by May Dawson
I jumped to my feet. The legs of the chair scraped against the cold hardwood floors.
“No, Mel,” I said. “Goddamn it. You know it’s not like that for me now—”
Mel jerked back. Her eyes narrowed with hurt as she stared at me. “You can’t see what’s right in front of you.”
Maddie stood in the doorway, her lips parted in surprise, and Penn stood behind her, close and protective. The two of them looked like they belonged together, standing so intimately close.
I flashed a quick smile at them all that didn’t feel convincing, as if nothing had happened.
Then I headed through the door out of the dining room toward the living room.
“Not again,” Penn said, when I pulled the front door open. “Ty, you can’t just run out of here. Stay and have a drink—”
“I’ll be back,” I said.
“Jesus, Mel!” Penn said to his sister. “We’ve been here what, an hour? You’ve been a bitch to Maddie and to Tyson—”
“Maybe you should stop bringing guests back here,” Mel shot back. “You don’t even live here anymore, Penn. But you come and go whenever you feel like it. You don’t—”
“Believe me, I wish I could stay away.” His voice was low and fierce.
I let the door slam shut behind me, and their voices faded. God. I loved them both so much, but they were a pair of idiots.
The compound was quiet as I headed across the lawn and through the woods to my parents’ old trailer.
As I passed a few other houses, some of them had lights on in the windows, and I caught glimpses of people moving around. Some of the kids that Penn and I grew up with were adults now who lived in the houses that had belonged to their grandparents, and they were raising their own children now.
I wondered what it was like to feel that much at home in a community, to want to just stay. I’d felt suffocated here for as long as I could remember.
My parents’ trailer was unlocked. There was nothing to steal anyway.
I threw myself on the old couch, then breathed in the faint scent of mold and instant regret.
This trailer was no more home than the alpha’s house. It wasn’t exactly full of good memories, either.
Penn, as a freckle-faced blond kid, had pushed in my bedroom window that morning, the same as he had a hundred times before. He stuck his grinning face in. “Come on, we’re going fishing.”
I’d grinned back. “My mom said we’re cleaning the place first thing this morning.”
“Then we better get out of here fast.”
I’d moved silently to get my fishing pole and tackle box out of the narrow closet, then passed them up to Penn. I climbed onto my bed to squirm out the window.
“My mom’s going to be pissed,” I said, even though that didn’t stop me. I never said no to Penn.
She’d be pissed too if she heard me saying she’d be pissed. My mother’s parenting style leaned less on the swear jar and more on the wooden spoon.
“We’ll help you clean up when we get back.” Mel had her own bright pink fishing pole over her shoulder. Her hair was in a long braid, her baseball cap pulled low over her eyes.
Penn groaned. “No promises.”
“She’ll get over it,” Mel had said.
The three of us had another long, magical day that would’ve just faded into pleasant childhood memories, if it hadn’t been for how it ended.
When we came back home at the end of the day, the house had been locked. I’d ended up climbing in through the bedroom window, afraid my mom had locked me out.
But instead, when I edged into the living room, I’d seen her feet sprawled across the floor.
“Mom?” I’d asked. I couldn’t see her face, not until I came closer.
When I screamed, and Penn couldn’t get through the front door, he’d backed up for a run, then jumped through the big window behind the couch. He’d come through the glass shattering around him like some kind of action hero, even though he was just a kid.
That window was still boarded up, and the cool night air seemed to leak through, caressing the back of my neck.
I wondered if Penn still carried any of the scars from going through the glass. No matter how much we fought or what else happened, in the end, he was always the guy who went through the glass for me.
And no matter what I told him now, I’d never really hesitated that rough night when he was shot and I drove through hell to rescue him. I’d always go back for Penn.
There was a tentative knock on the door.
“Yeah?” I got up, already feeling like I’d been stupid and dramatic when I stormed out of there.
I just didn’t know how to deal with Mel sometimes. We’d been such good friends before. I wished now that we’d never dated, because I couldn’t imagine ever getting back together.
Everything was different. But I still didn’t want to lose her. I didn’t know how to get back to friends again, though.
Even worse, as I tried to fumble my way back into friendship with Mel, I had Penn watching me. Mel might aggravate him, but she was still his sister. And now Maddie was watching me too.
Penn and Maddie were the two people in the world whose opinions mattered most to me. I didn’t want to disappoint them.
The door creaked out. Penn stood there uncertainly, a sixer of Coke cans dangling from one hand and a bottle of rum in the other. Maddie crowded behind him.
“I thought you might want to drink in the woods,” Penn said. “Like when we were kids.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Then Penn said, a little more certainly, “You know Maddie was a good girl in high school? She never once burned things for fun and destroyed her brain cells with underage drinking.”
Ah, we were making fun of Maddie to make things more comfortable. She pulled a face. She didn’t mind.
“Well, it’s never too late to try to be normal.” I got up and headed for the door, stopping to ruffle her hair.
“I don’t think you two could teach me a damn thing about normal,” she shot back.
I’d thought I was running away from them. But it was funny, just having the two of them here made me feel better.
