Chapter Eleven
Just like the last three days, there had been a small cluster of blue flowers bound in thin twine sitting in the cubby hold she kept her purse this morning.
She’d done a search on the internet for them to find the name. They were Bachelor’s Button flowers. Like the last three days, she added them to the vase she’d picked up from the store on her lunch break.
Stellan hadn’t tried to talk to her anymore. From what she could tell, he wasn’t talking to anyone. He came in, did his work, and left. He seemed tired any time she saw him.
She got that part. She hadn’t been sleeping very well lately. She stayed up at nights thinking about him. Not that she would ever admit that out loud.
Craig kept commenting on the flowers and asking her what her favorite ones were, so she was pretty sure they were from him. She could tell he liked her and was finding more ways to talk to her. She wasn’t interested, but he wasn’t crossing any lines, so she was being polite with the vase.
The bell over the door dinged and she looked up to greet a customer. To her shock, it was Mars and another tall guy that looked like Stellan. Dame?
“Heeey,” she drawled out warily.
“I come in peace,” Mars said immediately, holding his hands up in surrender. “Stellan knows we’re coming this time. He’s going to lunch with us.”
“Oh, okay.” She looked at the clock. “Ten minutes and he’s all yours.”
“Laramie, this is Dame,” Mars introduced them. “Dame, Laramie.”
“Good to meet you,” Dame murmured, shaking her hand.
The two giants exchanged a glance, and Dame’s attention drifted to something behind her. “Where did you get those flowers?” he asked.
Laramie had been typing out some notes on an order but twisted around to look at the Bachelor’s Button flowers. “Secret admirer maybe. Or someone who felt sorry for me from the day I met ol’ Mars here.” She scrunched up her face. “It wasn’t my favorite shining moment.”
“I heard,” Dame said low. “Those flowers aren’t from some secret admirer though. They’re from Stellan.”
Laramie frowned. “How do you know?”
“When we were growing up, he used to give them to our mom when she was angry,” Mars explained softly.
“She was always angry,” Dame said. “Stellan was always trying to fix it with little blue flowers.”
Stunned, she automatically looked over at the service window. Stellan was pulling a tire off the machine, with a faraway look in his dull eyes.
“Your mom wasn’t nice?”
Dame shook his head. “She was as close to the devil as I’ve ever seen. Mars and I gave up by age ten, but Stellan hung on. He wanted her to care.”
Oof. Her heart ached as she remembered the picture in his hallway of the aloof woman and Stellan as a boy smiling so brightly as he clung to her.
“Why are you telling me this?” she whispered.
“Because Stellan feels like shit for what happened the other day,” Mars told her.
“He’s replayed it to us a few times. He never talks about stuff like that.
He keeps reworking it in his mind. There’s regret.
He doesn’t know how to do the emotional talks to make things better though.
” He gestured to the vase. “The blue flowers are the only tool he’s got. ”
The brothers pushed off the counter and turned just as Stellan came through the service door. He cast her a quick glance and then averted his gaze and followed his brothers to the front door.
“Stellan?” she asked before he walked out.
He turned, eyes blazing gold.
“Did you give me these flowers?”
He dipped his chin once.
“They’re beautiful. Thank you.”
He scratched the back of his neck and then parted his lips like he wanted to say something. He had this helpless look in his eyes like the words in his mind didn’t make sense, or like he didn’t know how to get them out.
“I hope you have a good lunch with your brothers,” she told him, her heart in her throat.
He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple dipping low in his muscular throat. “Do you want to come?”
Laramie was shocked to her bones. “You…you want me to come to a lunch with you? And your brothers?”
“Yes.”
“Ummm…” She thought about it. “There’s one rule,” she said softly.
“I’ll be nice,” he promised quickly.
A smile confiscated her lips, and she ducked her gaze to hide the heat that was creeping into her cheeks. She turned to Murph. “I’m taking my lunch after all.”
“You’ve got an hour today,” her boss said without looking up from whatever he was inputting onto his computer.
“Really?”
“Get out of here before I change my mind.”
“Okay,” she said, excitement trilling up her spine as she grabbed her purse.
Stellan was waiting for her, holding the door open. Outside, Stellan’s brothers were climbing into the big black truck she recognized from Monday.
