by Grey, Aspen
“Well, I can see that’s not true,” Arnold said as he walked towards me. His scent reached out like a strong hand wrapping its fingers around me. I felt my panther cry out for me to run, to take myself away from this perfect home that I would inevitably destroy and leave Jace and Arnold to live the rest of their lives together, happily, without any of my drama. “Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong? See if I can fix it for you?”
“No,” I muttered as he grew closer. “You can’t fix it. You can’t fix me. I’m broken. I’m awful.”
“You’re not awful, Sasha,” he told me. “And no one is beyond fixing.”
“I am.”
“That’s not true,” he continued, kneeling down behind me. “And you know how I know that?”
“How?” I asked him.
“Because I’ve been watching you,” he told me. “Both of you. You and Jace.”
What?
I turned and looked back at him over my shoulder, trying to understand.
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw you both one night when I was out looking for clues on the killer,” he explained softly. “It was a week ago and I think I knew back then.”
“Knew what?” I asked, playing stupid. He frowned at me like I’d just asked a dumb question—which I had. I lowered my eyes.
“I kept an eye on you both,” he continued. “Knowing that the killer was out there and that nothing could happen to you. And you know what I saw? I saw goodness in both of you. You aren’t trash. You aren’t broken. You aren’t like those other boys working the streets. You’re different. You just don’t see it yet.”
“I’ve done terrible things,” I told him. “Terrible things to people I loved.”
“None of us are perfect, Sasha. And there is always room for redemption.”
He reached out and put a hand on me, and that’s when it happened. Panic flooded my body and I shifted instantly. My legs propelled me into the backyard and I leapt forward over the back fence and landed easily in the street behind.
Worthless.
Broken.
Home wrecker.
Get away from them!
I ran. I ran and I ran and I ran until my legs were burning and my paws were torn and bleeding, and then I kept running. I didn’t even know where I was going, but it didn’t matter. As long as I was away from Jace and Arnold then nothing bad could happen to them, and that was all that mattered.
Chapter Sixteen
Arnold
I was just about to shift when I heard Jace’s voice from behind me.
“What’s going on?” he asked. I wasn’t sure if he’d seen Sasha shift and leap over the fence and run away, and part of me wanted to chase after him, but another part of me knew that he needed time and there was nothing I could say at that moment to make him feel better.
“Jace,” I said as I looked at him. “Sasha just…had a bit of a breakdown. He shifted and ran off.”
“Shit,” Jace scowled, racing forward and preparing to follow after him. But as he reached me, I stopped him, placing a hand on his chest.
“No,” I told him firmly. “Not now.”
“No?!” he replied indignantly. “What are you talking about, no? I have to go after him.”
“He’s beyond speaking right now,” I replied, shaking my head. “This is something he must get through on his own. Anything we say now will just make things worse. And he will be back.”
“What are you talking about?” he scowled. His face was red. He was angry and still on the verge of shifting, but he was listening.
“Sasha is doubting himself,” I explained. “And I’m sure you know why. The story of him and his ex, Jedrik?”
Jace scowled and nodded. Having spent so much time together they must have known all of each other’s secrets by now.
“He feels horrible about that.”
“We all have our problems,” I sighed, leaning against the countertop. “But we all deserve to be happy. Well—almost all of us. And I don’t think Sasha is one of those horrible people who deserve to suffer for their entire lives.”
“You seem to know a lot about us,” Jace replied. I could hear the tiniest hint of skepticism in his voice that I’d expect from him. Out of my two angels, Jace was the tougher one, the more streetwise one.
“I’ve watched you both for about a week,” I told him. “I told this to Sasha.”
“Really…”
“I had to keep an eye on you,” I told him. “While the killer was out there. If I hadn’t, who knows what would have happened to you that night.”
Jace mulled over my words for a moment then shrugged.
“Well, I guess it won’t matter now anyway,” he replied. “What with Sasha running away on us.”
“No,” I shook my head. “He will be back. We are his fated mates. He will return.”
Jace stepped over to me and I took his hand as he laid his head down on my chest. “I sure hope so, Arnold.”
Chapter Seventeen
Sasha
I left Serra Mesa behind and headed for the coast. But I wasn’t going to Mission Beach, I was headed for Pacific Beach. I had to see him. I had to.
This is a bad idea.
My thoughts fought with each other like two sides of a civil war.
Shut up! You have to see him!
My paws scraped against pavement as I raced through a dark alley, dashing out of the way of a garbage truck.
You’re going to make things worse!
The moonlight shone down above me as I streaked across the city, passing the streets where I used to work, seeing other boys on the corner doing their thing. One of them saw me as I flickered past and I saw his eyes go wide as I vanished around a corner.
Just go back to them…
My heart was pounding. I hadn’t run like this in a long time.
No! You have to pay for what you did!
