“Wanna tell me what that was all about?”
She finally got her locker open but was stalling. She kept shifting a small pile of clothing. Rearranging it over and over. “You know,” she said, taking a shirt off the pile, hesitating, then refolding it and rearranging the stack again. “Carter being Carter.”
Bullshit.
“Why does he think you’re going out with him?”
No answer, but her heart beat a little faster. This whole avoidance thing was starting to piss me off. Even in the short time that we’d gotten reacquainted, I knew damn well this wasn’t like her.
“Kensey, what the fuck?”
She finally grabbed a shirt—the same one she’d put back five times now—and slammed the locker closed. “He thinks I’m going out with him.” She leveled her gaze at me. “It’s not going to happen.”
“And again, why does he think that?”
Her tough demeanor waffled, and her shoulders sagged just a little. “His father made some kind of deal with mine.”
“Bullshit,” I said, this time out loud. “That’s against the rules.”
She shook her head and sank onto the bench between us. “He’s telling the truth. I heard my father talking to his this morning before I left for school.”
Of course. That’s why she’d been off on the way here this morning.
“He can’t do that.” I didn’t know why the thought of Kensey going out with Carter pissed me off so much. Normally, I’d write it off as my animosity for the smug bastard, but this felt different. It was more than that. The way I’d reacted at seeing him stand so close to her, it was almost territorial. We didn’t get that way unless…
She shook her head again. She had the shirt twisted around her fingers and was squeezing the material so tight, her knuckles were white. “I don’t have the specifics. I mean, this is a Courting. He could force either of us to do pretty much anything to prove ourselves.”
“He’s not gonna rest until you’re tied to someone else. I hope you’re prepared in case this whole thing doesn’t work out the way you want.”
She winced and gnawed at her bottom lip. She let her head fall forward. “Not really what I want to hear right now…”
“What do you want to hear?”
“Pretend this is real. Just tell me what you would have told me if you cared.”
I wasn’t good at this comforting shit. I told it like I saw it. Sugarcoating things and offering soothing platitudes were for other guys.
But she was obviously upset, and I hated seeing her this way…
I sat down beside her and threw my arm over her shoulder, dragging her close. “No worries, Princess. I’ll rip the bastard to shreds before I ever let that date happen.”
I hated Carter. It wasn’t like I needed an excuse to feel inclined to kick his smug ass. But the words spilled out without effort.
Almost like I meant every damn syllable…
Chapter Seventeen
Kensey
“You sure you’re ready for this?” Slade parked a few doors down from Merrick’s house. The party seemed to be in full swing. We’d purposefully waited until we’d be able to make a somewhat subtle entrance.
We’d hung out several times with his friends, but this was Merrick’s home turf. This would be different.
I squared my shoulders and undid the seatbelt. “Please. I’ve got it locked down.” I’d donned one of the new outfits I’d gotten last week. A short black skirt and a tank with a red flannel thrown over top of it. On my feet were red sneakers to match. Cute in a grungy way. I’d caught Slade staring when he thought I wasn’t looking. His approval made me happier than it should have.
Merrick’s place was on the other side of town. He had a few neighbors, but in this area, no one gave a crap about the noise. Between the random shots fired and drunken screams from the park a few miles down the road, it all blended together in a symphony of urban decay. A house party was nothing to raise an eye to.
We waded through the crowd on the lawn and crept between the couples camping out on the steps. The thumping bass drifted out, and the moment my foot crossed the threshold, someone thrust a beer into Slade’s hand.
He took a long pull and glanced over to check on me. I’d made it clear I hadn’t wanted to come but understood we needed to at least make an appearance. Pulling a no-show wasn’t an option. It would have implied weakness and fear. Someone like Merrick would jump on that.
“You showed.” Merrick strode over and clamped a hand on Slade’s shoulder. With a firm squeeze and a jostle, he narrowed his eyes at me. “And you brought your b—”
“Watch it, Merrick,” Slade warned. His fingers tightened around mine, and I was grateful. It kept me from doing something stupid—like introducing my fist to the guy’s face.
