by Jessie Lane
Chapter Eighteen
The whole time Nikki had shopped, her mind had been whirling. Doubts upon more doubts overwhelmed her until she felt she couldn’t breathe. Somehow, she had managed to finish her shopping and buy the doll that Sarah wanted, but now she was wandering aimlessly around the mall, trying to figure out what she was going to do.
The sight of those parents earlier had triggered something in her. What, exactly, she couldn’t say. She tried to analyze her feelings to sort out what was going on in her head and her heart, but all she found was pain.
The pain that Sarah would never see their parents again.
The pain that their father had loved their mother so much that he had chosen to die with her rather than stay with them.
Nikki couldn’t deal with these types of pain again. And that was what Joe represented. Everything that he made her want and hope for was just one more thing to lose. She couldn’t risk it because she wouldn’t survive the loss. She sure as hell wasn’t going to put Sarah through that again. Enough people had abandoned her already, either by accident or by choice.
Decision made, she turned and headed back toward the long line of kids waiting to see Santa. When she heard Sarah’s voice raised in anger and calling a much bigger kid a big ol’ meanie, Nikki blinked in surprise. Sarah generally didn’t do conflict. When things got hard, her thumb went in her mouth and the kid just shut down.
Moving around the line and to the corner of the dais, she saw the instant Joe scented her. His head turned and, while it should have looked silly to have Santa Claus giving her the sexy eye, it didn’t. Instead, it made her hot all the way to her toes.
“Nikki!” Sarah squealed. “A boy was mean to J—Santa! But I told him!”
Nikki sucked in her cheeks to keep from smiling. “I did hear that. But I think Santa’s big enough to fight his own battles, don’t you?”
Sarah shook her head and even rolled her eyes, like a teenager in miniature. “Santa can’t fight a kid, Nikki. That’s just silly.”
Joe laughed then. “She’s always got my back.” He turned to the line of kids and said, “Santa will be right back! Just need to have a little chat with my youngest elf! Don’t go anywhere.”
He slipped away from the crowd, down to the side of the dais and Nikki stepped closer to him. They were concealed by the large, prettily wrapped stacks of gift boxes that made up most of the display.
“She had her lunch, obviously,” he said, pointing to the smear of barbecue sauce on her face as Sarah tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn.
“Well, right now she needs a nap… and a bath. Sweet Lord! Did you eat any of the barbecue sauce or just roll in it?”
“Oh, she ate it,” Joe said. “All three of the little plastic tubs that came with it.”
“One comes with it,” Nikki corrected. “Asking for extra gave her license to swim in it. Come on, Sarah, let’s go home and get you cleaned up.”
“Then the wights!” Sarah said, and immediately popped her thumb into her mouth as her eyes half-closed with exhaustion.
It was tradition, one of the few true family outings they did. Every year, they’d pile into their Dad’s old SUV and drive through town looking at all the Christmas lights. “Fine, then the lights. Come on. Let’s go.”
“I’ll see you later, right?”
Nikki glanced up, meeting Joe’s concerned gaze. She wouldn’t dump him in the mall. Shifters didn’t take kindly to dumping anyway. She sure as hell couldn’t do it when he had a line of kids a block long waiting to tell him he what they wanted for Christmas. “Yeah. You’ll me see later. Nothing’s wrong. I’m just tired,” she lied.
“I’m through here at four. They’re shutting down early. But I have some stuff to do first. It’ll be late when I come over.”
That was even better, Nikki thought. She couldn’t fight him and Sarah at the same time. “I’ll see you then.”
She didn’t kiss him. There were too many prying eyes around. And it would only make it harder to do what she needed to do later on anyway. Instead, she scooped her sleepy sister into her arms and headed out of the mall and to her car. The little bit of Christmas spirit she’d mustered had fled entirely. All she wanted to do was cry.
“Don’t make Joe go ’way,” Sarah said sleepily as Nikki lowered her into her car seat.