The three of us built a bonfire back out in the woods. It burned hot enough that we pulled off our sweatshirts as we stood around it.
“You didn’t bring cups,” I told Penn.
He shrugged. “I’m more of an idea man.”
I snorted, because all our lives, he’d been the idea man, and I’d been the one who figured out how to make things work.
Penn took a long swig from the bottle of rum, then passed it to me. He took a sip of Coke. “Practically the same thing.”
“Nice try.”
The three of us drank together for a while and played truth-or-dare.
There’s really only one way for truth-or-dare to go when you’ve been drinking, in the long run. The three of us sat together in the leaves at the edge of the bonfire, warm despite the chill of the night air, and watched the sparks drift upward into the moon-brightened sky.
“Kiss someone.” Penn’s lips tilted up devilishly as he raised the bottle to his lips again.
The fire reflected golden light off Maddie’s high brow and chiseled cheekbones and those stubborn, kissable lips.
Of course, I wanted to kiss Maddie—I always wanted to kiss Maddie—but I didn’t want to make things weird. Mel’s words still burned in the back of my brain. She’d said there was something different in how Maddie looked at Penn than how she looked at me.
I didn’t want to kiss Maddie if she didn’t want to kiss me.
“Get over here, you beautiful bastard, then,” I said.
Penn ducked his head as a grin twisted across his narrow lips. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And you’re the one who didn’t specify.”
Penn couldn’t stop laughing, but he didn’t stop me as my lips grazed his cheek. Penn’s cheekbones were sharp when he laughed, and I barely managed to catch his cheek before h
is smile flashed dangerously near my lips.
“Insanity.” I pushed him gently away. I rarely heard Penn laugh like that anymore, with the easy laughter of our childhoods. It took alcohol now to make him unwind. But deep down, I had the feeling he was the same person he’d always been. Funny. Light-hearted.
And my ride-or-die best friend.
“If you two weren’t such a pair of goofballs, that would be hot,” Maddie said.
Penn shook his head. “Well, I know we’re not taking any dares from Maddie now…”
“You think I’d make you two kiss again?” she teased. “As if I don’t have all kinds of ways to make you do my bidding.”
Penn growled at her, the sound half-wolfish and half-playful. “I told you when we met… I might not be the biggest of the guys—”
“To be fair, you’re all ridiculously tall as a group,” she inserted.
“—but I’m a born alpha,” he finished. His tone was teasing, not annoyed.
She walked her fingertips up his t-shirt, and his breath hitched in his chest. She glanced up at him, challenge written across her face. “I think I have my ways, Penn.”
Maddie pushed Penn, and he went to his elbows in the soft earth. He grinned at her, although his desire was written across his face.
“Well, I’ll just excuse myself—” I said, half-joking, half-not.
“Stay,” Penn said. He caught Maddie’s hand in his, glancing toward me. “We’ll, ah. Truth? Or dare?”
“It’s not your turn,” Maddie chided him. She looked up at me, her brows arching. “It’s Ty’s. If he wants to stay.”
I should go. But I couldn’t tear myself away. Maddie still had her hand on Penn’s chest, and his fingers had wrapped around hers. The two of them looked almost as if they’d paused in the middle of the act.
“Truth or dare, Maddie?” I asked.
“Dare,” she said, her voice husky.
“You already used this one,” I said. “Kiss someone.”
She reached across Penn and caught the front of my t-shirt. My breath hitched when she pulled me close. My knees brushed against Penn’s hip as I shifted closer, and I leaned over him.
Her lips grazed mine tentatively. She looked up at me, her eyes wide and bright, and caught her lip with her teeth.
Penn’s lips parted, but he didn’t look jealous. He looked…curious. My chest tightened, waiting, for whatever he was going to say.
But his next words were lost when another voice came from the edge of the forest.
“Staking a claim, huh?” It was Mel.
I groaned.
“We came out here to get away from you,” Penn said, squinting at her through the darkness.
Maddie narrowed her eyes at him, but he shrugged unapologetically.
“It’s my sister,” he said. “I’m allowed to be brutally honest. And she is being a jerk.”
“I know,” Mel said. “I came out here to apologize.”
That surprised me. The three of us had always been close growing up, and Mel usually never apologized for anything. Not even the time we were play-fighting and she helped me face-plant into the barn wall. Three stitches later, she told me not be such a klutz.
But now everything was shifting. She must feel like she was being left behind, and that made me ache for her. I wouldn’t want to be the one who was left out.
“Oh really?” Penn snorted. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
Maddie smacked his chest and mouthed, “Be nice.”
Mel hesitated, leaning her weight on one leg as she tugged at the hem of her sweatshirt like a nervous habit. It reminded me of a dozen other times I’d seen her anxious. Like her first day of high school, when she’d convinced her father to let her leave the pack’s one-room schoolhouse behind and come with Penn and me.
Before I could figure out what to say to ease the tension in the air, Maddie patted the grass beside her.
“Come sit,” Maddie said. “We don’t need drawn-out apologies around here. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this is pretty much asshole central.”
“Hey,” Penn protested, but his frown wasn’t real.