“Laramie is coming with us,” Stellan told them.
“Good,” Mars said without hesitation. “We’ll meet you there. You know the place, right?”
“It’s three blocks away, dick bag. I think I can find it.”
Mars and Dame headed out, and Stellan held open the door of his truck for her.
“You don’t have to do that stuff for me,” she told him. “I know we’re just friends, so it feels a little strange.”
“I’m going to open your doors and I’m going to pay for your food. I hated not giving you food the last few days. I hate that Craig gives you candy bars. You can call us whatever you want, but I’m going to hold the doors.”
There wasn’t a lot of room for arguing with him, so she accepted his hand and climbed up into his truck.
A strange relief overtook her as she buckled into the familiar seat.
She’d missed the smell of his air freshener, and the way he always had rock music playing low so they could talk over the volume.
She’d missed this truck, and she couldn’t explain it.
Maybe she’d just really missed the seat beside Stellan.
When he settled behind the wheel, she thought they would leave right away, but he didn’t turn the truck on.
He stared ahead with a slight frown etched into his handsome features.
“I don’t have all the good words,” he said.
“I wish I did, but I don’t.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of notebook paper and handed it to her.
A letter? Carefully, she unfolded it, and gasped. It was a sketch of her in the library, sketching in her mother’s journal. At the bottom, it said simply, I’m sorry.
The sketch was really good and had to have taken a lot of time with all the shading.
“You followed me there?” she asked.
“Yes. I wanted to fix it, but I’m shit at fixing anything. And you were crying, and I didn’t know what to say.”
She actually loved his honesty. He was so much easier to understand when he just told her where his chaotic head was at.
“I didn’t like what you said about me,” she said low.
“I know. I could see it on your face. You didn’t want to eat.
I still have the stupid sandwich in my fridge.
I can’t throw it away. I’ve tried. It’s yours.
Look, I know I’m fucked up. I know. For a long time I was okay just being fucked up, but you make things different.
” He inhaled deeply and eased his head back against the headrest. “I don’t like the way I feel without you around.
I feel like my worst self and I hate it. ”
“I don’t like it either,” she murmured, staring at the drawing. No man had ever apologized like this to her.
“And I don’t like when you cry over something I did to you.
And I don’t like the way your eyes were puffy when you came out of the bathroom on Monday, and I don’t like the way you avoid me, and I don’t like that you said you are busy indefinitely, which, by the way, I had to look up the word ‘indefinitely’ because what the fuck does that even mean?
But it might mean forever, and being so close to you at work without being allowed to talk to you or touch you has tortured me.
It has tortured me, Laramie. And I deserve it, I know I do.
I’m sorry. What I said was messed up, but it wasn’t true.
I wanted it to be true. I did. It’s best for you if we are just fucking.
It’s best for you if me and you are just that video and nothing more.
Clearly. If I’m not inside you, I’m pissing you off.
It’s what I do. I piss people off and I don’t realize how much of an asshole I am until afterward when I have time to think about it, and I hated the last few days.
I want to do better. I’m so fucking sorry I said all of that.
And I did it in front of people. You didn’t deserve it.
You let me touch your body, and then I hurt your heart, and it was fucked up.
I saw it on your face. I hurt you, and it was so fucked up.
” He sounded sick by the end of his rambling.
“For someone who claims to not be good at words, that was a really good apology.”
He jerked his attention over to her, his pupils constricting, making his eyes look even brighter with all that churning gold. “So, we’re okay?”
She looked down at the drawing, then back up to him. Slowly, she unfastened her seatbelt and leaned over the console, then kissed him on the cheek, and nodded as she sank back into her seat. “We’re okay.”
He blew out a long, steadying breath, and a slight smile consumed his lips. He lifted up the console, exposing the middle seat, and pulled out the seatbelt for her as she scooted right up next to him.
He buckled her in and turned on his truck, then put it into gear and pulled out of the parking spot. And by the time he turned onto the main road, he’d slid his hand over her legs and was gripping her outer thigh, holding her legs pressed against his.
