Page 54 of Crave

“Mom.” Lacey lunged for her, steadying her before she could fall. “Which way is your car?”

I hit the locator app on my phone. “C’mon.”

“Wait.” Simon stepped in front of us, earning a growl from Lacey. He held up his hands, palms out. “I can help. I’m a physician with the North Austin pack. If she needs medical attention—"

“Back off,” she said, fury lacing every word. “You’ve done enough.”

We reached my SUV. Lacey dug the keys from my coat pocket and clicked it open. By then, Juliet was staring vacantly past all of us, mumbling incoherently to herself. Lacey swiped tears from her eyes as she checked her seatbelt, making sure her breathing and pulse were stable—all while I looked on from a safe distance, utterly helpless to do anything. Except disappear. And I knew then what I had to do. Her mom couldn’t see me. We both knew it. Her memories reset in the wake of bad attacks, erasing the events that had triggered them. She wouldn’t even remember seeing me here. Unless, of course, I was there when she woke up, in which case we’d just be right back to square one. Ten years ago, I’d made the selfish choice. Now it was time to start making the right ones.

“Call me when you get back to town.”

Lacey’s eyes shot to mine. “Dallas—"

“S’okay. Just… go.”

Suddenly she was crushing me to her in a kiss that had never felt more like a goodbye. Her hands threaded desperately through my hair, her tears wetting my lashes, her sobs warm against my mouth in the cold December air. Time stilled as I broke the kiss, pressing my forehead to hers. She smelled of vanilla and coconut, butter and confectioner’s sugar. Lacey Blair always smelled of comfort, of warmth, of a soft place to land when I got home after work and a future of weekends spent cooking together where she would snort-laugh and inform me I was using way too much cumin (guilty) before kissing me senseless over a kitchen counter littered with her multicolored whisks and my high-end knife set. A life where a midnight-black cat twined figure eights around our ankles and the worst problem we had was who got to make the pancakes after spending the night wrapped up in each other’s arms. A life that was ours. And god, I wanted to fight for that future. For her.

But right now what she needed was one person in her life who wouldn’t force her to choose, and I was going to be that person. Even if it tore my fucking heart in two. Without a word, I kissed the tip of her nose and watched her drive away.

“You, uh, need a ride?” Simon slowly approached. No doubt he’d heard the whole thing. “If not, I’ll just take off—"

“Sure you don’t mind? Kind of a long drive. I can call one of my brothers.”

“Nah. Least I can do. Get the feeling this whole sitch is sort of my fault.”

As it turned out, Simon’s Audi was totally sweet. He offered to let me pick the tunes. Kind of hated to tell the guy our bromance was never going to work out.

“Thought maybe Juliet knew,” he said somewhere north of the city, as I tried and failed for the tenth time to get Lacey to pick up her phone. “About me, I mean. Our kind.”

“She really had no idea you weren’t human? And not to throw a wrench in this whole Romeo and Juliet thing you two have going on, but pretty sure she’s subscribed to like every anti-supernatural group on the internet. I’d start tasting your food.”

He laughed. “We met at a charity fundraiser through work last month. We’ve been talking ever since.”

“What kind of doctor are you?”

“I’m a trauma surgeon over at the new hospital that just opened up in north Austin.”

“And were you planning on telling her?”

“I swear, I know how this looks. But … you know how sometimes you meet someone and there’s this instant connection? I couldn’t get Juliet out of my head. And the more we texted, talked when I was getting off my shifts, the more I knew I wanted to see her again. I knew she was human, obviously, but the scent of werewolf was all over her. I guess I convinced myself that somehow she must know about our kind, that maybe there could be a chance for us.”

Knowing Lacey would probably burn The Spoke to the ground when she found out what I’d done, I made the split-second decision to let Simon in on the details of our long and sordid history.

“So you see,” I said at last. “I’m pretty much the last guy in the world with the right to be passing judgement. But they’ve both been through hell, and after what the Tracers did to Juliet, she can’t take anything else.”

“Has she been seen by one of our doctors?”

“Don’t think so. You know the Council. If they got wind of it—”

“Sure.” He paused. “But the thing is, our pack has a neurologist on staff. I might be able to pull some strings. Get something scheduled off the books.”

“That would be great. Might need a few days to work on Lacey, but she’ll come around. She’d kill for her mom.”

“I can tell.” He chuckled. “I have a sister just like her. You know, I could have sworn in the confusion back there that I saw my former Alpha.”

“Wouldn’t know anything about that.”

We crested a long hill, the exit sign for Blood Moon coming into view.