle, it’s not as easy to control my wandering eye. I’m not usually like this around attractive men, but Vaden is different in ways I can’t quite understand.
“It’s not cold,” he says, his back to me.
I watch him from the couch. “What are you doing?”
“Just grabbing a couple of things.”
Those couple of things include a bowl of water, a dishcloth, and a small first aid kit that he has to root through a cupboard to find while I stare at his ass.
When he stands, I wrench my gaze elsewhere.
I’m studying the framed pictures on the wall of a large group of people as he walks around the couch, places everything on the wooden coffee table, and sits on its edge facing me.
“Are those the Blackshaws?” I ask, pointing at the framed pictures. There are maybe fifteen or twenty people gathered in a clearing beside a lake, dressed casually in summer dresses, shorts, and T-shirts. In the background is a smoking grill, and everyone looks so young and happy.
Vaden glances over his shoulder at the pictures. “Yep.” He reaches for my left leg.
“What are you doing?”
He puts my foot on his lap and leans down to examine my bloodied knee. “Seeing how bad this is," he says.
I try to pull my leg away, embarrassed by the state of it. “It’s just a graze.”
His fingers, strong and warm, circle my ankle, holding me with an ease that surprises me. “It’s a little more than a graze.” He bends his head and gently pats the blood with the damp washcloth.
He’s gentler than I thought he would be, and that, more than anything else, stops me from arguing. “You’ve done this before.”
“Not as much as you would think,” he says, still cleaning the blood and the dirt from my bruised knee. “My sister was usually the one beating me up.”
Averie seemed so sweet and friendly. Vaden looks like he could pick her up with one arm and squeeze the stuffing out of her.
“Averie?”
With his head bent as he cleans my knee, one corner of his mouth lifts in a hint of a smile. “She said I growled too much, and I gave her too many orders. She didn’t like that.”
“When did you stop growling and giving her orders?”
He drops the washcloth into the murky brown-red water. “Yesterday afternoon.”
Which is around the time he was at the grocery store, growling at me. Could that just be a coincidence?
I lift my brow. “Because you outgrew the need to growl and order your sister around at the grand old age of…”
“Twenty-seven.” He picks up a bandage from the first-aid kit. “Now she just looks at me and laughs. Orders and growls no longer work on her.”
“Why not?”
“Because I met you.” He bandages my knee and tapes down the sides.
I cock my head. “What do I have to do with your sister laughing in your face?”
Finished with my knee, keeping my foot on his lap, he lifts his head to look at me. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
I shake my head.
He continues to look at me.
I scowl. “How do you always know when I’m lying?”
His lips twitch. “It’s another part of that long story I have to tell you.”
“Just how long is this story?” I mutter.
“Not so much long but… complicated. You were hobbling before.”
Which I’m guessing is the reason he refuses to let me walk anywhere. I open my mouth to lie, but reconsider it when he lifts his brow as if to say, don’t bother. “I threw myself out of my bedroom window and landed on my hip. It hurt a lot.”
It probably would have hurt a lot more if adrenaline hadn’t been pushing me to move or die.
“Let me take a look.”
“It’s fine now.”
He does the unwilling-to-be-convinced stare very well. Heaving a loud sigh, I push myself to my feet and hesitate as I stand in front of him, my cheeks hot. “I’ll have to lift my shirt so you can see my hip.”
I don’t remind him that we’re in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, that no one knows where I am, and that I’m trusting him not to take advantage of the situation and be a creep. But he sees my wariness anyway.
He lifts his hand, gently tucking a strand of blonde hair behind my ear. “You’re safe with me, Jane. This is about you being hurt. Nothing else.”
Giving him another searching look, I lift the left side of my shirt, hoping he won’t judge me for my white cotton panties.
His gaze drops, and his expression shutters.
My hip is red with dark shadows, the first signs of an angry bruise blooming.
Vaden doesn’t seem to notice my white cotton panties. His full attention is on my bruises. He cups my right hip and turns me slightly, bending his head to study my bruised left hip. “Yeah. That doesn’t look good, Jane.”
“I was more concerned about getting away than about how I landed.” My voice is tight, and my face is hot with shame. I wasn’t leaping out of a second or third-story building or anything, but the least I should have done was look where I was jumping. It’s a miracle I didn’t break something.
He looks up at me. I’m so tempted to smooth the furrow from his brow that I press my arm to my side and order myself to keep it there.
“I wasn’t judging you for it,” he says softly. “You got yourself out of a dangerous situation in one piece. It's the best thing anyone can do.” His praise sneaks into my heart, and I let go of the tension I was secretly holding onto.
“Thanks.”
His fingers brush over my bruised hipbone, finding a sore spot, and I hiss. He pulls his hand back, his eyes flying to mine, concerned. “Still painful?”
“A little sore.”
His next touch is gentler. “It doesn’t seem swollen, but it could get slightly stiff as it heals.” He stands up and moves around me. “Give me a second.”
I watch him return to the kitchen and the refrigerator. After grabbing an ice pack from the freezer, he wraps it in a cloth and walks back to me.
Perched on the edge of the coffee table, he presses the compress against my hip, and I let out a soft sigh.
“Any better?” he asks, voice husky as he peers into my face.
