The Shifter's Embrace

by Selena Scott

  “Celia,” he started, unsure how to ask the question, or even what exactly the question was. “Do you think—”

  They both jumped a little when Celia’s phone buzzed between them. She looked down at who was calling and immediately silenced it.

  “What were you saying?” she asked quickly. He couldn’t tell if it was because she was anxious to hear his question or if she was anxious to move past the phone call.

  “Did you just ignore a call from one of your sisters?”

  “Yeah, it was probably a butt dial, she never—” Celia cut off when her phone started buzzing again. It was a different sister. Her stomach swooped low. Two in a row? That could only mean that something had happened. She furrowed her brow at Jean Luc and he motioned for her to answer the call, looking almost as worried as she felt.

  “Kelly? What’s up?”

  “Don’t you fudging ‘what’s up’ me, you little sneak!” Her sister’s voice, husky with years of smoking, roared out of the phone loud enough that Celia held the phone away from her ear. Jean Luc’s raised eyebrows and the tight line of his mouth told her that he’d, unfortunately, heard every word.

  “What?”

  “You’re sleeping with Jean Luc LaTour and you didn’t tell your sisters? What the fudge, Celia! I had to find it out from Natasha, that little you-know-what from next door before I found out from my own sister?”

  A buzzing sound filled her ears. Celia was dimly aware that she was looking, with blind horror, into Jean Luc’s eyes, but she wasn’t registering his expression. Her sister kept on screaming and shouting as Celia held perfectly still.

  Jean Luc rolled away from her, grabbed his own phone and did a quick Google search for his own name. Twin shoots of relief and frustration zinged through his gut.

  He reached out for Celia but she was curled in on herself, the phone to her ear and one of her arms crossed over her belly. Her eyes were blank and really freaking him out.

  Jean Luc did the only thing he could think to do. He plucked the phone out of her hands, hung up on the screaming sister and turned it off, tossing it across the bed. Next, he gathered his stiff little woman into his arms and tried to stroke some of that tension out of her. “It’s okay. I just looked. Somebody sold a few grainy pictures of you and me at the grocery store two days ago. That’s it. They don’t have your name or anything. Your sister’s friend must have just recognized you from the photo. It’s no big deal.”

  “No big deal?” Celia pushed away from him and she barely looked like herself. “God.” She crumpled down and pressed her face into the pillow.

  He understood that fame and infamy were not something that some people wanted. Himself included. If there had been some magical way to be anonymously successful at football, he would have taken it in a heartbeat. He knew that Celia was probably in the same boat, she was so private after all. But he hadn’t expected this violent a reaction from her. She was acting like she was utterly horrified to be publicly linked to him.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” Celia muttered into the pillow. She sat up and her eyes were red and overflowing. “God, I’m so stupid.”

  His hackles instantly came up. He didn’t like her talking about herself that way and he didn’t like what her complete distress was implying about him. That he was a horrible mistake. That she was regretful of the time she’d spent with him.

  “Celia.”

  He reached for her but she scrambled back, out of the bed. “It was just a few pictures, right? And then the gossip sites ran with it and said you have a new girl, right?”

  “Yeah,” he answered slowly.

  “So nobody knows we’re sleeping together.” She paced by the side of the bed. Instead of reaching for one of his shirts, the way she often did in the morning, she reached for her own clothes. The action stunned him, wounded him more than he’d ever have admitted. “That’s fine. I can work with that. I’ll say I’m on vacation in Miami and I happened to meet you in the check-out. I’ll say I was just asking for an autograph and that’s it. No one has to know.”

  He sat up slowly, feeling a little like she’d just slapped him across the face with a freezing cold hand. God. Twenty minutes ago she’d been open and hot and clinging to him while she came all over him and now she was looking at him like she couldn’t believe she’d allowed him to breathe her air.

  “It’s that offensive to you?” he asked slowly. “The idea of being linked to me?”

  She stopped pacing but her expression was still distracted and panicked. “Offensive? No, of course not. Why would you say that?”

  “Because you’re acting like you just got caught sleeping with Hitler.”

  She looked at him in total confusion. “What? No. That’s not what’s happening here.”

  “Then what is happening here?”

  She scraped hands over her face. “What’s happened is that I’ve just signed my own death certificate.”

  “What?”

  “If my sisters believe that I’ve slept with you, then they are never going to let me live it down.”

  Again, he felt like she’d slapped him across the face. “Because of all the gossip about me? They’ll tease you for sleeping with someone who’s been around the block or something?”

  “Tease me?” She laughed humorlessly. “They’ll ceaselessly ridicule me for the rest of my life. Not because of the gossip about you. But because I would ever think that you’d take me seriously.” Celia scraped her hands over her face again, but this time she just covered her eyes and stayed that way. “When this is over, they will never, ever, let me live it down that I thought I could keep you. That someone like me could ever make you want to…”

  She trailed off, like she couldn’t even bring herself to say the words out loud. Like they were poisonous or painful in her mouth.

  He gaped at her. When this is over.

  Not if. When.

