11. CHAPTER TEN
“And they just… live across the way now?” Brynn asked as she swiped gold nail polish on her toes, her eyes moving to the front door of the apartment.
“Yep and now I’m stuck seeing them at every turn like they’re the three ghosts of Christmas here to remind me of all of my wrongdoings,” I grumbled as I sat on the floor and painted Aurelia’s toes. “All thanks to someone’s alpha putting us right next to them.”
It was our first true girl’s night since returning from Scotland three months ago. As soon as we got back the halted NHL season was back in full swing, so our days had been spent in stadiums amongst screaming fans or traveling to said stadiums.
The dads were still on cloud-9 thanks to the shiny new trophy adorning the fancy case at the Complex. I wasn’t sure if I’d seen Maxim grin with such smugness in the entire fifteen years that I’d known him.
I’d caught the man laughing into thin air more than once when I was over at the house, and frankly, it was creeping me out.
“And someone’s alpha got you an apartment rent free,” Aurelia reminded me primly, her words holding no anger at my jab. “And you missed a spot.”
She pointed at her big toe where there was indeed an entire swipe of purple nail polish that needed doing.
“Touché,” I told her with a grin and filled it in before amending my words. “I guess it’s not all bad.”
Which was a lie.
Between the odd looks both Leith and the omega, Artie, had been giving me and the glares I got from tall, dark, and grumpy every morning before my run, I was stuck with the constant feeling of anxiety whenever I left the apartment.
Penelope, who was busily helping Mimi with her nail polish, snorted and shot me a look that told me she knew I was full of it. She’d seen the odd behavior firsthand over the past couple of weeks and kept telling me just to go over there and have it out once and for all so we could find some kind of peace.
But Brynn and Aurelia didn’t need to know that. Chances are they’d go right over there and give the men in the other apartment a piece of their mind.
And that was the last thing I needed.
“It’ll all work out eventually,” Brynn said as she examined her paint job. “Besides, at least you get to look at them. Even you have to admit they’re really hot.”
I slanted a glare in her direction, but only met a smug, freckled grin. Brynn was the only one I’d told every detail about Leith and my time in Scotland after her accident.
And the only one I’d told about how much I liked the pack next door’s collective scent.
Leith’s scent had always haunted my dreams. The smell of fresh apples had embedded themselves so deeply in my DNA that I’d avoided them for six months after he’d blocked me.
A blocking that was totally my fault, and yet still stung to think about.
I should have never kept going back after that first night. I shouldn’t have shown him my love for musicals, and I definitely shouldn’t have slept in his bed more often than I slept in my own.
Somehow, during that time I’d lulled myself into forgetting all about why I had my rules in the first place.
Getting that text from one of the dads with the new hockey roster showing Alec Nashtos had been the wakeup call I needed.
At the time, I didn’t know Nash and that he wasn’t the bad guy that I thought he was. All I’d known was that I wasn’t going to mess up again—not when Brynn needed me to protect her.
In the end it hadn’t been Nash that I needed to protect her from. Had I still been in Scotland with Leith, Brynn’s stalker—the man who ran her down with a damn taxi in Norway—would have killed her that night. There would have been no one home to beat the son of a bitch half to death with a bat.
So I’d used that as my justification for hurting Leith and tried to close that chapter of my life.
Unfortunately, that chapter now lived across the hall and smelled and looked just as good as he had four years ago, and he had two handsome packmates to boot.
“Hot in the untouchable kind of way,” Brynn finally surrendered once I’d glared enough. “But, I also know for a fact that there is a very handsome new defenseman on the team who is still holding a candle for you.”
She was talking about Wiz, who had in fact made it to the Stallions as a trade after all. I’d only seen him twice and each time he’d shot me that same damn smile that had made my insides flutter in Scotland.
And I’d promptly run in the other direction each time.
I had enough on my plate without adding him into the mix.
“What is this?” I grumbled, looking at each of the women whose faces were filled with expectation. “Air out Ciara’s dirty laundry day? I thought this was supposed to be girl’s night?”
“That’s the exact point of girl’s night, Ceer,” Aurelia said as she took the nail polish from my hands and gestured for me to sit on the couch next to her so she could paint my nails too. “Besides, our lives are boring. We’ve got to live vicariously through you.”
