Chapter 20 Chance
Chance
I didn't turn on the radio. I didn't say a word for the first mile. The only thing sharper than the headlights was the tension sitting between us. Me in the driver's seat, Tash buckled up beside me.
The road out to her rental was pitch dark. Gravel spat up under the tires, hitting the undercarriage hard enough to shake loose every dumb thought.
I gripped the wheel until my fingers hurt. The silence was a living thing.
Fuck it. Might as well rip the band-aid. "I'm guessing you'd like to know why you couldn't find me? Why my whole family went off the grid?"
She blinked but didn't look at me, just wiped her hands on her jeans.
"Yes." Her mouth was set, but there was a crack in the armor.
"I never understood. One day you're there, and then, nothing.
Not even a forwarding address. I thought, I don't know, maybe you changed your names.
Got tired of this place. Or I screwed up so bad you couldn't risk seeing me. "
The way she said it gutted me. "It's not that simple," I muttered. "Never that simple."
The trees flew by in the beam of the headlights. Black, tangled, nothing out there but the old ghosts watching.
I stared straight ahead. "My family has always had to hide. Move every few years. Get new identities if we have to. Not because we're paranoid. Because there's a group of hunters called the Hollow Order. They hunt anything supernatural, and they're damn good at it."
She flinched at the word hunt, just a twitch, but I caught it.
I pressed on. "They started back in Victorian England.
Queen Victoria, legend says, got nearly killed by a vampire.
She survived, but it changed her. They built the first Hollow Order from her own private guard.
Over time, the power drifted. First to the British royals, then to American robber barons.
Now, it's a mix of old money, aristocrats, and corporate types. They fund the whole machine."
She stayed silent, staring at me in shock.
I kept talking. "Their hierarchy's fucked.
The top tier is guys who make presidents and kings jump.
They never get their hands dirty. They write checks, provide cover, pull strings.
Middle management watches every news blip, looking for anything weird.
Lower levels? That's the real shitshow. They train hunters from birth.
Families who specialize, you know? They're fanatics.
But they're not stupid, or sloppy. If you make the slightest noise, they find you. Then they kill you."
Tash curled in on herself, arms tight. "How do they know who to go after? Is it, like, magical surveillance? Or just brute force?"
I snorted. "All of it. Human networks, tech, even psychics.
If you're a shifter, or witch, or anything loud, you're on someone's list. The only reason the Meyers kept safe all these years is because we learned to be really good at hiding.
New names, new jobs, no paper trail. The year after graduation, Mom got a tip we'd been flagged.
We did what we do best. We vanished. Every few years, rinse and repeat. Safe over comfortable."
She let that wash over her.
I squeezed the wheel harder.
Caden was in heaven. He stretched, yawned, and practically preened at Tash's nearness. The dragon didn't just hum, he vibrated, sharp and golden inside, like a retriever with a new chew toy in his jaws. I almost laughed. He didn't care about dignity tonight.
She's ours, he whispered. She belongs where we belong. Don't let her go.
I wanted to roll my eyes, but didn't want Tash to see.
Tash worked her jaw. "So all those years I was just chasing a ghost. I thought maybe you moved to Florida or changed your name on a whim. I even set up Google alerts for ‘Chance Meyer.'"
A lump stuck in my throat. "I never would've wanted to leave you in the dark.
But there's a reason Mom offered that check, you know?
Not because she's evil. Because she figured the less you knew, the safer you'd be.
Shit, Tash, have you ever gotten weird mail?
Creepy phone calls? Strangers following you down the street? "
I didn't want to think about what might've happened if we hadn't both moved back to Laurel Gap now, before Fifi had her first shift. If she'd shifted in public. If the Order had found her…
She shook her head, but she was pale. "No, but I never thought to look out for anything like that. I never thought I was in danger or the girls."
Silence again. The pain of sixteen years, blooming fresh.
I downshifted for the last stretch. "Now that you're here, I'm not letting anything touch you or the girls. I'll burn down the town first."
Caden purred, smug. He liked that.
Tash ran her hands through her hair. "So what do we do? Go full witness protection? Can you really keep the girls safe?"
I slowed as we turned up the long drive.
"The best thing you can do is not get comfortable," I said.
"We stay alert. We teach the girls to stay alert.
We keep our magic small, our heads down.
That's how Meyers have survived for centuries.
" I didn't tell her about my father and how he'd died. It was too soon to freak her out more.
She didn't look convinced, but she didn't argue, either. I killed the engine. Neither of us moved. Then she popped the latch and stepped out.
Inside, her rental was chaotic. The twins' shoes littered the entry, and Huey's bed was jammed in the corner. The kitchen smelled faintly of apples and detergent. She hesitated, then started straight for the girls' rooms, and I trailed behind, silent in the cave of the place.
Packing was brutal. Tash grabbed clothes and started folding, but her hands shook so bad she could barely grip the fabric.
I wanted to help, but the moment I brushed her knuckles, the room lit up with static.
She flinched then glared at herself, cheeks hot. "Sorry. Nerves."
I grunted and went to work. "Hand me what you want packed." My hands made tight, neat stacks of clothes, but most of my focus was on her. The way she kept glancing at the door, as if a monster was set to bust in any second.
Caden's hunger was unreal. Every time she leaned close, every time her arm bumped mine, he flared up, pure, raw, possessive. Ours. Ours. Ours. It wasn't even sexual, wasn't just sexual, it was need, tangled with history and regret.
We made two passes through the girls' closets, ransacked the bathroom for toothbrushes, then hit the laundry. Every so often, Tash would stop just long enough to press the heel of her hand into her eyes, as if she could rub away the migraine.
