WESLEY
“Haven?”
I took a small, hesitant step towards her. I wanted to touch her, to put my hands on her and check if she was real. But I stopped in my tracks when she crossed her arms and tugged her leather jacket tighter around her body. As if it was a shield.
Why would she react like that? Like she needed to protect herself. How could she think I would hurt her? Had someone else hurt her? My lycan did not like that idea.
I pushed those thoughts away as she shook her head again, her loose curls swaying with the motion. Her face scrunched up in confusion, and she looked up at me.
“I’m sorry, I-this is—“
“It’s me. Wesley,” I said, taking another small step forward. “We used to
—“
“Yeah. No. I mean-I know who you are, I just-how?” she stammered. “How is this possible? How are you here?” she asked, gesturing with one hand.
“I could ask you the same question,” I replied with a laugh.
She tilted her head to the side, and the movement was so wolflike I had to stop and inhale to double-check her scent. Human. Definitely a human scent, with notes of jasmine and something… something fruity…
“I’m here with my roommate,” she said, and I opened my eyes. I hadn’t even realized I’d closed them.
“Your roommate?” I repeated.
“Um, yeah,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “It’s her birthday.”
A lightbulb went off in my mind. I had forgotten Maya had asked permission for her human roommate to come onto the grounds for her party today. Hell, I had forgotten she was living off packlands until I saw that request come across my desk.
“Oh, shit, you’re Maya’s roommate?!” I exclaimed. “How do you know Maya?” Haven asked.
I just gave her an incredulous laugh. She had to be joking. After all, she was in my hometown. She had to remember this was where I lived. She’d written the address down so many times that year when we wrote to each other.
“This is Crescent Lake,” I stated.
She gaped at me and then looked around at everything—the houses, the trees, the mountains, and then finally, the lake.
“Oh my gosh,” she breathed. “I didn’t even realize. I—“
“You didn’t know?” I chuckled, using her slight distraction to step closer to her.
“No. I didn’t ever ask Maya the name of her hometown,” she admitted, blushing.
“Or check a map?” I teased, crossing my arms over my chest.
It didn’t escape my notice that her eyes flickered over to my arms, where my biceps bulged against the tight hem of my short sleeves. I held in my chuckle and my smirk, and held back my lycan, who was paying very close attention to her every move and every expression.
She rolled her eyes at my teasing. “I haven’t had a chance to do much exploring or anything. I just moved here a few months ago when I was offered a position in this new—“
“Ballet company,” I said in unison with her, remembering that last piece of information about Maya—that she made costumes for the new ballet company in the city down the mountain.
“Yeah,” she breathed, blinking at me and swallowing. “You remembered?” she whispered.
“Of course I remembered,” I murmured, my arms dropping from my chest.
I lifted my hand up to touch her face, but then thought better of it and ran it through my hair.
“I still can’t believe this is real,” she said with a soft laugh, shaking her head again, her hair falling out from where she’d tucked it back. “I mean, of all the places for me to end up, of all the ballet companies in the entire world for me to choose from, what are the odds that the one I get a job with is less than an hour from where you live?”
“What are the odds, indeed?” I mused, my eyes lingering on her face as I tried to decipher the look she gave me. “Listen, I—“
“Wesley! You are wasting precious, prime moonlight time!” Reid called out, his footsteps moving closer to us. “Sorry, lovely lady,” he said with a quick look at Haven. “I need to steal this beast of a man away to…”
He did a double take as his words trailed off, then he pointed at her. “OH MY FUCKING GODDESS, IT’S YOU!” he shouted.
Haven just stared at him, her face blank. I cringed and tried to mindlink Reid to shut the fuck up, but he was too oblivious.
“IT’S YOU! YOU’RE REALLY HERE! HERE, IN CRESCENT—“
Sebastian cut Reid’s words off by smacking his hand over his mouth, pulling him away as he mouthed “Sorry!” to Haven and me. They both moved over to where Nolan stood, and as he uncovered Reid’s mouth, we heard him say, “Nolan! Did you see who’s here?!”
Nolan nodded and smiled awkwardly, lifting his hand to wave at Haven. “Did he just say goddess?” Haven asked.
Of course. Of course, that’s what she noticed.
“Just ignore Reid. He’s wild. I think he had too many cookies,” I said, jerking my thumb over my shoulder at the party. “I always tell him to limit the desserts, but he never listens. I blame the sprinkles, to be honest. The cookies are bad enough, but when you add the sprinkles, that’s just way too much sugar for him.”
Oh, my goddess, I was rambling to her. Again. Only, instead of rambling in a letter on a piece of paper, I was doing it out loud in front of her. She continued staring at me, and I tried to smile, even though I was dying of embarrassment on the inside.
I wasn’t that guy. I wasn’t the awkward rambling fumbling around girls guy. I was the confident, easy-going, smooth guy. For fuck’s sake, I was an
alpha. Why did I turn into a blundering dumbass in front of her? Her, of all people.