I snorted at that. Their lives were far from boring, but I always loved to humor them anyway.
“Well, far be it for me to not let you watch the life that is very quickly turning into an episode of The Days of Our Lives,” I sniffed, referring to the soap opera that used to be constantly on our TV back in Minnesota.
They all grinned at me like a bunch of maniacal birds.
“Hey, silver lining, at least Richter seems to have finally gotten the hint about you not being interested,” Penelope pointed out. “When I was heading into the office earlier this week the poor thing looked absolutely deflated.”
After graduating law school, Penelope took a job with the Complex’s legal department. She called it the driest of the dry work—but it seemed to pay well and the hours weren’t insane for her like many first-year associates had to deal with.
“I think Nash and Dutch finally talked some sense into him after he showed up outside of her car,” Brynn said as we all shuddered.
That should have been the last time I slept with someone so close to me, though the pretty-eyed defenseman who’d somehow followed me from Scotland showed that my self-control wasn’t as good as I thought it was.
I threw my hands up into the air. “That’s it, I’m putting an embargo on all men. No more for the foreseeable future.”
There was a beat of silence in the living room before they all burst into laughter.
“Hey—” I started, looking from face to face with an open mouth. “I could do it.”
Their laughter just grew louder and I eventually leaned back against the couch and crossed my arms over my chest with a pout.
“I could,” I repeated, though my words sounded false even to me. I always had a knack for getting myself into messes, it seemed, and they knew it.
“Of course you can.” Aurelia wiped away the teary traces of her laughter from her eyes. She was always the one to be in my corner even if I was in the wrong.
I could still remember the teacher she went head to head with when I was only thirteen and she was a scrap of an eighteen year old. I’d sworn up and down I hadn’t passed a very crude drawing of the woman around to the classroom and Aurelia had defended my innocence to the point of becoming red in the face.
Then on the drive home she’d read me the riot act for using my art skills for evil. She could always see right through me—it’s what made her one of my favorite people in the world. One of the only people who could cut right through my bullshit and see me as I was.
Throwing myself across the couch at her, I hugged her tightly. “You’re my favorite, Aurie.”
“Hey!” Brynn protested, but I ignored her.
I could feel Aurelia’s smile against the side of my cheek as she squeezed me back. “Oh, I know I am, now do you want all of your toes purple or should we do different colors?”
The air was crisp the next morning when I stepped out of the lobby of the apartment building, dressed for my morning run.
Stretching my arms high over my head, I began to warm my body up for the run to the sound and back.
My head still felt fuzzy from the copious amounts of wine that was consumed after the dads picked Mimi up last night. Aurelia, Brynn, and Penelope were still upstairs sleeping it off, but I’d awoken feeling antsy.
Nightmares had plagued every bit of my own sleep and it felt like, whenever I closed my eyes, I saw flashes of all of the misfortune I’d witnessed in my twenty-six years.
The few moments of the car accident where everyone was still alive but stuck as it sunk into the river, my mam’s face and her lips moving soundlessly as she told me something that I couldn’t quite remember.
Then waking up in the hospital surrounded by strangers who seemed to know more about me than I did them.
Giving myself a firm shake, I pushed the nightmares and the memories away. Bad memories were a lot like ghosts. If you gave them any attention, then they gained more power over you.
Putting my earbuds in, I scrolled through my phone until I found my usual running playlist and once the first few strains of SIX started playing in my ears I kicked off into a light jog.
There was nothing better than a morning run to clear the cobwebs of a bad night from my mind.
The pound of my feet as I sucked in a breath of cool air and let it out on another beat, the sheen of sweat clinging to my skin, the upbeat music playing in my ears.
It was just what the doctor ordered.
Well—it would have been—had I ever gone to see the doctor. Yet another lovely phobia of mine to add to the pile that always sat just underneath my skin.
Aurelia constantly tried to get me to go, but outside of the medical checkups required for figure skating, I could count on both hands the amount of times I’d seen one of those assholes in the last fifteen years.
The dulcet tones of the six wives of Henry VIII faded in my ears and shifted into something more somber as I turned the corner of one of the high rises and caught something out of the corner of my eye.
