Page 24 of The Golden Receiver

It was time to set it into action.

I grabbed my bag from its hiding spot, and I took off to practice. I dropped my gym bag off in the locker room and went to join my team for weight training. There weren’t a lot of people in the room yet, but Kieran was there. I spotted him the moment I went in, not that it was hard. Most of the team was performing lazy stretches in an attempt to wake themselves up. Kieran was running on a treadmill. The mechanical whir and the sound of his footsteps on the running pad were almost deafening in the gym.

Even though I’d just had a run, I climbed onto the empty treadmill next to him. I caught a glance at his speed, and just to annoy him, I set mine to a tenth of a mile faster than his. If he noticed, it would piss him off. He’d get pissed enough that he’d talk to me, and then we could settle everything. We could go back to running together every morning, and we’d start having more conversations. Maybe we’d even kiss again, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath for that one. I would just be happy to have our tentative friendship back in place.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even adjust his speed to try to go faster than me, and I saw him glance over. I saw him look at me, and he had to have seen the speed.

We ran for almost ten minutes in loaded silence, and every second felt ten years long. The urge to break the silence itched under my skin, and I was not a master of self-control. I managed to hold out for another minute before giving into temptation. “You know, if you really wanted to run before practice, you could’ve met up with me,” I told him, keeping my voice as chipper as possible.

I watched Kieran closely, watched as his eyes shifted to look at me. I saw his lips twitch ever so slightly, and I wondered if he was fighting a smile. If he was, he won the battle. His face stayed stony, and he stayed silent.

I sucked in a deep breath and tried again. “Seriously, the invite is always open.”

Kieran stayed silent. He ran for another minute. The moment his treadmill hit 2.5 miles, he hit the stop button and jumped off. He didn’t say a single word to me. I followed him around the weight room, trying to get his attention during weight training. He stayed silent. The only thing that changed throughout the practice was his scent. There was a sour edge to it again. It burned my nose, and I hated it. And considering the way he smelled after he worked out was normally one of my favorite smells… It was doubly upsetting.

Kieran didn’t talk to me at all during morning training, and he disappeared Invisible Man style right after. It only made me more determined. If phase one was a failure, then it was onto phase two of the plan.

I arrived at our class a few minutes early. I waited for him to take a seat and then I slid into the empty seat next to him. It was almost worth it when his eyes bugged out of his head. “That’s not your seat,” he muttered.

“It’s an open seating class,” I told him as I started to unpack my bag.

I hoped that this was it, that he’d start talking to me more. Even if he was just bickering with me about seating. My hopes crashed and burned. He didn’t even look my way for the duration of class. He kept his eyes trained on the teacher.

During film study, I once again inserted myself in the seat next to him. He turned and talked to Marlon or Marvin or whatever his name was on the other side instead. When I positioned myself next to him during drills, he stayed silent. He was good at this whole ignoring me thing, and I didn’t like it. Not one bit. And I really didn’t like that the sour edge to his scent lingered all day long.

No matter where we were or what we were doing, it was there. It lingered in the air after he left too, burning my nose. Normally, when I found an unpleasant smell, I tried to get away from it. Instead, I became more obsessed. I could smell his usual scent underneath the sour, and I wanted to bring it back. I wanted to figure out the reason behind the smell, determine what it meant. Kali had always told us that scent was better than a mood ring. It didn’t matter if you were talking about werewolves, humans, or any other monster. Everything had a smell, and every smell was information.

I wanted every bit of information I could get about Kieran Sawyer.

Wednesday night, I laid in bed and decided how to step up the plan. If inserting myself in his day-to-day routines wasn’t going to make a difference, then I was going to have to do more.

I sent him the normal text message on Thursday morning, telling him where I was going to be starting my run. I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t show up. So, I changed my running path. Instead of running in the woods, I ran across campus toward the training facility and did laps around it until I caught his scent. He’d shown up around thirty minutes before training was supposed to start, and I had a feeling it was for him to run on the treadmill. Well, if he wasn’t going to run with me, then I was going to run with him.

I stepped inside the training facility. I thought I could hear the whirring of the treadmill from the door, but I wasn’t sure. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth of the partial shift. When I opened my eyes, my hearing had increased. A lot. I could make out the sound of the treadmill. I could hear his footsteps, steady and controlled. I could even hear the tinny sounds of music, like he had headphones on. I’d never heard him listen to music while he ran before. Maybe he’d chosen not to listen when he ran with me because, secretly, he wanted to talk to me as much as I did him.

It put a little pep in my step as I stopped by the locker room to drop my bag off (in the locker next to the one that smelled the strongest of Kieran).

The weight room was empty, except for Kieran. He was on the treadmill in the corner. His face was flush, and I could smell the delectable scent of his sweat from across the room. But even when he didn’t know I was there, lost in his own world, that sour edge still lingered. What was that? What did it mean? It had to mean something. The sour smell got stronger as I crossed the gym and took the treadmill next to him. Like the day before, I set my speed to a tenth of a mile faster.

He didn’t look at me for a good five minutes. Then, the miraculous moment came. He looked at me from the corner of his eye, and then, his entire head swiveled. His eyebrows shot up, and he took out one of his earbuds. He opened his mouth, like he was going to say something, and then he just shook his head and said nothing.

I almost growled in annoyance. Instead, I set the speed on my treadmill to half a mile faster than his. “Something the matter?” I asked him.

“Your ears?”

My ears? Oh. My ears. I still had my wolf ears out. I’d forgotten to shift them away after confirming he was in there. I wasn’t going to do it now. Not when they’d been the thing that caught his attention in the first place. If I’d known that bringing out my wolfy traits would get him to pay attention to me, I would have whipped out the ears and tail days ago. But I needed to play it cool now. I needed to act like I wasn’t wiggling from excitement inside.

“The better to hear you with,” I told him, doing my best Big Bad Wolf impression.

He didn’t look impressed. I supposed the Big Bad Wolf was probably scarier than I was. Serena had once said I was about as scary as a Schnauzer puppy. She probably had a point. She knew me better than a lot of people did.

Kieran didn’t say anything, but he did press the speed button on his treadmill. He upped it by seven-tenths of a mile, exactly one-tenth of a mile faster than I was going. I was getting to him. I let him be faster than me for about a quarter mile before I adjusted my speed. By the time the rest of the team came in for practice, we were both adjusting our speed every few minutes, trying to one-up each other. I had the biggest grin on my face. Okay, so he hadn’t really said anything to me other than mentioning my ears, but he was giving me attention. He was acknowledging me again.

It was a win.

He didn’t even try to escape me when we ended up on all the same machines in the gym during training. I did notice that he upped the weight he was using every time he hit a machine after I did. If he wanted to be competitive, then that was okay. I just wished the sour smell would go away, but it was still there. It was just as strong as it had been the day before. At least I could say it wasn’t me. It had been there before I got there.

It was there when I found him at lunch and sat at his table. Unfortunately, he didn’t stay at the table for long. He finished his sandwich and left without a word. I forced myself to stay put instead of following him. It was still lingering when I sat beside him during film study. He didn’t say a single word to me during film study or practice, and once again, he slipped away immediately after practice.