by Vivi Andrews
Her frown grew even more fierce. “Don’t call me that.”
He grimaced. “I didn’t come here to upset you.”
“Why did you come here?” she challenged, blue eyes bright with something that could have been anger.
“Did it ever occur to you that we’ve made it worse by refusing to acknowledge it?”
Her eyes narrowed. “No.”
He wasn’t sure which she was saying—that it had never occurred to her or that it didn’t make it worse. “It’s been a quarter century. If we can’t talk about it now—”
“Why now?”
“You’re staying with Greg. You made your choice. What harm can it do?”
That softened the anger. “I’m sorry—”
“No. It was the right choice.”
She blinked, visibly startled. For a long moment he thought she wouldn’t reply, but then she grimaced and words began flowing out. “I tried to talk Lila out of marrying Santiago by telling her about you.”
Hugo caught his jaw before it could drop open. “You told her?”
“Oh, nothing specific and nothing scandalous. Not that there was anything scandalous to tell. We were always careful not to cross the line,” Lucienne mused, her eyes distant as she looked into the past. Then her gaze shifted to the present again. “I didn’t say it was you, but I think Lila figured it out.”
“She’s quick.”
“Yes.” Lucienne’s smile was slight but full of pride. “And then she decided to marry him anyway. Love over duty. And it made me think, about us, about the choice I made.” She looked at him, met his eyes without flinching—Lucienne had never been the type to flinch. “I never regretted it. And I wondered, if I’d really loved you, the way I thought I did, if I should have regretted it. If it was as real as it felt, wouldn’t I have given up anything to be with you? But I never really even considered it. I’m not a romantic, you know that, but I have to wonder if it was my ego, not my heart, that needed you. I loved the idea of you. I loved knowing someone wanted me so much, because Greg always seemed sort of stuck with me, but I wouldn’t have left him for the world.”
“I think I knew that.”
“I don’t say that to hurt you,” Lucienne murmured.
“No, I understand. I wouldn’t have done anything differently either,” he replied. “I could have fought for you, I could have done more to convince you, but looking back, I wouldn’t do a thing differently than I did.” Except with Moira. He regretted hurting her those years ago.
Lucienne shook her head. “What idiots we were. We could have been friends all this time.”
“We have been.”
She smiled her small reserved smile. “Yes. I suppose we have.”
Moira gave Caitlin her undivided attention, but as soon as she had determined the contractions that sent the first time mommy rushing to the infirmary were indeed Braxton-Hicks, she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from rushing the young lioness out the door. Caitlin was her patient, and more comfortable dealing with her than Dr. Brandt or Grace, but Moira couldn’t help the restless urge to get back to Hugo.
Things had been off with him when she left. The sex had been transcendent, but he’d gone all stiff and gruff afterward—as if she’d accidentally pledged her undying love during coitus, which she was damn certain she hadn’t done.
She needed to see him again tonight—if only to make sure he wasn’t making things more complicated than they needed to be. But when she texted him as soon as Caitlin and her mate were shooed back to their home, there was no response.
Probably asleep. It was after ten and he had said he had an early meeting. And last time he had dropped off like a log after sex.
Moira told herself it was fine, that things were fine between them. Whatever those things were. She wasn’t entirely sure where they stood, but she wasn’t going to make herself crazy about it. She’d made a choice; she would live with the consequences, whatever they were.
Hugo might be out cold, but Moira knew sleep wouldn’t be coming for her any time soon. She left the infirmary, walking along the winding paths of the pride complex, stretching her legs and letting her thoughts rattle around aimlessly.
It was a cold night, the pleasant coolness of autumn giving way to the bite of winter. The first snow would come soon. She loved to play in the snow, especially in her bear form. The air always felt so silky cool against her fur, even the scent of it cleaner somehow when snow was falling. Perhaps this year Hugo would join her. She’d rarely been around other bears since reaching her maturity and leaving her parents. She could see it now, playfully batting Hugo’s muzzle and loping away like she had when she was a cub.
A little niggle of doubt whispered not to get ahead of herself, but he’d chosen her. He’d told her he wasn’t going to be with Lucienne. This time things were different. Even if they didn’t fall in love and live happily ever after, surely she was able to play in the snow with her lover.
A laugh trailed out the window of a nearby bungalow and Moira looked up, becoming aware of her surroundings. She’d walked halfway around the perimeter of the main complex—almost to the doorstep of Greg and Lucienne’s new place. Perhaps her subconscious had been guiding her steps, taking her toward the home of her rival.
The door to the house Greg and Lucienne occupied popped open and Moira leapt off the lit path, hiding in the lee of a bungalow before she realized what she was doing. This was ridiculous. She could face Lucienne. Just because she was now sleeping with the man who had pledged his undying devotion to the former-Alpha’s mate—
Hugo stepped out of the house and Moira’s blood turned to ice.
He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be home. Sleeping off his sexual stupor. He wasn’t supposed to be with her. He’d said he was done with her.
Lucienne stepped onto the front step with the bear and the shards of ice in Moira’s blood stabbed into her heart.
