AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The blood drained out of her face and it went slack, and he suddenly realized exactly how much of an asshole he was for saying it in that manner. The lion was good at faking insouciance and then attacking out of the blue when the prey least expected it. The human parts of his psyche should’ve known better, but Lauren had hurt him and he’d wanted to hurt her back.
He’d gone too far, though.
“I’m sorry. Damn, that was cold, even for someone as pissed as I am.”
She didn’t move, and her scent went sour. Not grief so much as anguish and misery. Hopelessness.Despair.
“Fuck, Lauren.” He went to his knees in front of her on the loveseat and drew her small body into his arms, but she sat like a statue, as if he wasn’t even there.
“Hey, Shortcake, that was an asshole thing to say. I’m sorry.”
She drew a stuttering breath in. “It was the truth, and I challenged you to tell me the truth, and even told you I’d try not to attack the messenger.”
She sounded a little like a robot, her voice emotionless. Monotone.
“I probably deserve to be hit or kicked for that, to be honest.”
She shook her head and sat back, pulling out of his arms. “Disorganized attachment. So sometimes I cling, and other times I need to be left alone. There’s more to it than that, but…” She closed her eyes and put her face in her hands. “Somehow, I’d forgotten.” She sat up straight and finally met his gaze. “I’m not a good choice for a partner. Not for anyone. It isn’t so much that I was broken in the orphanage, but that I never developed properly to start with. The wiring in my head never made the proper connections. I’ve come to terms, mostly, with the sensory issues, but I’d somehow forgotten about the attachment bullshit.”
A knock came at the door, and Nick stood to answer it. Ambrose was outside, looking relaxed, but he asked, “Everything okay in here?”
He felt the air currents moving behind him, and he angled so he could see Lauren as well as Ambrose.
Lauren was standing, but she was still on the other side of the loveseat. “Nick has reminded me why he and I might work on building our friendship back someday, but more than that isn’t possible. Can you walk him back to the warmup room, please? I’ve probably kept him from the predator shifters longer than he should be away.”
“They’re fine.” Ambrose stepped into the room, closed the door, and leaned against it. “What did you say to her, Nick?”
Ambrose was concerned for Lauren, as he should be, but Nick wasn’t going to tell the demigod their private business. He was going to have to say something to get rid of him, though, so he said, “It was an asshole move, designed to get her to let her guard down and then serve up thecoup de grâce, and it worked too well.”
“But it was the truth,” Lauren told Ambrose, and then looked back to Nick. “I’d planned to explain my hawk, and another thing, to try to explain what I didn’t know yet, when we had our fight, but I guess it’s a moot point. If you want to be my friend again…” she sighed, and he scented that she was close to tears, though nothing about her countenance gave it away.
“Please leave now. I need to deal with the continued fallout of cancelling so many shows. We both have responsibilities to see to.”
“I will not,” Nick told her. He glanced at the door and then looked back to Lauren. She was standing with strength, but her face was too pale, her eyes haunted. “Ambrose, we’ll be fine, but we still have some things to talk about, clearly.”
“You should know that she lost her dear Smokey just before all hell broke loose,” Ambrose told Nick, and then he was out the door, and Nick locked it again.
“Fuck, Lauren. I’m so sorry.” He walked back to her, lifted her, sat on the loveseat with her in his lap, and tried to cuddle her, but she levitated up and away, shocking his hands a little when he tried to hold onto her. Not enough to create damage, but enough to make him let go.
“He was old. Pets don’t live forever. You didn’t want to come, and now you won’t go. Damnedcat.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I am, but you forgot theassholethat’s supposed to go betweendamnedandcat.”
“Look, the reason I needed you to stay away until I calmed down was because my head was full of things I could say to you to make you go away and never come back, and I didn’t want to lose your friendship, so I knew I needed some time to cool down before we talked. Youknowhow I am when I need space, and it pissed me off you didn’t give it to me.”
And now she was asking him to leave again, and he wasn’t leaving. Nick could read between the lines, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He chose to respond as if she was only talking about their fight from before, rather than address the fact she wanted him to leave her office.
“I let Gavin convince me we needed to speak to you together, but I knew I shouldn’t go. It isn’t his fault, though. He didn’t make me, it was completely my choice. I hoped we could talk it through. I was hurt because you’d been close, in Branson, just a few miles away, and had wanted all that time away frombothof us. I needed to understand.”
“I’m not sure I understood it at the time. Now, I know I’m not exactly human, and my power lies in tattoos. I had no idea why it feltsoimportant I get a tattoo, but it was imperative I did it alone, without a support system. Just me and the tattoo artist.”
Nick’s phone chimed, he looked at it, touched it, and frowned. A problem had been brewing between one of his lionesses and a particular vampire for a while, and the bastard was taking advantage of the fact Nick wasn’t around. “Fuck. Timing all around sucks on this, but I need to get back.” He stood, moved into her space, and brushed her hair away from her face. When she didn’t move away again, he leaned in and gave her a lingering kiss. Her body responded as it always did, and when he pulled her in for a hug, her arms went around his body as well. Relief flowed through him with the knowledge he hadn’t completely fucked up. He knew there’d be more fallout from telling her the way he had, but if they could deal with it together, it would be okay.
“Promise me you’ll come over for dinner as soon as we have time, and it’s safe to do so?” he asked her.
She held him tighter a few seconds and then stepped back and out of his arms. “I’d love that. Go take care of your miscreants. We all have work to do.”
Chapter 25
