24
Shawn
I am doing my goddamn best, and it’s not going to be enough.
The full moon sits high overhead, pale and nearly invisible in the sky, watching every single time I get too close to Elise, apparently. It bristles under my skin every time I so much as hear her voice, and it’s always my name on her lips, always asking if anyone knows where I am.
She’s been hounding me all morning. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the next few hours, honestly.
The Hayes House has never felt as small, or quite so constricting, as it does right now.
Some of the Carringtons have already started to arrive, and I am hoping to avoid them as much as possible. Too many wolves in one place during the night of the full moon. Not to mention, if any of them remember me from when I still had to attend church over a decade ago, I don’t want to have to explain my absence while simultaneously receiving derision for being a lapsed Catholic.
Guests fill the house, meandering in the living room and the foyer, a couple of townies I recognize are dressed in black, button-down shirts carrying trays of hors d’oeuvres around.
When I stand on the other side of the lawn, as far away from her as I can get without leaving the property, I feel a little more like a normal person. I can remember that I’m at my brother’s wedding for a moment, that this is what I came home for.
There’s been a few people here and there that I’ve talked to, mostly my more distant cousins. Some of my older relatives have pretty much ignored me, some are confused that I’m here at all. Only two have asked after my excommunication. It doesn’t hurt the way I thought I’d have to brace myself for it. Then again, my priorities have been somewhat shuffled by this week’s events.
No one’s gone feral, we’re all here, I remind myself.
All the unrest in my stomach is butterflies for my brother’s special day, even if it feels maybe more like termites gnawing at my insides. It still feels like I fucking might. I can’t imagine what else is making me want to crawl out of my skin.
My mom planned the dinner area to be closest to the kitchen, so food could go swiftly in and out as needed.
“. . . It’s mostly a matter of putting things in the oven and then plating them.” Elise’s voice carries from the kitchen, and I have to dig my heels in the lawn to keep from just gravitating over there. Despite the majority of the prep being finished beforehand, she doesn’t seem any amount less stressed about it.
I can barely stand to look at any of the food. Never mind that it’s probably Michelin-star-worthy and smells delicious, but the thought of eating anything makes me a little sick right now.
A foreboding lurks something terrible in my gut, an anticipation that won’t leave.
I make the mistake of turning around when I get a wisp of her scent on the wind. A loose tendril of her hair drifts on the air, beckoning me over. The wind slows and the curl rests on her shoulder, and all I can think of is putting my mouth there instead. I think I might be salivating over the little droplets of sweat gathered on her neck under her bun.
She looks like utter perfection. The black fabric comes all the way up to her collar, and the straps on her shoulders are only an inch or so wide, nothing for my claws. She looks very professional, and I just want to go over there and run my hands all over her.
I feel like I could shift at any moment, like even after last night’s close call, morning never came.
I’m actively unlocking new ways to drool over her that I can barely even comprehend, and all of it sits heavy in my lower jaw. I always want to kiss her, but it’s deeper than that, like I need to sink my teeth into her skin.
Oh.
Oh no.
You. Bonehead. I curse myself. You utter fool.
Of course it’s always been her. She’s my mate. I just didn’t want to see it, because I didn’t want to give her the chance to hurt me again.
The knowledge fits perfectly in my heart, like some kind of sick twist of fate, except for one detail. One moonlit titty-job that would have been one for the record books, if it weren’t for me.
She’s my mate, and what if I hurt her?
It doesn’t matter, ultimately. We’re not good together, because we failed the first time. There were all those reasons she explained to me why it didn’t work, even if none of them feel like anything at all when I watch the way she moves, and feel an unbidden growl try to rise up in my chest.
The only thing that feels worth letting her go is what pulled us apart initially: we can’t make a life that would be good for both of us work. My nature would hurt her again.
I dig my hands in my pockets for maybe the hundredth time today. Stay out of the way, stay far, far away from her. Every time I start pacing, I find myself wandering back to the kitchen, and have to purposefully go somewhere else.
This time, it’s out back, near the woods. I’m this close to just disappearing back into them.
This is the first time I have really seen all of it set up. The lawn beside the house looks like something out of a magazine. It is a small wedding, but that does not mean it’s any less beautiful than a fairy tale when our mother is planning it. Ten or so small round tables are spread around one side of the lawn, complete with long white tablecloths, floral centerpieces and settings, and two different stemmed glasses for each elaborate place setting. A few dozen fancy wooden folding chairs line an aisle of flower petals, leading up to one of those gorgeous flower arches full of swaths of gauzy fabrics that wave in the slight breeze. Against the backdrop of the mountains and the thick green woods, it is breathtaking.