I was being followed.
My inner ramblings screeched to a halt even though my feet kept going.
Who could it be? Richter? He’d been warned about showing up in random places, but I could still hear his cajoling voice as he tried to convince me to go out for another date despite the fact that we’d never even gone on a first one.
I kicked up my pace, swallowing the sudden lump in my throat.
I just needed to get to the sound. There were always police officers at the sound, even this early in the morning.
The edge of the fog that always hung over the water in the morning came into view.
Finally, I risked a glance over my shoulder and what I saw peeved me right off.
It wasn’t Richter running after me. No.
But it also wasn’t someone I was happy to see.
Conjuring up every single self-defense lesson that the dads had drilled into all three of us growing up, I turned to face my pursuer and promptly punched him in the throat.
Enzo Santoro went down like a bag of bricks, splayed flat on the ground.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I spat, standing over the groaning alpha. Ripping out my earbuds, I shoved them into the pockets of my leggings. “Why are you chasing me like some kind of psychopath?”
I hadn’t gotten creepy vibes from the alpha before, but I suppose my creep-radar had been wrong before.
“I wasn’t chasing you,” he managed to rasp, holding a hand to what would surely be his bruised throat. “I called your name twice and didn’t see your earbuds.”
“Just because you weren’t chasing me doesn’t mean you weren’t following me.” I wanted to give the man’s side a kick for scaring me so badly.
Enzo made another noise of pain. “I wanted to talk to you without Leith or Artie around and I know we both run at the same time.”
That made… sense, but I was still pissed at him.
With a sigh, I held out my hand to him and he gratefully took it and let me pull him to his feet. He was still wheezing a bit, but it didn’t seem like my punch had done any real damage.
“Try that again and next time I’ll kick your balls into next week,” I threatened, crossing my arms over my chest. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Who taught you to throw a punch like that?” he asked, still rubbing at his throat.
I wasn’t going to let him dance around the reason he’d decided to follow me on my run. “My dads. Now talk.”
“Leith and Artie are going to ask you out and I want you to tell them no.”
Whatever I had thought Enzo had been about to say, it definitely wasn’t that.
I blinked once out of surprise, and then again as I tried to digest the information he’d just presented me with.
Suddenly the shy smiles that the omega had been shooting me as he got off the ice this week made sense.
Despite all of the history with Leith and the fact that I’d just sworn off all men last night, something deep inside of me was pleased that the adorable omega liked me and that Leith didn’t hate me—but the opposite he still liked me enough to talk about asking me out again.
“Why would I do that?”
Enzo’s jaw tightened and he scrubbed a hand over it, scratching at the dark shadow of hair there. “Because you and I both know that you bring nothing but unhappiness to the people around you.”
I reeled back as if he’d been the one to punch me, not the other way around. “You don’t know anything about me. Hell, you’ve only seen me a handful of times.”
Enzo scoffed at that. “I know people like you. I was people like you once upon a time. You cover yourself in past hurts like the quills on a porcupine. Anyone who gets too close is liable to get poked—just like what happened with you and Leith four years ago.”
Ouch, well that hurt like a motherfucker to hear.
Taking a step away from him, I pulled my earbuds back out of my pocket, done with the infuriating alpha’s bullshit for the day. “And I suppose your packmates would be pissed if they knew you were here asking me to do this.”
Enzo flinched, telling me I’d hit the nail on the head.
“Doesn’t matter. My job is to protect them. Even from you.”
I’d met guys like him before. The kind that had a complex about being providers and protectors over what they saw as theirs.
It usually came from a deep sense of not being in control over some aspect of their lives.
But that didn’t mean that he got to push that shit onto me. I had enough of my own issues, I didn’t need to pile Enzo Santoro’s on too—even if I thought he was as cute as he was an asshole.
Rolling my eyes, I put my earbuds back in. “Don’t get your knickers twisted. Dating is against my rules, so your precious packmates are safe from my oh, so dangerous vagina.”
I pointed at him. “Don’t ever follow me like that again and maybe learn how to approach a woman without looking like a serial killer.” Then I turned away from him, pressed play on my music, and turned my feet in the direction of home. My run for the day had been completely ruined.