Not again. I can’t have been such a fool again.
Hugo rumbled something Moira was too far away to hear—but she heard the low answering laugh from Lucienne. The low intimate laugh. Moira’s stomach roiled.
Hugo bent his head toward Lucienne and Moira spun away. She couldn’t watch them kiss. She couldn’t do it. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, expecting to find them warm with anger but finding them wet instead, and chilled from the cold.
She’d let herself fall for him. Again. What kind of idiot made the same mistake with the same man eleven years apart? She could hate him, but blaming him was like repeatedly slamming into the same brick wall and blaming the wall. She should have known.
The laugh came again—that stomach-churning, intimate laugh—and Moira shoved away from the bungalow wall, rushing away from the scene as quickly as she could without stepping into the light and revealing her presence to the lovers.
No. She decided she would blame him. He’d told her he was celebrating the fact that Greg and Lucienne were staying together and then that same night he seduced the lioness away from her mate? How could he look himself in the mirror?
The bastard.
She hoped he’d come looking for her. She just hoped he dared.
Chapter Ten
Hugo could hear Moira moving around in her apartment when he knocked on the door. He’d received her text while he was with Lucienne and slipped away as quickly as possible. Things were good between him and the lioness. Better than they’d ever been, actually, because they were no longer dancing around all the things they couldn’t say. They could talk frankly about the might-have-beens without the keen ache of buried emotion.
If only he could be so certain of where he stood with Moira. He’d already screwed things up with her once.
He tapped on the door again, softly calling her name when the door didn’t immediately open. “Moira. It’s me.”
The door jerked o
pen so fast he had to leap back to avoid a bloody forehead.
“What are you doing here?” Anger burned bright in eyes that were red and puffy.
“Have you been crying?”
“I have allergies,” she snapped. “What do you want?”
What the hell? “What happened? Is everything—?”
“How’s Lucienne?”
Shit. He didn’t bother wondering how she’d known. That wouldn’t help him. “I just wanted to talk to her—”
“About me?” She threw up a hand in a stop sign. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
He shuffled closer, bracing a hand on the door so she couldn’t slam it in his face. “Can we have this conversation inside? So at least some of the details won’t be public knowledge by morning?”
Moira glared up at him, petite and mulish, but finally stepped back, waving him in. He breathed easier having gotten through the door, but his relief couldn’t touch his disquiet at her anger—it was like trying to stop a flood with a Dixie cup.
She closed the door and moved away from it, as if too restless to stay still. “You told me you and Lucienne were done.”
“We are.” He pushed sincerity through the words.
“Why?”
He stopped reaching for her, taken aback by the single harsh word. “What?”
“Did you turn her down? Did she offer to leave Greg for you?”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me,” Moira bit out, putting distance between them until she was as far as she could get from him without leaving the room.
Hugo grimaced. “Lucienne and Greg are staying together. But that isn’t why I—”
“So I’m the consolation prize.”
Shit. “No.”
“I am. I’m the one you want by default when you realize you can’t have the love of your life.”
Maybe at one point she would have been, he couldn’t deny that, but not now. Things had changed. He had changed. “It isn’t like that. I—”
“You’re a real asshole, you know that?” She folded her arms tight around her, glaring at him through eyes that glistened wetly. “And I’m a prize idiot for falling for the same bullshit twice. I deserve to be chosen—and not by default.”
“You weren’t,” he swore. “I only went to see her tonight for closure. There’s nothing between us anymore.”
“Because she rejected you!” Moira shouted, then sucked in a breath and shook her head sharply, bringing herself back under control. “You’re only here because she rejected you again.”
“No. I came to you because…”
Shit. Why had he come? The moment of truth had arrived and panic shivered through him at the idea of exposing his vulnerabilities to her. But if he didn’t, he lost her and that was unacceptable.
He’d used his feelings for Lucienne as a buffer between himself and anyone who might touch his heart, hiding from commitment with the grand illusory passion, but no more. He didn’t know what he felt for Moira, didn’t know where this would lead, but one thing he was sure of.
“I want to try.”
It was all he could offer. He’d been too certain before, with Lucienne. And it had been a false certainty. At least he knew the confusion he’d always felt for Moira was real.
Moira just looked at him, her eyes dark and wary.
“You were right. I have been focusing on something I could never have because it was safer than giving myself over to something that might be real—and really break me. I chose pining for Lucienne because if I’d already picked my heartache, I never had to worry about getting hurt.”
“No. You just hurt me. And anyone else stupid enough to want more from you.”
“Moira, I’m sorry. So sorry—”
“Sorry isn’t enough. And neither is trying. It’s too little too late, Hugo.”
He felt it then, the first squeezing ache in his chest. “Don’t. Please don’t make the same mistake I did.”
She laughed, a rough brittle sound. “Unrequited devotion? Not likely.”
