by Sophie Stern
The only person I’ve ever had eyes for is Foxy.
And apparently, I completely screwed that up.
“Allison isn’t my mate.”
My mother should know this by now. She should understand that when a lion mates, it mates for life. That’s the beautiful thing about being a shifter: these things are for eternity. She doesn’t care, though, and somehow, I never noticed that before.
Her eyes narrow now. We’re still on the porch. She’s standing on the doorway, and in the dim light provided by her porch light, I can see the glare that covers her face. Oh, she’s not happy.
Too bad I don’t give a shit.
“I’ve been working for years to get you to consider Allison,” my mother snaps. “She’s a good choice. She always has been. You’ve just been too caught up with that fox bitch to ever look at anyone else.”
I promised myself a long time ago I would never hit a woman. That might be sexist, but I don’t really care. I won’t do it. Even now, as I stand looking at my mother, I can’t bring myself to do it.
Oh, I want to.
I fucking want to.
But I won’t.
Instead, I nod, understanding that the relationship between myself and the woman who gave birth to me has effectively ended. My mother and I have never been close, but I know for a fact that there’s no coming back from this.
There will be no moment when I look at her and think oh, she really did want what was best for me.
I won’t look at her and believe that this thing between us is going to be anything but what it is: over.
“Goodbye, Mother,” I say firmly. There’s a finality to my voice on purpose. This is it for Mother and me. This is the end. I will not be coming over for holidays, and I will not be calling her when she finally has grandchildren, and I will not be visiting her when she’s lonely. This is the end. She tried to destroy me, and I will not continue to have a relationship with someone who is toxic, and who is hurtful, and who is cruel.
Her eyes widen and then darken once more. The words I’ve spoken seem to sink in, and she finally understands that I mean it.
“She was never right for you,” my mother tells me, and I know she’s talking about Foxy again. She doesn’t even care that our own relationship is crumbling right in front of her.
“That was never your decision.”
“She wanted you to stay here,” my mother says. “You were made for so much greater.”
“I wanted to stay here,” I correct my mom. “And even if I didn’t, I would have taken Foxy with me. It’s not every day you find true love, Mom, but I did, and you tried to fuck that up.”
I turn around and leave, carrying the blanket that’s wrapped around me. I drop it at the end of the driveway and shift into my animal form. For a second, I think about leaving the blanket there, but I won’t be a total dick. I pick it up in my teeth and carry it back to the porch and drop it there.
I look back at my Mom. She’s still standing there in her PJ’s looking like she just lost something important, but the truth is, I realize, she made her decision long ago.
So I turn, and I head back to my house.
Felicity and I have some talking to do.
Chapter 5
Foxy
I try for a long time to stay awake after he leaves, but eventually, my exhaustion hits me and I pass out on his couch. My dreams are filled with strange creatures and horrifying monsters, but somehow, an extraordinary lion seems to save me over and over again in every single dream. There’s a part of me that hopes it’s some sort of premonition. When I wake up, though, I realize that I’m all alone, and there’s no lion.
Until there is.
The door to the cabin opens and he comes inside.
Naked.
He’s so fucking naked that I don’t really know what to do. I mean, I showed up unannounced at his place, told him I’d almost been murdered by my date, explained to him that his mother was the one behind our breakup, and then fell asleep on his couch. I’m not exactly setting a precedent as being someone who understands how to win over a guy.
“Hey,” he says, carefully closing the door behind him. He locks it and I realize that I didn’t even do that when he left. I probably should have gotten up and secured the door, but instead, I just sat on the couch until I passed out. Good thing it was him coming inside. Apparently, I’m not exactly good at playing it safe these days.
Shit.
“Hey,” I say. I sit primly on the couch and try not to stare at his damn penis. For fuck’s sake, it’s so not cool that he looks this good naked. I mean, I like the way I look, too, but he…
Well, Brendan has always known exactly how to get a girl’s blood pumping.
I don’t even think that he really has to try. I think that he just naturally looks really amazing and wonderful. Somehow, he manages to look like the kind of guy you want spanking you and kissing you at the same time. He’ll fuck you hard and then bake you cookies to eat after. He’s a sweetheart, but he’s fine, too.
“How are you feeling?” He asks me carefully, gently. He doesn’t seem to notice that he’s naked, or that I’m staring, which is good. I don’t want to feel even more embarrassed about my behavior and my lack of total decorum. The problem is that he really does look wonderful, and it’s been kind of awhile since I had sex. Like, a long while.
“I’ve had better days, but I’m happy you’re back.” I don’t tell him about the nightmares. This isn’t the time to tell him that I was dreaming about him. I don’t know if he’d like that or be upset, but it’s best to keep that to myself for now. I’m not exactly good at saying the right thing these days.
“I’m happy I’m back, too.” He looks at me carefully, and he licks his lips. The gesture is probably just because his lips are cry, but instantly, I start staring at them. Images from the past are flashing back into my brain.
Brendan on top of me.
Flash.
