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Her heart pounded against her ribs and her skin felt damp all over, but the first sight of Tavish after weeks apart set her body aflame. Instead of feeling any of the jarring, battling thoughts from the car, all she felt was an instant rush of peace.
He looked like he was going through the exact same thing. He was stunned, but he composed himself after a second and then his eyes glowed warmly. He opened his arms like he intended for her to step into them, but then dropped them suddenly as if he was worried how she’d react. The entire clinic seemed to heat up a few degrees, not just her body.
“January.”
“Your internal mate radar must be broken. I thought you’d sense I was coming.” She said the words in a light-hearted way. It was as if all the anger and the uncertainty she’d been feeling had evaporated.
He didn’t know what to think of that, and then he grinned. “You’re right. I didn’t sense you were coming. But I’m so glad you’re here. Will you come with me?”
He meant to walk out the door with her, since she wasn’t having a medical emergency this time, but she shook her head. He stopped. He hadn’t touched her yet. She wished that he would have swept her into his arms, but also liked that he respected her space and kept a slight distance between them, letting her decide for herself if she wanted to be swept up or not.
“Can we talk here? Do you have a private room?”
Heknew. Maybe the mates thing was real, or maybe it was just the expression on her face, or the heaviness in her tone. Maybe it was how she’d worded what she just said, or the fact she was there and the timing of it, but Tavish went as pale as the man in the corner of the room.
“Oh my god. I’ll get Josephine.”
She glanced towards the two men. “They look like they need her urgently.”
“Kier and Trace can work their magic. They’re more than capable.”
Her eyes tracked to the bloodstained towel. “That’s a lot of blood.”
“Alright, she’ll stitch up Rory—he had an accident butchering a pig a few minutes ago—and then she’ll see Colin. He just has gas.”
Colin turned his head and gave Tavish a look that saidI’ll give you just gas, this shit is painful, I might actually be dying here and no, antacids aren’t cutting it.
Tavish ignored him. “Will you come back with me? We do have a room empty. We can talk there, and I’ll let Josephine know we need to see her as soon as she can be spared.”
She studied his face. He was only a few inches away. So close. So beautiful. She could barely breathe. She had to keep doing that. Air was a vital thing. She could look at his faceforever. She felt like she was melting and overheating, and at the same time, a thousand thoughts sprang to her mind. None of them were ones that were appropriate to say out loud, at least not in front of an audience.
“Yes.”
He led her straight back, down a hall that looked very professional, clinical, and clean. She barely remembered this from the last time. She could recall every single detail of Tavish’s face, but she hardly had any recollection of coming back here. She was too focused on the pain in her leg, on her sister who was having a bit of a freak out worrying about her, on the huge men who filled up the clinic, and the lovely, capable doctor who was equally as captivating and mystifying. If she’d stopped to think about it, even then, something about Greenacre had been so off. More like a dream than reality.
She’d dreamed of this place, not the clinic but the town, Tavish’s house, and the man himself, ever since she’d left. Every. Single. Night.
It was alarming how her return felt inevitable.
“Are you alright?” Tavish asked. He hadn’t even closed the door yet, but his deep voice brought her out of herself. He walked towards her, and she did nothing to put distance between them. It was too easy for him to slowly raise his hand and very gently tilt her chin up with two fingers. “January?”
“Right now I am, but I don’t know what’s coming. It’s terrifying.” She couldn’t keep her deepest fears or her deepest truths to herself. It was exhausting, being so vulnerable. She’d never been that way with anyone else, but it always seemed like she could tell Tavish anything. Even if she didn’t want to, she’d somehow end up blurting it out anyway.
She studied him, the hardness of his face, his jawline, the fine array of lines around his eyes, the lips she’d longed to taste from the second she drove away from Greenacre. Her heart dipped. If she was hooked up to one of those monitors, the little green lines would be all over the place. Her whole body felt like one of those jagged mountains, high at the top, low in the valley before climbing again. When she inhaled, she didn’t smell the bleachy, sterile doctor’s office scents. The room smelled like vanilla, but that was just background compared to the delicious scent that was rolling off Tavish in waves. Just his skin alone, without bodywash, cologne, aftershave, or anything else, had a delicious mountainy, wild, crisp and fresh scent.
She wanted it all over her. Immediately.
She cleared her throat. “Say something. Please.”
He quickly recovered. “Josephine is the best. The town had no doctor for a long time, but one of the reasons she wanted to start this clinic was because she knew that Greenacre would be opening up. It was her idea to build a clinic that could see women through their pregnancies, rather than what used to happen.”
There was a dark undercurrent in his tone that nearly made her imaginary heart monitor flatline as her heart paused mid-beat. “Oh my god. Oh my fucking god. The women weren’t… Do you mean…?” She couldn’t say it. Did they hold the women captive? Kill them? Her mind was throwing up all kinds of imaginary scenarios each worse than the last.
His dark eyes filled with sadness. “In the past things were done differently, we had to keep hidden and we couldn’t allow our young to be out in the world. Women weren’t harmed but we’d buy their babies, buy their silence. It’s unthinkable looking back, but if knowledge of what we are got out…” He paused and met her eyes briefly. January imagined she looked shocked, but inside she did feel some sense of relief. What he was saying was awful, absolutely awful, but given the circumstances perhaps it was understandable. He continued, “It was hard for a lot of women out there in the human world. That was a large part of the reason Sam put an end to any relationships between human women and shifter men. At least until it was decided to open Greenacre to take mates, until women knew what was happening and could make an informed decision. The past is ugly, January. I’ve always been so careful that this would never happen to someone who had no idea what was coming.”
“But it’s okay that I’m in this position now?”
“No.” His fingers spread over her jaw, caressing, and then dropped lower, to her shoulder. “I didn’t mean it that way. This was accidental. You have to know that. I thought the birth control would be enough.”
