by Selena Scott
Tre, who’d seen pictures of Peter Clifton online, nodded tersely. He was the squarest little J. Crew model ever to walk the streets of Boston. Never a hair out of place.
“Right,” Celia continued. “So, she’s not gonna care about a neat little haircut. If you really wanna catch her eye, you’re gonna have to do something to, you know, delight her.”
Tre cocked his head to one side. “She does love to be delighted.”
“Right.”
“Goddammit.” Tre pinched the bridge of his nose. “Alright. What are you thinking?”
***
Tre had literally sprinted out into the field of wildflowers that had overgrown the southeast corner of Thea’s land. He figured he had fifteen minutes or so before Caroline was up for the day. He’d picked every flower that had made him think of her and that meant that he’d sprinted back into the house with the sunniest, most colorful armful of flowers ever known to mankind.
He had just enough time to pass the arrangement off to Thea. “Dunk that in a jar for me,” he’d called to her before he sprinted to the shower. He was in and out in record time. At Celia’s behest, Tre tugged on his royal blue V-neck. Celia had convinced him that Caroline had a thing for his tattoos. So, alright. There was a good amount of chest and chest hair showing. He donned his good jeans and cleaned his glasses again.
He skidded past her door, saw it was still closed, and hightailed it to the kitchen. Thea, goddess that she was, had pulled out all the ingredients he’d need for the cookies Jack had told her Tre was planning on making. Though the flowers looked a little worse for the wear jammed into a mason jar. Oh well.
Tre looked wildly around the kitchen. “Alright. Hair. Flowers. Cookies.”
Caroline’s door opened up down the hall and Tre looked up at the group of friends around the kitchen table.
“Scram!” he whispered and Martine, Jack, Thea, Celia, and Jean Luc all scattered.
Seconds later, Caroline came into the kitchen.
“Morning,” he called over his shoulder to her.
“I’m mad at you,” she told him.
He turned to see her arms crossed over a demure white tank top, a pair of classy trousers covering those legs of hers. She wore a red belt and her hair in a braid. He resisted the urge to just fall to his knees right there.
“I know,” he told her.
“Where is everyone?” She looked around the kitchen in confusion and Tre realized that she must have taken her time that morning to ensure that the others would be awake and she wouldn’t have to deal with him on her own.
“I don’t know.” He told the half-truth. “Caroline, I deserve your anger. I totally understand why you’re mad at me.”
She finally flipped her gaze at him. Her hands shifted to her hips in an almost comically annoyed pose. “Yeah!”
“But I wanna be really clear about something.” He found that now he’d given himself permission, it was strangely easy to tell her the truth. “I want you. Badly. And not just because you were pulling away from me.”
Her brow furrowed.
“This isn’t a game to me. I don’t have any claim on you. I’m not trying to prove anything to myself. Or to you. I just want you.” He stepped forward, one hand making its way to his chest. “I want you because you’re so sweet you make my mouth water. And I—uh—picked these for you.” He picked up the mason jar of squinched, sunny flowers and put it in her hands. He scraped a hand over the back of his head. “And I’m making you cookies for breakfast.”
She blinked down at the flowers in her hands and then at the mixing bowl and flour and sugar on the counter. “Tre.”
“I’m not trying to manipulate you, Caroline, I swear.” Here came the doozy. The royal bellyflop. No way around it. It was gonna leave a mark. “If you still like Arturo, or you aren’t sure yet how you feel… well, you should keep doing whatever you’re gonna do with him. It’s not that I don’t care. Because I care a lot. But listen. I’m not trying to control you. I don’t want you because you want him. I want you because I want you. And I’ll take whatever part of you I can get. Even if that means sharing you.”
She blinked at him. Her eyes clouded with confusion. Her emotions were tangled and swarming. She’d truly felt one way when she’d stepped into the kitchen. And now she was suddenly feeling a whole other way. She hated this. She—something caught her gaze and she gasped in surprise.
Setting the flowers aside, she stepped toward Tre. “Is that—? Did you—?”
He froze as she stood next to him, her fingers raising through the air. They landed on the side of his head and Tre couldn’t help the full-body blush that swept over him.
“Did you shave a lightning bolt in the side of your head?” she whispered, her eyes lit with amazement, the very beginning of a smile flirting with the corners of her mouth.
He scuffed the toe of his boot on the kitchen floor. “I thought you’d like it.”
Technically, Celia had thought Caroline would like it and had spent twenty minutes talking Tre into it. But now that it was lighting her up like this, Tre was more than happy to take credit for the stylistic choice.
“I do,” she nodded solemnly, rocking back to her heels and taking her bottom lip in between her teeth. Her eyes bounced between his for a second.
Tre held his breath.
“What kind of cookies?” she finally asked.
Tre had to restrain himself from tossing that Breakfast Club fist in the air. “Peanut butter chocolate chip.” He stepped forward and took a risk in grabbing her hands in his. “I’m so sorry, Caroline. I never meant to make you feel like you were a game to me.”
She nodded but took a step away, her eyes falling to the floor. “I’m going to take a walk.”
She slipped out the side door and Tre sighed as he watched her go.
