Panicked, she spun. His apparition stood in the doorway, watching her with those sad, longing eyes. His vision wore slacks and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She couldn’t help wondering if he looked like that now.
“Get out of my head,” she whispered.
“Forgive me, Sav. I can’t resist you. Never could.” He faded away. Same fucking words his image uttered a million times over the years.
She managed to apply her lip gloss with trembling hands.
Nate’s ghost was driving her mad. And since moving back, he showed up ten times more than usual. One day, she’d slip completely into insanity if she wasn’t already there.
Tamping down the unwanted emotions, she slipped on her shoes and hurried down the stairs. Hopefully, the fresh air would clear her head.
She locked her door and inhaled the crisp air. She caught a hint of his scent and whimpered, pressing her hand to her forehead.
Bad idea, Savon. Really bad idea.
His voice carried on the wind. She couldn’t catch what he said, but the cadence and tone was right. Her heart beat faster, her breath coming quicker. She turned toward the house he used to live in.
A man’s profile stood in the window. His silhouette turned to look at her.
They’re going to admit me to the psych ward before the end of the week.
The honk startled the hell out of Savon. Shaking off the nerves, she hurried to climb in next to Bran. It was the first time since their parent’s funeral that she’d seen him dress up. Then again, she hadn’t seen him much since she’d moved away. She came for the major events, but skipped the holidays.
Thankfully, Nate hadn’t made any of those. Asshole didn’t care as much as Bran tried to claim. Maybe Nate had always been a selfish jerk and she’d been too blind to see until he disappeared.
Embarrassed, she turned to her brother. “Hey, sorry. Thought I saw the asshole.” She let out a strained laugh. “Let’s go. I could use a bottle of wine.”
Blue altered the colors in his aura for a second, before yellow flowed bright. At least his hope won out. He took her hand. “Sav, we’re celebrating our family being back together.”
Her brow arched. “That’s why you’re all dressed up in a suit?” When his smile faltered, she added, “You look great, by the way.”
“You too. And I’ve been told I clean up well.” He waggled his brows with a smirk.
Someone in a fancy sports car she probably couldn’t pronounce, tore out of Nate’s old driveway and sped off.
She snorted. “Who’s the asshole in the expensive deathtrap?”
“Some hotshot doctor who moved out here. He’s not so bad when you get to know him. Hell, I’m going fishing with him and the guys this weekend.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That sounds all too familiar.” He would have told her if that prick had moved back, right?
Chuckling, he backed out of the driveway and drove the short distance to town. “Relax, let’s enjoy our evening.”
Her heart sank. Hopefully her suspicions were wrong. If Nate were back in town she’d move somewhere far away from every-fucking-one. She couldn’t cope if the man who broke her heart and haunted her dreams were that close. Dealing with him in her imagination was bad enough.
Then Bran pulled into Giorno’s, and she shot him a glare. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“Come on, it was always your favorite.”
“Yeah, when I was stupidly in love with your asshole buddy.”
Bran rolled his eyes. “You liked it before Nate.”
“There was never a before Nate.” She blew out a breath. Her earliest memories were of the boy next door.
He took her hand. “Would you please eat dinner with me?” Bran gave her big puppy eyes, which he mastered as a child.
“Damn it,” Savon muttered and climbed from the Jeep Cherokee. She glared over the top of the vehicle. “Fine, just swear to me there is no surprise welcome back party, or something equally terrible.”
“Come on now.” He grinned. “Don’t give me any ideas. You know I’m not that bright.”
Not true. He was made sheriff of Silvertail Ridge for a reason. He was mistaken for a big lug-head most of the time because he was six foot four and made of solid muscle. But he was voted into the sheriff position before he became a werewolf in a town full of them.
“You love to torment me,” Savon challenged. “If it weren’t for you I would have never moved back here.” She was damned near positive living in this town would break her.
Bran blinked, a coy smile on his face. “What can I say? I miss my little sister.”
“And I missed you,” she admitted before stepping inside.
A cheerful and familiar blonde greeted Savon at the hostess counter. Francine was round with another baby and so happy a thread of guilt threatened to choke Savon.
“Oh my God, Savon! You look amazing. I’ve missed you so much.” Fran bounced around and enveloped her in a hug.
Savon patted her back and felt like hell. It had been far too long since she’d talked to one of her closest friends from childhood. The last time was at her parents’ funeral three years before. As always, she had told Savon to call, but she never did.
“Wow, Francine, we need to catch up. Maybe now that I’m here for good, we’ll be able to.” She offered a smile.
“Oh, I plan to drop in soon.” Francine winked.
Unsure how to feel about that, Savon nodded. “What are you doing here?”
Her eyes sparkled. “I hostess on the weekends, while Joe is home with the kids.”
“Wow.” Savon almost asked how many, only that was something she should know, but couldn’t remember.
Bran saved her with a gentle prodding, “Hey, Fran, mind getting us a table?”
Grinning, she banded an arm around Savon’s waist and guided them back to the table she’d shared with Nate far too many times to count.
Savon held back the sigh and gave Fran a squeeze. “Thank you. I promise not to be such a stranger.” Unless she decided to skip town. Escaping was a tempting prospect, but she didn’t want to run anymore.
