Page 125 of Big Bad Wolf

“Ah,” Sal said. “Heard he’s gone missing.”

Ruby scoffed. “He didn’t go missing. He left.” He left me, she thought but couldn’t bear to add.

The way Sal looked at her with such sympathy in his eyes told her she didn’t have to say it out loud. He heard it anyway.

“He’ll come around.”

“I certainly hope so,” Dolores said as though she was the injured party here. “Walk me home?” she asked Sal, apparently ready to move on with her life.

Sal’s face lit up. Dolores lived in an old house at the end of the street. The well-lit street. Ruby guessed it was probably okay for them to walk home.

“Be careful, you two,” Ruby looked at Sal pointedly and he saluted.

“I’ll get this lovely lady home safe,” he said, and Dolores actually blushed.

“That’s an interesting development,” Callie said as the two walked away, arm in arm, Dolores’s unmentionables bouncing up and down in the squeaky laundry cart behind them.

“I didn’t know Rafe was such good friends with Dolores,” Sawyer said with a laugh.

“Me neither,” Ruby said, and she could strangle the man for thinking he was some kind of monster when he spent his weekdays doing laundry with a lonely old lady. The bounds of her frustration were endless. “Anyway, do you guys want another round?”

“I wouldn’t say no,” Sawyer said, and Ruby got up to head to the bar. Callie grabbed her hand before she could leave.

“It’ll all work out in the end, Ruby.”

Ruby met her friend’s bright blue gaze.

“How do you know?”

Callie shrugged. “Call it witch’s intuition.”

Ruby smiled. “Thanks, Cal.”

And as she walked back to refill her friends’ drinks, she really hoped Callie was right.

Chapter Fifty-Three

He was here. Every hair on her body stood at attention. Rafe was in the woods. She could feel him. Ruby sucked in a deep breath as though she could inhale him into her lungs and keep him locked inside her chest.

She should have taken Macy up on her offer of a ride home, but she thought she’d sensed Rafe the night before and she couldn’t pass up an opportunity to be near him.

Now she was sure. He was here again.

She strode down the path, pretending to ignore the weight of his stare from the shadows, pretending to be immune to his presence when all she really wanted to do was drop down in the dirt at his feet and beg him to come back to her. But she didn’t. She wouldn’t.

Instead, she let him walk beside her, his steady breathing and quiet footsteps comforting her aching heart. Neither of them spoke, but Ruby knew he was getting closer and could feel his warmth beside her. Perhaps if she turned and peered into the darkness, she would catch a glimpse of her wolf. But she kept her eyes on the path ahead of her, using her phone to light the leaf-covered path in front of her feet.

“I miss you,” she whispered to the darkness.

No answer other than rustling leaves in the branches overhead.

“Dolores is pissed at you, by the way.” She paused, hoping that would draw him out.

Nothing.

“She says you were supposed to do laundry with her last night, but she left with Sal, so I guess she has a new boyfriend now.”

Nothing, and she wondered if she’d imagined him.