“Bae,” he finished with a saccharine smile. He disappeared for a moment, then reappeared with a red plastic cup. Holding it out, he said, “You can’t be at one of my parties without a drink in your hand.”
I hesitated before taking the cup and offering a small nod as he bounded off in the other direction. It was only eleven thirty and he was smashed already. It was going to be a long night.
…
I’d lost count of how many drinks I’d had. At first, it’d been nerves. I wasn’t comfortable being here. Whenever I looked up, no matter where I was or what I was doing, there was Merrick or Lupe giving me the wolf version of stink eye.
I’d moved on to the Jell-O shots. The reasoning was, something that colorful and jiggly couldn’t be a bad thing. Those pretty little glasses filled to the brim with a rainbow assortment of fun colors had to be safer than all the beer I’d downed. They were a happy combination of fruity and soft and went down smooth like candy.
Slade had gone off to talk to Merrick. Something super-secret they obviously couldn’t share with the class. That was about the time Lupe found me.
“You’re a brave little puppy,” she said, settling across from me. “Stomping into enemy territory without the big dogs to protect you.”
I set down my latest plastic shot glass—blueberry explosion, now empty—and tossed my best unconcerned gaze her way. “I’ve got a big dog with me. The biggest, actually.” I grinned and hitched my thumb over my shoulder in a random direction. I mean, what did it matter? She’d get the gist. “I’m here with Slade.”
She made a show of looking right, then left, craning her neck. “Looks to me like you’ve been ditched. Have you checked upstairs? That’s where the bedrooms are…”
I shook my head. “Why does it twist you up so much? Knowing we’re together?” I narrowed my eyes. Partially to be intimidating—I’d seen my father do it a thousand times—and partially because every few seconds there was more than one of her standing in front of me. “It’s not like you love him.”
Lupe snorted then gave her hair an expert flip. Please. I could totally pull that off…if I didn’t think a move that severe would tip me over on my ass. “Love him? Of course not. Love is bullshit. It’s nothing more than chemicals and pheromones. But I’m a better match for him.”
“So what? You think if I wasn’t in the picture Gavin would let you have him? The whole point of pimping us out is to merge with other packs. You don’t have alpha blood, chickie. You’re nothing more than a placeholder screw until the real deal—AKA me—came along.”
I was pretty damn pleased with my logic—and the insult—but for some reason, Lupe didn’t seem so thrilled. She jumped up and in a smooth move much too fast for my more than slightly inebriated brain to follow flipped the table and grabbed me by the throat. “I’m no one’s placeholder, bitch.” Her lips curled into a savage grin. “I may not be royalty, but you… You’re just a broodmare. Nothing more than the blood in your veins and the ability to pop out puppies.”
Maybe it was because a part of me—albeit a tiny part buried deep, deep inside—had actual feelings for Slade, and Lupe was kind of the competition. Or maybe it was because she’d hit a nerve. My
family loved me, but they were all about honor and doing your duty. Servicing your pack before yourself. Regardless of the actual reason, something inside me snapped.
A tickle skittered along my skin and a rush of warmth raced up my spine. The music and ambient chatter died away, replaced by a low growling sound. For a second I thought it was Lupe, but when her eyes widened and her mouth fell open, I realized it wasn’t her.
It was me.
Her surprise didn’t last, though. A slow smile spread across her lips and her mouth opened, but before she could get the words out, a large figure stepped in between us. “What the hell is going on?”
“Better leash your bitch,” Lupe said, venom dripping from every word. “She’s going to get hurt.”
I laughed and sidestepped Slade, pinning her with a deliberate grin. Then, without a word, I whirled on Slade and rose onto my toes, planting the mother of all kisses right smack on those tempting lips.
