by T. S. Joyce
“Yes. But it’s not why I stayed.”
Holt stood and ran his hand down his beard. “I want you to leave.”
“No. Please Holt, just let me explain. I quit my job. I didn’t give them anything. I’m protecting you—”
“Protecting me? Do you even know how to tell the truth, Bre?” he yelled. “Do you even know what the truth is anymore?”
“Yes, of course I do! I’m going to protect you, I promise, just—”
“Protecting me isn’t your job anymore.” He grabbed her suitcase from behind him and strode down the stairs with it. No, this wasn’t happening. She’d quit.
“I wanted to talk to you about it, but I didn’t know how.”
“It’s easy, Hollywood. You don’t invade a private man’s property with the intent to betray him, and then there’s no need for explanations.”
“I’m sorry, Holt. I couldn’t follow through with the story because I fell in love with you.” She was sobbing now, following him to her truck.
She pulled on the suitcase, but he yanked it out of her hands and rounded on her. “I was wrong! You aren’t a Lachlan. Lachlans are loyal.” His glowing eyes flashed with such hatred. “You’re just like all the other humans.”
Those words cut her like the blades of a dozen knives, right through her heart. “No,” she murmured as he tossed her suitcase into the back of her truck. “Please, Holt. Just give me ten minutes, and I’ll—”
“Trust is earned, Bre.” He rested his back against her truck and slammed his head back, stared at the sky. “It’s earned and then it’s deserved, but you failed.” When he looked back at her, the moisture rimming his eyes broke her heart the rest of the way. “I should’ve never let you in. You’ve caused damage you can never undo. Please just leave me alone.”
The way he’d worded that…
He hadn’t just said please leave. He’d said please leave him alone. Alone. Because of her, he would never trust again. He would cling to his swamp, to his territory, defending it alone until the day the Lachlan curse took him, and she wouldn’t be here.
Tears streamed down her face in an endless river.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered brokenly. She pulled his new phone out of her pocket. Stupidly, she’d changed his lock screen to a picture of them to surprise him, but that didn’t matter now. She didn’t have it in her to change it. “Here.” She handed it to him.
And then she got in her truck, turned a wide loop in the yard, and made her way back up the driveway. Her sniffles and hitched breaths were her soundtrack as she drove away from him. In the rearview, she could see him watching her leave, his hands looped behind his head, the look of heartbreak swimming in those striking alligator eyes. She was going to miss him so much.
And there was nothing she could do. No way to save them.
She’d ruined both of their futures, and she would never forgive herself until she made it right.
At least for him. Because that’s what love was. It was owning mistakes and doing better for the other person. It was keeping them safe from harm, even if it hurt to do it.
One.
That was the number of men she’d ever loved.
One.
That was the number of losses that would echo through her entire life.
One.
Bre broke down in sobs as she hit the main road.
One was the number of mistakes she would never be able to forgive herself for.
Chapter Sixteen
Bre lifted her fist to the door, but hesitated just before knocking. This would change everything. It would further ruin her relationship with Holt, but it could make him safer. Maybe, just maybe, she could help break the Lachlan Curse from afar.
Before she disappeared into obscurity, she could give him this. So Bre knocked on the cheap hotel door.
When Brian opened it, he had never looked more confused. “Why are you crying? Are you okay?”
“Yes. No.” She fell forward and buried her face in his chest as another round of tears came on.
He sighed and patted her back awkwardly. He’d always been like a brother to her and so weird about hugging. “Holt found out, didn’t he?”
She couldn’t do much more than nod.
“Aw, shit. Well, what are you going to do about it? Do you have a plan?”
Bre stepped back and wiped her eyes. That was enough of the breaking down. She could do that later, but right now she needed to do something big. Something that required her to be stronger than she’d ever been before.
She lifted her eyes to Brian, lifted her chin, and straightened her spine. “I need your help.”
Chapter Seventeen
This was his least favorite part of the day.
The walk home from the shop felt really different now. Hell, he’d started bringing Fargo with him to work just to ease the loneliness.
Loneliness. The whole reason he’d put that stupid ad out for a mate in the first place, and where did that get him? He watched Fargo’s back as the shepherd trotted through the woods ahead of him. He’d been stronger before, but Bre had come in and given him an awful gift. She’d opened the door to his cage of loneliness and set him free. And now he had to figure out how to sit in the cage again and watch the rest of the world keep turning without him. He used to live for solitude. Solitude was safe. It kept people at arm’s length and away from the truth about what he was.
But Bre had seen him. She’d seen him, all of him, even the pieces he hadn’t realized existed inside him. The feelings and emotions he thought he was incapable of—she’d brought them all out. And at the time, it had been invigorating. Terrifying, but exciting, because he’d had hope that he wasn’t going to walk and leave the world alone. Bre would be with him.
For thirty-five years, he’d lived like a ghost. But for a week, he had lived.
How did he go back now? How could he feel fulfilled with his quiet life? Without laughter or someone to care about his day?
