“No, I’m asking if you’re frigid or if you know how to be nice.”
“I have no reason to be nice to you,” she said. “Excuse me, I’m meeting someone.”
“No reason. That’s cute. I think you have a very good reason to be nice. You’ve been spoiling our fun.”
There’s three of them. Damn. Why didn’t you make the connection sooner? Smart daughter indeed. She glared at Alan. “You think chasing juvenile wolves around until they’re shaking is fun?”
“We wouldn’t have chased her if she hadn’t run.”
He was sneering again, and she felt her stomach do a flip. “You going to chase me, too?” She tried to walk past them, but he pushed her back into the corner.
“No. You’re not going anywhere.”
His buddies moved closer too.
She eyed them warily. Just survive. Phillipe will be here any minute. He’ll put a stop to this. He’ll save you. He said he loved you. He’ll be here any minute.
Alan stepped closer, grabbed her pony tail, and kissed her hard. She stayed still, intent on just surviving, on not riling them up any more than they already were. He took her silence as encouragement and kept kissing her. He released her hair, grabbing her shoulder instead. The kiss seemed to go on forever and she felt a tear roll down her cheek.
Finally, a voice barked, “What the hell are you doing out here? Get off her!”
Alan released her, pushing her back as he did, then turned to face the new comer.
“Patrick.” There was no fear, no panic in his voice. He was completely casual, seemingly unconcerned that he’d been caught kissing and groping a woman against her will.
“Get out of here or I’ll raise enough racket to bring the whole pack out of those doors.”
“Okay, okay, we’re going. See you later, Brigid.” He sauntered off, his goons a step behind.
Patrick didn’t move until he heard their car door slam, then he rushed to his sister’s side. “Are you okay?”
“No. I just want to go home.” The control she’d held onto by a thread snapped and she broke down sobbing. He hurried her to the car and opened the passenger door for her.
When she’d stopped crying, she pulled out her phone and texted Phillipe. Sorry. Suddenly not feeling well. Have to cancel tonight. Forgive me?
When they turned down their street, she sent him a second text. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Okay?
She sighed and put the phone away.
“What is it?”
“Just messaging my friend.”
“The one who was supposed to pick you up? Did you tell them what happened? Is everything okay?”
“I cancelled.”
“They’ll understand.”
“I hope so. I didn’t really explain. I mean, how do you put that in a text?”
There was a moment of silence and then he said, “It’s Phillipe, isn’t it?”
“What’s Phillipe?”
“You’re friend, the one you were waiting for. You two are seeing each other.”
“I was just going out for drinks with a friend. Besides, he’s your friend.”
Patrick slammed on the brakes and they both lurched forward in their seats.
“What the hell, Patty?”
“Get out.”
“What?” she stammered.
“I can see the house from here. It’s four doors. You’re safe. I’m not ready to go home yet.”
“Of for fuck’s sake. Okay, yes, I was waiting for Phil. Yes, we’re seeing each other. We didn’t want to tell you because we knew you’d react like this.”
“My best friend and my sister are lying to me for weeks, maybe months, and I’m not supposed to be pissed off about that?”
“You told Phil he couldn’t date me. You would have been mad no matter how or when you found out.”
“Look, I didn’t come out to rescue you. I had somewhere to go and that’s where I’m going now.”
“Where’s that?”
“To get drunk. The motive may have changed but the goal remains the same.”
“Fine.” She slammed her thumb down on the seat belt button and got out of the car. She slammed her door and growled as her brother put it in gear and took off. His tail lights disappeared around a corner a moment later. Tears sprang to her eyes. “At least things can’t get any worse.”
She walked home, grateful it was a nice night. She settled on the couch and pulled out her phone. It took her a moment to find her Alpha’s phone number in her contact list and then she hit dial. After a few rings, it went to voicemail.
“Hi Louis. It’s Brigid O’Leary. Something happened this evening and I wanted you to know about it. Look, I feel weird leaving it on your voicemail so I’m going to send you an email, okay? I’ll see you at the full moon.”
She wandered to her room and powered up her laptop. While she waited for it to start, she went to the kitchen and made herself some tea. She brought it back to her room and signed in to her email.
She selected ‘new message’ and started typing. She told Louis about the full moon that started all this. She told him about Anne’s reluctance to change the next month and how she stepped up to protect the girl. She told him about Alan and his friends in the parking lot, about what they said to her and how he forced a kiss on her.
“I don’t think Anne is the first girl they were chasing around,” she said. “But I have no proof. Maybe you can ask around? And something else. Patrick is in a mood and I’m worried about him. He’s gone off drinking right now. I think something happened after I left the meeting and before he stepped out to rescue me, but he wouldn’t tell me what. I know this is a lot to drop on you but you always say it’s your job to look out for all of us, right?”
She added her name to the bottom and hit send. Her tea was gone, and she was feeling exhausted. She put her cup away and got ready for bed. Last thing before turning off her phone for the night, she sent Phillipe one more text. Good night, Phil. She turned off the light and crawled into bed.
