13. Harley
Harley
Val is a shifter.
The thought keeps circling through my head like something trapped and frantic, slamming into the inside of my skull over and over while the cab pulls farther away from the clubs.
Outside the window, neon signs blur beneath the Arizona night, streaks of color melting together every time the driver takes a turn too fast. I barely notice any of it.
My whole body feels too tight and too hot at the same time, my nerves still humming from Val’s mouth on me, from the feel of his hands cradling me like I’m something precious instead of broken.
Jesus God. I’m still attracted to him.
I press both hands hard against my face and groan into my palms because none of this makes any sense.
I should be horrified. Furious. I should be demanding the cabbie drive faster, farther, anywhere except back toward the man who lied to me while touching me in an alley hard enough to make me shake apart in his arms.
Instead, my stupid
k about Val’s scarred face close to mine, or the rough warmth of his voice, or the way he kiss dick is still hard.
Not just half-hard either. Fully, painfully interested despite everything my brain keeps screaming at me. Every time I thin ed like I mattered, heat coils low in my stomach again.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” I mutter.
The cabbie glances at me in the mirror, but wisely keeps his mouth shut.
I drop my hands and slump sideways against the door.
Riding away from Val feels physically wrong somehow, and the sensation only grows worse with every block we put between us.
At first I try to ignore it, telling myself it’s just leftover adrenaline and confusion mixing together.
But the farther the cab gets from the clubs, the more something deep in my chest starts to ache.
A sharp pulling sensation beneath my ribs, like some invisible hook is dragging me backward.
“Damn it,” I whisper.
I close my eyes briefly and immediately see flashes of the alley again. Val’s hands on me. Val’s mouth. Val going rigid the second he senses danger. The look on his face when he says Nathan trusted him with me.
Then the glowing yellow eyes in the darkness.
My stomach twists violently.
Nathan and Marcus warned me somebody might come after me eventually. At the time, I’d mostly shoved the warning aside because I was already drowning in fear and humiliation and anger. But those eyes...
Those were real.
My eyes snap open.
“Fuck.”
Because suddenly the whole thing looks different from the outside. Val didn’t stay because he wants some heroic moment. He’s here because he thinks I’m in danger, and because despite being hurt himself, he still put me in the cab first.
I think about Val trying to fight another shifter in his condition and break out in a cold sweat.
He has that scar, and the eye patch, and he limps—can he take on a healthier shifter?
Are his limitations only in human form? I can’t make sense of that.
It seems to me that a shifter would be just as injured, if the injury is permanent, no matter what form he’s in.
I know they heal really fast. I’ve seen it happen.
So whatever damaged Val had to have been really bad, right?
I think of that shifter lying in the hospital bed, and the way I felt when I touched that still, swollen hand. Maybe I just have a thing for wounded men. Or wounded shifters, apparently.
I slump in the seat and stare out the window without really seeing anything.
What would mess up a shifter that badly?
I can’t imagine. It has to leave Val at a disadvantage, though, just as it would a regular human being when it comes to a physical confrontation.
A wolf in the wild, blind in one eye and lame, for lack of a better word, probably wouldn’t last long at all.
I let out a strangled laugh that sounds halfway to hysteria.
“Great. Just great.”
The cab keeps moving and every second makes the ache in my chest worse.
My sternum hurts now. My stomach too. A sick, restless pressure builds beneath my skin until I can barely stay seated. I dig my fingers into my thighs and try to breathe through it.
Val is a shifter. But he’s also kind, protective and has, so far, been gentle with me.
And I know damned well that if he dies tonight because I abandoned him, I’ll never forgive myself.
The realization lands with terrible clarity. I bolt upright so fast the cabbie curses.
“Go back!”
“What?”
“I said go back!”
The driver waves the fifty Val gave him. “Buddy, I got paid to take you home.” I stare at the bill for one furious second before yanking open my wallet.
“You want more?” I slap a hundred-dollar bill against the partition. “Then turn the damn car around and follow my orders, you asshole!”
“Hey, don’t yell at me—”
“Then stop arguing!”
Okay, maybe screaming at the cab driver isn’t my finest moment.
The U-turn he takes nearly launches me across the seat anyway. I catch myself awkwardly against the opposite door with a startled yelp while the cab swerves back toward the clubs.