At first, he was surprised—there was a lot of that going around tonight—but he went with it. I figured, fair was fair. He’d laid one on me to get my father’s goat and to convince Merrick. This was the least I could do to repay the favor.
I locked my arms around his neck, pulling him down and deepening the kiss. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was something else, but everything in the room grew sharper. More focused. There were twenty hearts beating—I could tell which one was mine, which was Slade’s—and which was Lupe’s. The brush of my fingers against the bare skin of Slade’s neck was like a shock to my system. It was electrifying and invigorating, and I wanted nothing more in that moment than to chase it to the end of the earth and back. Every inch our bodies touched was on fire.
But the feel of our lips as they moved…that was the kicker. That was something that couldn’t be faked. You could kiss the shit out of someone, but to bring them to their knees, to make them feel like you were the only air in an oxygen starved world? That was more. It had to be.
I managed to dislodge my lips from his and turned to Lupe. I wanted to say something witty. To throw the whole thing in her face with style and grace. There were just two problems. The first was that the number of assorted, amazingly colorful, drinks I’d consumed during the early part of the evening were beginning to catch up to me. Coherent sentences were going to be a bit of an issue from here on.
Secondly, Lupe seemed to be getting father and farther away. One minute I was standing a few feet in front of her, the next she began to shrink. “Hey! Wait a sec. Get back here, bi—”
Someone’s hand grazed my ass. My ass that was no longer where it should have been. “I leave you alone for five seconds…”
The world tipped sideways just a bit, and Slade set me down on the ground in front of him. “You left me alone for way longer than that,” I fired back. “It was, like, years. Decades, maybe.”
“Years,” he repeated. I was pretty sure he was laughing, too. It was the best sound I’d ever heard. Deep rich with a kind of dark rumble. “Decades?”
I couldn’t think of anything that would pass for a proper comeback, so I simply nodded my head. That was a mistake. Everything swam and my world tipped hard to the right.
“Whoa.” Slade caught me before I crashed to the ground. “Just how much did you drink in there? It’s pretty hard to get a wolf tipsy!”
“I had a few,” I said. “Then I had a few more. After that, then only a couple.”
He rested his hand against the small of my back and gently guided me over to a wooden bench at the edge of Merrick’s yard. “Since when do you play in the drink-till-you-drop Olympics?”
I shrugged. The motion almost made me topple off the bench. Luckily, Slade was fast. He caught me as I wobbled, wrapping an arm around my waist to keep me in place. Or maybe it was to keep up the charade. Surely someone was watching?
“Why were you so mean to me?” The words slipped out before I could clamp my mouth closed.
“I’m mean to everyone,” he replied with a shrug. At least I thought he shrugged. It could have been me. Or the planet. Because in that moment? Everything was kind of moving. “Which time specifically were you referring to?”
“In the treehouse. You were a real asshole. I wanna know why.”
“I wasn’t being an asshole. I was trying to stop you from doing something you’d regret later. If I’d let you kiss me—”
“I did kiss you, remember? Then you were horrible to me.”
His head whipped around so fast, it actually made me dizzy. Then again, sneezing would probably make me dizzy right about now. And coughing. And breathing… “You’re talking about—”
“Yeah.” The moment. The one that tore us apart when we were younger.
He was quiet for a minute. “What was I supposed to do? You were the one person in my life who saw me. The one person I would have given a limb for. The one I swore I’d never hurt.”
“Yet you did.”
His posture stiffened. “Pretty sure I don’t have to justify myself to you, Princess.”
And there it was. Every time I thought maybe I was wrong, that maybe—just maybe—Slade McAlister wasn’t the biggest dick walking around on two legs, he went and pulled back the curtain.
I stood, wobbling a little. Slade went to steady me, but I jerked away, nearly sending myself to the ground. I managed to stay upright and fumble away from the bench several steps. Distance. That’s what I needed. And maybe another one of those pretty red Jell-O shots. “Don’t. I’m sorry I asked. You’re right. You don’t owe me shit.”