“Ty, stop hogging the rum.” Maddie turned to me as I held the bottle out to her, and our gazes met. Her eyes were bright and warm, and my heart lurched in my chest. She was making things better with Mel. That was something that mattered to me, something that I didn’t know how to do on my own.
God, I love this girl. Maddie was sunshine and light, shining into a world that had been dark for too long.
I looked up at Mel, hoping she’d come join us, hoping we’d start finding our way forward as friends.
Mel’s gaze had been darting between Maddie and me, as if she read that moment. For a second, pain etched itself across her face.
Then she took a step forward as I held the bottle up. She grabbed it and took a long swig of rum before she sank cross-legged next to Maddie.
“An assembly of assholes, maybe?” she suggested. “A federation of fuckheads?”
“You started off alphabetical,” Maddie pointed out, making a give-me gesture with her hand. “But you couldn’t keep it up, could you?”
Mel’s eyebrows rose as she handed Maddie back the bottle. “A bevy of bastards? A council of clusterfucks?”
“I think we’re going to get along,” Maddie told her.
Things were awkward at first, but they got easier. After a while, voices and laughter rose into the air, higher than the flames when the wind caught the bonfire.
The light of the fire reflected off Maddie’s face as she laughed. Mel grinned too, caught up in Maddie’s easy magnetism.
Penn smiled at them both. He looked half-baked, even though I knew he wasn’t, when he was content. He leaned on his elbows, the fire casting his face half in light and half in shadow.
Penn caught me watching him and winked, as if he too was relieved that Maddie and Mel had begun to make peace with each other’s existence.
And for the first time, I found myself really thinking that maybe even I could have peace too.
Chapter Twenty
Maddie
“You really started something out there, Maddie.” Penn pulled his t-shirt over his head, and the muscles in his back rippled with the motion before he tossed the shirt onto the floor.
“Did you mind?” I asked. I crawled into his bed and fell back against the pillows. My head felt dizzy and light in a pleasant way. I wondered if it would feel that way in the morning.
“No,” he said, without hesitation.
Well. The memory of having him and Ty so close to me rose again, flushing me with heat, the same way I had felt in that moment.
Then he flopped onto the bed beside me. He leaned on his elbow, reaching out to trace his fingers over the curve of my face.
“What are you doing?” I murmured, but I shifted subtly closer, drawn into his touch.
“I don’t like being away from you,” he said. “I don’t want to say goodbye, Maddie. Not even for a few days.”
His words brought Rafe’s warning back to mind, and suddenly my heart beat faster.
I didn’t want to make any promises. I didn’t want to worry him, either. I knew these men and I would find a way to be together.
Or at least, I wanted to believe we would.
So instead of answering, I closed the distance between us and brushed my lips across his.
He crushed his lips to mine, as if he was claiming me. His fingers threaded in my hair, pulling me against him.
I drew in a quick, sharp breath before he kissed me breathless.
When his eyes were heavy-lidded like they were now, his touch firm and possessive, I felt so wanted. The way he looked at me was just as addictive as the orgasms that came after.
“Get on top of me,” he ordered, his voice husky. He was already shifting, his hands cupping my hips, and he drew me on top of him in one quick motion.
I leaned forward, my breasts brushing his pecs through my t-shirt. My nipples pe
bbled with desire as his hand stroked down my back, down the curve of my ass. As I kissed him, my hair fell around us like a curtain, brushing back and forth with our motion.
If this is goodbye…
No. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the thought. Stay in the moment.
It was too good a moment to miss, with his hand caressing my ass. Heat flooded through my blood, as if my whole body was on fire for Penn.
“I’m glad you and Mel are getting along, but I didn’t want to be interrupted before,” he murmured, glancing up at me through dark lashes. “I wanted to see where things would go.”
I kissed his cheek, his jaw, loving the feel of him against my lips. I nipped his earlobe before I murmured, “And where did you want things to go?”
“Where were you going to take them?”
His thumb slid under the waistband of my panties, drawing them away from my abs. He slid them down around my thighs, before his hand stroked down my naked ass. He ran his hand across my curves appreciatively, his fingers slipping ever closer and closer to my aching clit, and I groaned into his ear.
“I don’t know,” I murmured. “It was an impulse.”
“It’s a good impulse. Ty’s a good man.”
I might’ve commented on the fact that he was bringing up Ty while the two of us were rather intimately engaged, but his fingers finally slid down the curve of my ass and pressed against my wet, throbbing core. My hips swayed forward against his. I was helpless but to grind against him when I wanted him this badly.
“You’re giving me permission?” I asked archly, as his fingers began to work against my clit. Heat washed over my body as he relentlessly brought me closer and closer to orgasm.
“Not that you need it,” he said, his brows arching. “We both know that. But yes.”
His fingers stroked back up the curve of my ass, and the sensation sent sparks tingling across my skin. I gasped, and he looked self-satisfied.
He ran his finger under the hem of my t-shirt, pulling it away from my body. I caught the hem and dragged it over my head. As I dropped the shirt to the floor, his breath caught as he took in the sight of my small breasts, my nipples hard, my pale skin flushed with desire.