Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
“He was sleek, dangerous, powerful. A graceful, deadly predator with wide shoulders that tapered down to slim hips, powerful thighs, and thick calves roped with muscle. The only soft thing about him was his swathe of dark hair that fell in thick waves to tease his shoulders.”
— SUNNY, MONA LISA AWAKENING
“ S pace.” I was shocked at the steadiness with which I got the word out. “Space.”
No.
WHAT. THE. HELL.
Do not push our mate away.
My wolf unleashed a blistering series of curse words.
Sonnet sat there, silent. Hurting.
The one person who’d looked at me and seen more than a man and his wolf.
Christ, I’d been a fool.
And you still are.
No. I wasn’t. It didn’t matter how much I’d worked to change, the time I’d devoted to becoming a better person who did better things, who was not a garbage animal who took and took but never gave back. I couldn’t erase my past, but I would not allow it to hurt this woman.
“You need space,” she said.
You’re hurting her NOW , my wolf snarled.
She did sound empty and anxious, tearful. But it was a much smaller hurt in comparison to what would happen if the world tarred her with my brush, if they looked at her and saw the beast who’d selfishly run with the Iron Wolves, stealing and lying, hurting and taking. She was better than that. She deserved better than that.
We pulled into the gravel driveway in front of Wyatt’s place, and I slowed to a stop. My mind raced, trying to find a way out. An alternative to giving her up. Was there a way to hide what I’d been?
Ranger was good with electronics. Maybe he could figure out a way to wipe me and my arrest records from the law enforcement databases.
But even if he erased the legal records of what I’d been accused of doing, that still left all the people here in Moonlight Valley who knew exactly what Darrell Boone’s firstborn son had done. They would tell stories, and they wouldn’t have to lie or exaggerate. The entire, mortifying, scandalous truth would come out.
And the biggest truth of all was that I had done those things. I wasn’t some innocent victim, and the stories wouldn’t be exaggerated.
I was guilty as charged, and I deserved my punishment.
And, of course, there was my father. I still didn’t understand how he’d managed to send that picture of me and Sonnet, but if he could shake his jailers and his well-deserved punishment long enough, he’d do his level best to exploit our relationship. At the very least, he’d want money.
You’re even better than your old man at the dating game. She’s got money and great tits. She can give your old man a fresh start. Think of the stories I can tell—you think those press people might be interested?
My chickens were coming home to roost.
He was a threat.
We’ll protect her any way we can. My wolf sounded sad. He knew my plan was the safest one for Sonnet.
I would not be Darrell Boone’s son, not his mini-me, and sure as hell not the chip off his old block. I would be a man who took care of his mate, saw to her needs and well-being. I would always put her first. I would not be an embarrassment or a dirty secret. Not blot her reputation. Not make her job harder. I’d done these things to my family, and I’d learned my lesson. I could never live with myself if I hurt her future.
I could not.
I would not.
“How much space?” she asked huskily. Her hands were balled up in her lap.
I shook my head. Instead of answering, I got out and walked around to open her door. I held my hand up, palm out. Please take it. Let me help you one last time.
She sat in my truck, glaring at me. Also, she was trying not to cry. Her solution for not tearing up seemed to mean biting her lower lip, the sharp point of her incisors worrying the tender flesh. It felt like she’d stabbed those points into me. My heart hurt, but I deserved it.
I had hurt her.
I TOLD you that. Let me out. I’ll do the talking.
I couldn’t. I just—couldn’t.
“Talk to me,” she ordered. “Please. You’re overreacting. We don’t have to make decisions right now.”
Her voice cracked as she jumped down onto the gravel, slamming the door shut behind her. She grabbed my shoulders with her hands because she was not a quitter. She was trying and trying, while I?—
“Maverick! We could date in secret for a while, just until?—”
“Absolutely not,” I growled.
I wanted to mark her. Make her mine. Be everything or nothing to her because otherwise it was too painful.
I was no longer a liar. I hated lying. I hated pretense and deception. I owned my shit—I didn’t cover it up like a goddamned cat.
Sonnet flinched, her hands dropping away from my shoulders.
It wasn’t so much the lying, as it was no one knowing that she was mine. She was famous and beautiful, smart, funny, and so talented. Of course, people wanted to know her or think that they did. Of course, they wanted to be around her as much as she would permit.
If being with Sonnet meant thousands, possibly millions, of people wanted a piece of her, I would deal with it. Alright. That was just how it was.
Just as long as the world knew she was mine.
And that there were pieces of her, private pieces, that I wouldn’t have to share. That she wouldn’t want to share because they were ours. My lizard brain was working overtime, and my inner caveman was bellowing. She would have given me well-deserved shit for my possessiveness, but I wasn’t perfect. This was just further proof of that.
“I don’t care what other people think.” Her voice was small. I hated that she was making herself smaller, diminishing herself because of me. I was a liability, that was for sure.
“You should,” I said. “You’ve worked hard to get where you are. Don’t throw it away because of a few feelings for a Tennessee redneck werewolf.”