Our mother always knows how to host a party, I’ll give her that.
It was hard not to think about Elise and the day we eloped. The two of us jumping off the Atlantic City boardwalk into the sand and immediately losing a flip flop in the process. Staring out across the ocean, knowing there was an eternity before us and feeling like it would never be enough. That, for a moment, we were the only people in the world. And as excited and giddy as we had been, it was also incredibly lonely.
There are just so many chairs here.
“If it reminds you at all of the wedding from the movie version of Twilight, yes, that is my doing,” Laura whispers as she elbows my arm to break me out of my reverie.
I give myself a little shake and try to pull myself back to the present. Unfortunately for me, I do remember having front-row tickets to Laura’s Twilight obsession. “Uh, kinda. Maybe if it was actually in the woods instead of next to them.”
“Yeah, Deanna shot that down. She didn’t think there was going to be room for everything with how close the trees are.”
“I didn’t realize so many people were going to be here,” Elise says, nearly startling me out of my skin as she steps into our conversation.
“Oh, yeah. I heard you ran into my mom.” Laura grimaces a little.
“Yeah. She’s, uh . . .”
“She’s a hater, I know. She’s also Logan’s godmother though, so it’s not like they wouldn’t invite her,” Laura mutters, rolling her eyes.
Out of the view of my cousin’s theatrics, Elise meets my eyes briefly, and I drop the contact the second it happens, burned by it. I immediately take ten steps in a different direction, pretending to examine the place cards on one of the tables.
“It’s still pretty small. A lot of Dad’s side of the family is gonna show up. They’re a little weird and distant. The cousins are cool though,” Aiden says, and he starts to go to playfully mess Laura’s hair up but stops himself about two inches from impact at the look she gives him.
“Do not. I spent all morning on this; there is so much hairspray keeping everything exactly where I want it,” she snaps, deadly serious for a moment, her eyes flashing wolfishly.
“Got it, got it,” Aiden yips, chased away by her tone.
Laura glances between me and Elise. “What’s the matter with you two?
“Nothing,” she says at the same time I do.
Laura frowns, likely contemplating whether or not she wants to press her luck with us but decides against it at the sound of cars pulling up. Elise doesn’t hear it, but every wolf in and out of the house looks up at the minute sound of tires crunching over the gravel driveway.
Her mouth is set in a stony frown, but her eyes are full of apology.
She’s sorry? Even though I’m the one that tore up her arm?
She has to have come to the same conclusion I had: we weren’t meant for each other. It’s not the conclusion I want our intertwined lives to come to, that we ultimately go our separate ways, never to see each other again. It seems such a waste, that life in all its oddities would find a way to put us in each other’s paths again when we’ve grown.
And still, she is trying to catch my eye.
It happens, that flick of her dark-brown eyes meeting mine, and it lances through me.
I look away and stalk toward the house, hoping to get inside and away from her again. When I glance over my shoulder to make sure she’s still across the lawn with Laura, she nearly gives me a heart attack by being only a couple steps behind me. Christ, this woman is going to kill me.
“Oh my god, dude. Your Aunt Jenny? I’m sure she hates me now. I’ve said like three things to her, and all of it was a mistake.”
How is it possible to feel so loved by someone.
I can’t answer her. My heart beats too much.
She frowns and moves on. “Um. So, I know the wedding is at five and the reception ends at eight, I figure you’ll be busy tonight too. But I want to talk to you about last night.”
My throat is too tight.
“Shawn,” she repeats, grabbing my arm, as I didn’t hear her the first time.
“I’m leaving first thing tomorrow,” I say, shrugging her off. “I only wanted to come up for my brother’s wedding, anyway.”
“You left me in a field, my arm bleeding and cum all over my tits, and you won’t even talk to me for a minute now?” she mutters angrily, but it’s clear enough for me, and the two members of the Carrington pack that glance over at us looking concerned.
I wince and grumble through my excuse. “I had a pretty good reason, if memory serves, and it was to avoid making the situation even worse.”
“I know you’re upset after what happened. But can you please not leave until we’ve had a chance to talk?” she says quietly, worrying her lower lip between her teeth.
