Chapter 6 - Drake
“You all right?” Oz asked as we sat in my office, going over some new information.
“Fine,” I grunted.
Oz laughed. “Very convincing. What’s on your mind?”
Gesturing at the pages in front of us, I said, “This.”
“It’s not just that. You should know by now that you can’t disregard my dazzling intellect,” Oz said. “My guess is it’s personal. How are things with Liv?”
I kept my expression neutral. Oz had always been able to read me like a book, even when no one else could. That didn’t mean I was going to talk to him about this particular can of worms.
I shrugged, shuffling the pages as I looked down at the table. “Things are fine,” I said.
Oz snorted. “You’re a terrible liar,” he said.
“I’m an excellent liar,” I grunted. “Just not when it comes to you, apparently.”
Oz cracked a grin. “So, that bad, huh?”
“It ain’t great,” I said.
Liv and I had barely stayed in the same room for long enough to say hello. Our conversation before the mating ceremony, where we talked about what came next, was still our longest one since Liv’s apartment.
It wasn’t just the awkwardness that stemmed from the entire way things had gone down before the mating ceremony.
It was the fact that every time I saw her, I wanted to press her against the wall and have my way with her.
After the mating ceremony, when we had been standing in the living room, I had been seconds away from tearing off her dress.
That overwhelming urge for her was getting unbearable.
My wolf wanted to take over, to take her and claim what he had wanted for years.
It took all of my strength to refrain, to keep myself under control.
I could tell she wanted it, too. The mating bond made me all too aware of her own emotions, her own cravings when we were in the same room.
I had wondered if that was why we didn’t stay in the same room for more than a few minutes, because it would be too easy to give in to those urges if we didn’t.
I went wild every time I smelled her scent.
Oz watched my face, reading my expression. I scowled at him. I hated it when he did that.
“What’s the issue, exactly?” he inquired.
“I don’t think she’s exactly thrilled about everything,” I said despite my promise to keep it to myself. Oz had this way of drawing things out of me, even when I didn’t want him to.
Oz leaned back against the table. “I mean, you don’t think there might be some lingering problems from when we were kids?”
I blinked, trying to keep my expression neutral. “What are you talking about?”
Oz barked out a laugh. “Drake, I’ve been your best friend for years.
You don’t think I saw the way she looked at you when we were kids?
And then she suddenly just avoided you at all costs?
It didn’t take a genius to figure out something had happened.
I might not know the details, but I know something happened. ”
I didn’t answer at first. I had never told anyone about what had happened between the two of us, and as far as I knew, Liv had never told anyone, either.
It wasn’t exactly something that I wanted to go around advertising.
But Oz was looking at me with that expression that told me he was already on the right track.
“Yeah, something happened,” I finally admitted.
Oz nodded, as if this confirmed a long-held suspicion. “Whatever it was, it had to be pretty bad, right?”
I tried not to wince. Instead, I shrugged, glancing away for a brief moment.
“Did you ever try to talk to her about it?” Oz prodded when I remained mute. “We were kids,” I argued. “There isn’t anything to talk about.”
Oz snorted and rolled his eyes. “I’m betting there’s plenty to talk about.”
“She could have brought it up if it was that big of a deal for her,” I said.
“Right.” He drew out the word as if talking to a toddler. “Because the consistently sunny woman is going to bring up something negative. Have you not realized that she tends not to talk about anything even tangentially bad?”
My brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“How many times have you heard her say anything depressing or that didn’t sound incredibly optimistic?”
A few times, namely when I had gone to her apartment, and those moments after the mating ceremony.
Except, the more I thought about it, the more I saw his point.
I thought about how she had addressed the mating ceremony when we had planned it.
I thought about how she often diffused tense situations by being overly cheerful.
She was a sunny person, but she also used that as a facade, as if she didn’t want to acknowledge problems. At least not to anyone but herself.
“See?” Oz asked as he watched my expression. “Even if she wanted to talk about it, there’s no way in hell she’s going to initiate that conversation. You should talk to her. Maybe even apologize for whatever happened.”
