Chapter Three
“Where’s your head at,” Darrel yelled.
Dodger winced at the volume of his boss’s voice. That was one thing he didn’t appreciate about his heightened senses. Yelling made his ears ring.
“It was just an off day.”
“You dropped a damn limb on a fence.”
“And I’ll fix it,” he barked out. “I already talked to the homeowner. I’ll have it repaired by tomorrow.”
“By tonight,” Darrel said. He jammed his finger at him. “You’ll have it done by the time you clock in for your shift tomorrow.”
A growl rattled Dodger’s throat, and he allowed it.
“Are you growling at me?”
“Remove your fucking finger from my face before I eat it,” he said low.
Whatever Darrel saw in his expression, he dropped his hand to his side.
“I’ve been working this job for three years. How many times have I dropped a limb where I didn’t want to?”
Darrel didn’t answer.
“How many times?” Dodger barked.
“Just this one that I can remember.”
“You’ll give all those fuckheads over there a hundred chances, but when I make a mistake, it’s the end of the world. Why?”
“You know why.”
“Because I’m a werewolf?”
“Because you are a liability! If you want to work on an all-human crew, you have to be perfect. That’s what you signed up for.”
Dodger made a click sound behind his teeth and shook his head as he walked to his truck. He slammed his hard hat into the bed of it and climbed inside with one last fiery look for his asshole boss.
Darrel didn’t understand what Dodger was capable of. Yelling at him was a dangerous game.
He hit the gas and spun his tires out, spraying gravel behind him and peeled out of the parking lot.
He’d messed up today. His job was to cut limbs back from power lines, and he was the one with the chainsaw up there.
Where had his mind been today? On the human from Copper’s, honestly.
He couldn’t afford to lose focus right now.
He was just now getting back into the rhythm at work, on a new shift with a new crew after he’d quit a couple of months ago.
His Pack had been dissolved by the Elders and he’d left, only to be dragged back by his Alpha in hopes of creating a new Rogue Pack.
Dodger regretted coming back here every day, but still, he was putting down roots like an idiot.
He’d even bought a small modular home and put it up on Liam’s territory. Sure, he could move it anytime he wanted, but he was starting to get that old familiar trapped feeling again lately.
He hated it.
Doing lunch with Nate’s mate? And having to give a shit about her feelings? Annoying. Not fighting his Pack mates because Liam had made a dumb rule about it? Super annoying. His job? Annoying. The fact that he couldn’t get his mind steered clear of the beauty from earlier—Destiny—Mega annoying.
Now he was headed to the lumber yard to buy supplies to fix a fence he didn’t care about at his own expense.
If Dodger were human, Darrel would’ve just patted him on the back and told him ‘everyone has bad days sometimes’ and got the whole crew to patch the fence at the company’s expense.
But he wasn’t human. Consequences were bigger for him.
Up ahead, there was a school zone, with the speed limit sign flashing.
Shhhit.
Dodger slowed and rolled his window down just to feel the cold air on his face. He didn’t usually go this way at this time of day to avoid the droves of little human kids running all over the place like they had no survival instincts at all.
Two cars in front of him made it past the crosswalk before a herd of little kids had gathered on the sidewalk to cross.
The crossing guard was a lady, nice legs in tight leggings, oversized jacket that hung halfway down her thighs, burgundy beanie, and neon green crossing guard vest, and a stop sign held in her hand.
Destiny recognized him at the exact moment he recognized her. He could tell.
She stood there frozen in the middle of the road, the stop sign held up, her eyes round as saucers.
Dodger pulled forward a little and hung his head out the window. “Hey. What are you doing?”
“K-keeping kids safe while they cross the street?” One of the kids in question took that moment to hug her legs and look up at her. “See you on Monday, Ms. Young.”
“See ya,” she said in a pretty tone.
Dodger snorted. Of course she was one of those good humans. He couldn’t corrupt this one. She looked so freakin’ adorable in her neon crossing guard vest.
All of the kids crossed, and she checked for more, but there were only a trio of stragglers walking slowly from up near the elementary school. She turned the sign in her hand, and it read Slow.
He eased forward and stopped in the middle of the crosswalk, right beside her.
“What are you doing?”
Honesty was best. “I messed up at work and now I have to fix a fence. I was…distracted. I’m headed to the lumber yard and then the hardware store.”