I turned to leave—not that I had any clue where I was going. My head was fuzzy, and I doubted I could have found my way out of a clear plastic bag, much less all the way home at that point. I got two steps, maybe three, before Slade was in front of me. I had no idea where he’d come from. Wolves didn’t teleport…unless he was a magic wolf?
Yeah. I’m never drinking again…
“You’re bitching about the fact that I was mean to you when we were thirteen? After all this time, you’re still pissed at me because I said something that made you feel bad? Seriously?”
“Yes!”
His face contorted, a weird mix of anger and amusement. He flung both hands into the air and took a step toward me but hesitated midway and changed his mind. “You’re an idiot!”
There was something about the way he said it, something about the tone that made me stop. He was pissed, yeah. Slade was always pissed about something. But there was more to it than that. There was…regret?
Still, no one called me an idiot…
That fiery Deaton temper reared its ugly head, and I took a swing at him. It didn’t go exactly as I’d planned, though. The blow sailed through the air—and missed him by a fairly wide margin. It probably would have helped if I was standing closer—and, ya know, if my head wasn’t swimming like an Olympian. The forward motion disrupted my balance and sent me sprawling forward. Luckily Slade seemed to be in control of his limbs because he caught me before I went down.
Again.
This was starting to get annoying.
“You wanna carry a grudge, Princess?” he said, setting me upright and taking a step away. “Then carry it for the right damn reason. I made you kiss me that night. I flipped my switch and gave you no choice.”
“You flipped your—” I stared at him, taking a good, long look. Drunkish as I was, I could still see it. He believed what he was saying. He really thought he’d forced me to kiss him. “And I’m the idiot?” I said after a few moments.
His entire body stiffened, and he ground his teeth. You didn’t call a guy like Slade McAlister names unless you had some type of death wish. “You must be,” he said, voice dripping with poison. “Especially if you’re trying to insinuate that kiss was voluntary.”
I snorted. It was unlady-like and probably made my tea-loving, stiletto-wearing-until-the-day-she-died granny roll over in her grave. “That’s really what you thought? That you flipped your switch?”
The only response I go
t was an intense scowl.
“I kissed you that night because I wanted to, Slade. Because I liked you. I kissed you because I thought you kind of liked me, too.”
He laughed. It was a cold, grating sound that scraped down my spine and clattered in my ears. “Of course you did. That’s what you were supposed to think. I was being selfish. I wanted you and knew there was never a chance.”
Of all the things he could have said, that wasn’t even on the radar! “You liked me?”
“Why wouldn’t I? You’re amazing. You never let them push you around, never let them change you into something you weren’t. You were kind. You didn’t look down on me like everyone else did.”
“And it never occurred to you that I might actually like you? Like, for real?”
His expression darkened. “I know who I am. I know where I come from. Someone like you isn’t going to glance twice in my direction. We were friends, but you would have never seen me as anything more. Not without a little nudge.”
Obviously, the guy didn’t own a mirror—even back then. I’d been into him for so much more than his looks, but even the other stick-up-the-ass pack daughters drooled over him in private. “So you acted like a dick because, what, you felt bad about flipping your switch?”
“No apologies, Princess. I’m still a McAlister, and we want what we want and do anything to get it. After a while though, I felt bad. I knew if we kept hanging out, I’d never stop. We needed distance, and you would have never taken the hint.”
“How long?”
“How long, what?”
“How long did you have your switch flipped on me?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. From the beginning of tenth grade, maybe?”
I snorted. “So in all that time, you never tried anything? You’re a hormonal teenage boy with the wolfy osmosis to make any girl want to jump into bed with you, and you don’t even try to kiss me?”
“If you remember, I did. I made you kiss me.”
“Sorry, I call bullshit. That was months after you say you started doing it. In all that time, you didn’t make a move before that? No way.”