  Jean Luc felt himself drying out, curling in, like a piece of fruit left in the sun. She’d never taken the two of them seriously at all. She couldn’t even picture a life in which this continued on. In which the two of them continued on.

  She looked insane. She looked hysterical. Like at any second she was going to just keel over and cry her brains out. Jesus, were her sisters really this evil? He’d heard the one screaming, and it definitely hadn’t been an ‘omg, this is so exciting’ sort of scream. But Celia was acting like she’d just ruined her own life.

  The rest of her words sunk in. Someone like me. Something became dimly clearer to Jean Luc. He again got the feeling that he and Celia were speaking two different languages. Playing two different games.

  She lunged forward across the bed, toward her phone. He leaned forward and covered it with his own hand.

  “No,” he said gently, keeping her from it.

  “I have to, Jean. I have to do damage control now or else I’m screwed.”

  If she hadn’t shortened his name, the way only she did, he might have acquiesced, handed it over. But the nickname reminded him that he knew her well enough to know that her impulses were not always to be trusted. He had better instincts than she did where her own good was concerned.

  “No. Baby, that’s not a good idea.”

  Desperation crept into her eyes but he felt her softening, kneeling over the bed.

  “I have to call them back and explain.”

  “And lie, you mean.”

  She crumpled then, her hands over her face, her shoulders quaking, silent sobs wrenching out of her. “I’m such an idiot.”

  “Celia!” Jean Luc took her by the shoulders and lifted her up so that she had to face him. “What the hell is going on? You’re really freaking me out!”

  He thought, for a moment, that she was going to shrink away from him, pull back and into herself and disappear completely. The potential of that future was so clear and close that he could picture it, almost as clearly as the little fantasy he’d just had about her in the kitchen. He could picture what it would be
like to have her retreat into her own fear. To have her break up with him. Ignore him. Pretend that none of this had happened. To have her tell her family that the picture was just a fluke. That they were never together, that he meant nothing to her. To have her be distant from him for the rest of this adventure and to disappear into the ether the second it was over. He could picture it all so clearly.

  But she didn’t pull away, thank God. She tossed her arms around his neck and yanked herself into his lap in that koala way of hers. She gripped him tighter than she ever had before. So hard that it was actually hard for him to breathe. He relished the moment, gripping her shirt in his hand, pressing his cheek hard against hers.

  He used his free hand to rub circles over her back. “Is this because you’ll get famous? You’re scared of losing your privacy?”

  “No,” she whispered, clinging to him even tighter.

  “You have to tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Try. Baby, please try.”

  She took a deep, shuddering breath and her grip on him loosened, whether she was relaxing or fatiguing, Jean Luc couldn’t tell. He tried to tip her head back to look her in the face, but she clung back to him, hiding her face in his neck. Just when he thought he’d have to prompt her again, she started talking.

  “You have to understand, some families as big as mine are probably happy and healthy. But mine was not. There were too many of us. My dad was always at the restaurant. My mom was way too caught up in keeping everyone alive and clothed to pay attention to anyone in particular. I’d go days without anyone speaking to me. Or saying my name. I was fed and clothed, but not really…”

  “Cared for,” he whispered back, his hand still working in a circle on her back.

  “Exactly. I was invisible unless I was in the way. When you’re in that environment, everything becomes a competition. Especially with my sisters. No one wanted happiness for the others. If someone was happy, the others were threatened by it. If I got a good grade, my sisters would tear up the paper. I got a scholarship for a summer camp once, and one of my sisters called and declined it before I could accept. They gave it to someone else.”

  Jean Luc made a sound of quiet outrage, furious on her behalf.

  “If I had a good friend, they’d spread rumors about me until I was alone again. The two boyfriends I had in high school both ended up sleeping with one of my sisters. Because my sisters went after them. I lived at the library. It was the only place they wouldn’t follow me. The only place I was safe.” Finally, she leaned back and looked at him.

  “Anything I wanted, they destroyed.” Her eyes fell, and so did big, racing tears. “And I want you so bad. I want you so bad that I know I’m going to lose you. And then my sisters will be there to laugh in my face and tell me how much I deserved to get dumped by you. And I can’t take that. I’ve endured everything else. But that?” She crumpled again, her forehead on his shoulder. “I’m such an idiot.”

  Jean Luc sat quietly, gathering his thoughts one by one. The whole time he just stroked that hand in circles. When he was all gathered up, he slowly leaned her back until she was on her back on the bed. He went on all fours over top of her.

  “I’m gonna say a bunch of stuff and I really, really want you to hear it. Okay?”

  She looked up at him, her eyes glassy and full. She nodded her head.

  “Actually,” he said, “first I have a question. When you say that you want me, do you mean that you want me, for like, a long time? That you want to be with me? Not just on this crazy adventure, but in the real world, too?”

  She was still for a long time, and then the glassy trembling in her eyes spilled over as she nodded a yes. He could feel how hard it was for her to admit that. How much she wanted to protect herself by saying no. But she didn’t. She said yes.

  “Okay,” he took a deep breath. “Okay. That’s good. Because I want that, too.”

  Her eyebrows instantly furrowed, like she didn’t believe him. He chuckled, shifting his weight onto one hand and used a firm thumb to straighten out her eyebrows.

