Page 42 of Tiger Betrayal

Dame probably was too.

Laramie drew his hand to her lips again and pressed her soft kiss to his knuckles. Ren and Misty were looking at the table, and their eyes were full of tears.

“This is why I don’t talk.”

“Nah,” Mars said from behind him.

“This is why you should.” He was carrying a bottle of whiskey and a stack of shot glasses. He set them on the table and poured six shots, then passed them out to each of them.

“To Stellan who followed through. He promised us that night that everything would be okay, and then he made it okay. If that asshole, who we will never utter his name again, was still here, we would all be messed up still. That bond would’ve poisoned all of us.” He lifted his shot glass and wiped his cheek roughly with that hand, spilling some of the whiskey. He leveled Stellan with a look. “You took the poison away and we are all sitting here right now with our mates because you did what needed to be done. You avenged us. You made it okay.”

Stellan didn’t want to be weak. He didn’t want his bottom lip to tremble, or for the burning sensation in his eyes to get worse, so he leaned forward and grabbed his shot glass and lifted it into the air near Mars’s. “To being here.”

“To being here,” Dame agreed.

And the girls, even Laramie, repeated it. “To being here.”

And then they took those shots and inside his heart, Stellan felt even better. The darkness was seeping out of him. He could feel it. He’d been purging the things he’d kept hidden today, and it was fixing something that had been so broken inside of him.

He looked over at Laramie, and she seemed so proud of him.

So damn proud.

To being here.

Hell yeah.

Chapter Fifteen

There was a folded note attached to the small bouquet of yellow flowers that sat by her computer at her station.

Laramie looked around, but no one seemed to be paying attention to her, and Murph was busy scolding someone on the phone.

He’d put her and Stellan on different lunch breaks now, which was lame, but she had a feeling Stellan was going to remedy that. He would probably work at a slower human pace and kill production time in the service department until Murph wised up and let them eat lunch together again. She had faith in Stellan to get exactly what he wanted.

She unfolded the note and read the neat handwriting.

Blue flowers will be for apologies.

Yellow just because.

S.

P.S. want to go find your parent’s tree after work? Yes or no?

She was grinning like a goofball as she glanced up at the service window. Stellan was loading a tire onto the machine. Laramie scribbled her answer onto a blank piece of paper and held it up. Stellan glanced up and ducked his gaze again to the tire he was working on. He nodded, and flashed her another quick, gold-eyed look before he pulled the tire from the machine and disappeared into the service center.

“Yes, what?” Murph asked from behind her. Gah, he was grumpy today.

“Oh, nothing,” she said as she quickly crumpled up the paper she’d written on.

“If it’s something perverted, Laramie, I swear to G—”

“He asked if I wanted to go find a tree my parents carved their initials on thirty-five years ago. My mom passed away last year, and I like to find places she’s been to. She went to college here. Stellan offered to help me find the tree.”

Murph was standing there with his mouth hanging open. “Well, I…well now you’re going to make me all sad. Why would you tell me that story?”

“Because you asked.”