by Sara Summers
“I don’t know. You left me in that salon for ten hours, Logan. I had never even heard of hair or eyelash extensions, and the lady attacked my entire body with hot wax…” I grimaced and shook my head. The pain was gone, but I would never forget the scarring experience that was getting almost all of the hair on my body ripped out.
He looked completely shocked.
“That’s what you meant when you said I thought my mom was my soulmate.” He rubbed his hand over his face and looked at the wall for a moment, frustrated. “If I had been there with you it would’ve been worse, not better. People would’ve been staring and taking pictures, and you would’ve felt even more uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry that all of this is happening so quickly and that the way you look has to change to fit into my world. I wish it wasn’t like this, I do, but if you hadn’t gone to the salon and been uncomfortable for a while, you would feel out of place every time you went anywhere with me.” He stepped closer and tried to take my hand.
I stepped back.
“I shouldn’t have to change for you. I’m your soulmate.” I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Can you really say that? If we were in the cage right now, what would you expect me to do? Work construction with you? Try to fit into your family? Make friends with your brothers? You’d want me to shift, and to be a part of your wolf pack whether I wanted to or not.” He argued.
I stepped closer. When he challenged me, the wolf in me refused to do anything that resembled backing down.
“So I should give up everything that matters to me? Because you look down on the way I live, I should just let it go and let you and your mom decide to what degree I fit in here? We shouldn’t, oh, I don’t know, compromise?”
“Of course we should compromise, but first we need to get through with the elopement party. To do that you had to go to the salon.”
“If we were really compromising there wouldn’t be an elopement party, Logan. We both know we didn’t elope because we didn’t need any kind of ceremony to make this real. You just want me to pretend to be human, and you want me to do whatever it takes to keep up that image. This isn’t a compromise, this is a dictatorship.” I could hear the growl in my voice and didn’t bother trying to hide it.
“I’m not being a dictator, Emma. I’m doing everything I can to make this fair for both of us, but if you come out with being a shifter, you’ll destroy everything my family has built. Living like this is important to them. I’m trying to compromise with you.” He protested, his hands out in front of him.
In that moment, I realized that he was choosing his family and his world over me. My soulmate cared more about his family’s perfect image and fame than he cared about me or how I felt.
“Oh, really? I asked you what your plans were, but you never even took a second to wonder about mine. I might’ve grown up in the dump, but even dumpster girls have dreams, and my dreams are just as important as yours. We’re supposed to be combining our lives, not choosing one and abandoning the other.”
“You don’t have to abandon your life, I never asked you to do that.” Logan grabbed my arm.
My heart sank to the bottom of my feet. He wasn’t willing to change anything, but he wanted me to change everything. He wouldn’t give up what his family wanted.
“No, you just asked me to leave my home and family, to pretend not to be who I am, and to completely change my appearance.” I pulled my arm out of his grip. “Because you’re always the prince, and you always get the girl. Screw you, Logan.”
I stepped into the bathroom and closed the door, locking it behind me. Tossing my clothes in a heap on the floor, I shifted into wolf form.
The bathroom was large, but it was still a bathroom. There wasn’t space to run and there was nowhere to hide. There was just me, a toilet, a fancy sink, and a shower with four heads.
Still, it was a relief just to be in wolf form. It felt like I could finally breathe again.
I draped myself across the tiled floor and let myself get lost in the overwhelming feeling of “it will all work out” that always accompanied being a wolf.
“Emma!” Logan banged on the door for the tenth time, and I decided once again not to bother acknowledging him. If he wasn’t going to acknowledge that I was a person with dreams and feelings, I wasn’t going to acknowledge that he was upset.
“Fine, don’t open the door. Just listen.” He said.
I had an overwhelming urge to kick the door down just so he’d stop talking. It was clear that he wasn’t willing to look at anything from my perspective, and I knew that whatever he said was just going to make me more frustrated.
“I want this to work out between us. We’re going to figure it out, we just have to make it through today first. Tomorrow, we have the entire day to figure out what we want to do.” He paused, and I knew he was hoping I would say something.
I sighed inwardly, and then shifted back into human form.
“Are you willing to change any of your plans?” I asked.
“Of course. I want to compromise, I want you to be happy too.”
“So you’ll drop out of the superhero movie if I say that moving to Georgia is a deal breaker?”
I knew the answer even before he took a long time to respond.
“I can’t do that.” He admitted.
“You’ll tell the world that I’m a shifter, then? And show them your cotie?”
Once again, I knew the answer.
“I can’t do that either.”
“You have no idea what it means to compromise, Logan. The only thing you know is how to be famous and get your way.” I pulled my clothes back on. My shirt was still outside, so I opened the bathroom door.
It surprised him when I walked past, grabbing my t-shirt off the ground and pulling it over my head.
“What are you doing?” he asked, cautiously.
“You aren’t willing to even discuss what we are going to do, so this relationship is never going to get anywhere. I’m leaving.” I said, like it was the easiest thing in the world.