  “I want that, too, because you’re smart and fierce and sweet and hot and interesting and you make me feel better about the hard shit that’s happened in my life and I haven’t been happy in four years and you make me happy.” He took a deep breath, refilling his lungs with air and regathering his thoughts, which, as they so often did when he was making a long speech, threatened to scatter. “Celia, you act like your sisters know something that you don’t. Like they understand the world better than you do. But they don’t. Sounds to me like they don’t see you as inferior, they see you as superior, which is why they try so hard to break you down.” Still looming over her, he gently straddled her. “Baby, when I was on the field, there was one thing I knew: the more shit a guy talked to me, the more scared he was of me. That was part of the reason I was so good. Nobody could rattle me on the field. While he was rattling off insults at me, trying to make me scared, all I could hear was his own worries about his own worth on the field. That’s what you need to hear from your sisters. They tell you you’re not good enough for me, they’re telling you that they don’t think they’re good enough. Simple as that.” He took a long breath.

  “Here’s another thing that I really want you to understand. I am just a guy. Just some guy like any other guy.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Jean Luc, please. You’re basically an American god. People all but bow down to you.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not me. That’s Jean Luc LaTour. Think about me. Think about who I really am. Just Jean. With you, I’m just Jean. Just a guy that you’re dating. Who is sometimes awkward and shy and sad.”

  “And kind and sweet and funny and gentle and patient and—”

  He laid a finger over her mouth with a smile on his face. “And human.” He moved that finger and took her by the chin. “Trust me, Celia, really trust me on this. Any human man, famous or not, would be the luckiest asshole on the planet to be with you.”

  She made a sound, one that neither of them could interpret.

  He plowed on. “So, say that something goes wrong and we break up. You would not be a fool for thinking that it could have worked, that you deserved me, that you could keep me. Because I want this to work. And I’ll do what you need to get comfortable. You need it to be under wraps for a while? That’s fine. You need me to get on the phone with my publicist? Cool. We’ll call her and see the best way for me to deal with a new relationship publicly. I don’t care. I’ll do whatever you want. As long as we’re operating under the understanding that you’re cool as hell, completely worth every single second of my time and we’re not letting your asshole sisters call the shots just because they’ve been so good at being assholes to you.”

  He drew a deep breath and furrowed his brow, wondering if he’d fully gotten his point across or if he’d gotten a little lost along the way.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  His eyes shot down to hers and she clapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide like she couldn’t believe what she’d just said. Her cheeks turned pink.

  “I mean,” she tried. “I didn’t—I meant to say I love you. Dang it! It just keeps coming out.” She rolled and buried her face in the sheets.

  He rolled her back over but she kept the sheets over her face. “What did you say?” he whispered.

  “I said that I love you.” She peeked her eyes out of the sheet. “Because I do. Like a whole lot. And I’ve been trying to play it cool and not move too fast, but I guess I’ve been holding it in too long because I can’t stop saying it. I love you.”

  He pulled the sheet fully off her face and stared at her lips with intense scrutiny. “Say it again.”

  Her lips trembled. “I love you.”

  Still as ice he moved his eyes back to hers. “No one has said that to me in over four years. No one has felt that for me in over four years.”

  She didn’t know what else to say. She was hollowed out and tender, full of st
inging, electric vulnerability. Every bit of her past experiences told her to clam up, close herself off and not show him her soft, exposed innards. But he’d just told her that he hadn’t felt loved in four years and there was no closing him out. “I love you,” was the only thing she could say. “Very much,” she added when his face continued to be a mask of bemused, overwhelmed emotion.

  He thumped down on her. Not his full weight, which might have collapsed one of her lungs, but enough to make her ‘oof’. She laughed and cradled him in her arms and legs.

  “I’m still really scared of what may happen. With you and me. I’m scared of being known as the random girl who Jean Luc LaTour dumped. I’m scared of being judged. I’m scared of getting used to a good thing and then having it taken away. I’m scared of changing my life around. I’m scared of my sisters, Jean.”

  “I am, too. They sound like a bunch of gremlins.” He lifted his head, smiling when she laughed. His brow furrowed, a thought occurring to him. “Do we have to, like, see them at the holidays and stuff?”

  She went very still. “Are you saying that you want to be around for the holidays?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Celia. Yes. I want to be with you. Together. Nobody else. Okay?”

  She took a long, shaky breath. “Okay, then, yes. We’ll have to see them at the holidays. And they’ll be bitches to me and rub their cleavage all over you.”

  He winced. “Maybe we can go abroad?”

  “I love you.” This time, she felt absolutely no trace of regret at saying it. She’d found, over the last few moments with him, that he’d succeeded in doing something again that he’d done before. He’d pulled the blanket over the two of them. Not physically this time, but emotionally. He was really, really good at blocking the rest of the world out. Cutting everything away so that it was just the two of them. And he was right, in this world, they were just two people. Celia and Jean. Right now, the only question she needed to be fretting over was whether she could handle that. And she could. She could handle this love she had for this man. She could give it over to him.