I don’t want to make that promise. It’s already going to be hard to leave, but if I have to say goodbye to her—I don’t know if I’ll be able to.
She elbows me with the arm I scratched, the sleeve pulling up just enough to show the large Band-Aid that she’s covered it up with. “C’mon, I’ve still got the other nine fingers. Let’s try to be present for your brother’s day.”
I can’t quite laugh, but the breath in me feels a little less pinched for a second.
I try to evade and glance around. “Speaking of being present, has anyone checked to make sure there isn’t a bedsheet hanging out of Logan’s window?”
Elise rolls her eyes, and then her hand is on my arm, pulling me toward the kitchen. It’s empty for the moment, unfortunately. “If you’re not going to talk to me later, we’re just going to do it now.”
She lets go of me once she’s ushered me into the room, and then stands in the doorway to block me from going back out.
I try to get past her, but getting closer to her makes the back of my neck hot, so I just pace to the other side of the room. “You should stay away from me. I can’t be around you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I . . . I hurt you. I can’t come back from that.”
Her mouth sets in a hard line as she crosses her arms over her chest. A beat passes before she says, “Remember that time I closed the apartment door on your hand? And in a week your fingernail turned blue and fell off?”
The memory of that example makes me grimace. “I . . . what? God, gross.”
“Yeah, it was, that’s why I remember it. That low-key traumatized me.”
“It’s not the same thing, Elise. We shouldn’t be together because . . . we shouldn’t,” I finish, a little underwhelmed with my own logic. I had good reasons a minute ago.
“I know you don’t believe that.” She holds me in her gaze, her warm-brown eyes searching mine. “Is that what’s truly in your heart?”
As the seconds tick by without an answer, the vulnerability of the question stretches between us.
That. I can’t deal with that. Not when she knows the truth about me and my family. It was so much easier to deal with when the problem was just some boneheaded move on my part, not an unchangeable part of myself.
Like my entire life hasn’t been needing to push my worst self away, resist all my impulses, and she has the audacity to be understanding of them. How dare she love me in the way I need to be loved when I am trying my fucking hardest to stay away from her.
I want her to know that someone would choose her first, would choose her over everything.
Even if it can’t be me.
I sigh and scrub a hand over my face. “No, dammit. I would do it again in a heartbeat. All of it.”
The words spill out, a confession I have been biting my teeth closed on, maybe even since she first arrived.
I don’t know if that’s what she is looking for, but she blinks in surprise, her posture easing.
“I . . . what?”
“As many times as you gave me, I’d be back again for you. Even if it ended in another divorce.”
Her mouth falls open, but she says nothing. My whole being aches to capture that mouth in a desperate kiss.
“I wouldn’t change a thing. I’d go through all the heartbreak of you leaving again, if it meant spending any amount of time together again. And I don’t care if that makes me a sap or pathetic, I am all of that for you,” I say, and it’s oddly freeing to just tell her. “Losing you is worth having had you at all.”
But she needs to hear it, and maybe I’ve owed her this the entire time. Maybe I was just so scared of all the worst outcomes that I kept this final sliver of vulnerability to myself.
But the worst came to pass, and I didn’t protect myself. I just hurt her.
“You have been worth every minute of it, unfair or not, terrible ending and all. I’d do it again. No changes, no notes. I loved you then, I love you now. Stay. Keep your life here. And if we can’t make it work, tell me to leave and I will.”
Elise’s eyes are glassy. She looks like she wants to say something, like she’s on the edge of finding the words she wants, and I lean in to hear them.
Of course, it’s the moment Logan chooses to appear, thudding down the stairs.
I love my family, I really do.
Logan looks like he’s ready to bite someone’s head off, possibly in a very literal way, as he interrupts our little moment. Asshole isn’t even fully dressed for the wedding, and it’s in what, thirty minutes?
“Is there a reason you two are blocking traffic?” he asks, like the kitchen is currently a high-traffic area.
Elise shuffles out of the way, and he still rolls his eyes like it wasn’t fast enough. Her brow furrows as she looks at him, the way he looks a little paler than usual, sweat beading at his scalp. “Dude, are you ok?”
“No, I’m not. I need an ice pack. Where is all the fucking ice in this kitchen? Didn’t I just see like twelve bags of ice a minute ago?” He bitches in a way that, to me, is incredibly reminiscent of when he was a hot-headed teen, slamming the lid of one empty cooler after another.
