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“Talk to her. Hear her out. Go from there,” Ty advises.
I say nothing. I don’t want advice on this. And I’ve made that clear.
“I’ll go out and check on Grey. Hey Linc, come with? After this?” Joel jerks his chin up, saving me from telling Tyson to fuck off. Again.
“Yeah. Right after this,” Linc agrees.
“I’ll come too,” Jase says.
“Jase is the one to watch now,” Lorenzo puts in.
“Riley’s mating isn’t solidified. Might be that I’ve got a breather until that happens. Take your time, Rye,” Jase teases.
His expression drops when our eyes meet.
“Or do what you need to do. Don’t worry about me.”
I look away. “If I’m not needed here, I’m gonna dip.”
I need time to myself. All they’re doing is talking shit over that they can’t resolve.
“You’re not all right, man. What can we do?” Jase offers.
“Nothin’. I wanted to find her to get answers and now she’s here. I don’t… I don’t want the answers. What difference would it make? She knows what she did.”
“Do you want it severed?” Graydon asks.
“I don’t know what the fuck I want. I just know you all need to let me figure that out. I need space.”
When nobody speaks for a minute, I go on, “You’re meeting about me and about Grey. Grey will figure out what his mate is all about and tell us when he gets the chance. We’ve gotta trust him. And as for me… I got nothin’, boys. You wanna make sure she stays at that corner and doesn’t go anywhere, feel free. You don’t? Whatever.”
“You’ll talk to her?” Tyson asks.
My eyes roll. “You wanna let her go, do it. I’ll find her if I decide I’m ready to listen. Unless she masks her scent again.”
“I think you should go now. Don’t put it off,” Ty advises.
“You’ve been heard.”
“Are you gonna listen?”
I huff out a small fraction of my increasing impatience.
He leans in. “Did I listen to you when you asked me to give you a chance to show me what I was missing not being part of our pack? Do you know what you’re missing by not claiming your female?”
I scowl. “Two very different situations, Ty. This pack did nothing wrong to earn your absence. This witch has only been sittin’ there not even twenty-four hours. You think she deserves me droppin’ everything when she left me and hid for seven fuckin’ years?”
Mase answers, “I think you need to listen to her and then make a decision. We all feel your headspace. We all feel the rift, the disconnect, Riley. The sooner you hear her out, the sooner you can move forward.”
“And sad to say,” Ty contributes, “the disconnect doesn’t feel right. I’ve only had this connection with you for a short time and I don’t want it broken like this.”
“Best deal with it, Riley,” my father speaks up from the wall by the door, where he stands with a few more male pack members that I hadn’t clocked. He’s here likely because I’m on the agenda. “Listen to what she has to say, son, then process how it all makes you feel. Do it soon. Don’t put it off.”
He wouldn’t want me putting anything off. One of the values he raised me with was that procrastination was always a downhill slope.
After I lost my shit this morning and ran off not even a sliver of my rage, Mase and Ty caught up with me and I went to the job site with them. I was next to useless. Ty’s a natural. He helped me and Mase wrap the job up. After that, Mase invited me to go for a beer to get me talking. I wanted no part of it. Before we were back, the alphas of our pack had requested this meeting. But I’ve had enough. I need time to get my head together. That I didn’t even clock my father in this room feels odd to me.
“You think I’m not thinking about going over there? Her van’s a hundred feet from me right now. You think I can’t feel it in every cell in my fuckin’ body?”
“What’s stopping you?” Tyson asks.
“Fuckin’ leave me be, you guys. I’ll deal when I’m good and ready.”
Twenty-one alphas and four betas watch me storm out.
When I get outside, I see her van lit up. I smell her. She’s in my lungs. She’s somewhere in that hole in my chest that I’ve felt for seven years and she’s trying to take residence there, but it feels like she’s using an ice pick around the edges to dig her way in, and I don’t know if I should let her wreak more havoc or find a way to expel her.
I get into my truck and peel off in the opposite direction of my house. Tonight, I’m grabbing a motel room.
***
It’s last call in the Stagecoach Tavern at the edge of Drowsy Hollow that’s farthest away from Arcana Falls. And the foxy waitress I’ve been flirting with all night stretches across the bar to get two inches from my face, giving me a view straight down her loose blouse.