I thought about Jace back at Arnold’s house and the security of his home, how beautiful it was and how comforting his warm scent was. It was a sharp contrast to the smells of the city as I ran. Trash, car exhaust, weed and booze, cigarette smoke and the scents of other omegas, betas and alphas.
This will only cause more problems!
That was probably true, but I simply wasn’t capable of stopping myself. It was like my legs were pistons on a train whose engine was roaring, flaming hot with coal and steam bursting out everywhere as it barreled down the tracks towards its destination. I had to get there. I had to see Jedrik before I’d be able to move on.
Tears peeled away from my eyes as I ran, and as I closed in on his place, tucked away in its wonderful location in Pacific Beach, I felt a strange sensation come over me. It was familiar, but also terrifying at the same time. I’d shared many good times with Jedrik before I went crazy on him, and those images filled my mind as I slowed down in the alley behind his house.
I had thought that only the horrible memories would be in my mind when I arrived, but it was actually the complete opposite. Was it because I wanted him again?
No!
No, that wasn’t it at all. It was because I wanted Arnold now. I was reminding myself that I was capable of more than just the horrible things I’d done to Jedrik. At least, I was trying to get myself to believe that.
I shifted as I came up to his place. He lived above his woodworking studio, but you had to go through a gated door to get to the stairs. It didn’t matter though. I saw the windows to his bedroom were open. All I had to do was stand here and he would smell me.
Please don’t freak out, I thought as I clenched my hands tightly at my sides and looked around to make sure I was alone. Just don’t freak out!
After a moment, I picked up Jedrik’s scent, slowly sinking out of the cracked window above. As I’d been running and was covered in sweat, my scent would be much stronger and easier to pick up. He would have caught it the moment I entered the alley, and I smelled his now as he was out of bed and on his way downstairs.
Please don’t let this be the biggest mistake of my life.
The door opened and Jedrik stepped outside, wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and a white tank top. He was still enormous, thick with muscles and slightly furry with black curls dripping from his head. His smell, salted caramel, was comfortingly familiar, but his eyes were skeptical.
“Sasha?” he said slowly. “What are you doing here? I thought we agreed to never see each other again.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but that’s when the tears really started to fall. I stammered and choked the word from my lips.
“Tell—tell me I’m good enough!” I gasped, collapsing onto my knees before him.
“Sasha!” he said with concern as he stepped quickly over to me and bent down to my level. “Sasha, what’s wrong?”
“Tell me I’m good enough,” I repeated, barely able to speak. “I feel so awful about what I did to you! I was such a horrible person, and now—now I’ve met someone and, and…”
“And you think you’re going to repeat your mistakes with him,” he said simply.
You always did know what I was thinking.
I looked up at him and nodded through blurry eyes. Back when we were together, this is when he would have leaned forward and wrapped me up in his arms. I didn’t expect that now, of course, nor did I want it in that way, but I did need something from him, and I hoped beyond all hope that I hadn’t made a mistake by coming here.
He’s going to tell you that you’re horrible. He’s going to tell you to stay away from anyone who’d ever consider being your mate. Because that’s what you deserve.
Worthless.
Home wrecker.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen, Sasha,” he finally said, putting a hand on my shoulder. I gasped and looked up at him.
“You don’t?”
He shook his head and smiled. “We made peace together. Remember? I forgave you. You understood what you did was wrong. I know how bad you feel about it, but I forgave you. Do you think you’d do what you did to me to anyone else—knowing what it did to us?”
I thought about his question for a moment, then shook my head.
“No.”
“No!” he said with a smile. “No, you don’t. No, you wouldn’t. You’ve been there. You know it doesn’t work. It doesn’t make someone love you. So why would you go back to your old ways?”
“I…I guess I wouldn’t,” I replied, starting to get myself under control.
“Exactly,” he replied, taking hold of one of my hands that was torn up pretty badly from the long run from Serra Mesa. “Look what you’ve done to yourself. Where did you run from?”
“You don’t even want to know,” I replied, managing half of a laugh. I felt suddenly stupid, but that was a good thing. It meant I understood what Jedrik had told me. It meant that I was beginning to realize that I was capable of love. I was beginning to trust myself.
“Come on,” he said, helping me to my feet. “I’ll take you home.”
“No!” I protested. “I can’t let you do that. Perry and Roberto—”
“Are sleeping,” he replied. “They know you and I are finished. This isn’t anything. It’s just a favor. You can’t run back on injured paws. Come on. I’ll take you home.”
Chapter Eighteen
Arnold
He’s going to come back. You know he will.
I’d told that to Jace and I believed it, but it had been a while now and Jace was starting to get antsy. It wasn’t long now until the sun came up, and if he wasn’t back by then, I don’t think either of us would be able to wait any longer. We’d have to go looking for him, despite the fact that he’d be almost impossible to find.
There were simply too many people in San Diego. Too many scents and too many smells to track him. If he was going to see Jedrik in Pacific Beach, that would at least give us a place to start, but it still wouldn’t be easy. I just hoped that when he got there, his ex didn’t kill him.
