Chapter 8 #2
Mercy realized what was going on and weaved around Robyn. I’d never focused on anything harder in my life than that ball coming toward my face. When I caught it, I wanted to cheer and scream, but catching it wasn’t the goal, so I pivoted and took off.
An audible smack sounded from behind me. Stealing a glance, I glimpsed Mercy lying face down in the mud. “Can’t catch me!” I taunted, running gleefully with my prize.
Then I slipped. Mercy cackled from a distance. Undeterred, I jumped to my feet and bolted as if the hounds of hell were hunting me.
Just as victory was within sight, I made the fatal mistake of looking over my shoulder again. To my horror, Krys was only steps behind me and closing in like a dark villain.
When he slammed into me, I lost my footing. We hit the ground, slid several feet, and tumbled around like clothes in a dryer. Once we came to a stop, I clutched that ball beneath my arm as if my life depended on it.
Krys rolled on top of me, mud spattered on his cheek, neck, and bare chest. “Gotcha.”
I gave him a sardonic grin while pointing at the trees on the left. “Think again,” I panted.
Arms caging me, he looked toward the tree line we used as a goal marker and saw it was behind us. He lowered his head while cheers erupted from my teammates. “You son of a bitch.”
My belly tingled as I stared up at my best friend. His dark hair curtained my face, so there was nowhere to look but at his glossy lips and piercing blue eyes. Our bodies were joined, skin slick and muddy, the heavy panting between us provocative.
Krys’s dark eyebrows slanted down before he moved away and flopped onto his back. The rain pelted us, forcing me to close my eyes. I could still feel his body heat lingering on me like a distant dream.
Snap out of it. Like he was really gonna kiss me. Kissing in the rain is for romance movies, and my life is either a satire or a tragedy.
I laughed and tossed the ball between us. “I don’t think I’ve seen you run that fast since the Harley-Davidson shop announced a sale.”
Krys swung his arm, and a clump of mud hit my chest. He sat up and wiped his hands on his pants while staring across the field.
Curious what had caught his attention, I eased up on my elbows and watched the pack sprinting to the house to claim the showers.
Lakota and Melody were in the lead, but Lakota stumbled while jumping the fence.
“They’ll be a while,” he remarked. “After they use up all the hot water and towels.”
Shower sex was in the forecast. Their wolves all but demanded it after the chase, so Krys and I always wound up showering last. Whoever claimed the heat house first usually stayed in there the rest of the day.
Must be nice.
I sat up and wiped the mud off my legs. “How’s your face? From the other night, I mean.”
He rubbed his cheek as if there might be phantom pain from the memory.
“I didn’t see it coming, and I always see it coming.
” After a minute of staring vacantly, he wiped his goatee.
“That dickhead was making fun of Archer playing pool. I don’t know if he said anything, but I sure as hell saw what he was doing behind his back.
You know how they get after a few drinks, but Archer’s not self-conscious like he used to be.
Cleo saw him and”—he shook his head—“flipped out.”
I already knew the story but let him tell it anyway.
Krys smeared the mud on his arm when he tried wiping it off. “That kid has fight in her, but maybe Tak’s right about not teaching violence. She’s a good girl.”
It looked like he wanted to say something else. “What?”
“Nothing.” He lowered his gaze.
Catcher barked in the distance. There was no point in hurrying back. I leaned on my hands, and the house disappeared behind a curtain of torrential rain.
Krys burst out laughing. “I guess we won’t need a shower.”
“What’s Cleo up to?”
“Painting her room. Mercy took a few cans up there.” Krys got real quiet. “Every kid deserves a family.”
That’s an odd thing to say out of the blue. “She has us.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s bothering you?”
He wiped his face, raindrops clinging to his lashes. “You can’t say anything.” Krys glared at me across his shoulder, and a crease formed between his eyes. “I mean it.”
While I loved hinting at secrets, I knew which ones needed absolute guarding. “You have my word.”
“Montana said they might’ve located her family. They don’t have confirmation, so maybe it’s nothing.”
I wiped my face. “She’s our packmate.”
“I know. But she was stolen from her parents.”
It wasn’t lost on me that she and Krys shared a connection. Though he often remarked how someone should step in as her parent, Cleo didn’t want that, and no one forced it on her. Krys obviously loved the girl, but an unpredictable wolf like his could never be anyone’s watchdog.
His pain was etched on his hardened expression.
“She loves you,” I told him. “Even if she leaves, we’ll still be her second family. Someday she might come back here to visit. Being with her family will heal the anger she’s carrying around like a time bomb.”