“Honey, I made you a promise. Just me and you, right?”
Sarah’s eyes popped back open enough to focus on Nikki’s face. “Why can’t it be you and me and Joe? I like him, Nikki.”
“It just can’t.”
Sarah’s bottom lip stuck out in a petulant pout. “But why?”
Nikki closed her eyes and prayed for patience. She had learned to hate the word why. “Because I’m not going to lose anybody else and I’m not going to let you either. You’re already too attached to him.”
“Joe says it’s better to love someone and lose them than not love them at all.”
“Well, he’s wrong. Now, if you nap in the car on the way home, all we have to do is get your bath taken care of and then we can go get hot cocoa again and see the Christmas lights.”
The little girl’s eyes widened for a moment. “Okay.” She nodded enthusiastically before squeezing her eyes shut again so tightly that it made her little face wrinkle up.
Nikki’s frustration vanished and her heart melted just a little bit. She loved that kid. Nothing and no one would ever get in the way of that.
Chapter Nineteen
One rather long nap, one short and much protested bath later, Nikki found herself back in the car with Sarah. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but by the time they reached the swanky neighborhood on the other side of the town where all the best Christmas lights were, it would be.
“You said cocoa!” Sarah protested.
She had. Christ. And since she had a whopping total of fifty bucks left in her bank account and another three days to payday, only one of them would be getting it. “We’ll get you some cocoa, baby.”
Hitting a drive-thru, she paid more for a single cup of cocoa than it cost to buy the ingredients and make a gallon at home. Nikki placed it in the cup holder up front before looking at her sister in the rearview mirror. “It’s got to cool a little bit first, then you can have it.”
“Fine.” Sarah pouted.
Looking back at her sister, Nikki asked, “What’s the deal with you tonight? Why the attitude?”
“I wanted Joe to look at the wights with us!”
That only cemented her earlier resolve. Nikki knew then that it was time to cut him out of their lives before Sarah got any more attached, or before she did. “Well, he had to work. We’ll see him later, I’m sure.”
It was a lie. She would see him later, and she would be sure that Sarah didn’t. That kid didn’t need anyone else to miss in her life.
The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful. Sarah forgot her earlier disappointment and oohed and aahed over the pretty lights. Nikki couldn’t even bring herself to care all that much. Every part of her hurt in anticipation of letting him go. But what could she do? She wouldn’t allow a mate to consume her life and take her away from her sister. She couldn’t do that to her.
She turned the car toward home, and immediately regretted the decision. Traffic on the parkway was at a complete standstill. “Just shit,” she muttered.
“You said a bad word!”
“It’s only a bad word if you’re not a grown up,” Nikki fired back at Sarah.
After a few minutes, traffic began to creep forward. She could see emergency personnel and vehicles up ahead. Whatever had happened to stop traffic had happened not far in front of them at all.
As they crept past the EMS and fire crew, Nikki felt her heart stutter. The mangled motorcycle was barely identifiable, but the broken pieces of plastic and glass that littered the pavement were the same cherry red as Joe’s bike.
Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, god. No. No. No. No.
The litany of prayers and protests that rambled on a cir
cuit in her mind was barely comprehensible.
She glanced in the rearview mirror at Sarah. Even in her car seat, she was too little to see over the side and take in any of the damage. That was at least something to be thankful for.
As they rolled past the accident scene, a sick dread and the awful weight of regret swamped her. She didn’t even know if it was him. Only that it could be. He might be gone for good. And the thought left her with such unimaginable pain that she couldn’t even fathom why she’d thought she’d be able to just let him go. It was too late to try and stop herself from loving him. That ship had sailed the moment she’d met him.
“We have to get home, baby. The weather’s getting bad,” she said, striving for a somewhat normal tone.
Sarah had one of her old dolls and was happily chattering to it, oblivious to the fact that their whole world might have just been upended again.
Driving carefully, hands gripping the wheel until her knuckles were white with the force of it, Nikki made it back to their tiny house and got her sister inside.