There’s nothing you can do now, I thought. This is something he has to work out for himself.
It’s important, especially as an alpha, to understand when it’s time for you to sit back and when it’s time for you to step in. As a detective, this is one of the first things you learn. If you have a lead, a witness maybe, and you confront them at the wrong time, they’re going to see you as the enemy. If you understand how to wait, hang back for the perfect moment, then they might talk to you. If I tried to get in the middle of Sasha and whatever demons he was going through right now, there was a real possibility that I’d drive him away, and I simply couldn’t risk that.
“He should be back by now!” Jace growled, slapping his hand against the counter for the twelfth time.
“Take it easy,” I told him. “I know you’re worried. We both are. But we have to let him do this.”
“Do what!? If he goes back to Jedrik, there’s a good chance he and his mates will kill him!”
“I don’t think that will happen,” I said, shaking my head.
“How could you possibly know that?”
“I may not know everything that went down between them,” I replied. “But I know Sasha well enough, as do you, to know that he wouldn’t put himself into that kind of a situation, no matter how he was feeling. He’s smart—like you.”
Jace thought about this for a moment and, not finding any real holes in my logic, shrugged and began to pace around the room.
“Maybe you’re right,” he conceded. “But still….I’m worried.”
“I know you are,” I told him. “You look out for him. But no one can look out for him with this. It’s a journey he has to take on his own.”
“He doesn’t think he’s deserving of love,” Jace said. “He thinks his past actions will forever determine his future.”
I nodded. “Well, hopefully his ex says something to make him understand that everyone deserves a shot at redemption. Everyone deserves a shot at happiness.”
Jace opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, there was a knock at the front door. He was there in a second, with me right behind him, and tore it open to find Sasha standing there, stark naked and obviously in an emotional state. But he was smiling.
Thank God.
Behind him, I saw a BMW pulling away. His ex had given him a ride home.
“Sasha!” Jace cried out, throwing his arms around his neck and pulling him close. His scent was everywhere, and I reached my arms around both of them and hugged them tightly.
“How did it go?” I asked.
“Ahhh, it was hard,” Sasha replied. “But Jedrik…was Jedrik. He was always smarter than me, and he told me everything I needed to hear. I think I’m finally able to start letting that stuff go, and I don’t think I ever would have been able to without him saying what he said to me.”
“So now you can finally stop feeling like you’re not good enough to love?” Jace asked him. “Because after everything that happened here…”
“I’m ready,” Sasha said, stepping back from our embrace so he could see our eyes. He looked at Jace, then looked at me. “I am ready, finally, to start moving on.”
Chapter Nineteen
Jace
“You’re crazy, Sasha,” I joked softly as I gently rubbed the grit and sand from his palms. The run across town had torn him up. He was even bleeding a little.
“Stop it,” he whispered with a smile.
“You know me. I can’t stop looking out for you.”
“Well, hopefully you won’t have to any longer,” he replied. “Now that we have a big strong alpha!”
“I’ll never stop, Sasha,” I told him. “I don’t care if there were four hundred Arnolds walking around with you as bodyguards twenty-four seven. I’ll always look out for you.”
I looked into his eyes and kissed him, deeply but quickly, before going back to my nurse duties. His feet were soaking in a tub full of warm water, and he was sitting on the edge, completely naked, as I did my best to take care of him without getting
completely turned on by his body. But after what had happened in the bedroom…that was getting harder and harder to do.
“What’s the matter, Jace?” Sasha teased, obviously noticing what I was going through. I shook my head and smiled.
“Nothing, Sasha.”
“What’s the matter, Jace?” he asked, leaning forward and pressing his lips against my neck where it met my jaw, causing me to shiver at the wonderful sensation. “Trying to concentrate or something?”
“Stop it!” I laughed. “I have to get your hands and feet cleaned up.”
“I’m a shifter,” he scoffed. “They’ll be fine by tomorrow.”
“Not if you have a bunch of disgusting San Diego dirt stuck in your wounds,” I corrected him. “But if you want your foot to turn green and fall off…”
I let go of his hands and pretended like I was going to get up and leave, but he squealed in protest.
“No, no! That’s okay. I’ll be good.”
I looked at him skeptically. “Mmmhmmm.”
“I will! Scout’s honor.”
“Hah!” I burst out laughing. “You are the furthest thing from a Boy Scout that I’ve ever seen.”
“Hey, that’s not true,” he replied. “I can tie knots.”
“You can tie your shoelaces in knots,” I countered. “That’s about it.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I have you around then, isn’t it?” he whispered, leaning closer.
“Stop that,” I warned him. He was teasing me—trying to distract me as I doted on him.
“Stop what?” he asked, slyly running his fingers over the inside of my thigh.
“That!” I told him, swatting his hand away. He simply smiled like a naughty teenager as I continued my work.
