Chapter Ten
Stellan didn’t understand.
What was she doing here?
He cocked his head and watched her sketching in a thick, old, worn-out journal. Maybe she just really liked libraries, but he’d watched her. He’d followed her here. He wanted to fix whatever was wrong with her. Somehow. He didn’t know. She was hurt and it was making his insides feel split open.
Her eyes had been puffy when she’d come out of the bathroom at the end of her lunch break, and he’d been confused.
He’d wanted to talk to her about Mars. Wanted to vent to her.
Wanted her to understand a complicated layer to his life, but she’d been upset.
He was awful at fixing things for upset women.
His mom had always been upset.
Every day. He’d always tried to fix it for her too.
He leaned against the bookshelf behind him. Stellan could see her over the top of a row of books. She was curled into this defensive little ball, but as she sketched, she relaxed. When she dragged her knuckles across her cheek though, he knew she was crying.
He hated this feeling inside of him. It made him want to throw up. It made him want to Change into his tiger and rid himself of all human emotions.
Everything he touched turned to mud, and now he’d turned happy, beautiful, full-of-life Laramie muddy. It hadn’t even taken him long.
He fuckin’ hated himself.
A soft snarl rattled his throat, and he swallowed hard and crossed his arms over his chest, like that would keep his emotions inside. He’d said some cold stuff, but it wasn’t a slight to Laramie. He just didn’t want Mars to put attention onto her. He wasn’t ready.
He’d gotten territorial. It had been a long damn time since he’d reacted like that. He hated that Mars had just showed up at his shop, his safe spot. He’d hated that he’d clearly talked to Laramie before Stellan had even introduced them. How did Mars know about her? How had he found her?
Stellan clenched his teeth together hard and wished he was still alive. Wished he was human. Wished he was normal. Laramie deserved normal.
Clearly, she was going through something, and he was feeling unsteady with it all.
He’d kept her in the bedroom all weekend.
He’d kept her hormones racing and her mind numb and hadn’t asked her about…
well…her. And now she was in a random library sketching a specific window and crying silently, and he would give anything to know what she was thinking.
He wished he knew where the tears were coming from.
She unwrapped Craig’s candy bar and he couldn’t watch her eat it.
He inhaled deeply and pushed off the bookshelf, then made his way out of the library without exposing himself to Laramie.
He needed to Change again before he met up with Mars tonight. He was so damn tired of bleeding everyone who gave a damn about him.
He’d verbally bled Laramie today, and he winced as he remembered how loud he’d been, and how the guys had all poured out of the shop to see what was going on.
She’d probably been so embarrassed.
He was such a fuckin’ asshole.
She deserved so much better. He’d known it from the start, but for some reason today, for the first time in as long as he could remember, he wished he could be a better man.