I walked back to the driver’s side. It felt like I was wading through molasses, but doing the right thing could be hard.
“Are you coming back?” she called after me. “Is this really it?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly because I didn’t want to walk away, but I refused to hurt her, and that left me with no way forward and an unpleasant past that was no one’s fault but my own.
“You cleaned the bathroom.”
I didn’t look over my shoulder. I recognized Knox’s voice. He was right. I’d scrubbed the toilet and shower, vacuumed the bath mat, and shined the faucet with Momma’s baking soda, lavender, and vinegar paste. As it was going to take more than a clean bathroom to make me feel like I was in control of my life and my decisions, I’d moved on after that to the living room. And now the kitchen. After I finished up here, I aimed to clean out the garage.
When I didn’t answer he said, “We have a chores schedule, Mav.”
I added more hot water and soap to the sink. There was an art to handwashing crystal, and ours hadn’t been washed in donkey’s years.
“Mav?”
“Fuck off, Knox.”
Last night, after dropping off Sonnet, I’d shifted into my wolf and run out to Lucky Jansen’s place, the club headquarters for the Iron Wolves.
I’d wanted a fight.
I’d wanted to go tooth and claw at someone who deserved it and have someone go tooth and claw after me in return.
Brawling, getting drunk, causing mayhem wouldn’t have felt good, but at least I would have been feeling something.
I waited for my wolf to chime in, but he’d been silent for hours.
He was in a snit about Sonnet and giving me the cold shoulder.
To quote someone near and dear to your heart: fuck off.
I’d run around Lucky’s place, rubbed up against a few trees to leave my mark, and then left. I couldn’t go pick the fight I wanted. I might have lost Sonnet, but I still had my brothers and sister. They also deserved better from me. I couldn’t go to town on the Iron Wolves.
But I could clean the house.
Knox didn’t budge from the kitchen door. “When did you build a toolshed?”
I didn’t respond.
“Or are the outbuildings spontaneously reproducing like one of those fucking snakes you study?”
“Get. Lost.” I rinsed a vintage wineglass in the suds.
For the record, snakes didn’t spontaneously reproduce. Some of them mated, some self-fertilized, and then either laid a clutch of eggs or gave birth to live young.
Knox sighed. He stood there, judging me silently, while I took satisfaction in cleaning up Momma’s favorite crystal. The glass was starting to look cloudy, so perhaps it was time for a vinegar bath.
Then a second voice spoke. “Maverick, did you clean the bathroom?”
Ranger.
I considered plunging my head into the sink of soapy water.
Ranger continued, “It wasn’t your turn. It was Atticus’s. How are we going to function as a unit if you go around violating the chore chart? It’s like asking a raccoon to organize your garbage. It makes no sense.”
“I asked him the same thing,” Knox snarled. As I was ignoring him, he must have been addressing his complaint to Ranger. “And he built a shed in the backyard.”
“I can hear you, you lunkhead.” I set a glass on the microfiber cloth I’d laid out and glared over my shoulder, finding my brothers frowning at me. “Did you hear what I said. I’m happy to repeat?—”
“Fuck off and get lost. Yes. That message came through loud and clear.” Knox’s tone was flat and irritated, but he didn’t leave the kitchen.
Ranger raised an eyebrow. “I take it your relationship with Ms. Ruiz took a less than pleasant turn?”
And how? my wolf growled. You are a QUITTER.
I ground my teeth. It had been better when I’d been getting the wolfish cold shoulder. On the other hand, after I finished washing our crystalware, I would need to find something else to do. I could scratch that itch by wrestling with Ranger inside the house. He was an excellent grappler and cleaning up the mess afterward would keep me busy for the rest of the day.
As though reading my mind, Ranger stiffened. “You will not. I haven’t drunk my apple cider vinegar yet, and that comes before twenty minutes of moderate physical exertion to get my blood circulating.”
“Then go on and get.”
Ranger grunted, looking unhappy. “If you don’t tell me what happened, I’ll drop by Ms. Ruiz’s trailer and?—”
“You will not,” I barked. I set the glass down carefully and turned around.
“Then tell us what happened.” Ranger held up his hands.
“What did you do to her?” Knox glared at me.
“Not a thing.” I tossed the washrag onto the countertop so I wouldn’t slap it against Knox’s head.
Without thinking, I asked, “What’d you do to Sanye?” I wiped my hands on the edge of my T-shirt. “You obviously did something to scare her out of town and make her hate you so much.”
Knox paled, and I almost regretted asking him the question.
Ranger stepped between us. “This ain’t about Knox, this is about you using a year’s worth of bleach for superfluous cleaning. So, you tell me, what’s got you cleaning up a storm? What happened with you and Sonnet?”
Exhaustion hit me, leaving my body aching and tired. My chest hurt. “We’re done.”
We can’t be.
But we had to be. I’d been repeating the words to myself like a refrain in a song because my past meant we had no future. And yet I didn’t want to let her go.