“That isn’t what I meant. I walked away from a chance with you for the stupidest, fabricated reasons. Don’t hide from what we could have. After all these years, there’s still something between us. Even after all the stupid shit I did to screw things up, there’s still something there. I know you feel it.” He crossed the room, not touching her, but coming close enough that they were breathing the same air. “Lucienne was an ideal for me, a fantasy, and maybe I’ll always feel something for her, but love isn’t something you throw into a void of hopeless devotion. You showed me that. You loved me when I didn’t know I needed it. Let me try to deserve it now. Let me try to deserve you.”
So this was what a broken heart felt like. It wasn’t a fracture. It was a burn. The backs of her eyes, the back of her throat, her chest—everything burned. She looked up at Hugo—the big dumb bear—and fire seared through her in crackling waves.
She could say yes. She could let him try. But it felt like weakness. Felt like a mistake. She couldn’t deny that she had loved him, but…
“I can’t.” She needed more than an attempt. She’d let her heart run away with her on far less last time, but she was done being that fool.
“Moira—”
He reached for her and she dodged past him. She was halfway to the door when something stopped her. Some last shred of hope, perhaps, the one she’d never quite managed to squelch. She turned, facing the bear. “Why me? Why now? Am I just the rebound from your great love?”
“No. Of course not. Tell me what you need from me, and I’ll do it. What can I do to prove myself to you? I will fight for you, if you just tell me how.”
“I don’t need you to fight. I want you to choose me, not because it’s me or no one, not because I’m the result of some romantic ultimatum you’ve built up in your head. I’m not a prize. I deserve more than that.” She deserved more than a man who would try to want her.
She turned and marched out the door—leaving him behind in her own apartment and not caring. She needed to get away from him.
Moira didn’t often call on her bear. The lazy strength that slumbered in the back of her mind didn’t demand much of her, but it was a constant comfort, one she reached for now. As soon as she hit the path, she shifted form—fur rippling over her limbs as they swelled and stretched with solid strength. Her clothes were tatters and she batted away the shredded remains before loping toward the woods. The trees closed around her and she padded deeper into the comforting dark of the forest. There was a hollow not far from here, she knew it well, knew the earth would enfold her. She could go to ground, curling up and hibernating until it stopped hurting, until she could finally stop kicking herself for being such a fool again. Until she forgot the look in Hugo’s eyes when he asked her how to fight for her. Until the last clinging thread of hope finally snapped and her heart was finally free.
Chapter Eleven
“Hugo’s here again.”
Moira looked up from the computer with a muted growl she couldn’t quite suppress. Grace stood in her office doorway, hip cocked, lips quirked in barely contained amusement.
“Tell him to leave,” Moira said, turning back to the computer. “I won’t see him.”
“I already did,” Grace announced cheerfully.
Moira’s head snapped up and she frowned. “You did what?”
Grace shrugged, unrepentant. “I figured you wouldn’t mind if I jumped right to the kicking him to the curb portion of the proceedings, since that’s been modus operandi for the last four days.”
Four days. Four days since she’d turned him down and four days that he’d been showing up in the infirmary—sometimes with presents, sometimes just with a pathetic hang-dog expression that had all their pride mates who had seen it looking at her speculatively when she threw him out.
“Kudos, by the way,” Grace went on brightly. “Not every woman can turn a big bad bear into her personal slave. Mad respect. Not that I didn’t already think you were badass, but I kinda had you pegged more for the give-in-at-the-first-sign-of-groveling type than the make-his-ass-work-for-it kind of girl.”
Moira frowned. “That isn’t what I’m doing.” She didn’t want to torture him. She just wanted all of this to be over so she could move on.
At Grace’s extended silence—wildly out of character—Moira looked up and found the lioness watching her with a single brow arched high. “Don’t tell me you’re kicking him to the curb for real. I’m all for making him pay, but…” She paused, making a show of thinking. “No, you’re right. You should never see him again. I mean, I’ve seen how you are when you’re together and why would you want to be with someone who lights you up like that and brings out a passion you’ve never displayed for anything else ever in your life. You’re totally right. What’s worth fighting for in that?”
Fighting for. Why did everything have to be about fighting? “He hurt me,” she snapped, hating that she had to defend herself. Wasn’t Grace supposed to be on her side? What happened to feminine solidarity?
“Can you forgive him?” Grace asked.
“I don’t want to.” And she didn’t care how petty that made her sound. She wanted someone she didn’t have to forgive. She didn’t want Hugo to be it for her. “I want someone who would choose me from the start. He had his chance.”
Grace nodded sagely. “He was an idiot. Men are idiots. You’re right. So the question is, do you want to be the woman who gets to be right or be the woman who gets screwed into happy oblivion?”
“I don’t know what I want.”
Another sage nod. “Women are idiots too.” Grace shoved away from the doorjamb. “Think about it. You can be right or you can get the guy.”
Moira gritted her teeth. “How can someone who is so pragmatic in every other way be such a romantic idiot?”
“Are you talking about him or you? Because one of you needs to stop being an idiot and it’s unlikely to be him because he’s got too much testosterone poisoning to think clearly.” Grace shrugged. “If I were you’d I’d grab onto happy. It’s hard enough to come by without spitting in its face when it does come along.”