I had grown up in a household where my father had never apologized. To him, apologizing showed almost as much weakness as believing in fated mates. Besides, there was nothing to apologize for. I had done what I thought was right in the moment. Except I had no desire to argue with Oz over it.
“Right,” I grunted, staring down at the table, not really sure what to say about any of it. What he was saying made sense, and I couldn’t find any fault in it. I pushed myself to my feet. “I’ve got to get going. I’ve got to organize the extra patrols.”
His words stuck with me the rest of the day, and for a moment, I wondered if maybe he was right after all. I hadn’t made any effort to talk to Liv about what happened back then. I had thought it was in the past, and therefore not an issue. But what if Liv didn’t feel that way?
***
Liv was curled up on the couch in the living room, flipping through a book. She looked up and gave a small, tight smile when I came into the room and sat down in one of the chairs.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hi.” She closed the book, keeping her finger stuck between the pages.
Silence lingered as I tried to figure out how to bring up the topic. It should have been easy, except the words refused to come as Liv stared expectantly at me. She fidgeted, glancing toward the door, her weight shifting as if preparing to get to her feet.
“Doing all right?” I asked.
She nodded, smiling. “Of course.”
Our eyes met, and our gazes locked on one another, time seeming to freeze.
Her scent made my wolf growl with hunger and want, just as I had expected.
For the briefest of moments, I pictured myself grabbing her, laying her down on the couch, and tearing off her clothes.
I wanted to feel her writhing beneath me, I wanted to hear her cry out, wanted to see her satisfaction when she came.
I shoved those thoughts and urges away. They were too much of a distraction.
As if she could sense those urges—and she might have been able to through the mating bond—she blushed and glanced away, breaking the spell. Her fingers twitched, sliding out of the book, her stopping point forgotten.
“I should probably get ready for work,” she said, standing. “Amelia needs help opening things up for the kids.”
She was nearly out of the room before my mind righted itself and I remembered why I had come to talk to her in the first place.
“Wait,” I said.
She halted in the doorway, turning back to look at me, her brow furrowed in confusion. Up until now, we had both given one another space, not intruding on the other’s routines as we continued to navigate everything between us.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“I wanted to talk to you about what happened when we were kids,” I said.
Liv froze, her eyes wide, mouth slightly agape. She looked like a deer in the headlights.
“What about when we were kids?” she asked, her tone overly casual.
I let out a deep breath. “The whole bit about you coming and telling me we were mates.”
I had never seen Liv look as though she wanted to run for the hills more than she did right now, and that included the day I was now referring to, and the day I had come to her apartment.
Her eyes darted back and forth as if she were searching for a way out.
When she saw she wasn’t going to get away from the conversation, she took a deep breath, gnawing at her lip.
“What about it?” she finally asked.
It was going to be like this, then. A dull throb began in my temple.
“I know that things probably didn’t go the way you had pictured,” I said. “But we never talked about it after it happened. I wanted to give you the chance to talk about it if you needed to.”
She bit her lip, shifting back and forth as she glanced away. “What’s there to talk about?” she asked. “I told you I thought we were mates. You told me I was wrong and that you had no interest in being with me, regardless. That’s all.”
Based on her expression, there was plenty to talk about. I might have been imagining it, but I could have sworn that there was hurt in her features.
“I just don’t want there to be bad feelings about any of it,” I said.
“Why would you think there would be bad feelings?”
“You’ve sort of avoided me ever since,” I said. “That sort of suggests bad feelings if you ask me.”
She didn’t answer for a long moment.
“There wasn’t anything to talk about,” she repeated. “And you made your position clear, so there was no need for me to come talk to you. I wouldn’t necessarily call that avoiding, would you?”
No, I wouldn’t call that avoiding. I called it running for the hills. I regarded Liv for a long moment, wondering what it would take for her to open up to me. I cared about her being happy. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t see that.
“Liv, we’re mates. We’re going to have to live with one another, and there’s no changing that. I would like us to get to a point where one of us doesn’t leave the room the second the other one comes in.”
“You do that, too,” she pointed out.