Brendan kissing my neck.
Flash.
Brendan licking carefully around each of my nipples.
Flash.
I try to push the images from my mind, and I shake my head physically to do so.
“Where did you go?”
It’s none of my business where he went. The truth is that he doesn’t have to tell me a damn thing. We aren’t dating. He owes me nothing. For some reason, I need to keep reminding myself of this because there’s a part of me that very much wants more from him.
Still, I’m curious. I find myself wondering if he went for a run to clear his mind, or to try to get me out of it. Is he still pained from our breakup? Actually, he seemed both shocked and horrified when I told him the truth reason for our breakup, and it makes me feel a little…
Well, ashamed, I guess.
It’s been so long that I probably should have followed up and made sure that he really did go to school and that he really was successful, but why would I? We were broken up! We were split up and when that happens, you’re supposed to move on. You’re supposed to stop looking backward and look forward instead, and well, I tried to. I really and truly tried to. I always assumed that he had moved on, too, but now I’m not so sure.
“I went to see my mother,” he says the words with a sort of finality. His mom? Why would he go see her? Then I realize he went to confront her, and that makes me feel nauseous. I haven’t seen Jeanette since it happened. I haven’t wanted to or needed to. She made it clear that I was no good for her son, and well, I believed her. Brendan and I dated on-and-off throughout our senior year of high school and all of college. We broke up for little things and got back together the next day. We were each others’ first love, and well, I guess I had always thought that she liked me.
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
My question hangs in the air for just a second. He crosses his arms over his chest and looks at me carefully. I try again to stop staring at his penis. This is a super serious conversation,
but he is so damn naked right now. Seriously. He needs to cover up.
“Because she lied to you, and I wanted to know why.”
Wait…
What?
My blood runs cold at his words. What does he mean? She lied to me? What did she lie to me about? And why?
“Brendan?”
I think he senses the fear in my voice, but he doesn’t come to the couch. Instead, he sits down on the floor and looks over at me. There must be three feet between us, but it’s enough to keep us from touching in this moment.
And he’s still naked.
I’m torn between wanting to throw myself at him and start climbing up him like a tree and wanting to respect the fact that he hasn’t had any time to deal with this newfound knowledge.
“What do you mean? How did she lie to me?”
“I never went to grad school, Foxy.”
“But…”
“I never wanted to go either.”
A sinking feeling hits me. He didn’t plan to go to school? But I saw the papers! I saw the entrance packet. I saw the acceptance letter he received that showed he’d been accepted, but…
Thinking back, Brendan had never mentioned graduate school to me. When we’d talked about our futures, it always seemed like our time really was supposed to be in Claw Valley. We both seemed to like the idea of settling down here and having kids one day. Neither one of us had expressed much interest in leaving. In some ways, I think that was why he words had come as such a shock to me.
“What?” I shake my head. “What do you mean? Tell me what you mean.” I’m on the verge of crying again, and oh, I do not want to cry in front of him. Not tonight.
“I had never been planning on leaving Claw Valley. My mom had been pushing me for years to leave. She wanted me to go to graduate school, to sow my wild oats, and to marry Allison Erin.” He shakes his head and holds his hands up. “I was never going to do any of that.”
“What?” The word comes out forced, like I’m choking on it. What is he talking about right now? Is this for real?
I feel like I’m on repeat, like I’m some sort of broken record right now. The only question I seem to be able to ask is what? Nothing else seems to come out, no matter how hard I try.
“Yeah.”
“But…”
But she told me.
She said he was going away, and I couldn’t do anything about it.
There’s a college just a few towns over, and pretty much everyone in Claw Valley does their undergraduate studies there. Brendan and I both did, but for grad school…
Well, she just said it was super important.
“I’m sorry she tricked you,” he says.
“I…”
She stole everything from me.
I never would have broken up with him. Not in a million years, but I wanted him to be happy. I wanted him to be loved and content, and I wanted him to get his own happy ending. In my mind, giving him up meant giving him a future. It meant that he was going to be able to carve his own way out in the world without the burden of taking care of me.
And then Brendan comes to me.
He gets up, and he walks over, and he pulls me up off of the couch. He tugs me into his arms, and he wraps himself around me like a guardian.
“Brendan, I’m so sorry,” I say, and that’s when the tears start to fall. “I didn’t know. I trusted her.”
“I trusted her, too. Foxy, I cried over you so many times. I shed so many tears, and she never told me. She never told me just how big of a role she played in you leaving. She never felt the need to let me know you were leaving because of her.”
“If I had known, I never would have said goodbye.”
There’s a part of me that wonders why I even listened to her.
We’ve lost so much time.
And now it’s too late.
I found myself at Brendan’s house because of the tiger who attacked me, but now…
Now I’m right back where I was all of those years ago, and my heart hurts just as badly.
“I need to go home,” I tell him, suddenly pulling back. “I’m sorry, Brendan, but I should go.”
“No.”
“What?”