Fran squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll see you soon.” She stepped away.
Bran slipped into the booth. Savon turned to the table and froze as she locked gazes with Nate. Not just a memory, but Nate in the flesh. Her imagination had been dead-on.
A hurricane of emotions threatened to blow Savon over.
“Good evening, Savon. It’s my pleasure to see you again.” His voice had deepened but held the same warm, inviting quality as before.
Her stomach turned as she shot Bran a glare. “Certainly not mine.”
Francine nudged her with a scowl at Bran. “He didn’t tell me you didn’t know.”
“Not your fault,” Savon managed calmly.
Bran grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the seat. “Give us a few. Please, Fran?”
She dipped her head, walking away.
Savon closed her eyes and tried to rein in the anger. After a few seconds, she directed her attention to Nate. “What the hell are you doing here?”
How about, when the hell did you become a werewolf? Feral energy poured off him, just like her brother.
Her heart pounded harder. The air grew thinner.
He smiled, his dimple making an appearance. “Silvertail General Hospital needed a new surgeon. I moved back about three months ago.”
Her gaze cut to her brother. “Seriously? The moment you started begging me to move back to this god-forsaken town?”
Bran sighed and nodded across the table. “You know Nate, Savon. This is the beautiful Evangeline.”
Savon was so shocked to see Nate she hadn’t noticed the stunning golden-blond beauty with crystal green eyes. Evangeline wrinkled her nose at Savon.
Savon snorted.
“Evangeline, this is my darling sister, Savon,” Bran finished.
A snarl left Evan
geline’s lips. “I’ve heard so much about you leaving Nate behind in his time of need. I’m not sure why he thinks it’s a pleasure to see you again.” The French accent made her sound even bitchier.
Savon glared back at her. “Excuse me? He disappeared for months. What was I supposed to do? Wait forever? I had a full scholarship to art school. We all thought he was dead. His father”—she glared at Nate—“wouldn’t tell me otherwise. How the fuck was I in the wrong?”
She laughed harshly. “There was no proof Nathan was dead. You gave up hope after you agreed to marry him.”
“Wait, you proposed?” Bran growled at Nate.
Savon ignored him and sneered at Evangeline. “You weren’t there, and you have no idea how broken I was when I realized he wasn’t coming back. No, he waited a full month after I left to come back to town and never once bothered to call me. All Bran would say was that he wasn’t coming to me. Then Nate went far away to grad school without ever attempting to make contact. At that point, he tore out my damned heart and decimated my whole existence. His reasons didn’t matter if I wasn’t important enough to even call. So, fuck off.”
“You want to play, little girl?” Evangeline taunted.
Savon spun toward Bran. “How could you do this to me? What gave you any inclination this would work in any way, shape, or form?”
“Savon, you never gave him a chance. You wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell you what happened.”
“Nope, you told me he couldn’t come. I shut down because that was the only way to survive. So, fuck you, Bran. I can’t deal with this shit.” She hurried to the bathroom and locked the door, hoping to God she could escape it all.
* * * *
Evangeline moved to climb out of the booth.
Nate blocked her. “Oh, no. I’m not moving. You will not make the situation worse than you already have.”
“She’s not even sorry you were in a coma,” she hissed.
“I told you to stay out of this. She doesn’t know what happened to me. She’s less than willing to listen.”
“You’ve been in contact with her this whole time.”
He sighed, dropping his head. “Not in a way she understands. She doesn’t know I’ve been in her dreams. She thinks it’s all in her head.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Okay, she’s right. You are an asshole. Why wouldn’t you tell her? I’m sure she thinks she’s crazy.”
He sighed. “I’ve tried explaining a million times. She won’t listen. And if my father ever suspected I went to her, called, or made some physical effort to see her, he would have slaughtered her. So yeah, I spend all night chasing her through her dreams, hoping she’ll finally listen to me.”
“You what?” Bran demanded. “And when the fuck did you propose to her? No wonder she’s pissed you never called!”
Nate growled, a command rumbling through his chest. “Bran, don’t start with me. She hasn’t made this easy.”
“You could have written a letter. I would have taken it to her. Shit, you could have told me what I needed to say to her.”
Nate rubbed at his chest. “By then she was too angry to listen, and it’s my damned fault. If I had listened to her and waited on the ring, I wouldn’t have been in the accident in the first place.”
“That’s where you went? To get a ring?”
He nodded. Nate had it all figured out, or so he thought.
When he first got home after finals, he tossed his stuff in his room and hurried down the stairs to find Savon.
His father stopped him before he made the bottom step. “Don’t go to Savon. It’s only going to make things harder when you become a werewolf.”
“Not going to be a werewolf,” Nate insisted. They’d had this same argument a hundred times since he’d started college. There was no way in hell he would let his father change him. And if it wasn’t for Savon, he would never come home.
“You will. Whether you like it or not, you will take my place in this pack. You will be the Alpha. It’s best if you accept it now.”
Nate glared at his father. “No chance in hell,” he snarled. “There is only one thing that can make me happy, and that’s Savon. I’ll choose her every single time.” Nate shoved past his father and ran down the trail, knowing he’d find Savon under their willow.