It wasn’t. I had waited my whole life for my soulmate. He was a major part of my plans. I’d expected to meet a guy who would sweep me off my feet and love me with a passion that was so fierce he would do anything to let me know it.
“Just half an hour ago you were saying that the Creator put us together so you could beat up crazed fans.” He said, his eyes wide with alarm.
“Yeah, and half an hour ago I thought you were going to try to work things out between us. I realized that was a lie, and now I’m leaving.”
“Shifters don’t believe in leaving their soulmates. You guys do whatever you have to do to stay together.” He protested.
I laughed.
“You’re going to teach me about shifters now? Do you know what my mom always says about soulmates? She says it’s just a word. She says you have to choose them every day, over and over again. That just because you found your person, it doesn’t mean you don’t have to try. You aren’t willing to even try.”
“I am, I swear. I will. Come to the party with me tonight and tomorrow you can leave if we don’t come up with a plan that works for both of us, okay?”
“No, not okay. You’re never going to choose me over your family.” I held out my hand toward the door. “I can hear your mom’s makeup lady downstairs. If I asked you to, would you send her away? Would you tell your mom that I’m pretty enough without it, that you don’t care if I stand out in the crowd?”
“Are you going to leave if I say no?” he asked.
“You are completely ridiculous.” I laughed in disbelief.
“My family’s image is important to them, and I guess it’s important to me too. Please, just,” he shook his head and took my hand, placing his palm against the cotie on the side of my neck before I could argue.
His hurricane of emotions rushed through me, and I stopped in my tracks.
I felt his struggle. He wanted me, he really, really wanted to be with me, to buil
d a future with me. But his family meant more to him than anything. He loved them more than he loved me, and that stopped him from choosing me over them.
My heart sort of softened when I felt that. I couldn’t expect him to love me more than he loved his family after only a day and a half. Asking him to choose between me and them was too much for him.
But he really did care about me.
I started to feel a little hopeful again, when I felt his emotions. In time, I knew I could become more important to him than his family. If I could stick it out a few weeks or months, he would love me and what I wanted would matter to him.
So I decided to stay, to give him time to love me and time to choose me.
I closed my eyes and pushed his arm away from my neck.
“Alright, I’ll stay until tomorrow.” I turned toward the door when I heard the makeup lady outside it.
“I’ll make it work for you, I swear.” He promised taking my hand.
I really, really hoped he would.
Especially because the makeup lady came in with a needle-gun to pierce my ears.
Eleven
I tucked a strand of wavy hair behind my ear and forced a smile. My face felt slimy and thick, all caked in makeup. The way everyone was staring at me, I figured it was either as slimy as it felt or as sexy as Logan claimed.
“Good to meet you!” I smiled and nodded, faking an interest in the man in front of us. His job was something to do with Logan’s acting, but I didn’t really understand what.
Even if I had understood, I was far too busy feeling uncomfortable to pay any real attention to the conversation. The tight, shimmering silver dress I wore wasn’t even a little bit stretchy, so breathing was tricky, especially because it had an equally unstretchy high-neck that felt almost like it was strangling me. Besides the makeup and the dress, I’d been wearing the six-inch black heels for two hours at that point and my feet felt like they might fall off.
The guy we were talking to walked away to get something to eat, and Logan’s mom hurried up to us.
“Keep your hair untucked, Emma. And remember, keep that tattoo covered.”
She’d taken to calling my cotie a tattoo every time she told me to keep it covered, which was just about every four minutes.
I felt like stabbing the heel of those ridiculously tall shoes into her gorgeous green eyes.
But if she was blind, she would’ve had to ask Logan if my hair was covering my cotie every two minutes instead of four. That would’ve been worse.
So the eye-stabbing was out of the question.
“I’m going to go freshen up.” I told Logan before hurrying off. While I hated the heels, I had no problem walking in them. The makeup lady told me that I wore them “like they were a second skin”.
Little did she know that I actually had a second skin. It was just covered in hair and frequently, dirt.
Laren told me that referring to the bathroom as a bathroom was bad manners; if I needed to pee, I had to call it “freshening up” and I had to powder my face while I was in there.
That wasn’t happening, not that I’d let his crazy mother know it.
I stepped into the hallway and took a deep breath of slightly fresher air before walking toward the bathroom. I didn’t actually need to go, I just wanted to get out of the insanely packed room.
While I was heading toward the bathroom, I noticed an open door a little ways ahead. We were on the top floor of some tall, fancy hotel, so I knew it wasn’t an escape route. But then again, a patio was almost as good.
I headed straight for that patio.
When I saw an old man in a wheelchair staring out at the city, I froze. He noticed me though, so I couldn’t just leave.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone was out here.” I apologized, reaching up to scratch at the stiff high-neck of my dress. When I pulled it away from my skin I could breathe a tiny bit better, but I couldn’t pull it away much.
“That’s alright. I don’t mind a little company.” The old man said. “I’m George.” He held out his hand.
Everyone else at the party had either hugged me or done this weird thing where they kissed both of my cheeks, so the handshake was a relief.
