A Mate For Jackson

by Selena Scott

  They were just pulling into town when she snapped. Couldn’t take it anymore. “I don’t get it.”

  He turned to her with an eyebrow raised but didn’t say anything more.

  “What does my scarf have to do with you breaking your chains and charging upstairs?”

  His face shut down and she knew at a glance that he was not answering this question. At least not in any way that would even remotely satisfy her curiosity.

  “It’s… hard to explain.”

  “How about you give it a shot?”

  He just raised that eyebrow even further. “It’s probably better if we just leave it alone.”

  She should have known that he wouldn’t answer her. He’d roll around naked with her but he wouldn’t tell her the truth about what had happened. And that just pissed her right off. Sometime in the last 24 hours that pesky crush she had on Jackson may have started rearing its head again. She kicked it right back into its hole. Because who needed a guy like him? Who needed someone who was withholding and bitter and secretive? Not her!

  She’d prefer to be on her own than spending time with a guy like that.

  When he pulled up to her apartment building, Kaya took a deep breath and did what Natalie would want her to do. She turned to him, clutching her bag on her lap. “Thank you for helping me yesterday and giving me a place to stay. I really appreciate it. I’m not sure what would have happened if you hadn’t come along.”

  He said nothing, but his knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.

  “I’d like to pay you for gas.”

  “Absolutely not,” he bit out. He turned away from her. “Jesus.”

  “Jackson, I—”

  “Get out of the car, Kaya. You’re welcome. Now, please. Just get out of the car.”

  Stung, pissed off, and through the roof with incensed anger, Kaya did just that. She slammed out of the car and into her apartment building, never looking back.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Jackson drove away from Kaya’s house at least forty miles per hour over the speed limit. He’d always loved driving fast but this wasn’t because he wanted it. It was because he needed it. If he didn’t get away from her as fast as he possibly could, he was going to ruin everything. He was going to drive back to her house and fall on his knees. He was going to beg her forgiveness. Worse yet, he was just going to tell her everything.

  It killed him that he couldn’t even tell her the truth. That seemed to be the very least that he owed her.

  And what was with the whole refusing his apology thing? He replayed her words in his mind over and over again. She wouldn’t accept his apology because she thought that doing so would be a cosign on his own personal self-hatred? Of all the ludicrous—

  “Shit,” he grumbled as he pulled into his own driveway. “She’s totally right.”

  He dragged his things into his house and didn’t bother looking around. It was too quiet in here. It was too sterile. Too lonely.

  His family was all stuck upstate until they got dug out of the resort, so for the day, at least, he was alone in Boulder.

  Not that it wasn’t a fully populated town, but he couldn’t help but feel like he was trapped with Kaya again. First in the cabin and now in his own hometown.

  On autopilot, he got into his running gear and took off down his usual running path. He and Sarah, who was an Olympian, did a fourteen-mile loop once or twice a week. That was usually enough exercise for him to keep the demons at bay. He’d never done it alone before but he was going to now.

  Every pounding step he took he replayed the night again and again. His memories as a wolf were foggy and strange. They weren’t classifiable the way that human memories were. He could see her face. Hear her voice. He’d known that she’d been speaking to him, but couldn’t make out any of the words. He’d known she was scared and had done his best to hold still so as not to scare her. Eventually she’d fallen asleep and he’d known it was his duty to watch over her. He’d even gotten a few hours of shuteye. Something that was almost unheard of in his wolf form.

  One memory that wasn’t foggy at all, that was painfully clear, in fact, was how it had felt to shift back to his human form and have her there, all blue eyes and messy hair and the blanket up to her chin. He’d been overcome, more overcome than he’d been as a wolf, even. Her scent was everywhere, the memory of how calm and sweet she’d been the night before, all of it swamped him and he’d had to go to her. He’d been mindless of the fact that they were not really friends who hugged. Mindless of the fact that he was naked. Mindless of the fact that he was lying on top of her and holding her as close as a lover. All he’d known was that his brave woman had made it through the night with a wolf at her side and she wasn’t screaming at him or skittering away. She was hugging him back.

