Page 69 of Tempting Fate

“So what’s going on? You’re out searching?”

“Yeah.”

“And…?”

“And what?”

“Em. You think you can hide anything from me?”

I sigh, then finally tell her everything that happened over the last few days. Well. Not in detail. She doesn’t need all that.

Still, she can read between the lines. She’s quiet for a few seconds when I finish speaking, so I wait for it to sink in.

“What are you going to do about it?” Cate asks, and I sigh.

“I don’t know.”

She laughs. “Yes, you do. Gotta say, Em, you never struck me as being interested in a polycule.”

“I don’t think there are enough of us to qualify for that,” I say. Yeah, I did some research today, too. Only a little, and then I pushed my laptop away because the search made it all real and the reality is that I don’t think Patch or Jamie want this. “I need to talk to them. Again.”

“They’re scared, huh?”

“I don’t know if that’s what it is.”

Cate snorts. “I think it is, like, ninety percent of the time, you know?”

“Maybe.”

“You’re scared.”

I sit with that for a moment, letting it sink in. Cate knows me better than anyone, and despite everything, I think she always will. “Yeah, I am.”

“So get it together, Hartford,” she says, and I jerk at the use of my old surname. Then I laugh. She only uses it to annoy me. “You’re going to have to sort these boys out, so sort them out.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ugh. I’m younger than you.”

By two weeks. “Don’t remind me.”

“You’re going to be safe tonight?”

“Of course.”

“Text me once you’re home?”

“I will.”

Cate says goodbye and I hang up, then lean back against the outside of a dark, closed pub. I feel more settled than before. I just need to sort things out. If neither of them wants this, neither of them wants it, and I can’t change that, but I can choose what I do next.

And what I want to do next… I open up the text thread I have with Patch and type out a quick message. I’ll meet him tomorrow—today—if he still has time. If he doesn’t mind it being such short notice. And if not, I’ll meet him another time. I want to do that.

I want Jamie with us, too. I want him to know that he has that option because I think he thinks he doesn’t. But maybe I need to talk to Patch about that first, too.

I make my way down the street, then over to the spot where I saw the wolf the other night. There’s nothing there, of course, just shadows and I think, at one point, a hedgehog, which scurries away before I can get a close look at it.

Maybe this was useless. Maybe using my savings on renting a place down here, trusting money from a source I don’t even know, was literally the worst choice I could have made.