"Need a break?" I said.
She didn't answer. Just kept packing.
We boxed up books, art supplies, one ratty plush bear that looked like it'd survived a hundred wash cycles.
I couldn't help picturing my daughters, fuck, I still wasn't used to that, my daughters, curled on the rug, not a clue in the world how close they'd come to disaster. It made my insides go icy.
At one point, our hands collided in a sock drawer. Fingers tangled, then bounced apart like magnets refusing to meet.
She glanced up. "Sorry."
I shook my head. "Don't be."
After that, things went faster. Room by room, item by item. Not a word between us unless it was necessary. I kept waiting for her to explode, or cry, or fight. But she didn't.
When we hit her bedroom, the energy shifted.
She stopped dead in the doorway. The window was open a crack, letting in the taste of winter, and the bed was an explosion of flannel sheets and baby photos.
Tash drifted to the end table and picked up a photo. The twins as infants, cheeks round, fuzz-headed, both of them wrestling a stuffed dragon of all things.
She stared at the picture so long I thought she'd become a ghost herself.
I watched her shoulders shake.
Then, quietly, the tears started. She tried to smother them in her sleeve. I let her have the silence. She deserved it.
Then she started talking.
"I really tried, you know. I tried for years.
Every few months, I'd search. Google, social, people-finder sites.
I set up alerts. Even checked alumni directories, just in case you'd surfaced again.
After Laurel Gap went dark, I thought maybe you all died in a fire. Or maybe you just hated me that much."
I crossed the room and didn't even stop to think. I just pulled her in.
She folded, her arms tight around my waist, her head crushing into my chest, the whole world crumpling down to the ache of sixteen years lost.
Caden sang, fierce, oh so smug. She's ours. She's ours. Never let go.
I meant for it to be comfort. Just a steady anchor, hold her together so she didn't break all the way. That lasted maybe a second.
Her hands balled in my shirt. She shook, angry and wild, the tears just fueling it. She pressed her face into my shirt and sobbed. The sound carved me open.
I tried to hold her together, arms tight around her, but the truth was I was breaking just as bad. All those years she'd searched. All those years I'd been a shadow in someone else's story.
"Fuck," she whispered, "I don't even know what's real anymore. I don't even know if this is real."
She clung to me, nails digging through the cotton, and time lost all meaning. Past, future, none of it mattered.
Caden roared inside my skull. The need was savage. I couldn't pretend it away.
She jerked her head up, eyes red, cheeks wet, the pain alive on her face. My mouth crashed into hers and I tasted nothing but salt and her.
She kissed me back, hard, gasping, teeth and lips and the bitterness of everything we'd lost.
We slammed into the wall, then the dresser, then tripped backward onto the bed.
The clothes and pictures on the covers went flying.
Half the goddamn closet, pajamas, socks, the whole mess.
She clawed at my shirt buttons, ripping the first two open before I managed to yank her sweatshirt off over her head.
I didn't even try for gentle. Neither did she.
She locked her thighs around my waist and hauled me down, urgent as hell. I kissed her again, hotter, meaner, maybe a little desperate, because what else were we supposed to do? Years of missing her detonated behind my ribs.
Her hands were everywhere, my back, neck, shoulders, fingers pinching just to anchor herself. Even her tears tasted angry.
I got her jeans unzipped and she shimmied them off, nearly kneeing me in the stomach. The sheet twisted under us. She didn't care. Neither did I. I wanted to eat her alive.
Every time our skin touched, Caden crowed. Take her. Claim her.
She yanked my shirt over my head, dragging her fingers over my back, and I nearly lost my shit. Her bra was next, a plain cotton thing, practical as ever, but it looked so perfect on her I wanted to shred it in my teeth.
"Is this okay?" I managed hoarsely, caging her wrists in one hand.
She bucked, panting, eyes crazed. "We're doing this, yeah?"
"Yeah," I said, my whole body one live wire.
"God yes," she said, and the words undid me.
The rest was a blur. Her panties, soft and damp, tore down her thighs. My jeans shoved somewhere off the bed. The mattress creaked, sheets crushed, cold air burning into my shoulders while everything south of my heart was lava.
I braced a hand above her head and drove into her, raw and hungry. She met me, every thrust, every curse, every dig of her nails. There was no grace to it, only the violence of need and the hundred things we never got to say.
She came first, locking up tight, mouth open in a ragged gasp. I followed, barely catching myself before I could bite down along her shoulder, pulling out before I spilled myself inside her. The urge was primal, hot and bright and fuck, it took everything in me not to mark her then and there.
I collapsed beside her, a mess of sweat and ache, lungs stuttering in the dark.
She was gorgeous. Flushed, wide-eyed, hair stuck to her cheeks, lips red from kissing. She didn't look away. I don't think she could.
For a minute, all I could hear was the sound of us breathing.
Caden paraded around my chest, smug as hell. She's ours now. Mate. Bite. Now.
I banished him with a curse, but he didn't care as I searched her face for regret. There was none. Only hunger, still, and a weird, sweet relief.
I wanted to say something sharp, or funny. But all that came out was, "You okay?"
She snorted, half laughing, half crying. "You're insane."
"I missed you," I said, stupidly.
She punched my chest. "Idiot. You don't know me."
We tangled together, neither of us bothering to move, not even to find a blanket. The chill on my skin was nothing compared to her, all hot and alive.
Caden's need to bite was a living thing. He kept muttering, do it, do it, do it, but I held the dragon down. This wasn't the night for that. Not yet.