  “Why the heck did she hug me back?” he asked himself as he jogged back up his lawn a few hours later.

  He spent some time stretching, showering, and eating half the pizza he’d ordered. Then, because his body demanded it, he fell into bed and slept a dreamless sleep. When he opened his eyes, it was 8 p.m. and dark as midnight.

  He knew immediately what had woken him. Loneliness. His house was too quiet, too dark. He was still tired, but there was something else thrumming through him that wouldn’t allow him to roll over and go back to sleep. He hauled himself out of bed, brushed his teeth, and pulled some clean clothes on.

  He frowned at himself in the mirror when he realized that he was fixing his hair. This was ridiculous.

  Without thinking too hard on his actions, he called in an order to a Mexican restaurant he’d always liked and headed over there, that foreign thing still thrumming through him.

  He knew what it was.

  He was thrumming with the reason that Kaya had hugged him back. Because Kaya was truly a kind and sweet person. She was not playing games with him. She was just going to treat him well. Probably no matter what. No matter how much of a dick he was.

  He stopped at a fancy grocery store after picking up the food and came out with a bag of goodies. Not ten minutes later, he was idling in her parking lot, trying to simultaneously talk himself into and out of this idea.

  In the end, it was the fact that they were both alone in this town tonight that had him turning his car off and grabbing the bags he’d brought with him. He checked the list at the front door and saw that she was apartment 4R.

  He took the stairs two by two and was slightly out of breath when he got to her door. His heart was tight with each beat as he stared at the wooden door that looked like every other wooden door in that hallway. The only difference was that it was her wooden door. Which made it irrevocably precious to him.

  Finally, he let out a long breath and knocked on her door. A few seconds later there were footsteps. “Who is it?”

  “Jackson.”

  There was a pause. “Jackson who?”

  How many Jacksons could she possibly know? “Durant.”

  The door opened a crack, still on its chain, and he was treated to a view of just one of her striking blue eyes, tropical blue in the middle and navy blue around the iris. The door closed, he heard the chain clacking, and then it swung open. She was revealed. She wore leggings, an oversized sweatshirt, wool socks up to her knees and bunchy slippers. Her hair, which was still damp from a shower, was piled onto her head in two messy buns that reminded Jackson of cat ears. The scent of coconuts wafted over toward him. He cleared his throat and reached into the bag he’d set on the floor.

  He pulled out a bouquet of purple mums and held them out to her.

  “You have to let me apologize,” he started.

  “You can’t be serious.” She was looking at him like he was a complete and total whacko. Maybe he was.

  “The flowers aren’t doing it for you? All right. That’s fine.” He shoved them into her hand and then reached back into the bag. He resurfaced with vegan chocolate ice cream.

  She squinted at the label. “Is that dairy-free ice cream?”


  “You’re a nutritionist so I figured you’d want the healthier stuff. Especially after all that crap you had to eat at the cabin. No to the ice cream? I brought healthy cookies, too. And, like, a fruit salad thing.”

  He shuffled it all out of the bag and into her arms. Next came the mixed six-pack of beer. “I know you like sour beer so I got you a variety. And of course, pretzels to go with the beer.”

  She struggled to hold all of it. “What the hell is all of this?”

  “I brought a bunch of stuff hoping that at least one of these things would get me through your door so that we could talk.”

  She sighed, looking down at everything with a rather bemused expression. “Jackson, you’re kind of a freak.”

  “Tell me about it. If that doesn’t do it, then I brought this.” He held up the takeout bag of Mexican food and she sniffed the air.

  “Is that…”

  “Enchiladas from Tio’s? Yes. Yes, it is.”

  She sighed, her face pinched in suspicion, but then she stepped aside. “Fine. You can come in. Bring the Mexican food.”