He can’t keep me here. I’m not a prisoner.
“You aren’t safe, Felicity. You don’t have to do anything with me, but I want you to stay here. It’s safer here. I can protect you. Until we know who this guy is and what he wants and what he’s after, then it’s best if you stay here.”
He wants me with him, under the same roof as him, and I…
Is that a good idea?
It really, really doesn’t feel like a good idea.
“I have a guest room,” he says, like that matters.
“Yeah,” I finally choke the words out. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he agrees, and somehow, that seems to settle it. In a daze, I follow as he leads me through his cute little house, up some stairs, and to the guest bedroom. It’s decorated with these big stripes in every color of the rainbow. I turn to him and raise an eyebrow. I mean, he’s a grown man. Most people have a guest room that looks like someplace a grandmother would sleep, but not Brendan.
This room has a huge bed in the center of the room with a big red blanket on it. There are orange and yellow pillows on top. All of the other furniture in the room is equally colorful: a blue desk, a green dresser. There’s even a purple nightstand.
“What can I say?” He shrugs. “I like things that are colorful.”
“Me too.”
“I know.”
I look over at him sharply, and a coy grin spreads across his face.
“You always talked about rainbows all of the time. You never stopped looking for them. Anytime it rained, you’d manage to find one.”
“They’re my favorite,” I whisper. We used to talk about getting rainbow tattoos one day, and all through college, I had rainbow-colored hair. I stopped dying it a long time ago. Now my hair is plain and red and simple, but somehow, it means a lot to me that he didn’t forget.
We may have had a horrible breakup, but apparently, I inspired his guest room décor. That has to count for something, right? Maybe it counts for something.
“I missed you,” he says, looking over at me. He’s still naked. He’s still wonderfully naked and he doesn’t seem to care or mind at all.
“I missed you, too,” I whisper.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen between us, Felicity, but I never stopped missing you,” he says. Then he shrugs and shakes his head. He moves toward the door again and he stops in the entrance. “The bathroom is next door and I’m down the hall. If you need anything, my door will be unlocked. You can just come in, okay?”
“Okay,” I whisper.
“I mean it. If you feel scared or something happens where you need assistance…just come get me.”
“I will.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise,” I whisper.
Satisfied, he turns to leave. I leave the door open, but I flip off the light. I drop my little blanket to the floor and crawl naked under the covers on the big bed. Somehow, it’s enough. It has to be enough. I close my eyes, and I wish that our story was different. I can’t believe I was tricked into giving up my mate.
In the darkness of the night, I start to cry, but I bury my face in a pillow and hope he doesn’t hear.
Chapter 6
Brendan
The next morning, Felicity comes downstairs and sits down at the counter. Without batting an eye, I take in her disheveled appearance. She’s wrapped in a blanket, and her hair is messy. Her eyes are swollen and she has dark circles under them. Felicity is no less beautiful like this, but she looks like she didn’t sleep at all. Perhaps I’m to blame for that, but I think the stress of her failed date coupled with the revelation about my mother probably got to her just a little bit.
“Good morning,” I greet her, turning around from my cooking. I’m scrambling eggs, frying bacon, and making toast. I
step aside from the stove to pour her a cup of coffee, taking care to fix it the way she likes it.
“Thanks,” she says. She takes a sip and looks up at me. “You remembered.” She seems a little bit surprised about this.
“Almond milk and a dash of sugar,” I roll my eyes. “Nobody else in the world likes that, Foxy. It’s not a hard order to remember.”
“Hey,” she protests. “That’s not really fair.”
“I think it’s more than fair.” I look at her carefully. She looks soft and sweet and a little bit wild. She looks like she’s been well-fucked even though she hasn’t. Part of me regrets not taking her up on her offer last night, but the rest of me knows just how wrong it would have been. My goal is to take care of Foxy: not take advantage of her.
“Well, thank you,” she says, sipping the coffee. I let her sit there and drink it silently as I finish preparing our breakfast. It doesn’t take long to finish the eggs and bacon. I plate the food, add the toast with a smidge of butter on each slice, and set the food on the counter. She looks at it eagerly, hungrily, like she hasn’t eaten in weeks. Maybe longer.
Who has been taking care of her all this time?
I know that she’s close with her mom and her little brother, Max. He was just a baby when we broke up. Now he’s a big kid with big kid needs and I know that out of all of the potential big sisters in the world, Felicity is probably the best he’s ever going to have.
“We need to talk,” I tell her with a sigh. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to have this conversation. What I want is to forget the last five years ever happened. What I want is to head back to five years ago when we were making love in our favorite cave, and I want to pretend like it didn’t end utterly horribly.
“About us?” She asks. Does her voice sound a little hopeful? It sounds a little hopeful. Even though I’m devastated at the time we’ve lost, and there’s a huge part of me that wants to claim her as my own, I’m not certain we can just pick up where we left off. Can we? If we had some sort of time machine and could go back and erase the last five years, I’d be all in. I’d be so damn ready for that.