She waited for the sound of his bike, for the ringing of her phone. She listened for even a hint of footsteps on the porch. All the while, she went through the motions of preparing dinner, feeding Sarah, reading her a bed time story, getting her all tucked in and ready for Santa. Even to the point of putting out cookies and milk. Yet the whole time, Nikki felt like she was dying inside.
When it was safe, when Sarah was sound asleep, Nikki dug her phone out of the bottom of her purse. There were no texts from him, no missed calls. There was no sign that anything was wrong, but that didn’t stop her heart from breaking all over again, because there was also no reassurance that everything was okay.
She opened up her contacts and her thumb hovered over his name and number. If he answered, she’d know he was fine. If he didn’t, she’d be right back where she was, not knowing if he was dead or alive, or laying in some hospital alone and hurting. In the end, she sat like that for the longest time, afraid to know the truth.
Chapter Twenty
Joe had made the trek back up the mountain with the big ass dollhouse box strapped to the back of his bike. How he’d done it without wrecking and killing himself, he didn’t honestly know. It hadn’t helped that the fine mist that had been falling all day was rapidly turning into a mix of snow and ice. Still, he’d managed.
Sitting in the middle of Sam’s living room at the lodge, he had a small toolkit and the instructions for the dollhouse laid out in front of him.
“Who the hell designed this thing? Ikea?” he muttered. There were more parts than he’d ever imagined and most looked nothing like the illustrations on the directions.
Sam walked in, eyed the mess, and laughed. “Yeah. I’m not ever getting into the kind of shit you just fell into. Holy hell.”
“Don’t get cocky. I need your help,” Joe admitted.
“You’re a fucking mechanic?”
“Yes! A mechanic. Not a damn Barbie architect!” Joe snapped, his lion irritated at all the little pieces that came to the dollhouse. Didn’t these toymakers know that male lions were notoriously lazy? “Help me get this thing together. If that kid doesn’t wake up to this thing under her tree tomorrow morning… I just can’t disappoint her that way!”
Sam shook his head in disgust. “Fine. But you owe me.”
“And when I bring your truck back tomorrow, it will have a full tank of gas in it.”
Sam paused as he picked up some of the dollhouse pieces. “My truck? Again?”
“Look, I strapped the box to the back of my bike and damn near died. You really want to put this thing together and then see it destroyed when I smack into a tree with it?” Joe shot back.
“I’m still undecided,” Sam snapped back at him. “Let’s this get this damn thing done.”
They worked mostly in silence except for the occasional calling out of whatever tool or part they needed. It was almost like a surgical team. The process all total took much longer than they’d expected.
When the thing was finally complete, they loaded it into the bed of Sam’s truck.
“Don’t get attached to my truck, man. Remember you chose that death stick on two wheels and bring my baby back to me in one piece. And a good friend would bring me back some honey as a thank you!”
Joe rolled his eyes and thanked his friend again for letting him borrow the truck. He should have known the big bear shifter would ask for honey. The only thing Sam was obsessed with more than honey was women.
As he got in the vehicle and started it up, he glanced in the back one last time to make sure the dollhouse was secure. He couldn’t wait to see Sarah’s face tomorrow morning when she saw her present from Santa.
The ride to Nikki’s house took a lot longer than he would have liked due to the slippery roads, but he took them slow. The last thing he wanted was to wreck and fuck everything up. Finally, he made it safely to her place.
As he pulled up in front of her house, Joe had barely put the truck into park when the front door whipped open and Nikki came flying out of the house. Joe was over the moon to see his girl…until he realized there were tears running down her face.
Jumping out of the truck, he ran over to find out what was wrong. “Nikki, baby—” was all he got out before she flung herself at him.
“Oh God, I thought it was you, Joe!”
His mate was sobbing in his arms and he didn’t understand why. Joe tried to pull her back to get a good look at her face but Nikki wasn’t budging from the death grip she had around his body. “What are you talking about, sweetheart?”