“It wasn’t a straight up no,” he told himself. And then he turned to the cookies.
***
Caroline chomped on one of Tre’s cookies and watched from afar as the men, in their grizzly forms, sparred and tousled in a far corner of one of the fields. She leaned against one of the white pillars of the porch, her cheek resting against the wood and her hair down her back.
The flowers were still in a jar in the kitchen. She’d resisted the urge to bring them to her room. He talked pretty, sure. But how was she supposed to know for sure he wasn’t messing around with her?
Someone else, unbeknownst to Caroline, also watched the men spar. Arturo was around the bend of the wraparound porch, watching them with his hands in his pockets. As he watched, there was a different set of bears in his mind’s eye. His brain took him, almost unwillingly, to centuries ago, when he’d been one of those new bear shifters, trying, for the life of him, to figure out how the hell to be a shifter.
He was surprised by the dull tug of longing in his gut to go out there to the field. To join them all.
He hadn’t wanted to join something in hundreds of years.
He rounded the corner and there she was, leaning against the pole and smelling like chocolate.
Arturo felt a pain in his chest just looking at her. It was different than the visceral, teeth-gritting stab that he’d been experiencing since they’d brought him here. This was in his chest. And he knew it wasn’t physical pain. It was a product of his memories. Because looking at Caroline, that wide-eyed confusion on her face, he could almost feel Amelia there next to him.
The pain worsened and he quickly turned inside, out of the sunlight. Back to the darkness.
***
“I want to take you on a date tonight.”
The words stopped Caroline in her tracks. Literally. She’d been retracing her steps, attempting to find where the heck she’d left her cell phone and Tre’s voice from behind her had her freezing in place. She whipped around, one couch cushion in each hand.
“Why?” she demanded, her eyes a little suspicious, but a just hint of curiosity in her tone.
He couldn’t help but smile at her t
here, befuddled and off-kilter and so pretty his mouth went mostly dry. “Because I like you.”
She smiled and then frowned. “We don’t need to go on a date for you to like me. You can like me just fine while we all play poker together like we were supposed to.”
“What are you looking for?” Tre asked her.
“My phone.”
He dug his own out of his pocket and called her. She put the couch cushions back into place as they heard her sunny little ringtone chiming down the hall.
He followed her. “But a date means that I’d get to like you in private. Where the point of the privacy is that I like you and I want you to know it.”
“Fine.” Caroline waved her hand as she walked through the door of her bedroom. “I know it. Now we don’t have to go on a date.”
She stared perplexedly around her room, looking for the source of the chiming but the call went dead. Tre called her again. He strode toward her bed and started tossing pillows aside.
“But if we went on a date maybe you’d start to get used to the fact that I really like you.” He found her phone made into her bed between the sheet and the duvet cover. He picked it up and turned to hand it to her. “I don’t just wanna be friends anymore.”
She took the phone and bit her lip. “Is this because of that kiss?”
“Yes, of course,” he answered immediately. Because it wasn’t a lie. But from the way her face immediately fell he realized that he was going to have to tell the whole truth. She turned to leave the room and he followed her. “I mean, yes and no.”
“Well,” she tossed over her shoulder as she walked down the hall. “Which is it?”
“Caroline, love,” Tre said as he scooted around in front of her. He didn’t care that they were stopping right outside of Arturo’s room, where that bastard was probably listening. He really, really needed to get this straight with her. “The answer is yes because that kiss fucked my whole life up. That was the best, most mind-blowing, like, life-ending, holy shit moment of my entire life.” He gently pressed two palms to her shoulders and gave her a soft smile. “I mean, you were there.”
She bit her lip but said nothing. Tre barreled on. “So, yes. That kiss was what got my head out of my ass and made me realize that I can’t ignore this anymore. But it’s everything else, too, that made me want you. All the time we’ve spent together. All the card games and conversations. Watching you get through the last days of your divorce, pushing yourself. You’re so unbelievably brave, Caroline. How could I not want you?”
She looked up at him with those big, honey eyes for one perfect second, where Tre knew she believed him. But something shuttered her and she stepped around him, striding for the kitchen. “I know I’m great, Tre. I’m not confused on whether or not I’m worth wanting, okay? But I’m not convinced that you want me for the reasons you think you want me. No date.”
She reached onto the kitchen counter and hitched the mason jar of wildflowers into the crook of her elbow.
“Alright,” he said quietly, his hands in his pockets as he watched her smooth out one bent petal of a flower. He tried not to smile as he watched her fuss over the bouquet. “I’m gonna ask again, you know.”
Caroline shrugged her shoulders, doing her best to stop her smile before it started. “Free country.”
And then she was gone, back to her bedroom, taking the flowers with her.
***
He did ask again. And he gave her flowers again. Three mornings in a row. Caroline became more and more befuddled as each day passed. It was getting significantly harder to stick to her guns.
Getting pursued by Tre was like falling asleep in the sun after a good swim in the pool. She had to fight not to let it happen naturally. He was just so warm and sweet and always smiling at her. But he gave her space, too. Laughed at her jokes, pulled out her chair for her, caught her eye across the table.
But he didn’t try to kiss her again. It was four nights after the kiss on her bed and Caroline was brushing her hair again at her desk.