“Logan, jeez, calm down,” Elise says, raising her hands in a placating gesture.
She moves to assist, but Logan is already two steps ahead of her, crossing from the empty cooler to the freezer.
“Don’t tell me to calm down! When in the history of telling people to calm down has it actually done anything?” he snaps back at her, taking things out haphazardly and discarding most of it aside.
“Hey! Don’t talk to her like that,” I say, warning in my voice, my claws pressing out of my fingertips territorially.
Logan barely glances in my direction as he digs through the freezer for probably a bag of frozen peas or something.
“It’s fine, he’s just stressed.”
“I don’t care, groomzilla over there needs to tone it down.”
Logan barks out a hollow, joyless laugh, and exits the kitchen. I hear something like marbles hitting the floor, and more swearing follows him.
Did he just immediately puncture the bag of peas?
I glance at Elise and wave for her to stay back before I follow my brother’s barrage through the emptied hallways. Along with some frozen peas scattered across the floor, there are huge gouges scratched down the halls, out to the patio.
I find my brother at the end of the trail of destruction, sitting on the ground next to the glass door, methodically shredding a curtain with his claws. He seems to be struggling to control himself.
His anger lays around him in little tufts of shredded fabric and frozen peas. He clutches the punctured bag to his chest, shuddering, trying not to snarl or transform. His long hair comes loose, scattering across his face, his eyes wild with anger.
“It feels like a panic attack,” he mutters, not even looking at me.
I can see the way it hurts to contain.
I also see the way a couple of guests outside have spied us through the glass and know he wouldn’t want anyone to see this.
“Hey, man. It’s gonna be ok. Let’s take a beat. You go back upstairs, I’ll go out there and apologize, tell them you’re not feeling well,” I tell him quietly, taking his arm and helping him stand back up.
“You want to tell me to just do what you did, just drop all my responsibilities, my loyalty, my family, and for what?” Logan growls slowly, his glare burning into me. “Look how shit everything turned out for you. You threw all of us away for a human that left you the moment it got too hard.”
His claws press in and take a few slices out of my jacket sleeve. Gritting my teeth I pull back. I’m off balance when he shoves me bodily.
The door bursts open when my shoulder connects with it suddenly, and the two of us spill outside, onto the patio. A rush of murmurs rise when the sky stops spinning. All the guests look at us, frozen.
I stumble, but keep my footing under me, holding him at arm’s length the best I can, my hand clawed around his shoulder.
“Yeah, you talked too loud about your little secret,” he snarls, tone venomous.
“Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I grumble around trying to hold him. I glimpse Elise behind us, eyes wide and terrified.
“No, you shut up. You broke the rules, you don’t get to just . . . be happy! I stayed here and picked up the pieces after you left.”
Teeth bared and a low rumble in his throat, he shoves me back, forcing me to let go of him. I stumble back and a table cuts into my side, the sound of dishes and glass hitting the ground follows.
“You picked some girl you just met over all of us,” Logan seethes, throwing a glare in Elise’s direction. “Did it occur to you how it felt for you to throw the rest of us away? Did it even matter?”
His anger is so singular, it’s like he doesn’t even see anyone else.
The metallic taste of blood creeps into my awareness. My lip is bleeding, I find, rubbing where he struck me. I swear we used to have a no-closed fists rule about hitting each other. Distantly, and perhaps a little unrealistically, I hope he gets grounded to hell for this.
I push off the overturned table at my back, the broken place settings gathered underneath me.
“No, you fuck off. I lost almost everyone who said they loved me. For eight years. Overnight. Don’t think that you don’t have to make that up to me.”
He growls, the sound wrinkling his nose terribly in a snarl, and he begins the shift, even as dusk has barely fallen.
“Logan! Logan, please,” Mom says, her eyes wide, and desperate with concern.
I really thought our mom would be on the other side of this. Even though she is outsized by all her children, she has never looked so small, or frail as her expression betrays her, as she reaches a gentle hand toward Logan.
The moment passes in his eyes, they linger on her, considering the peace she reaches out with.
Then his eyes flick to me, a sneer curling under the dark intensity of them.
“So, Shawn gets to break all the rules, and it’s just fine?”
Oh, we’re fucked.
Logan lunges, and I don’t honestly see who it’s toward. I just move toward him.