“Sounds like a fun Friday night,” she teased.
“What can I say? I’m a party animal.”
“You’ve got the animal part right.”
A smile took his face, and the stretch of it felt good. Destiny was quick-witted. He liked that.
“What are the odds I saw you twice today?” he asked.
“Must be…” she waggled her eyebrows. “Destiny.”
He belted out a laugh.
Behind him a car laid on the horn, and he tossed it a withering look, before he returned his attention to Destiny. “The rugrats are almost here,” he said, tipping his head toward the three stragglers that had reached the corner. “I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Don’t get splinters,” she called.
He snorted. “I don’t get those.”
She looked like she wanted to say more but pursed her lips instead and held up the stop sign for the car that had honked behind him. Ha.
The tailgate of his truck was just past the crosswalk when he stopped and did something so stupid.
He grabbed his phone out of the cupholder, and called out, “What’s your number?”
“Mine?” she asked, twisting in her cute little neon vest.
“No, the car behind me with the honking problem.”
She gestured the kiddos toward her and called out her number for him to save into his phone.
And then he was off. No more words, he just rolled up his window and tossed the phone onto the passenger’s seat.
“Why did you do that?” he murmured to himself, gripping the steering wheel harder.
Werewolves and humans didn’t mix. That had been beaten into his mind growing up. Even flirting with one felt wrong. They weren’t even the same species. He’d judged Liam so much for pairing up with a human, and now he’d just asked one for her number?
He should delete it. That was the best thing for her. Delete it and move on and never drive past this school or go to Copper’s again.
He made it to the lumber yard with a plan, but the second he parked and picked up his phone, his plan fell apart. Her number was just sitting there, and he knew damn well he couldn’t delete the contact. His wolf wouldn’t let his finger anywhere near the delete button.
Why did I do that? He silently asked himself for the fifth time. Why?
He hadn’t even saved it yet or put her name in it. The number just sat there, glaring back at him, asking him the same question. Why?
Here was probably why. He hadn’t dated anyone in months. He’d been bogged down with the Pack drama and was lonely with it, and Destiny was the first person who had paid attention to him, and he was reaching. Yeah. That’s all this was.
He deleted the last digit, but he re-typed it without even meaning to. His wolf growled long and low inside of him.
Frowning, Dodger deleted the last four digits in a rush and then re-typed them. “Stop!” he yelled at his animal.
Fuck you.
“No, fuck you! She’s fragile, you sick fuck. She’s a human!”
She’s fun. She’s interesting. We could make her stronger.
“She’s a good person.”
So?
“So why would you want to corrupt that?”
The animal didn’t have any logical response, so Dodger took that as a win and deleted all of the number and then gritted his teeth and fought hard as his stupid finger poked every single number back into his phone, typed out Hot Human and saved the contact.
“Aaaah!” he roared, throwing the phone onto the floorboard.
He would throw it into the river on his way back to Rogue Pack territory and get himself a new phone.
I’ll type it into the new phone too, his wolf assured him.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The wolf wasn’t supposed to be in control, but here he was, for the thirty-fifth year in a row, fighting the damn voice in his head.
Why couldn’t he be one of the dumb ones?
Why couldn’t his wolf just try unsuccessfully to talk to him with barking and yipping and growling?
He could ignore that! But no, he was unblessed with a wolf that could probably do fairly well on a freaking SAT test.
Ha.
“Shut up. You don’t even know what an SAT test is.”
Dodger forced himself to get out of the truck and leave his phone on the floorboard.
The wolf was quiet as he shopped for the lumber he needed for the fence repairs. He was quiet when he pulled the truck around to load it and was quiet as he drove to the hardware store to grab the right sized brackets and nails.
He was not quiet as he tried to go the long way around the school on the way to the property he’d damaged though. So here he was, driving past a school zone that was no longer flashing and lacked one hot crossing guard.
“She’s gone home.”
Where is her home?
“Absolutely not.”
Let’s ask her.
Dodger strangled the steering wheel and wished it was his wolf’s neck in his hands.
He connected a call to Liam to distract himself.
“What?” Liam answered.
“Uh, how was your day?”
There were three loaded seconds of heavy silence, and then Liam said, “Is this a cry for help?”
“What?” Dodger asked.
“Are you in some sort of trouble?”
“No.” Yes? He didn’t know.
“Then why are you calling me asking about my day?”