Page 58 of Chased

Sanchez didn’t know whether to laugh or facepalm. It was heartfelt and totally tactless, which pretty much encapsulated his cousins.

Hell, it encapsulated all three of them.

He left it all there for Madison to find, except he borrowed a couple of the cookies because he was fucking starving.

Then he looked at the note again. We’ll never do it again. It was true they wouldn’t, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

He needed to do something about that.

He was almost out the door, when he stopped. He wasn’t exactly familiar with the rules of dating, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to have sex with a woman who really mattered to him and then just walk out and leave her hanging.

That was what you did if you didn’t give a fuck.

And he definitely couldn’t leave her with idiotic-but-kind-of-sweet gestures from his fucking cousins, and nothing from him.

After giving it some thought, he made a pot of coffee, so it would be ready when she got up. Then he found a piece of paper and left his own note:

I have to do some stuff. I wanted to leave you an excellent note that would make you smile but I don’t know how because I suck at all this. Anyway there’s coffee for you and last night was good.

Shit. Even Cisco and Matéo were better at this than he was. He added:

I’ll come back later and… Shit. I’ll come back later and fuck this up some more.

S

It was lame and stupid so he left before he could change his mind and leave her nothing. Grabbing the blanket off her couch on his way past, he headed out to find his idiot cousins and put them out of their misery.

And then he was going to make sure Madison would always be okay here at the Ridge. No one was ever going to hurt her again.

He found the guys at the cabin. They were in the back room, partway through the ritual bottle of whiskey, but they both scrambled to their feet when he came in.

“How’s Madison?”

“Is she okay?”

“Is she still a rabbit?”

“Did you fuck her and make her feel better?”

“Did she like our note?”

“Our wolves wanted to bring her a fresh kill, but we thought that was probably inappropriate.”

Sanchez shook his head. “You fucking think?”

Cisco asked plaintively, “Is she still mad at us?”

Sanchez sighed. “I should head-slap the both of you,” he said. “She’s fine. She’s human again, and she’s still asleep. The end.”

Matéo’s nostrils were flaring. “Not the end. You two did fuck.” He sniffed the air again. “A lot.”

“Shut the hell up.”

Cisco said, “At least she forgave you. That’s a start.”

“There was nothing to forgive me for,” Sanchez said. “Except not strangling you when you were cubs.”

Cisco looked at him earnestly. “We really didn’t know it was her. We would never have hunted her if we’d known. We feel awful.”