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Was he embarrassed of me? Or ashamed? Or worse—was it only his wolf that wanted me?
I shoved my tray to the middle of the round table and rested my head on the cool Linoleum. A warm hand settled over my back.
“Don’t touch her,” Dastien growled.
I whipped my head up. Bossypants was back with a vengeance. “Seriously? Please don’t tell me that after your days long disappearing act—which, by the way, you were painfully consistent with this morning—”
“Tessa—” Dastien started, but I held my hand up.
If we did this here and now I was totally going to cry. “Let’s talk about it later.”
No one said anything as I downed half my Diet Coke in one gulp. Maybe it would’ve been better to go for the regular Coke these days, but I’d grown accustomed to the taste. A girl needed a little something familiar when surrounded by the completely unfamiliar.
The sounds of the cafeteria as people moved around, grabbing their breakfast and chatting about last night’s attack, filled the silence at our table as I took a bite of food.
Dastien looked across the room as Mr. Dawson walked through the door. They were having some sort of unspoken conversation that involved minute changes in body language. Dastien nodded and stood up.
“Catch you later,” I said. It sounded pitiful, even to me. For once it’d be nice to be the one doing the leaving.
He walked around the table and squatted next to my chair. “I have to, mon coeur. I want to stay here with you, believe me. I need to win your trust. I’m sorry I left before you woke this morning. I’m an idiot and I didn’t know it’d hurt your feelings or else I would have stayed. But I have to go now and I hope that later you’ll give me yet another chance.” He kissed my cheek and rubbed his nose from the corner where my neck met my shoulder up to my ear. He breathed in deeply, scenting me, and I felt it all the way to my core. “Je t’aime, ma chérie.”
My heart skipped a beat. Did he just say what I think he said?
No. I must’ve misunderstood.
I wanted to hang on to him, but stubbornness was in my nature. I wouldn’t be forced into any relationships. But after last night, my resolve was weakening. Dastien was addicting, and I was hooked before I ever got to Texas.
I watched him until he was at the door. He glanced back and smiled, and then was gone.
Shannon scraped her chair against the floor as she got up.
Meredith broke the silence first. “Adrian, can you help me with my meta lab?”
“Hey, if you want help, babe, all you gotta do is ask. I love helpin’ the ladies.” He grinned.
“Don’t be such a dork.” She picked up a biscuit and chucked it at him.
He plucked it out of the air and took a bite. “Yum. Thanks.” He winked at her. It was really nice to see them flirting. Meredith always counted herself out of the whole mating-game. Which reminded me… “So, why haven’t you picked one?” I gestured to the tables of guys.
Everyone at the table stilled.
“I haven’t shifted yet,” Meredith said quietly. She looked down at her plate. “I had a run in with some witches a few years back. Mr. Dawson thinks they cursed me. I wouldn’t want to stick anyone with that.”
Adrian reached across the table. “Hey. I told you I was working on it. Brujo blood, remember.”
“Brujo?” I said.
“Witch. I’ve got some in my lineage a ways back. It’s a pretty diluted but strong enough that I can cast minor spells.”
“I know what brujo means, but isn’t it just a bunch of hippie stuff. At least, that’s what my dad always says about my cousins and they claim to be brujos.”
Adrian studied me. “You looked a little Latin but your name threw me.”
I nodded. “Half. Dad’s one hundred percent white-boy. Mom’s Mexican.”
“So when you say cousin, you mean as in somewhere along the line we had a relative in common kind of a thing, or cousins as in mother’s sibling’s kids.”
I laughed. Mexican families were typically really large. My mom joked that in her hometown on the Texas-Mexico border everyone was cousins somewhere down the line. “As in my mother’s nephews and my aunts and uncles and my grandmother…basically everyone on my mom’s side.”