His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he checked the screen. Like every other time he saw the selfie of him and Bre that she had put on his phone, his heart clenched. Oh, he could change the picture, but he wasn’t ready yet. It was the last trace of her. Three days into purgatory, and he was still clinging to a silly picture where she was smiling up at him like he was important. And that’s what people wanted, right? To feel important to someone. To anyone. It was a basic human need, and Bre had taught him that it was a basic shifter need, too.
Gram was calling, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t talk to her now and explain how fucked up everything had gotten. She would be so sad, and he couldn’t be the one to tell her that what he was had been more important to Bre than who he was.
Holt moved to shove the phone back into his pocket, but a text lit up the screen. It was Liam.
Answer your gram’s call, asshole.
What the fuck?
Gram called again.
Holt paused in the woods, under the rays of evening sunlight, just in view of Bre’s weeping willow. That’s what he called it now. He could never see those low-hanging branches again without thinking about how he’d touched her body under them.
“Hey, Gram,” he answered the call somberly.
“Boy, you need to get up to Tackey’s. Right now. Get in your truck and come up here.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Something big. Something I want you to see.” Gram swallowed audibly, and her voice went all thick. “Something I want you to see.”
“Okay. Okay, Gram, I’ll be right there.” He hung up and jogged the last hundred yards to his Bronco. Something was happening. Something big. Gram never asked him to come into town; she knew how much he hated it.
Tackey’s, the place where he’d taken Bre the first night he’d met her. More memories to lock away. More hurt, but if Gram needed something, she was all he had left. And Lachlans took care of each other.
Fargo came right along with him and waited at the door of the Bronco, so
okay. Fuck it. “Get on in the truck, boy,” he murmured, opening the door.
Fargo hopped into the passenger seat, and Holt peeled out of his driveway and headed for town, right past the firefly fields he would never visit again and straight into the parking lot of Tackey’s.
The lot was full, and people were streaming inside. Even the street was covered in parked cars.
“What the hell?” he murmured. He had no choice but to park on the grassy abandoned lot beside the restaurant. Even that was filling up. The outside-bar was chock full of people drinking and watching a big-screen television someone had set up beside it.
Seemed like everyone in Uncertain had turned out for a random bar night. This was his nightmare, being shoved in a small space with all these humans.
But just as he changed his mind and was about to turn right back around, he saw Gram. She was standing beside the door, her cheeks flushed as she stared at him.
Heaving a sigh, he made his way to the bar door, zigzagging around the other patrons pouring in.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“Hurry. It’s starting now, and I have a seat saved for us up front.”
Gram grabbed his hand, like she had when he was a little kid, and she pulled him right inside Tackey’s, past the host stand, through the crowds of people and to the bar. To the same seats he’d sat in with Bre. Fuck, his chest hurt.
Liam sat on his other side, but the gator inside of Holt was still. He didn’t even feel like fighting, more proof that Bre had broken him completely with her betrayal.
Liam slid a pair of beers over to Holt and Gram. His too-bright eyes were hidden by sunglasses, but Holt could still see the glow. “What is this?”
“A beer.”
Now Holt just wanted to punch him in his sarcastic face. “I mean why is everyone here?”
“Bre set this up,” Gram said, staring up at a brand new, huge television someone had mounted behind the bar.
“Bre?” he asked, sitting up straighter. “Gram, I have to tell you something about her. Something she did.”
“Oh, I know what she did. She called me and told me everything. I think I’ve watched every story she’s reported over the last three days. I’m proud of her. She’s real good at what she does.”
“But…” Holt frowned and looked at Liam, then back to Gram. “She came here to expose me.”
Gram took a long drink of her beer and then leveled him with a gaze. “You didn’t listen to her, boy. She came here to betray you.” Gram arched her eyebrow. “She couldn’t follow through. You became hers to protect instead. Look around you. What do you see?”
“A bunch of fuckin’ townies,” he murmured, frowning at a massive buffet line set up against the wall. That was a first. Tackey’s didn’t do buffet-style meals.
“Bre spent her life savings to pay for this party,” Liam rumbled.
“Why? Why would she do that?”
Liam pointed to the television screen with the neck of his beer. “So they can all see this.”
On the TV, Bre sat on the bench of a picnic table in front of the Norman Motel in town. She was wearing a blue sundress, and her hair was done in perfect curls cascading down her shoulders. Her eyes were all done up with makeup, but her freckles were on display. She sat ramrod straight, her hands clasped in her lap, her lips trembling slightly.
A man’s voice asked a question. “What were you sent here to do?”
“To get the public a story on a real shifter.” She cleared her throat and lifted her chin higher. “Before I start, I want to say something. I know what I’m about to do will hurt a man I love. I know he’ll never forgive me, and I know I have to live with that. But if I can keep him safe, it’s worth it to me.”
“Start from the beginning,” the man encouraged her.
“This was supposed to be the story that made my career. And so I ignored the little voice inside of me, telling me it was wrong to trick a person. I convinced myself that Holt Lachlan wasn’t really a man, that he was just an animal. That’s how I justified answering his ad for a mate and tricking him.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I lasted a day.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I met him, he was prickly and private. He wouldn’t talk to me about anything real, and I didn’t understand his reactions to anything. I didn’t understand his instincts. But he took me to this place in the woods and showed me this swarm of fireflies.” The scene cut to his woods, his special place, the lights of the bugs blinking rapidly.
