Page 8 of Crave

My brother’s eyes flared wolf gold. But he didn’t try to deny it.

“Hate me all you want,” I continued. “But that’s effed up and you know it.”

Shoving up his glasses, Ethan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look. I’m not proud of what I did. I was in a messed-up place—”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Yeah, like you’re some kind of saint?”

“Don’t even try and make this about me.” Stalking over to the bar, I wrenched the top off a bottle of tequila.

Ethan’s voice sounded in the dark behind me.

“We weren’t dating. It was a casual thing. Strictly to keep our wolves in check.”

I growled. “Yeah. Keep talking. Totally helping.”

The first shot burned on the way down. The next two I barely felt. The four walls of The Spoke felt like they were closing in around me, everything in it down to the last chair, napkin and piece of Howlers sports memorabilia on the walls something I’d picked out with my own two hands. And somehow, here in the one place I should have felt more at home than any other, it felt like my heart was going to explode.

“Little late for that.”

The bell over the door jingled. Letting my head thump back against the wall, I pulled out my phone. Lacey’s last text flashed on the screen.

BabyGotBake: I really need to talk to you.

Something flipped in my chest. Here was the thing my brothers didn’t understand: sometimes when you’d caused so much hurt, so much destruction, the best thing you could do was to stay the hell away. Lacey and I were friends now. As in, she was the one I called that time a giant tarantula got loose in my kitchen and I needed someone to come capture it and release it at least a hundred miles from my house so I’d be able to sleep at night. Which—don’t laugh. Those little dudes had like eight thousand beady spider eyes. Freaking creepy. As in, I was the one she had on speed dial for certain monthly emergencies when her refrigerator ran low on essentials like chocolate frosting, slow-smoked beef ribs, and carbs. Because real men didn’t fear the tampon aisle.

For the five years since I’d been back, we’d had each other’s backs. Nothing was off limits.

Except for one topic. Us.

And like every other fuckup in our long and spectacularly twisted history, that one was on me, too.

2

Lacey

“DID YOU GET THE LINK I SENT YOU?” my mom, Juliet, demanded the moment I swiped to answer her call.

Cracking the front door to Blair’s Bakery, I allowed a blast of icy November air to lift the damp hair off the back of my neck. Every prep counter in sight was covered in dirty mixing bowls. On a regular day, Blair’s sold out of a dozen pies by close. Now it was a week before Thanksgiving and I was up to my elbows in orders for pumpkin, sweet potato, walnut fudge and apple. The black chalkboard menu behind the front counter displayed a fat cornucopia bearing blueberry muffins and cranberry scones. Bunches of bright fall cornstalks stood in the corners between the round wooden tables and chairs. Brilliant gold and crimson leaves decorated by my Saturday morning baking class circled the wide column in the center of the store.

And this might be the last year I would ever see any of it again.

Shutting the door, I let the heat of the industrial ovens wash over me like a hot Texas summer day. “You mean the link for those amazing mango-orange running shoes that totally have your favorite daughter’s upcoming birthday written all over them?”

I was her only daughter. Which she frequently reminded me didn’t cut down on my awesome factor in the least.

“And you have how many pairs again?”

“Can a girl ever have too many?”

“Which is why I already ordered them.” There was a pause on the other end of the line, and I could almost picture my mother standing up from her workstation with its two giant screens to pace before the large bay window overlooking the street. “This is like a snakebite kit, but for werewolves. According to the product description, if you extract the venom shortly after being bitten, it reduces the chances of transmission down to nearly zero.”

My heart sank. “Please tell me you didn’t already—”

“I got us two.”

“Okay.” I rubbed my forehead, not wanting to point out that 1) werewolves didn’t have venom, 2) the results of your typical feral werewolf attack were closer to velociraptor than garter snake, and 3) if shifter scientists hadn’t been able to come up with a way to prevent transmission of lycanthropy after decades of trying, I wasn’t betting the farm on something my mom found on one of her prepper websites.