Nikki let out another loud sob. “T-the accident on the p-parkway! I thought it was you.”
Exerting just enough strength to pull her back so he could look at her face, Joe tried to make sense of what she was saying. “What accident?”
Shuddering a breath, she answered him. “There was a motorcycle accident on the parkway. It looked just like your bike. That bike was in p-pieces, Joe, and for a minute t-there I thought I’d lost you.” On the last word, she started sobbing uncontrollably again and Joe’s heart hurt for his upset little mate.
After picking her up, he carried her back to the house and set her down on the couch. She tried to hold onto him when he went to pull away, but Joe gently forced her to let him go. “I’m right here, sweetheart. Right here.” He kissed her on her lips and tried to calm her fears as best as he could. “Take deep breaths for me, baby.” It took a few minutes, but eventually Joe had her breathing normally again instead of almost hyperventilating.
Once he had Nikki calmed down a bit, he gave her another soft kiss on the lips and then cradled her face in his hands. “I hate to leave you, sweetheart, but I need to go get Sarah’s present out of the back of the truck before it gets ruined. It could start snowing or misting again any second. I’ll be right back, all right?”
Nikki shakily agreed, allowing Joe to run outside and get Sarah’s dollhouse. It took a whole lot more effort to carry it by himself this time, but he managed to get it into the house without dropping the damn thing. After he gingerly placed it by the tree, he peeled off his jacket, threw it on the chair, then rejoined Nikki on the couch.
The moment he sat down she climbed into his lap, straddling him so that she could face him. Joe let his hands rest on her hips. He could see a lot of thought moving behind her gorgeous green eyes. Now he just had to wait and see what she was going to say.
“I was going to end it,” she said softly. “I had made my decision earlier today because I thought—because I thought I could avoid the pain of losing someone again if I just kept you from getting too close.”
Her soft admission stung him. Just the thought peeled back all the layers and left him feeling raw. “Nikki—”
She stopped him, pressing her fingers to his lips. “Let me finish. If I don’t say all this now, I’ll lose my nerve.”
He nodded and waited with baited breath.
“When my parents were killed, my whole world c
hanged in an instant. I went from being carefree and irresponsible to having to take care of myself and a little girl who’d lost everything. And I was angry, Joe. I was goddamn mad at my father. I don’t blame him for the accident, but I blame him for choosing to stay there in that car even as it went up in flames. My mom had died on impact. And he knew that. He knew she was dead. And he stayed there with her anyway, knowing we’d be left alone.”
It made so much sense to him in that moment. Her resistance to being mated to anyone, her determination not to be tied to another person. He couldn’t imagine what that felt like to know that someone you loved had chosen to die and leave not just his adult child alone in the world but a tiny and vulnerable cub like Sarah. “I’m so sorry, baby. But that’s not who we are. Neither of us would ever make that choice.”
“I thought the only way to avoid being like my dad was to avoid having a mate at all. But I was wrong,” she uttered softly. “I was so fucking wrong. It’s going to hurt whether I lose you today, tomorrow, or fifty years from now… I want the fifty years.”
He watched, hyper aware, as Nikki brought her hands up and placed them on his stubbled cheeks. She raced her eyes over his face, as if tracing all his features in an effort to commit them to memory. Every passing second made Joe more nervous of what she might eventually say.
Finally, as tears started to well up in her eyes once again, Nikki spoke. “I’ve been a hard-headed fool about you, Joe Miller.” He opened his mouth to tell her she hadn’t been quite that bad, but Nikki shook her head and wouldn’t let him speak. “I have been so damn stubborn, thinking I knew what Sarah and I needed all along. What was best for us. I was wrong. Everything we need is right here in front of me. You’re everything I could have ever hoped or dreamed for, Joe, and if you still want me as your mate, know that I want you too.” She leaned forward and placed a quick, desperate kiss on his lips before pulling back to say, “I want you, Joe, always.”