Phillipe sat on his couch staring at the floor between his feet. There was a bottle of scotch on the table, half full. He’d just bought it on the way home. He hadn’t planned on sitting alone, drinking himself into a stupor tonight. In fact he rarely drank, but he needed something to numb his emotions.
He was feeling numb now, so much so that he wasn’t sure where his fingers were unless he was staring at them. The one thing he couldn’t lose was the image in his mind.
How could she do this? I thought she actually cared. I thought she was different. Why did I have to be born a monster?
Something rang. He looked up slowly, looking around for the source of the sound. His cellphone was sitting on the little end table he’d put near the bottom of the stairs so he’d have somewhere to dump his keys and the rest of the shit in his pockets after work. The screen was lit up and it was ringing.
He walked over, surprising himself by not crashing into anything. He picked up the phone and hit the green button. “Hello?”
“You asshole.”
He frowned. “Patrick?”
“The fuck, didn’t you look at the screen? Of course it’s Patrick. How could you do this?”
“Why are you yelling?” he asked, putting a hand on his forehead. He needed to sit down.
“Because I’m fucking pissed off at you, that’s why. You said you wouldn’t do it. You said we were blowing this fucking town as soon as we had the money. But you don’t have the money, do you? That’s how she got the fucking needles. You fell for her. My SISTER! You asshole.”
“Patrick, look, this isn’t...”
“Don’t even start. You don’t get to lie to me anymore. I thought we were friends.”
“We are.”
“You lied to me, I don’t even know how many times. Are you fucking her too? Fuck, I don’t want to know. Just, we’re done, okay?”
“Can we just...”
“Unless you’re calling me with a fistful of cash and a ticket out
of dodge, don’t call me. We’re done.”
The line went dead.
Phillipe stared at it for a long time. His head was pounding, his thoughts were swimming around his head, making him dizzy. He squeezed his eyes shut, but things weren’t any better when he opened them again.
“Ah fuck it,” he muttered. He dropped the phone on the table again and staggered off to bed.
He’d been drifting through the last few weeks. The drinking had been a bad idea so he hadn’t repeated it, even though there was still half a bottle of scotch on his counter waiting to be finished. He worked and slept and ate and went to clan functions when he had to, avoiding Brigid so he wouldn’t have to confront her about what he saw.
He got through the next full moon without having to explain any of this to Remy. His clan chief was more focused on what had been going on with Phillipe’s parents.
“I’m sorry you had to cut them out,” Remy said. “I had a good home, a good childhood, so I don’t like to see families fall apart. But I can understand when they have to. You stuck it out longer than most people would, and you did it at my request. If you’re done, you’re done.”
“Thanks, Remy. I just can’t handle their bullshit drama anymore.”
“Language,” Jules said as he came in. “There are ladies present.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Jane said.
“I second that,” Tara added.
Jules just grinned. The usual banter took over and Remy sifted through everyone else’s news. The attention shifted away from Phillipe and he focused on keeping it that way.
He managed to avoid Brigid with a few vague texts about being busy for another week. He was relaxing on the couch, enjoying a rare evening when he had no obligations to anyone, when his doorbell rang. Frowning, he paused his game and jogged up the stairs.
Brigid was standing on the doorstep. She was looking back down the walk, her hands twisting back and forth, and when he opened the door she quickly smiled at him. “Hey, sorry for dropping in unannounced. I haven’t seen you in weeks. I was starting to get worried.”
“Sorry, uh, it’s been really busy lately.”
“So I gathered. Do you have a few minutes? Could I come in?”
“Sure, yeah. Just, uh, let me tidy a few things away.”
“I’ll walk down the stairs real slow.”
He hurried ahead of her, shut the game off, and hid the liquor bottle. He was still hustling laundry out of the living room when she made it to the bottom. She settled on the couch to wait for him.
“So, uh, Patrick knows about us,” Brigid said. “Sorry, I know we said we weren’t going to tell him but he confronted me about it.”
“It’s fine,” Phillipe said, thinking about the fight he and Patrick had just finished a few weeks earlier. “It had to happen sometime. It’s not your fault.”
“So, why are you avoiding me?”
“I’m not, I’m just busy. Look, I need to get going.” They were in his apartment, so he couldn’t very well leave until she did, but he might be able to convince her to get going if she thought he had somewhere to be.”
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I just had a fight with my best friend. Everyone at work blames me for Coraline getting fired. And I have a low-life thug trying to hire me to work muscle for me.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“It doesn’t. I’m just busy, tired, stressed...”
“You’re not even returning my text messages half the time!”
“I don’t want to talk about this, okay? I need to go. I have work tonight.”
“No you don’t. I already called them and asked.”
“You called the club?”
“I didn’t want to come down here if you weren’t home and I didn’t want to ask you because I was worried you’d lie to shut me out. You need to tell me what’s going on. I think I deserve to know.”
“I think you already know.” Her being here, her pushing like this, it was making everything feel raw and exposed again. He just wanted her to go so he wouldn’t have to think anymore.
