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Oaklee moved around her open-plan kitchen, putting a kettle on the boiler for our instant coffee. She prepared two cups and added sugar. She knew how I drank my coffee by now.
When the kettle whistled, she filled the cups, and the smell of coffee filled the apartment. We added cream and carried our cups to the one couch she had facing a stack of pallets.
Oaklee made herself comfortable, tucking her feet under her. She tried to finger comb her hair and gave up.
“I didn’t really freshen up.” She blushed, as if what she looked like mattered more now that we were okay again, than it did a moment ago.
“You look beautiful,” I said.
She shook her head. Maybe she didn’t believe me, but that was fine. Without her makeup, completely natural, Oaklee was resplendent.
We sipped our coffee in silence.
“I lost my sister a couple of years ago, because I didn’t pay attention to what was going on in her life,” I said.
Oaklee was quiet, letting me talk.
“She had issues, and I knew about them, but I thought it was under control, you know? She just had Carletta and me, and we should have been better, but we just… we fucked up. Now that she’s gone, it’s killing me.” I laughed bitterly. “The problem is that once you have this perfect outlook of what happened… it’s too late. You can’t change it. No matter what I do, I can’t bring her back.”
“I don’t think it was your fault, you would never let her get hurt if you knew,” Oaklee said softly.
“That’s just the thing. If Iknew. I was too busy having fun, fucking around, doing shit that didn’t matter. And if it didn’t matter, why did it seem more important than my sister’s life?”
Oaklee bowed her head, her face riddled with sympathy. I usually hated pity, but what I saw from Oaklee wasn’t pity. She felt for what I’d been going through.
“Are you punishing yourself?” Oaklee asked.
“I was with a woman the night she died,” I said bitterly. “If I’d just given up a piece of ass to look after Delaney, maybe everything would’ve been different.”
“You can’t live the rest of your life being miserable, Jameson,” Oaklee said. “If she loved you like you loved her, do you think she would want you to punish yourself for the rest of your very long life?”
I sighed. In theory, I completely understood and agreed, but fuck.
“I just feel soguilty.”
Oaklee reached for me and squeezed my hand.
“I wish I could have met her.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said. “I think she would have liked you. Carletta does.”
Oaklee swallowed and shifted in her seat.
“I’m glad she does.”
“We’ll figure this out, somehow,” I said, more to myself than to her. “It’s okay to do this.”
Oaklee nodded slowly, watching me with large eyes. “One day at a time?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll start with work, get to know each other a little better, and…” I wasn’t sure what would follow on that. Love? Marriage? A baby in a golden carriage? Since Delaney, that had never been on the cards for me. I wouldn’t let it. Now, though, it was a different story. Oaklee and I shared the mate bond. That shit wouldn’t just go away, and even if we decided it didn’t work between us, that bond wouldn’t break unless one of us died.
I shuddered at the thought.
We would figure this out. I had no idea how, but Oaklee was easy to be around, comfortable and warm and open, and that was already a damn good start. I hoped we could figure out the rest in time. I hoped I wasn’t making a huge mistake, because my fractured heart couldn’t deal with even more bullshit I’d brought upon myself.
Oaklee shifted a little closer to me and put her hand on my cheek. Her eyes were a deep gold, nothing like the hazel they usually were. Her animal was close to the surface, and her scent drifted toward me.
She was a fox. I didn’t know how I’d missed it before, but now that we were bound, and her scent was a signature I knew by heart, I knew that about her. I knew a lot of things about her that no one would just know without her telling them.
