Page 121 of Big Bad Wolf

Any hope she’d had of forgetting about Rafe while she was at work quickly evaporated when she walked into the bar. Rafe was imprinted all over this damn place. The first time she’d ever laid eyes on him had been here. He had a favorite seat at the bar now, right next to Sal. Seeing it empty made her want to cry.

Getting out of bed had been a grave error.

“Jesus, Ruby. You look like crap.”

She rested her tray on the bar while Macy filled the drinks for her table. “Thanks, Mace. Sweet of you to say.”

Her boss gave her a lopsided smile. “Sorry, but I mean really, you okay? What’s going on? You never miss work.”

What was going on? Well, she and her sister were being hunted by werewolves, her Mate had rejected her, and she was really tired of trying to convince him he was exactly what she wanted. But none of those things felt acceptable to say out loud.

“Rafe and I got in a fight.” Got in a fight, broke up forever. One of those.

Macy’s eyebrows rose.

“What did the big guy do?” Sal asked, chiming into their conversation like he always did.

“I can’t seem to convince him that we make sense together.” Ruby bit her bottom lip, refusing to let her emotions show, not here in front of Sal and the whole damn town.

“Men, am I right?” Sal said, and Ruby couldn’t help her laugh.

“You are definitely right.”

“What happened?” Macy asked.

Ruby shrugged, unable to put the full weight of the past few days into words. “I don’t know. He seems convinced that he’s doing me a favor by staying away. Like he’s protecting me somehow when all he’s doing is hurting me.”

Macy nodded, considering. “What are you going to do?”

Ruby balanced the tray on her hand and spoke the words over her shoulder. “I wish I knew.”

Macy’s concerned gaze followed her through the bar, past Sierra cornering a hapless hiker, past Trina and Shreya whispering and laughing like they were still in the high school cafeteria, past the booth with Bert and Mabel and Steve and Freddie where the two men were regaling their friends with tales of extracting a family of skunks from some out-of-towner’s rental house, past all the faces that made this place home. They were a rough-and-tumble group but apparently, at some point, Ruby had grown to … like them? Appreciate them, at the very least.

“Ruby, we missed you,” Tom said as she put his beer on the table in front of him.

“Oh yeah?”

“Of course.” He smiled, and Kev and Gil nodded in agreement.

“Thanks guys.”

“Everything okay?” Tom asked. “Anything we need to take care of?” He lowered his voice and Ruby felt like she was suddenly talking to a mob boss in an old movie. Was Tom about to make her an offer she couldn’t refuse?

And for a minute Ruby let herself entertain the image of Tom, Kev, and Gil storming up to Rafe’s cabin and kicking his ass. Or attempting to. It was a pleasant thought.

“Everything’s fine, guys. But thanks.”

“We got you, Ruby,” Kev said with a wink.

And that was something, wasn’t it? To have a trio of weathered old Mainers on her side? She felt like it was. Between Macy’s concerned questions, the phone calls she’d been getting from Gert all week checking in on her, and now Tom’s offer, Ruby was realizing she had friends here. Even though their average age was somewhere around seventy, it made her feel better.

Ruby let the comfort of being in a place she’d finally learned to call home wear away the tension of the day.

Would she ever feel normal again? Would she ever feel like she wasn’t missing a chunk of herself? She didn’t know. Certainly not today. Today she felt like she was walking around without her heart, like the space behind her ribs was hollow. But that wasn’t right either. She wasn’t empty. She was aching, like a giant walking bruise.

It was different from when her parents died. Her parents’ deaths had left her feeling alone and scared, like the world no longer made sense. But her aunt had helped put the pieces back together. The loss of Rafe was like the world itself had gone dark. If only she could find him lurking in the shadows.

Part of her screamed to try again, to never stop fighting for what they had, for what they could have. But every time she thought of doing it, all she could see was his face set in that tormented grimace, the certainty that they shouldn’t be together stamped across his features. How could she possibly fight that? How could she battle what was in his own heart?