She rolled her eyes. “I am so tired of cryptic male bullshit right now. What am I supposed to know?”
“That I’m a fling, I’m nothing to you. Were you planning on telling me we weren’t exclusive? You said it didn’t bother you that I was a bear. I should have known better. It isn’t going to work.”
“What isn’t going to work?”
“Us! I’m just a way for you to kill time until a proper mate comes along.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked but she had a sinking feeling that she already knew.
“I was early. The night of the new moon, when I was supposed to pick you up? I was early and I saw you making out with your wolf friend.”
“We weren’t making out.”
“I saw you!!”
“You saw him kissing me against my will.”
“You weren’t fighting him off. Coraline kissed me, so I know all about unwanted attention. I nearly put her through a coffee table to get her off me.”
“There were three of them, Phillipe. Three! And all of them wolves. I didn’t know how far they’d go. I didn’t want them to hurt me. All I could think about was surviving long enough for you to rescue me. They were mad at me, I was ‘interfering’ as they called it. They wanted to make me pay. If Patrick hadn’t come out when he did...”
Possessiveness replaced the sting of rejection and his anger shifted from her to the men who had dared try to hurt her, like a switch being thrown. “Who are they?”
“Why?”
“Someone should teach them a lesson.” He balled his hands into fists.
“You?” She laughed but it sounded shrill, harsh.
“They hurt you.”
“I don’t need rescuing now! Phillipe, you walked away! You saw them harassing me and you walked away. Patrick rescued me, and he found out about us in the process. And he hasn’t spoken to me since, by the way. My Alpha has already been informed and is taking care of the rest because this is pack business and doesn’t concern you.”
“You...”
“This concerned you when it was happening, when they were attempting to do God knows what to your girlfriend, and you chose not to get involved.”
He deflated. All the defensiveness and anger just drained away. “Brigid, I’m sorry.”
“For what? For thinking the worst of me? Or for abandoning me when I needed you?”
“I-” There was so much he wanted to say about the money, the needles, her suspicions about the girls at work. None of it sounded like an apology. “I don’t know.”
“Look, I’m angry right now. I think I’m allowed to be angry given what’s happened to me. I don’t want your apologies. I don’t want you to make it up to me with some stupid romantic gesture. What I want is for you to explain to me why you thought I was cheating instead of thinking I might need help. Until you can do that, I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t even want to look at you.” She got up and headed for the stairs.
“Brigid.”
“No. I can’t do this right now.”
He watched her walk up the stairs and out the door. The finality of that click, soft when she had every right to slam it behind her, broke his heart.
Chapter 12
The next night at work, Phillipe wandered upstairs to Bastien’s office. Bastien seemed surprised to see him. “What can I do for you?”
“Call Bruno. Tell him if he’s still hiring I’d take a one-off job.”
“Oh? That’s surprising. I honestly thought you’d never give in.”
“Yeah, well, things change. I need the money.”
“Everything all right?”
“Yeah. Just had to help a friend through an emergency and I’d like to make that money back sooner rather than later.”
“Fair enough,” Bastien said, nodding. “I’ll give him a call. He’ll probably be here by the end of your shift, if he
doesn’t have a job lined up for tonight already.”
“Sure.”
He went back to work. The girls weren’t too frisky in line tonight, which was a good thing. His patience was paper thin and he was afraid that the first girl to try to kiss him would get punched. Sure enough, Bruno and his heavily muscled associates were waiting in the back room at closing time. Phillipe studied them a moment. He couldn’t even be sure they were the same two guys who had accompanied Bruno that night at the parking lot. Though he supposed he looked much the same as any other bouncer, at least to the people waiting in line.
“Phillipe,” Bruno said, extending a hand. He wore a light-weight jacket from some designer brand that played up his small frame and dark features. “Have a seat. Once the traffic dies down, we’ll talk.”
Phillipe accepted the outstretched hand and the invitation to sit, but pointedly ignored Bruno’s attempts at small talk. The smaller man gave up quickly and they waited for the rest of the staff to go home.
“What changed your mind?” Bruno said.
“Doesn’t matter. Do you have a job?”
“Sure. I need a few guys to stand around and look big. All you need to do is intimidate a few people into compliance and keep your mouth shut about it afterwards.”
“I’ve got a friend who’d like to help us out with this.” Patrick hadn’t actually agreed to this, but considering how good the money was, and how badly Patrick wanted out, Phillipe was sure his friend would be on board.
“I don’t like hiring people I haven’t met.”
“He’s good in a fight and knows how to keep his mouth shut. And if this job pays as well as you’ve been promising, we’ll both be too far out of town to do you any harm in a matter of weeks.”
“Well then, I guess I’d better make this worth your while.”
Phillipe found Bruno’s smile unsettling but choked down his unease and smiled back. Things will still be tight. Brigid had done a real number on his bank account. But there’s some shit he could sell off, and if Patrick and him room together after the move, then they could make it work. He listened to all the details, times, places, plans, and most especially, how to get paid. They shook on it and Bruno left, taking his muscle with him.
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