With a sigh of relief, Laramie hugged his muscular arm and rubbed her thumb gently onto his taut skin as he drove them to a little restaurant called Bunker Barbecue. It was connected to a gas station, but they had a smoker going outside and it smelled like delicious brisket.
Stellan backed his truck into a parking space next to his brother’s like he’d done it a thousand times, and then threw it into park.
Before he even cut the engine, he leaned over and pressed his lips to hers.
His hand went to the side of her neck as he kissed her, and God, this was everything.
She’d missed him. She couldn’t explain it, because he was supposed to be this new entity in her life, right?
But she felt like he’d made such a huge, crater-sized impression in her life already.
“I missed the taste of you,” he murmured, trailing his kiss to her neck, and back to her lips. He didn’t push for more though. Instead, Stellan rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. “You forgive me?”
“Yes.”
“Then you can have whatever you want.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean you can have whatever you want.”
“Can I ask a question then?” she asked.
His eyes cooled as if he knew where this was headed. “Sure.”
“What are you?”
Stellan cocked his head. “What do you think I am?”
“A werewolf.”
His eyebrows shot up with his surprise. “What do you know about werewolves?”
“What I read about them in books.”
“Wait, you read books?” he asked.
A laugh escaped her at his shock. “Yes, I read books. Lots of them. I’m even part of an online book club.”
“A book club,” he murmured softly. “So, there are more people like you?”
“A lot more people. Readers can form tight-knit communities.”
“And you all read about werewolves?”
“So, are you one?” she asked, guiding him back on track.
“No. Werewolves don’t exist.”
“That sounds like something a werewolf would say,” she pointed out suspiciously.
Stellan leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, stayed an inch from her face as his eyes blazed gold with his words. “I’m a Cat.”
“What’s a Cat? You mean like a cat shifter? Can you turn into a cat? What kind of cat?”
He didn’t answer though. Instead, he got out of the truck and jogged around the front, and opened the door for her, and helped her out.
She wanted to ask one trillion more questions, but at that moment, a little red car zoomed past them and honked. Two ladies hung out the window and whistled at Mars and Dame, and Laramie laughed. She bet these were Stellan’s sisters-in-law. She couldn’t remember their names, but that was okay.
Stellan told her as he led her up to the barbecue place, “That’s Misty and Ren, the two most annoying females on the planet.”
“Are they Cats too?” she asked softly.
“Misty is just like you,” was all he said. So, okay. He meant Misty was human.
Lunch was short on account of their hour-long lunch break, but Laramie had so much fun.
Stellan didn’t let her pay and ordered what she thought was way too much food for them, but he polished off everything she couldn’t finish.
It was a relaxed place with long picnic tables with checkered red and white table cloths in an outdoor seating area with strands of outdoor lights overhead.
It was probably really pretty here at sunset.
Mars and Dame were easy jokers and loosened Stellan up, though he was naturally quieter than them.
Misty and Ren blabbed easily to Laramie in a nearly constant fashion, and she loved it.
They were funny and happy and seemed to just be living in the moment.
They explained they didn’t get to see each other except when Mars and Ren were visiting Salt Lake City.
Mars and Ren were visiting for the week for some Ledger family reunion, and that was the first time she’d learned Stellan’s last name. Stellan Ledger. What a cool name.
Ren and Misty both hugged her goodbye like they’d known her forever and invited her out for drinks with them later tonight.
She’d planned to do a memory lane adventure, but that could wait.
She looked up at Stellan to see what he thought, but he was smiling at something Mars had said, and right now, he was holding Laramie’s hand right here in front of everyone. His answer would probably be yes.
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll be there.”
It wasn’t just her who felt lighter. On the way back to work, Stellan kissed her knuckles three times absently, like he wasn’t even thinking about it while he told her this story about the night he and his brothers had to spend the night in jail when they were eighteen because they got drunk on top of some water tower and had the cops called on them.
She liked this side of him. He’d let down his guard, and his eyes weren’t glowing. They were just a light brown.
She was so curious about the Cat stuff, but she had this feeling that Stellan was wrapping his head around trusting her and being more open. She just had to be patient and not push him too hard.
He would tell her what a Cat meant when he was ready. She believed that now.
Stellan was going to be a slow-open book, but to her, those were the best kinds.