Chapter 18 A Different Choice #2
But I understood what Rafe meant, and the assumption underneath it made my decision easy.
He believed that what the Goddess handed down automatically outweighed what I chose for myself.
To him, fate mattered more than desire, and a divine assignment counted for more than a man who’d told me plainly what he wanted and never once tried to bend my life around it.
I turned to Jules.
He watched me with the same restrained desire I’d seen since the morning he told me the truth over scrambled eggs. He had seen me covered in grease, road dust, and blood without ever flinching.
I reached up and put my hand on his jaw.
Jules went still. His breath caught, and his eyes widened just enough to tell me he hadn’t expected it with Rafe three feet away and the whole yard within earshot. He leaned into my touch and waited for me to close the distance.
I kissed him.
I brushed my mouth against his, testing, tasting.
He let me lead for the first few seconds, his lips warm and sure, his restraint intact even now.
Then something in him shifted. His hand came up to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair where it had come loose from its knot, and the kiss deepened.
He tasted like cold water, and I met him with a hunger born of choice.
His other hand found my waist and pulled me closer.
He kissed me harder, and I matched him, my fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt as I pressed against his chest. Through Wade’s bond I felt a distant spike of jealousy, sharp and hot, but he stayed where he was and kept his promise to let me choose.
Over Jules’s shoulder, I saw Rafe go white.
His left hand closed over his chest, and the pain on his face reached me through the bond at the same instant.
I watched the certainty leave him, the belief that Nora Keane, the dutiful mate, would eventually come around because the Goddess had written it in our blood.
I kissed Jules Duquette with engine grease on my hands and a flannel soaked in sweat, and Rafe watched.
A sharp whistle cut across the yard from the dock, one of the dockhands signaling something mundane.
I pulled back. Jules’s hand stayed at the nape of my neck for one extra breath, his thumb brushing the skin there, and then he let go. His usual charm had given way to something rawer.
“Okay,” he said, quiet.
“Okay,” I said.
I picked up the socket wrench he’d brought, crouched by the lift’s sheared mount bolt, and went back to work. Jules’s taste sat on my lips, and I didn’t wipe it away.
Rafe stood for a long time. I felt a trace of his pain through the bond as he watched me choose someone else. Then his boots scraped on the concrete, and he walked back toward the pack house without speaking.
? ? ?
That evening Wade was on the porch.
The sun was low over Superior, turning the water bronze and copper, and the wind had dropped to something almost gentle.
Wade sat in the wooden chair with his wounded forearm resting on his knee, the fresh bandage Bette had applied that afternoon already spotted with blood.
He’d worked all day, hauling wreckage, directing repairs, posting his wolves, and refusing every suggestion that he rest. The lines around his eyes were deeper than yesterday.
Through our bond, I felt his jealousy. It had dulled, but it was there. He’d felt the kiss. He knew.
“I kissed Jules,” I said.
“I know.”
“Are you going to say something about it?”
Wade looked out at the water. “I told you I wouldn’t order him away. I told you what you want is your decision. I meant both.” He paused. “Doesn’t mean I liked feeling it.”
“I know.”
We let that be for a moment. The plain talk between us had always been the best part, and I wasn’t going to ruin it by pretending the kiss hadn’t happened or that it didn’t matter. It mattered. So did Jules, and Wade, and, in a way I couldn’t escape, Rafe.
“Rafe can’t stay in the house,” I said. “But sending him on the road with his shoulder torn up and Conrad promising to send more wolves is stupid. He’d be a target, and if Conrad’s men grabbed him, we’d lose the person most likely to anticipate Conrad’s next move.”
Wade didn’t like it, but he nodded. “The bunkhouse. Across the yard.”
“Not the house.”
“No,” Wade said. “Not the house.”
“I’ll tell him.”
I found Rafe sitting on the pack house steps with his injured arm cradled against his chest. The evening had turned cold, and he wore only a shirt. He looked up when I approached. Without the arrogance or bargaining, I barely recognized him.
“Bunkhouse across the yard,” I said. “There’s a cot, blankets, and a space heater. You stay until we understand what Conrad’s planning. After that, you go.”
“Thank you.”
“Your father made it too dangerous to put you on the road. That’s the only reason you’re here.”
Rafe eased to his feet. He looked at me the way he had earlier that morning when I’d changed his bandage, searching my face for a condition I hadn’t named. A wounded Copper Point heir on an open highway was a risk none of us could afford, and that was the whole of it.
He walked across the dark yard toward the bunkhouse. I watched him go, then returned to the porch where Wade waited.
Neither of us spoke. The lake hit the rocks in long, rolling swells, and somewhere inside the house Jules was cooking, his off-key humming carrying through the kitchen window. I sat in the chair beside Wade, rested my head against the chair back, and closed my eyes.
The cold air smelled like pine and woodsmoke and the last of the day’s engine oil on my skin.
I opened my eyes, looked at the darkening lake, and went inside to wash my hands before dinner.