Chapter Four #4
Shock ripped through her. Shane lost to a beta? To Kevin? That wolf was about as old as their parents. That made no sense.
A thousand questions prickled on her tongue, but she could tell Shane didn’t want to talk about it.
He leaned forward again, giving her a prime view of his gorgeous ass as he took up the drill again to drive in another screw.
His shirt stretched tight across his shoulders, and Kimberly felt the impulse to shrink away from the mad alpha.
She waited for an opening between the whirl of the drill. “And the wolves that followed you here?”
“They sided with me.”
“Even though you lost?”
She heard a huff of breath that sounded a little too much like an aggravated sigh. “Yes, even though I lost.”
“I guess that’s something to be grateful for,” Kimberly said, again waiting for a gap between the drone of the power tool. “Kevin obviously didn’t read the pack that well if he thought he could take it all.”
“He rigged it,” Shane snapped. “He spread lies about me months before the challenge. He made sure that most of the pack would turn against me, even if I won.”
Kimberly blinked. “That’s low, even for him.”
It became noticeable that Shane’s drilling was a little more aggressive now, as if he had a grudge against the wood and wanted it to suffer. Kimberly bit her lips together and decided to give him a little bit of quiet to calm down.
Suddenly, Shane turned on his knees to face her and set the drill down. With a little too much force, he yanked off his mask. The skin around his cheeks and mouth was flushed, as if he had gotten too hot under the cloth.
The eyes that turned up to her burned just as hot, nothing like the soft looks from yesterday. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
Kimberly went still, as if caught under a predator’s gaze. “Yeah.”
“You said you were happy in your pack. But I’ve met Gage. He’s an asshole. Why did you lie?”
If she had been in her wolf form, her fur would have bristled. “I didn’t lie. I am happy. Gage may be a little rough around the edges, but he’s a good guy.”
Shane’s stare turned hard. He didn’t believe her. “A good guy—a good alpha—wouldn’t make jokes about your dominance behind your back.”
Kimberly straightened, hands on the edge of the counter. “What?” She knew Gage could be a sarcastic ass sometimes, but making a joke at her expense was a little low. He had to be drunk at the time.
“Are you defending him because you’re hot for him?”
Her hands turned to fists. “Excuse me?”
Shane stood, nearly towering over her from the other side of the counter. “I didn’t think you went for guys like him, but ten years can change a person, right? Admit it. You like him.”
“Like him?” She huffed. “We’re not in high school anymore, Shane. Real adults don’t talk like that.”
He took a step closer, his shadow falling across her. “Just tell me the truth. Is the only reason you stayed with your pack because you had the hots for Gage and didn’t want to leave?”
Kimberly felt her face burn. Not with embarrassment, but outrage. “It’s none of your business who I have the hots for. You lost the right to know anything about me when you made the choice to—”
“I had no choice!”
Shane’s eyes turned gold and it was a good thing he was facing away from the front door. No less than three intense seconds ticked by when Kimberly’s first pickup for the day walked into the lobby.
The intrusion of a human knocked some sense into Shane.
His wolf receded, giving way to the honey-brown eyes she still loved after all these years.
He turned away and resumed working on the flower bucket rack.
Kimberly remained a little flustered while she retrieved Mrs. Johanson’s bouquet for her granddaughter’s birthday.
The cool of the storage refrigerator did some good to calm her, but Shane’s words continued to bounce in her head.
What the hell was he talking about? What joke did Gage make?
Why was Shane getting so bothered over whether she had a thing for her alpha?
Then, she remembered something from her past that confirmed what was going on.
Once upon a time, one of Shane’s friends made a pass at Kimberly.
He cat-called her just before the pack went on one of their annual runs.
She and Shane had been dating for some time, and at the next opportunity to get her alone, Shane peppered her with questions about why his friend would act like that.
Kimberly wasn’t the one to be asked, and she told him as much.
It wasn’t a fight, but it was a moment that tested their relationship, their trust.
Shane was jealous of his friend in Warrington, and it would seem that he was jealous of Gage now.
After Mrs. Johanson paid and left, Kimberly walked around the counter to stand near Shane, heedless of whether she would be in the way. Just like when they were kids in Warrington, Kimberly decided to take a gentler approach.
“I’m not into Gage,” she said firmly. “He’s like a brother to me and always has been.
I followed him to Tolstone for the same reason your pack followed you.
Loyalty. Loyalty not through manipulation, self-preservation, or because I was forced.
It’s not your dad’s kind of loyalty. It’s loyalty based on trust and friendship.
Maybe that’s something you’ve forgotten in the last ten years, but plenty of us still think that way and choose to live our lives by those principles. ”
Shane paused in his work, but he seemed to have no comeback. He didn’t even turn around to look at her. He simply let her finish her speech, and after a few beats to wait for more, he went right back to putting together the rack.
Kimberly wanted to bark at him, demand that he acknowledge her. Instead, she turned sharply, her long ponytail whipping with the motion, and stomped to the back room. If he wanted to act like a child and ignore her, then she’d do the same.
Maybe it was stupid to think that she could have rekindled any sort of connection with Shane.
Too much time had passed, too much had happened, and both of them were still bleeding from wounds they couldn’t talk about.
Losing a fight to a beta and most of his pack turning their back on him had to be rough, especially if Shane had let anything of his father’s old ways sink in.
Kimberly probably wasn’t the one he’d ever trust with his healing, but as she dropped into the office chair to finish her inventory order, part of her wished she could be the one for Shane.
She wanted to be the one he ran to when things were too much to handle, the way he used to.
A tightness constricted her chest and her eyes stung with tears she refused to let fall.
She had such hope for today and Shane had to go ruin it by being dumb and jealous.
Maybe he was right. Maybe people did change too much.