AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah. I did.” I set my mom’s box on the floor and held my hands out for the box. I hadn’t thought of it in years, and truth be told, I left it there, unable to throw it out and unwilling to bring it with me.
“I thought you got rid of it or something.”
Nope. I just… I opened the box. “My treasure changed from rocks and flattened pennies and… let’s take the big box down to my mom. I can show you what’s in that one after.”
He agreed and we brought her the box, which I soon discovered was her storage space for her Santa plates for tomorrow. It was hardly the safest place to keep them, but I was glad she did. Finding that box… It would help me explain so much to Nicholas, things I’d been holding in my heart all these years.
“Is there anything else you need help with, Mom?” I asked. I really hoped the answer was no. It had been a long morning. It seemed as if everyone was winding down for the afternoon so we could start it all over again this evening.
“We’re all set, baby. Why don’t you head over to Nicholas’ house. If we’re sharing the two of you from now on, then we better get used to you bouncing between the two houses.” She chuckled. “It’ll be just like old times. Too bad we never built that tunnel.”
I grinned. We had always joked about building a tunnel from Nicholas’ house to mine, so that way we could travel between the two places easier. I thought it would make sense just to build an addition and connect the two houses, but I supposed that would be a nightmare for property taxes.
“Thanks, Mom.” I hugged her tight and promised we’d let her know which meals we would be around for and when.
Nicholas had the box in his hand and the two of us walked over to his house. Somehow it was quiet there; apparently most everyone had gone out to do some very last minute Christmas shopping.
We went up to his room. “I’m nervous,” I said.
“About sharing what’s in the box?”
I nodded.
“I can help with that.” Nicholas set the box down and then pulled me into his arms. His lips were on mine, gently coaxing my mouth open. I closed my eyes and just let myself be led by him. My alpha.
Chapter Thirteen
Nicholas
Foreheadstogether,bothofus catching our breath, our kiss getting hotter than I intended, I soaked in all that was Christopher. It felt so right having him here in this room, the one we’d spent so many hours in. Unlike at his house, mine was like walking through a time slip.
The posters were still on the wall from when I was a kid. They had yellowed with age, but they were hanging tough. I had a stack of notebooks on my desk that was from my last semester in the regular school. Even the bedspread and sheets were the same.
Christopher had gotten a little weird when I mentioned the box held his treasures, and that had me doubly curious about what was inside.
“Maybe we should leave the door open.” He gave me a peck. “Otherwise I’m going to want to get you naked, and that’s probably not the best idea.”
“It sounds perfectly fantastic to me.” No one would care what they overheard. We had wolf hearing even in our human forms, and we’d just learned to be polite enough not to say anything. It was either that, or soundproof every room.
“Behave.” He stepped around me and sat on my bed, the one he was in when he first discovered that I’d accidentally mated him in the clearing, that those wolves he saw were all human beings most of the time. “I want to show you.”I sat across from him, the box between us.
“I never stopped adding to this, not until you left.” He put the lid to the side, the top side down, forming a little tray. “This is the rock we found by the river the day we tried to go fishing with our homemade fishing poles.” He set the small rock on the box.
Our fishing trip had been doomed from the start. We thought making fishing hooks out of the ties used on the bread bags was a brilliant idea when we added them to our cardboard poles. I grew up in a family of predators, I understood what it took to catch a fish. But even then, I didn’t have the heart to tell him how horrible the plan he was so excited to have come up with was. I was along for the ride, and I would have done anything to continue hanging out with him.
How blind I was to not realize what that was then. Hindsight was twenty/twenty.
“I remember that.” I picked up the rock and held it in my hand. “It was a fun day, but your mom was furious with us.” She didn’t like finding us by the river, sure that one or both of us would drown. And fair enough. We were only seven.
“And this…” He placed a smashed penny on the inverted box lid. “We found this at the old barn.”
We had always been careful not to go near the barn, as it was falling apart. But that one day, we saw a kitten, one who looked far too young to be on its own, and we ventured inside to fetch it. We found more than a kitten, we found an entire litter. We told my mom and she managed to get them all new homes. “Penny the cat.” That’s what we called her because we found this penny trying to fish her out of the crate she had jumped into. “I still think one of our moms should’ve let us keep her.”
“Same.” I added a pet to my mental list of things that I wanted us to have together. We were due.
He dug back in the box, and this time he pulled out a magnet… the one I had on my locker. “When you left, they took or tried to take everything from the school. But they missed this. I snagged it.”
It was a silly tourist magnet from when my family went to the amusement park. There was nothing innately special about it other than it brought back memories. My heart broke for teenage Christopher, who had held on dearly to any shred of our time together.