On the way there, he figured out the answer. If she said yes, they’d run away, get married, and he could switch grad schools to be close to her art school. He didn’t give a damn where he went as long as Savon was by his side.
“Thought if we ran away and got married, Dad would leave me alone. And then it all went to shit anyway.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “How do I make this right?”
A snort escaped as Bran shook his head. “Makes sense when you put it like that. Still, you hurt her. You’ve got a lot of ground to make up. You’re going to have to grovel.”
“I need to do a lot more than grovel. I don’t expect this to be easy.” Leaning back, he stared off in the direction of the bathroom.
“You really didn’t tell her you were stalking her in her dreams?” Evangeline demanded.
“What was I supposed to say? She waited over a month, and I couldn’t reach her in her dreams at that point. Not until after she finally left. By then I broke any trust we ever had.”
Evangeline touched his shoulder. “Let me talk to her. I can start fresh, if she’ll listen.”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Bran huffed. “She’s stubborn like you’ve never encountered.
“Please, I have a couple centuries on you. I’m sure I’ve encountered worse.”
“You don’t know Sav,” Nate said. “Go ahead and talk to her. You can’t do worse than you already have.”
Nate slipped out of the booth, and Evangeline walked past.
“If she does anything to Savon, I’ll kill her. I don’t care if she’s like a sister, or you fancy yourself her mate-to-be.”
Bran leaned back with a sigh. “Sooner or later, Evangeline is going to realize what she’s missing. Maybe once you’re finally settled and mated to my sister.”
“I don’t know, Bran. I may be too late.”
“She’ll come around. But you should have told me you proposed to her.”
Nate scrubbed a hand over his face. “I probably should have. I need to make this right.”
“You’ll find a way. You always do.”
Chapter 3
Savon should have known her brother had set something up.
But no, she wanted to believe it was all in her head, her imagination playing tricks on her. Not the asshole sneaking in to rip her open all over again.
Leaning over the sink, she cranked the water on, hoping everyone would think she was busy. She needed an escape. Anything to get away from Nate.
The door opened.
“I locked that for a reason,” Savon bit out.
“Savon, I apologize for my attitude. Nathan is a close friend and has been for years. Bran never mentioned you didn’t know the whole story.”
“Try none of the story.” She shut off the water and faced Evangeline. God, she was beautiful. Her imagination provided images of Evangeline’s long legs wrapped around Nate’s hips.
She attempted to push down the jealousy boiling. Twelve years, no contact, she had no reason to be jealous. He wasn’t hers anymore. Besides, Savon didn’t need the spirits to overreact with her unchecked emotions.
Evangeline spoke with her classy and sexy accent. “He was in a coma for two months. He was locked down by his father for several more weeks to make sure he adapted to life as a werewolf. Killian turned Nate, hoping our accelerated healing would provide a solution to the coma. When that didn’t work, he called me to help Nate find his way back. Nathan had every reason not to come to you. He woke up screaming your name, and Killian promised to gut you if he ever went after you.”
Pain rolled through Savon. “Killian hated me. He refused to even tell m
e Nate was alive. And when Nate finally did come back to town, Bran only said Nate couldn’t come to me. Nothing else. Killian may have kept him from me initially, but if he loved me, he could have found a way. You don’t have any idea what I went through. Nate had twelve years to call and say he was sorry, to explain, to give me a reason why he broke my fucking heart. He never bothered. That’s all on Nate.”
Evangeline’s head tipped, her mouth quirking. “He tried in his own way. How can you not know?”
A tiny thread of curiosity wound through her, but anger washed away everything. “If you’re so interested, why don’t you comfort him?” Savon slipped past Evangeline and ducked out the back door.
Going back to the table would only result in a fight. She didn’t have words for Bran. And an apology from Nate was so far overdue it couldn’t change things now. And having him in front of her tore her open all over again.
She wanted to fall into those chocolate eyes and let him wrap his arms around her, take away all the mess in her head. Since he’d disappeared, he’d only brought chaos, and she needed balance.
Savon made it three blocks down the road before someone caught her arm, sending tingles dancing along her nerves. She was spun toward Nate, who looked like someone punched him in the gut.
“Sav, there are so many things I want to say and I don’t know where to begin.”
“Don’t bother. You moved on, became a surgeon. There’s nothing left to say.”
“You’re wrong. I never moved past you. You were always standing in my way.”
She flinched before anger flowed. “Oh, fuck off, Nate. You never tried to find me after your coma.”
“You don’t know the whole story.”
“Too late for that. I don’t care.” She pulled away, taking two steps back.
He dropped his hand but stared into her eyes, pleading. “At least let me give you a ride.”
“No. Go back to Bran and Evangeline.”
“We need to talk.”
Her eyes slid closed. The streetlamps flickered on and off. It was too early and light out for them to be on. The spirits were latching onto her emotions, acting up.
She strangled back a frustrated cry. “Maybe later, when this doesn’t hurt so damned bad, I’ll be able to listen, but right now…” She didn’t finish that statement. He didn’t deserve a chance and she needed to remember that.
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