“I’m Emma.” I shook his hand.
“The same Emma that my grandson spontaneously married?” he asked.
“If your grandson is Logan.” I held up my left hand, showing him the massive diamond the way Laren told me I should when someone asked if we were married or just wanted to see the gigantic sparkly thing on my finger.
“I bet your hand feels heavy with that rock on it.” He remarked. I laughed—actually laughed—for the first time that night.
“It does.” I lifted my hand up and down a few times, not used to the extra weight.
“What’s the real story between you two? I know the secret relationship is a load of crap.” He studied me.
I sighed and leaned my forearms on the balcony railing. The metal was a little cold, and it felt nice against my skin.
“If I tell you, Laren will probably have me murdered. Logan might even help her plan it.” I said, reluctant.
“She won’t find out that I know. Laren hasn’t listened to a word I’ve said since I ended up in this wheelchair.” George said.
I don’t know if it was because I was tired of lying or just tired, but I decided not to hide anything from Logan’s grandpa.
“Alright.” I pulled my hair up and away from the pinkish-gold marking on my neck under my ear, which I had refused to let Elouise put makeup on. That was where I’d drawn the line.
“Logan is your soulmate? How is that possible?” Grandpa George wondered as I let my hair fall back to its normal place, hiding the marking like Logan’s mom so desperately wanted me to do.
“Good question.” I smiled tiredly. “I guess humans are compatible soulmates with shifters now.”
“I thought something like this might happen. I was a doctor, you know, and I treated both humans and shifters the same. I always figured that if the same medicines worked for all of us we couldn’t be that different.” He said.
“Well I guess you were right then.” Doctor Grandpa George. It was hard to imagine that nice old man being related to Laren Lush.
“Do you plan on telling anyone else about it?”
“I wanted to from the beginning, but Logan and Laren think it will destroy their reputation or image or something. I think pretending to be human and that we eloped like this is ridiculous.”
“Can I give you a piece of advice, Emma?” Grandpa George asked.
“Of course.” I smiled. Talking to him was the most fun I’d had all evening—maybe even all day. On top of the fun, this guy actually thought humans and shifters were equal, so any opinions of his were something I wanted to hear.
“Plant your feet right now. You have to do it today, make it clear to your soulmate and his family who you are and how you feel. Plant your feet and then stand your ground. If you don’t, you’ll spend the rest of your life being treated like a doormat with a pretty face.” He said.
I turned my body toward him, shocked. If he was saying what I thought he was saying, it was the last thing I expected from Grandpa George. He was as much a Lush as Logan and his mother were, wasn’t he?
“Are you telling me to announce to the world what I am?”
“I’m telling you that I should’ve stood up to my wife when she took our two-year-old to TV show auditions. If I had, I wouldn’t be dragged to stuffy parties full of people who have more money than they know what to do with. If I’d stood my ground when I felt like I should, my son wouldn’t be an actor with no morals who cheated on his wife three weeks after he married her but still refuses to sign divorce papers.”
My back straightened when I heard that.
“Logan’s dad is your son?” I don’t know why, but I’d thought Laren was his daughter. Grandpa George Lush?
He answered my question with a sad smile.
“Don’t be a doormat, Emm
a. I can tell that you’re strong.” George patted my hand with his frail, shaky one.
“Emma?” Logan stepped out onto the balcony. “I was worried about you.” He said softly, his arm sliding around my waist. “Hey, Grandpa.” He nodded at George.
“Your honey was just telling me how perfect the two of you are together.” Grandpa George winked at me and I smiled.
“I’m glad. We need to get back to the party, though.” He towed me away from his grandpa. “What did he really say?” Logan whispered. “He didn’t ask about the…” he gestured to the marking on his neck that was covered in even more makeup than my face.
I pretended it didn’t bother me that he’d avoided saying “cotie” like it was the f-bomb in a room full of preschoolers.
“He just asked me if you were treating me right.” I shrugged, lying through my teeth. “He’s sweet.”
“Sure he is.” Logan grimaced, but that grimace instantly transformed into a charming grin as we walked back into the massive room, full of people. We still hadn’t talked to everyone, but there was still an hour and a half left for that.
“Fix your hair, Emma.” Laren snapped as she swept past us. As Logan towed me toward a couple I hadn’t met yet, all I could think about was what Grandpa George had said.
Plant your feet and then stand your ground.
“I’ll be right back.” I whispered, squeezing Logan’s hand before I hurried toward the stage.
Twelve
There were musicians on the stage, and I’d seen and heard them singing into the strange-looking devices that magnified their voices. When I’d tried to ask Logan what they were called, he shushed me. I guess he was worried I’d give myself away if I didn’t know what a microphone was.
“I just need a second.” I apologized to the singer with a smile and a shrug. He motioned for his band to stop playing, and I stepped up to the microphone. “Excuse me? Everyone?” I cringed inwardly as their eyes turned to me.
My eyes met Logan’s, and I saw the panic in his gaze. I needed to talk quickly if I was going to finish before he pulled me off the stage