“Anyway,” I said, giving a small laugh, trying to push through the hopefully not-that-awkward moment.
Her lips twitched with a slight laugh, and I breathed an inner sigh of relief. Laughter was at least better than her judging me in silence. I glanced behind me towards my friends and sent them all a mindlink.
“You guys go ahead. I’ll catch up in a bit.”
“Take your time, Wes,“ Sebastian replied, laughing.
“Seriously, I won’t be long,” I told him.
He just shook his head and ushered the other two away towards the forest. “Don’t let me keep you or ruin your night,” Haven said, and I turned to find her eyes following my gaze towards the trees where the guys just
disappeared.
“You’re not ruining anything,” I reassured her, shaking my head with a smile. “Trust me, I’m right where I want to be.”
She sucked in a breath, and her blue eyes met mine, and I got lost in their depths. I drowned in the sea of her pinning gaze, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to remember how to swim and resurface for air.
But she broke our connection, and I blew out a disappointed sigh as she looked over her shoulder at the party.
“I should get back to Maya,” she said with reluctance, her words saying one thing, but the tone of her voice and her hesitant movements saying another. “I’ll… see you later?”
“Yeah,” I said.
She nodded and turned, tucking her hair behind her ear again and dropping her arms to her sides. Before I could consider what I was doing, I
reached out and grabbed her hand.
“Wait!” I said, and she turned and looked down at our joined hands and then up at me.
My eyes stayed locked on where we connected, at where I touched her for the first time ever, and all thoughts and plans went out the window. Her skin was soft, smooth, and cool against my rough callouses, and her hand fit perfectly within mine.
My lycan purred—fucking purred, like a content kitten curled up on a warm bed after drinking a bowl of milk—and it was my turn to shake my head and clear my thoughts, just as I’d seen her do earlier in our conversation.
“Have coffee with me?” I managed to say. “Tomorrow? In the morning?”
I hoped she would agree to meet me in the morning. I could show her around town and talk with her. I wanted to know what she’d been up to over the years, wanted to make sure she’d been happy, safe, and cared for, since I’d never heard from her after everything that happened.
“I have class…” she said, but she chewed on her lip and looked at me for a long moment. “But it’s optional so… Yeah, okay.”
I internally fist-pumped the air, then pulled out my phone and handed it to her. “Just give me your number and I’ll text you the details.”
She nodded, her lips pulling into her mouth as she put her digits into my phone. Then she handed it back, and I, maybe on purpose, brushed my fingers over hers as I took the device back from her.
I shoved it back into my pocket, and we stood there, looking at each other. I couldn’t believe she was here. She was fucking here. In California. On my pack lands.
I could feel a ridiculous smile threatening to form on my lips, so I finally said, “See you tomorrow!”
“Bye, Wesley,” she said softly before turning and heading up the bank to the party.
I watched her as she walked away, my eyes lingering on her long, pale legs extending from her dark wash denim shorts and noticing how the sleek, toned muscles stretched with her every step. But I quickly tore my eyes away from her, not wanting her to catch me ogling her body. Although I wouldn’t deny how attractive I found her, how beautiful she was.
After she was gone, I didn’t even bother finding the guys to go on a moonlit run with them. I had too much running through my mind, too much to plan for my “date” in the morning.
 |
MY KNEE BOUNCED UNDER the small cafe table as I checked the time on my phone again. I tried to keep my frustration in check, because I didn’t want to break yet another mug at the coffee shop our pack owned, Brewed Awakenings. We’d done enough of that throughout puberty when we were still learning how to control our hormones and our beasts.
But it was getting more difficult by the second to keep a hold on my temper, and my lycan’s huffing and puffing in my mind wasn’t helping the matter. At all.
I opened my messages again and scanned through them, making sure they’d actually been delivered to her phone. She never replied other than a thumbs-up to the time and address I’d sent her. But I’d messaged her
several times since then, most of them after it had been fifteen minutes past when she was supposed to meet me.
An hour had passed since then, and I realized she wasn’t just running late.
No, for the first time in my life, I had been stood up.
I swallowed my pride and cleared my mug away, handing it to the teenaged she-wolf behind the counter. She smiled and thanked me, and then I made my way out the door.
I paused when I reached the street, fiddling with my keys as I thought about what I should do next. I didn’t imagine her obvious happiness at seeing me. Or did I? Had I inserted my own excitement at seeing her into the entire encounter, projecting my emotions onto her and just seeing what I wanted to see?
Fuck. That must have been it. My optimism had colored the entire interaction, my happiness creating rose-colored glasses.
No. No way. She had smiled. We had laughed. There had been a connection.
I clenched my jaw and stormed down the road to my truck. The few wolves in town who walked by me bowed their heads or moved to the other side of the road to get away from me and my aura.
I grabbed the box in the passenger seat, slammed the door, and continued on my way, determined to sort all of this out and spend my day the way I’d planned.
