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I had to say that I wanted to finish reading it. Leaving it the way it was, it felt unfinished. Maybe everything felt that way.

It was odd, because I had come to Riverside for closure. In some ways, I felt as if I’d gotten in, but in others, it felt as if things were more open ended than they had ever been, that too many things had gotten more complicated instead of less.

Maybe closure was something that people only got in movies. Maybe real life just went on and on and on.

My wolf was seemingly exhausted from the heat, from all the running, from the hunts, and she didn’t stir much as we went back into the world of steel and smoke. She stayed quiet.

My dad took me up to my apartment. He’d never been here. He looked around and patted me on the shoulder and said I had done good and he was proud of me.

Once in the city, I barely had time to think.

Casey was forgiving about how long it had taken me to get back to the office, and—anyway—we were too slammed at work over the next few weeks to have time to think about anything except the tasks at hand.

We had an event for a charity organization and—at the last minute—they weren’t happy with the catering company we’d brought in, so we had to fire that catering company (delicately, because we wanted to work with them again and maintain our professional relationship) and then get taste testings, and then whittle down between the possibilities, and then finally hire another catering company, and all of that was within days of the event.

It was stressful.

In the middle of it, I got my period, which I had a strange sort of bittersweet reaction to. Some part of me wanted to miss it, but not really because I wanted to be pregnant, because I wanted an excuse to text Vincent.

While I was changing my tampons in the middle of catering taste tests, I would fantasize about what he would have said. I imagined that he would have been gallant and all-in. I’ll do whatever you want, he would have said, whether that’s driving you to a clinic or changing the diapers and doing the night feedings.

But that wasn’t going to happen, and actually, I was relieved. Not because I didn’t want to have a baby. I did. I wasn’t getting any younger, after all. But because that was not, at all, the way I wanted to conceive a baby. I wanted to be in a steady relationship first, preferably one where the baby’s father and I were already living together.

After the charity event was over and we had a chance to breathe, I remember waking up one morning, drinking my coffee while looking out the window over the city, and feeling…

Well, that was the thing. Everything about my life here was either stress or the lack of stress. I was pleased when I wasn’t busy or worried about something going wrong but I wasn’t actually happy. I was just feeling a lack of negative feelings.

And I couldn’t say that I’d been happy at Riverside.

It was only that I thought about having my coffee overlooking the river, or walking along the old town square or running in wolf form through the woods, and I knew that I felt more alive doing all of those things than I ever felt in the city.

Anyway, I needed to go back to deal with the property I owned. And I needed to make time to shift again, to keep my wolf from going too crazy, even though I could barely feel my wolf these days. She seemed truly buried under the weight of everything.

I should plan a weekend trip, sooner rather than later.

And once I had it planned, I should text Vincent and let him know.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THAT’S GOOD, VINCENT texted. You’re planning on getting things squared away? You still going to sell the building?

I haven’t decided, I texted back. I also need to make sure my wolf is shifting and running, of course.

Yes, you do.

We chatted back and forth for a bit, but it didn’t go the way I had expected. I thought he’d drop everything and go to meet me there, I realized.

Why had I thought that?

It was because of the things he’d said to me in the woods, while we were post-coital, knotted together, I realized, and I should not hold him to those things.

The fact of the matter was that he had done me a favor and broken my heat. In the afterglow, he’d said things, and maybe he even had some kind of latent feelings for me owing to the fact we’d been kids together. But the situation was impossible, like my dad had said. Vincent needed to preserve his relationship with Damian. Even if I wasn’t with Damian, Vincent could not be with me.

I had to accept this.

Maybe I was disappointed, but I guessed I would get over it.

Knowing that Vincent would not be there, did I still even want to go to Riverside?