“A little. Thanks.” I smile.
His eyes drift to my mouth, and I track the bobbing of his Adam’s apple. Reluctantly, he pulls his gaze from my lips and leans back, as if to put space between us. A space I’m not sure I want.
“You’ll be more comfortable sitting or lying down. Keep the ice pack on for about ten minutes. It’ll help with soreness.”
He’s pushing me away. I understand why he’s doing it, or at least I think I do. It's strange to feel hurt by someone doing something I should have done myself. I’m used to being on my own. To taking care of myself. To not needing anyone. Yet my feelings for Vaden Rowe exist, and they scare me.
Backing up, I sit on the couch with the ice pack against my hip, under my shirt. “So, what’s this long story you have to tell me?” I ask.
“I’m going to tell you something that breaks the biggest rule I grew up with. What I say will scare you. It might make you think I’m lying, and it might make you want to run.”
Nerves skitter down the back of my neck.
When a man tells you something like that, and you know no one is close enough to hear you scream, you want to bolt. But I’ve always been curious, and if he hadn’t just cleaned and bandaged up my knee as if I were made of glass, I would have bolted.
“So why tell me?” I ask, on edge.
“You’re mine,” he says simply.
“I’m not a thing to be owned, Vaden,” I bite out.
He leans close, bridging the distance between us. So close we’re almost kissing. “Even if I would set the world on fire for you? Even if I would rip apart anyone who dared lay a finger on you?”
It’s tempting to say yes. Far, far too tempting to want to know how his lips taste with the hungry way he’s looking at my mouth.
I’ve spent the last couple of years running from someone who will eventually kill me, and I’ve lost count of the times I’ve lain in bed at night, wishing someone would come along and end the people who want me dead.
But that would be a fairytale, and I’m twenty-four, far too old to believe in those.
I look away. “I don’t need you to protect me. And I don’t expect you to. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you.”
“There’s another world beneath the one you know. I live in that world.”
Startled, my eyes fly to his. “Like… the black market? The mafia?” I recall what he said before about killing people who went after his sister. “Are you like an enforcer for the mafia or something?”
His eyes sparkle with amusement. “Why do you sound so excited about that?”
I sniff. “You’re hearing things.”
But I’m lying. It’s wrong to wish people dead, but I’ve been running long enough that I just don’t care anymore.
So yes, I would not mind the least bit if he were a mafia enforcer with absolutely no fucks to give about picking up a gun and blowing someone away.
In fact, I think I would prefer if he was.
“Sorry to disappoint you, Jane. The mafia would run screaming into the night if they ever ran up against one of us.”
Okay, consider me hooked.
I perk up. “One of you?”
“I have two souls, and two shapes. One of those shapes is human. The other is a wolf.”
I start laughing, thinking this must be a joke.
Vaden gazes at me, calm and serious, with no trace of a smile.
My laughter fades. “You’re not joking.”
His eyes are watchful. “I’m not joking, Jane.”
I scoff. “You’re telling me you’re a werewolf?”
“A shifter,” he quietly corrects me. “I’m not controlled by the moon the way werewolves of the past were, but I do have a beast inside me, and that beast is a wolf. A shifter also has a mate, the other half of his soul, and that’s you.”
I stare at him, disbelieving. “So, do it now. Change into a wolf.”
He shakes his head. “Humans don’t do well when we shift in front of them. A wolf is a predator, and you would run away from me. You would hurt yourself.”
“Right.” I smile brightly as I pull the ice pack from my bruised hip and hand it to him. “It’s getting late. I should probably—”
He slowly stands as I do. “You don’t believe me.”
I edge away from him because I was right about him all along. He’s a gorgeous lunatic, and I don’t have my pepper-spray to remind him to keep his distance. “I’m tired, and I’d like to get some rest, if you don’t mind? I have work tomorrow.”
I don’t have work tomorrow because I’m waiting for Mart to decide when he needs me again, but Vaden doesn’t need to know that.
Tomorrow, I can forget all about this crazy talk of wolves and shifting and whatever nonsense Vaden expects me to believe.
Which is a shame. He’s way too hot to be this crazy.
He gestures to the bathroom, watching me closely. “The bathroom is over there. Use whatever you want. Take the bed in the bedroom. If you need to change, I have sweats in the dresser. I’ll crash on the couch.”
I hope to God he’s a deep sleeper because I might only get one chance at this.
I head for the bathroom, using the toilet before I wash up. Vaden is waiting just outside, slipping into the bathroom as I leave. Although I consider bolting now, he would for sure hear the front door and immediately come after me.
“Good night, Shelby,” he says before I can step into the bedroom.
I paste a fake smile on my face. “Night.”
I start to turn away.
“I can save you if you let me, Jane.” His voice is quiet and he looks almost sad. “All you have to do is believe.”
“I don’t need saving.” Least of all from a crazy person.
As I slip into the bedroom, I feel his eyes on my back until I pull the door closed behind me and consider my options. There’s a small window in the rustic-looking bedroom with a red check comforter spread over the bed. It’s definitely not big enough to crawl out of, especially with my sore hip.
Oh well.
They say all handsome men have flaws. This one just happens to be crazy.