“Seatbelt’s there for a reason,” the driver mutters, but I ignore him completely.
“Just hurry!”
The ride back feels ten times longer somehow. I keep scanning the streets through the windows, half expecting to see glowing yellow eyes in every alley now. My pulse won’t slow down as every horrible possibility keeps flashing through my head in vivid detail.
Val bleeding in an alley.
Val surrounded by wolves.
Val shifting—
I cut that thought off immediately because I still can’t fully process the idea of Val becoming an actual wolf. Nathan and Marcus are one thing. They’re attached to the compound in my mind somehow, separated from normal reality by sheer strangeness.
Val kissed me.
Val went down on me.
Val laughed at my terrible flirting.
Trying to combine that man with claws and fur and glowing eyes makes my brain short-circuit completely.
When the cab finally reaches the club district again, I practically throw myself against the door before the car fully stops. My heart slams painfully the second I look around and don’t immediately see Val anywhere.
No Val.
No glowing eyes either.
Just drunk people spilling out of clubs and cigarette smoke curling through the night air.
“You want the hundred, wait here,” I snap at the driver.
Then inspiration strikes. I tear the bill in half and the driver gawks at me. “What the hell?”
“You get the other half if you stay put.” I toss one torn piece into the front seat. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I hope.
As soon as the words hit me, I pause beside the cab.
Damn it all! What am I doing?
I stand there breathing hard while traffic hums around me and music pounds faintly from nearby buildings. Fear and shame and longing churn together so violently inside me that I almost feel dizzy.
Then the answer comes quietly.
What’s right, that’s what I’m doing. I can hate all shifters for the actions of Dobson, and be the kind of bigot I’ve had to fight against all my life, it seems like.
Or I can get over my fear and accept that there are good shifters just like there are good humans.
Fucking fear makes everyone haters, even me. I am so ashamed.
I drag one hand through my hair.
I don’t have time to unpack that now. Later maybe. Later, when my entire nervous system isn’t screaming at me to find Val immediately.
So I run. Past the club entrance. Past the alley where we kissed. Past groups of smokers and tourists and drunk college kids stumbling down the sidewalks. I check the diner windows next and nearly groan when I still don’t see Val.
“Fuck!”
Where would he—I slam directly into a familiar hard body.
“Fuck!”
Momentum takes us both down instantly.
The fall happens fast, too fast for me to do anything except gasp as pavement rushes up and Val’s arms come around me.
He twists as we go down, taking the worst of the impact with a sharp sound that cuts through me worse than the landing itself.
His body hits hard beneath mine, and I end up half sprawled across his chest, one knee scraping the ground while his arm locks around my waist like he can still protect me even while I’m the reason he’s on his back in the middle of the damn sidewalk.
“Oh my God, you’re okay.” I hear myself say it before I know I’m going to, breathless and too raw, and I hope he thinks it’s because I just ran headfirst into him and crashed us both to the ground.
But seeing him, feeling him solid and alive beneath my hands, sends relief through me so violent and deep that it almost hurts.
I don’t even question why. For once, I don’t have the energy to dissect every feeling until it turns ugly. I’m just glad he’s alive.
Val grunts, but his eye widens as he looks up at me. “Get up. We have to get you away from here.” His voice is rough with pain and urgency, and then his gaze flicks past me toward the alley he came from. “Why did you—?”
A loud crash echoes from that direction and Val goes still beneath me.
“Never mind,” he snaps. “Go!”
He shoves at me, but I grab his wrists and pull, because apparently tonight I’ve decided fear isn’t going to be the only thing driving me. “You too.”
“Harley—”
“No.” My voice cracks, but I don’t let go. “You too.”
Getting him upright is harder than it should be.
He’s heavy, and even though he’s doing most of the work, pain flashes across his face when he puts weight on his left leg.
That confirms every terrible suspicion I had in the cab.
Whatever happened to him did not magically stop mattering because he’s a shifter.
He’s hurt. Maybe badly. Maybe worse than he’d ever admit to me.
The thought makes me furious in a way I don’t know what to do with.
I fit myself under his left arm, wrapping one of mine around his waist as best I can. “Lean on me and move it, buddy.”
“Buddy,” Val mutters, breathless and almost disbelieving. “Right. I know you hate us all.”