That made me wonder about Krys’s pent-up anger.
He wasn’t a hothead, but he loved fighting.
Some men needed their asses kicked, and Krys was more than happy to oblige.
But where did all that rage originate from?
I’d heard him curse his father’s name on the rare occasion Archer brought him up, but Krys didn’t share details about his past.
“Someone should tell her,” I finally said.
“She already knows they’ve been looking.”
“Yes, but if there’s a chance you’ve found her family, don’t you think she needs time to process it before she’s spirited away? Even if it’s a dead end, at least she wasn’t left in the dark. Talk to her.”
“And say what?”
“The truth. Maybe just listen to her. I would’ve given my left kidney for someone to confide in as a kid, but all I had was an overworked mother.”
Krys wiped the rain from his eyes. “Why did your dad leave?”
“He was never in the picture to begin with.” The Arrowhead pack was a fresh start for all of us, so I’d never gone into detail about my past. “All that stuff that happens in childhood haunts us for years, so we need to make Cleo’s transition easy in case she does go.
Otherwise, she might end up like that crazy lady we pass on the way to the general store. ”
Krys snorted. “Shotgun Sally? She almost hit the tires on our truck last time. That woman is unhinged. I don’t know what the hell her problem is.”
I stood and offered my hand to help him up. “I do.”
He took my hand and stood. “Well?”
My secret would incriminate me, but I couldn’t help myself. “Lakota and I headed to the store one morning to pick up groceries, and while we were there, we had a little drinkypoo on the patio. Maybe a little too much.”
He turned a sharp eye at me as we walked. “I’m guessing Tak didn’t hear about his beta wolf drinking and driving.”
“He wasn’t the one driving. It was spiked, and he was laid out in the back of the truck like a deer in hunting season.
He can’t hold his sensory magic, but I can.
Besides, nobody’s ever on that back road early on a Tuesday.
Everything was fine.” I shook my wet hair.
“Until a wasp flew through the open window and nose-dived at my face.”
Krys chuckled.
“So I’m waving my arms to get it out of the truck. When it stung my neck, I lost control. The truck plowed over Sally’s mailbox and the little garden around it. Her gnome collection became an unfortunate pile of rubble.”
Krys opened the gate for me. “Let me guess, she shot at you?”
“No. I ran out of the truck to get the wasp off me. She walked out of her house in that pink bathrobe, coffee cup in hand. I swear on my grandfather’s grave that the second she laid eyes on that broken mailbox, one of her giant rollers fell out.
The mailbox caught under the tire, the garden decimated, the gnomes in a million pieces—it was a massacre.
When she threw her cup and threatened me, I panicked and fled the scene. Guess she never got over it.”
“Lakota didn’t wake up?”
“Nope.”
Krys pushed a bird feeder hanging from a branch as we passed it. “So he has zero idea why that woman is always firing rounds at his truck tires?”
“None. And let’s keep it that way.”
“That’ll come back to bite you if she winds up shooting one of us.”
“Sally’s bitter, but she’s not crazy. I’ve seen that woman shoot a tick off a bear’s ass. She could hit the tires if she wanted.”
Catcher had taken shelter beneath the porch on a raised platform we built for rainy days so he wouldn’t have to lie in the water.
Krys pointed at the porch. “Grab one of those snacks for him.”
Even though Catcher hunted and occasionally ate from the table, he enjoyed Tak’s homemade jerky, so Tak kept some in a resealable bag in a deck box where we stored a bunch of stuff.
There were only two left in the bag, so I fished them out and leaned over the rail. “I’ve got his snackies!”
Krys reappeared, grabbed the meat, and ducked beneath the porch again.
I climbed onto the railing and walked back and forth while it continued raining. The thought of staying cooped up in the house while everyone had sex was depressing. “What do you think about going to the movies?”
“What?”
I spun on my heel and paced the other way. “Do you feel like going to—”
My sneaker slipped across the wet wood, and I flew off the railing. The wind was knocked out of me when I landed in Krys’s arms.
“Gotcha.”
He arched an eyebrow mysteriously, and my heart thumped faster.
“You need to watch where you’re going,” he said. “One of these days, you won’t have someone to catch you.”
Although this moment called for a joke to make it less weird, words escaped me as the rain continued falling on us.
Krys’s eyes skated down to my mouth before he set me on my feet. “I’ll take a rain check on the movies. I need to have a talk with Cleo.”