Should we date secretly? Considering that unpalatable option had set me off on my bathroom-cleaning orgy. Like a fool, I wanted everything. I thought she’d seen somebody redeemable, somebody worth caring about.
I thought she saw somebody worth standing up for in public.
Now I was stress cleaning.
Ranger propped his hands on his hips. “Why would you be over? Did something happen while you were picking pumpkins?”
“No. Her sister called while we were driving back. Sonnet’s supposed to attend a premiere in London this week for Smoky Spirits and she needs a date.”
Ranger nodded. “And? What’s the problem?”
My gaze flickered to Knox. He impersonated an iceberg, his arms crossed, his mouth grim. “I can’t be her date.”
Ranger tsked impatiently. “Why not? You have a passport. And a suitcase. Are you persona non grata in London? Did your wolf lift a leg and pee in the Beefeaters’ Cheerios?”
“Because if I go, everyone will know about us. Because that means reporters digging into my past. I’m an ex-con from backwoods Appalachia. I have a GED, an arrest record, and a bad name.”
“You are not an ex-con. You were never convicted.”
“Tomato, tomatoh. I stole those cars, even if they could never prove it. Plus, there’s the whole wolf thing. I can’t have photographers following me around, poking their noses in our family business. What happens if one of them catches us shifting?”
“So, she dumped you.” Ranger’s eyes flashed amber.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m dumping her. I have to do it.”
“You?” Knox asked abruptly. A flash of surprise disrupted his irritatingly calm stoicism. “Why would you do a dang fool thing like that?”
“Because I’m not going to be the one who hurts her,” I gritted out. “Are you telling me that I should wreck her life, Knox Jackson Boone? I’m a career torpedo. A blot on her public image. You can’t say you lo?—”
Love , my wolf prompted. Yeah, let’s talk about love.
You can’t say you love someone and then do something like that to her.
I loved Sonnet Ruiz.
It had happened so easily, so naturally, that I hadn’t stopped to think about it. I’d just gone ahead and done it.
It feels good , my wolf prompted. And natural as hell. Amazing. Awesome. Well, not the blue balls part, but we’re gonna work on that RIGHT?
My wolf had no hesitation. He was already all in, even if his manners needed work.
HEY.
I loved her, and the thought of spending the rest of my days—hell, any of my days—without her had me panicking.
Ranger cut off my lunge for the mop. “Wait a minute. Hold your horses. What did she say?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What the lady wants doesn’t matter?”
Poking the bear. He has a death wish.
I grabbed the mop. “She doesn’t want my privacy to be invaded. And she wants us to be secret lovers. She suggested that we hide our relationship.”
“How do you feel about your private time, Maverick? I know that I prefer having some me time that is not invaded or documented by y’all. Are you worried about people talking about you?”
“I don’t mind them talking ,” I snarled. “They can say whatever they want about me. It’s the effect that those words will have on Sonnet that’s?—”
“Got your britches in a twist,” Ranger finished for me, nodding his head. “So, you don’t care about your privacy.”
“I do not.”
“And she claims she doesn’t care about her image.” Ranger nodded. He seemed to be having a conversation with himself. “So why not just trust each other and move on?”
It’s not that simple.
“There’s Darrell,” I pointed out. I’d shared Darrell’s letter with both of them. “He’s fixing to use her somehow. Do you think he wouldn’t?”
“No,” Knox answered. He never had been one to lie, not even in social situations where something less than bluntness might have been a kindness. “He’ll use the hell out of her. I don’t know how he shifted, but he’ll be all over this.”
Ranger waved this concern away. “Don’t you worry about him. I’ve got him under control. You will just have to trust me on this one. You have my word.”
We exchanged steely glares. How did I let it go when it was Sonnet’s life at stake? But Ranger had a point. He was sneaky and devious, mean sometimes, and Machiavellian always, but he kept his word. Plus, his being mean could only help with the likes of Darrell.
“You focus on Sonnet,” Ranger said. “And think on how you’re going to make this right.”
“I guess we could date on the down-low,” I said.
Everyone should know we’re a pair. We are proud of her.
“No,” Knox said unexpectedly, shaking his head. “You don’t want to be hiding. If you won’t do it in public, don’t do it at all. Hiding gets old and hurtful. You want her by your side for your moments, and she’ll feel the same about you.”
Knox stripped off his fancy dress shirt, hanging it neatly on the back of a kitchen chair. He took in my dirty, worked-in clothes. Then he pulled off his undershirt.
Crossing to the mop bucket, he picked it up and carried it over to the sink to start running the warm water. He handed me the vinegar spray.
“Here,” he said. “Use this.”
I glanced at the mop bucket and then at my brother. “What are you doing?”
He shrugged, but there was a flash of something in his eyes. It was buried real deep, here and then gone, but it sure looked like sympathy. “You scrub and I’ll mop. And when we finish in here, I’ll help you do the baseboards.”
Don’t cry , my wolf warned. Don’t you dare cry.
I couldn’t help but notice that he sounded choked up.
My voice was raspy and rough as I asked, “Why?”
“Because we’re family,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And God, do you need help.”