Around him, people were murmuring low, but their attention was on the TV. Joe turned up the volume even louder while Holt sat there frozen to his seat.
“He showed me something special to him, and there was a shift in my heart. He wasn’t some cold-blooded predator shifter and nothing more. He was a man. He took me to eat in town so I could try the local food.” She smiled and wiped a tear before it felt to her cheek, and then she gave a little wave. “Hello, Tackey’s.”
A chorus of whoops and cheers and whistles sounded from the people around him, and Holt looked around in shock. Gram was smiling at him with tears in her eyes.
“The Lachlans have lived in Uncertain for generations, and people like to make up legends about them. But the truth is, their family history is terribly tragic. They’re hunted in the swamps because of what they are. Hunted. And maybe some of you are justifying it, too. They’re just animals. But I’m telling you, you’re wrong.”
The scene cut to a picture of Holt when he was a boy, swinging from a rope from the banks of Caddo Lake right in front of the Lachlan House. Next picture was one of him, maybe five years old, snuggling against Gram sleeping as she and Pap talked on the porch in a couple of plastic lawn chairs. Next was him and Liam when they were ten, arms flung around each other, both holding a string of catfish they’d caught, both grinning from ear to ear. That had been before the gators in them became enemies. The next one was of him and Gram, dressed for a funeral, holding hands on the bank by the house, staring out at a boat of flowers they’d made when Pap passed away.
“Fuck,” he uttered, dropping his gaze to the bar top to get control of his emotions. He shook his head hard as Liam clapped him on the back.
And then there was Bre again. “By day two with him, I couldn’t wear the microphone anymore. He was so much more than I could’ve imagined. Loyal, hard-working, caring. His dog loves him.” She laughed thickly. “He’s probably sitting in the bar right next to him. Hi, Fargo.”
“She’s good,” one of the townies said, scratching Fargo behind the ears from where he sat at Holt’s side.
“He let me in, but I didn’t want to do the story anymore. I didn’t want to use what he told me for ratings or for views. I told my cameraman and my network that I quit. They called it “going native.” And I had. I fell in love with Uncertain, Texas. With the people there and the culture. Definitely with the food,” she said with a chuckle. “With the job Holt does as a swamp guide. Seriously, if you want an authentic swamp tour experience, take it from a shifter who actually lives and breathes for that environment.” She fidgeted with the fabric of her sundress. “I messed up and assumed he was like the media portrays shifters. Like he was more animal than man. Like he had less value. I was so soooo wrong. I was supposed to betray him, but I fell in love with him instead.”
The scene faded to a video of him walking through the woods with Fargo. “One smile,” she said from behind the camera.
“That’ll be five bucks.”
“Five bucks for a smile?”
“Yep. Pay up, and you can have it.”
An acorn flew through the air and hit him in the back of the head. He turned, laughing. It was a big laugh, deep and bellowing. He barely recognized himself. Is that what he looked like when he was happy?
Next was a picture of their hands, clasped together as they walked.
Next was him putting gas in the boat, smiling at a little girl who was asking him questions about alligators. Next was a selfie o
f them, the one on his phone—the one where she was looking up at him and he was looking down at her. Smiling. He was always smiling.
Fuck, his chest hurt. It hurt.
Bre was a sneaky picture taker, but he was thankful for that. She’d caught moments he hadn’t taken the time to appreciate. She was showing the world how she saw him. And as the pictures went on and on, morphing one into the next, he began to see how she saw him, too.
He put his hand over his mouth and squeezed his jaw as he watched her out him as something so much more than he ever thought he could be.
The room was silent now. No one moved, no one talked. They just watched as the scene cut back to Bre.
“Uncertain, Texas. You don’t realize it, but you have a treasure. You have my treasure, and this is the part where I beg you to take care of it. Don’t keep him on the outside anymore. Don’t make up rumors or join a mob against him. Look at him. Seriously, Uncertain. Look at that man.” Tears fell down her cheeks. “Look at that brilliant, caring, important, strong man. He’s not trying to hurt you with what he is. He’s just trying to survive one day to the next, just like everyone else. He’s trying to find his happiness, just like you. I messed that up a little. He trusted me, and I failed him. Big lesson learned, and I will pay for it for the rest of my life. So please, Uncertain, since I can’t be there to protect the man I love, can you do it for me? Stop the poaching. Be the good, loyal people I know you are. He’s yours. My heart is living in your swamp.” Bre inhaled deeply, and her pretty blue eyes were so full of emotion as she begged, “Please protect him.”
The scene cut to a newsroom with a man and a woman in business attire, sitting behind a desk, both staring at the camera with wide eyes.
“Well…” the female news anchor said. “That was something.”
The man looked at someone off camera. “I know I know. Okay, they’re telling us to get it together,” he said with a chuckle. “Next up is a story— You know what, I have something to say. Uncertain, please do as she asked.”
The lady sniffed, and he looked over at her. “Are you crying?”