  Resisting the urge to pump a fist in the air, Jackson followed her into her studio apartment. He’d known that it was a studio, but he’d never been there before and he hadn’t exactly mentally prepared for being in her space. She was everywhere in the apartment: propped open books, coffee cups in the sink, her messily made bed not more than fifteen feet from him. He quickly turned his back on the bed and started unpacking the food onto her table. She put most of his gifts away, propping his flowers up in the sink as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.

  Then, she cracked two of the beers he’d brought and sat at the table with him.

  “Just because I let you come in doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind about the apology thing,” she informed him, opening her takeout box.

  “Understood.” He was quiet for a minute. “For the record… I think you were right about that.”

  She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Which part?”

  “That any apology I made right then wasn’t going to mean what I thought it was going to mean. It was just going to be a way for me to confirm that I’d been terrible to you.”

  “You weren’t terr—”

  “Hold on, I’d really like to get this out.”

  “All right.”

  “Kaya.” He set his knife and fork down and took a swig of beer, wincing as soon as he realized it was a sour. Not his taste. “Look. I’m not going to apologize for what happened when I was a wolf because, as far as I can tell, that was all kind of a freak accident. The door was accidentally open, your scarf, you having to get up and move around… all of it was the perfect storm. But it sounds like having me there in my wolf form wasn’t traumatizing for you and I was actually pretty well mannered, considering. So, yeah. I’m gonna skip that apology.”

  She looked pretty intrigued by him and so he took that as a sign to continue.

  “I definitely owe you an apology for the way I talked to you in the car. It’s just that sometimes, when I’m around you, I feel like I might… explode. And I need space right away. But I was rude to you. And for that, I apologize. It’s not the man I want to be.”

  He opened his mouth to keep going, but she held up a hand.

  “What do you mean that I make you feel like you’re going to explode?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Just like the scarf thing was hard to explain.”

  “Right.” He looked down at his food and pushed it around a little bit. “The other thing I need to apologize for is jumping on you this morning. I should never have done that. I pinned you down, I was naked. God.” He dragged a hand over his face. “I just hope that it didn’t screw you up or something.”

  “Screw me up? Jackson, it was actually kind of nice.”

  He frowned. He had not expected that to be her reaction. “Oh.”

  A quietness descended on them.

  His mind felt like it was working much too slowly. It was confusing to be in her space. He was almost high on her. After so many years of depriving himself of her, even the smallest exposure was liable to send him to the clouds. But this? Alone over dinner in a colorful apartment that smelled like her and looked like her with her hair in a messy pile on her head and her feet tucked under her as she ate? Yeah. He was kind of spinning.

  “Are you done apologizing?”

  He cleared his throat. “I feel like there’s more. But… I can’t really think of it right now. Actually, I can’t really think at all.”

  He scraped his hand over his face again, over his hair. He needed a cup of coffee and a swim in a frigid lake. He needed fresh air. He needed ice water. Preferably the kind he could dump over his head.

  “Jackson?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Look, don’t take this the wrong way or anything. But why the hell are you in my house right now?”

  He pressed his fingers into his brow and downed half the swamp beer in one go. “I have no fucking clue, Kaya. I wish I could explain it. Even to myself.”

  “Because,” she cleared her throat and pinned him with those tropical blues, “it doesn’t really feel like you came over here to apologize. It kind of feels like you came over here for another reason.”

  His blood formed icy spikes in his veins. Was he really that transparent? Was she reading him like a book right now? Could she see something that Jackson himself couldn’t even see? “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged. “You tell me. Why don’t you explain my scarf, or why you feel like you’re going to explode, or why you show up at my door bearing gifts?” She pushed her plate away. “I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me, Jackson. Like there’s something that if I understood it, all this stuff would make sense to me. But you won’t tell me, so I’m stuck with all these disparate pieces.”