It occurred to her, finally, something she could do to figure out if Tre was telling the truth about how he felt.
Her stomach flipped at the thought of it, but she knew it might be the only way. She ignored herself in the mirror as she stood up and crossed the bedroom. This wasn’t like four nights ago when she was wearing her sexiest pajamas and was armed with fresh new condoms. No. Tonight Caroline wore a simple baby blue pajama set, shorts and a button-up short sleeve with a floppy collar. She had big white socks on her feet.
She wasn’t out for sex. She was out to prove something. To herself? To Tre? She wasn’t sure as she padded softly down the hall to Arturo’s room.
She just knew that if Tre truly felt something for her, he’d still feel it even if she kissed Arturo. He’d said he would.
Peter, on the other hand, would have lost his damn mind. Kicked her out of the house if she’d ever been with another man. Even though he was with other women all the time. To him, loving Caroline hadn’t been about experiencing her. It had been about owning her. And she’d never go back to that kind of interaction with a man. She wanted to be wanted. Not possessed. She’d spent far too much of her life being nothing more than a possession. And apparently a subpar one at that.
She wiggled her toes in her socks as she stood outside Arturo’s door.
She could hear some of the group still playing a late night game of poker in the living room. Taking a deep breath, Caroline pushed through Arturo’s door and into his room.
To her surprise, he wasn’t in his bed the way he usually was. He was standing at his window, gazing out at the mountains. The moonlight was silvery over his tan skin and for a moment, he almost looked like a ghost. His dark hair was inky blue.
She took a step toward him and, unbidden, her mind’s eye flashed an image of Tre across her consciousness. Fiery red and warm, like a candle in a dark room. But she pushed it away. She loved red, yes. But she liked blue, too. She shivered. She wasn’t sure if the room was cold or if it was just Arturo’s presence.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked her in a quiet voice.
She ignored it. Caroline tangled her hands up in front of herself—she was so much more nervous than she thought she’d be. She couldn’t help but think of the night she’d slipped into bed with Tre, propositioned him. She’d been nervous, of course, but she’d also been positive that nothing would go disastrously wrong. She’d left his room hurt and confused, but she’d been alright. That was not the feeling Caroline had right now.
Leave! something shouted inside her. The hairs on her arms rose up. Arturo stayed very still under the window, watching her carefully.
“Do you know why I came?” Caroline heard herself asking.
Arturo chuckled a dark laugh and looked back out the window. “I think I know better than you do.”
“No, you don’t!” That got her back up. Everybody always thought they understood everything better than she did. She was sweet and naturally innocent, she knew, but she wasn’t an idiot. She strode toward him.
“Caroline, angel, you came because you’re trying to tell yourself something isn’t true, when you already know very well that it is so—” Arturo’s words cut off when he turned and she flung herself into his arms.
Her hands gripped his shoulders and his hands came around her back. He hadn’t intended on kissing her. Actually, he’d intended to send her away. He’d been sure she’d come. She wasn’t very difficult to read. His passing interest in her as a woman had faded after he’d realized how like Amelia she really was. He’d never be able to be close to a woman so like Amelia again.
But here she was in his arms. Caroline looked up at him but he could almost see Amelia’s face. He was jolted to a time long ago when he’d still been a man. When his soul had still been intact, when Amelia had looked up at him and begged for a kiss. He’d given Amelia that kiss and effectively ended his own life.
He shouldn’t do it again.
But he drop
ped his head and pressed his lips to another creature for the first time in four hundred years.
Caroline stiffened in his arms. Arturo, horrified, felt a rushing within him that he couldn’t stop. His energy gathered, flung toward her. He tried to shove her away but it was almost as if she was stuck to him.
Caroline’s eyelids slammed tight in pain. She was wracked with a body infusion of white-hot pain. Like a hot poker on an exposed nerve. This was wrong. It was terribly wrong. She knew that if the kiss went on much longer, Arturo would separate her life from her body. She would float away from herself and be gone—she’d leave herself behind.
“No!”
His word was harsh and almost evil-sounding as he took Caroline by the shoulders and shoved her away from him.
She stumbled backwards and tripped over the chair at his desk. She fell to the floor, barely catching herself.
Her pupils were blown out and he watched in horror as his own blue energy zipped around her body, sinking in through her skin. She trembled, her eyes wide and terrified.
“Go,” he ground out as he fell to his knees, his world blackening at the edges. A horrible pain, worse than any of the others, knifed his gut and he fell face down on the ground beside her. “Go.”
He heard her scramble away and then he heard nothing more.
CHAPTER NINE
Caroline found herself in front of a familiar door. Just like she had at Arturo’s room, she didn’t bother knocking. She pushed open the door and found Tre propped on one elbow on his bed, fiddling around on his laptop.
He looked up and grinned at her immediately. “Hi!”
He closed the laptop and summoned her inside. She stepped in on numb feet. To her, he looked like heat personified. And she was so cold. He said something to her that she didn’t quite hear. Like he was speaking to her through a layer of ice. She wanted to hold her hands out to him, warm herself at his hearth, but she found that she couldn’t lift her hands.