  She was very, very perceptive. And she was also making Jackson very, very nervous. He pushed his plate away and white-knuckled his beer. He shouldn’t have come. It was a mistake. She was totally right. He’d tricked himself into thinking that he had to come over here and make sure she was all right, apologize to her and mean it. But really, the whole time, in his heart of hearts, he’d just wanted to see her. He’d gotten greedy over the last 24 hours, having her in his car, in the cabin, falling asleep next to her, hugging her, holding her. And now he wanted more. He couldn’t be trusted. Anything he said might just be him trying to convince himself that more Kaya was a good idea.

  “It’s better if we just leave it alone,” he said eventually, his voice gruff.

  “Jackson.” Her voice was so gentle that he somehow felt even more pinned in place. Her eyes were trapping him, her sweetness. And then, oh God, her hand landed on his wrist. “You’re the one who isn’t leaving it alone. You’re the one who showed up here with dessert and flowers and whatever the heck that thing your face is doing right now.”

  He had to laugh. Because he could feel how hard his face was pulled into a frown, how tense his jaw was. “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”

  “I don’t know how to make it easy for you. I don’t even know the rules to this game.”

  It was that honesty, that patience, that intuition of hers that was breaking him. He didn’t stop himself from setting down his beer bottle. He didn’t stop himself from flattening his fingers against the table, and then he didn’t stop himself from flipping his arm over and sliding his hand down so that he was suddenly palm to palm with her.

  Kaya looked alarmed and unsure as a bright pink blush popped up on her cheeks. They sat like that for a long minute, just holding hands and looking at the exact spot where they touched one another. Jackson took long breaths but he wasn’t calming down; in fact, he was gathering up, racing toward something, his blood pumping liquid metal.

  He was going to tell her.

  Holy fucking shit.

  Almost forty years of stranglingly tight self-control and tonight he was finally going to l
ose his grip on himself. Tonight he was apparently just gonna say fuck it and pull the rip cord, pray there was a parachute somewhere in his heart.

  He could feel his heartbeat in his palm and he knew that she could, too. Her eyes jumped up to his.

  “My wolf reacted that way to your scarf because it had your scent on it, Kaya.”

  “It made you… hungry?” she guessed, her teeth pressing into her bottom lip.

  He chuckled, though he wasn’t any less nervous than he’d been before he’d started confessing to her. “In a way. But not for food.” He took another deep breath. “I feel like I’m going to explode when I’m around you, I’m here with gifts tonight, I’m always pushing you away, all for the same reason.”

  She still bit her lip. He wasn’t sure she was breathing. It was like she didn’t want to disturb a single thing about the moment lest she ruin something and not be able to find out the secret.

  “I’m connected to you, whether I like it or not. And sometimes I try to fight it. For your own good. Like when I kicked you out of the car today. Or when, last year, I told you we couldn’t be friends. But sometimes I just can’t fight it anymore. Like last night.” His eyes caught on hers. “Or tonight. I should be able to fight it. I should be stronger than this.”

  “What do you mean? Fight what? What kind of connection are we talking about here?” She bit that lip again and he could feel heat pumping from her hand. “You mean, like, a crush?”

  He laughed, almost bitterly. “No, Kaya. I don’t mean a crush. I mean that you’re my mate.”

  She opened and closed her mouth. She looked like a beautiful tropical fish with those eyes of her and her golden skin. Shock gave way to befuddlement. “Mate,” she repeated dimly.

  “Mate.” He punctuated it with a nod and felt goosebumps rise all over his body. It felt freakily good to freely say the word out loud. He’d known for years, kept it a secret for years, because he’d never seen the upside to telling her. But now, upside or not, he’d told her and he felt as if he were a hermit crab who’d just shed a shell that was much too small for him. Perhaps he was a little freaked out and vulnerable without protection, but he couldn’t ignore how good it felt not to be constricted by his own secrecy for even a second longer.