Page 28 of The Alpha's Second Chance Mate

“Well, uh, that didn’t go terribly, did it?” Trent said.

I grunted. “I almost killed Ashton with shrimp, and I dragged up old wounds with my big mouth. How could it have gone any worse?”

“She could have cut off your dick with her steak knife,” Trent offered.

I glared at him. “You really know how to look on the bright side. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Military secret. When you think it’s bad, always remember it could have been worse.”

At that moment, I realized we hadn’tfullyfinished dinner yet and cursed under my breath. “Shit. We didn’t have dessert. That fucking cheesecake is still sitting in the fridge. Damn.”

Trent got up and started piling dishes in the sink. “That can be a father-son bonding snack later on.”

My body felt drained and exhausted. All I could do was sit there and chastise myself for everything not having gone perfectly. All through the night, Avery had been cordial, but not overly warm. That broke my wolf’s heart. When we were dating, Avery had always looked at me like I hung the moon. Would that look ever return? I didn’t know, but God, I wanted it to. My wolf desperately missed our mate, and I was right there with him.

7

AVERY

My mind had refused to shut off, resulting in another night of crappy sleep, and the exhaustion clawed at my mind. As I sat in front of my computer, I tried to focus on the tasks I needed to get done, but that was proving difficult. All I could think about was the awkward dinner from the night before. When we got home, I’d collapsed into bed early, but I tossed and turned and repeated the scenes in my head again and again.

I’d thought I could handle being around Cole again. As a grown woman, as a mother, I should easily overlook irritations and other issues. I’d spent the entire day before psyching myself up for the dinner. By the time we arrived, I’d truly believed that I was ready for it.

All my attempts to prepare myself went out the window as soon as Cole opened that door.

Seeing Trent again was nice, but that also made the whole evening feel like some kind of surreal time-travel experience. I could almost picture the three of us sitting around the lunchtables in high school, joking and laughing. Except we were in our thirties now, and there had been a fourth person in attendance last night. Ashton.

Every awful thing I’d gone through had replayed through my mind all evening. Every second caused more and more hurt and regret to bubble up to the surface. And when Cole brought up stuff from the past, it had been too much. I’d needed to get out of there.

Ashton had noticed my weird behavior and had been pretty quiet on the drive back home.

“Why did you freak out like that?” he’d asked as we pulled back into our neighborhood.

“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to hide my embarrassment.

“You know what I’m talking about. He said something about doing wolf stuff, and you freaked. You got all quiet and stuff.”

Wolfy shit. That was what Cole had said. A cute name I’d used to refer to his shifter customs. I think I was around Ashton’s age when I came up with it. Any time he went and did anything with his pack, I’d say that to him. Two words I hadn’t spoken or even thought about for years.

When Cole said those words—as dumb as they were—a flood of emotion overcame me, and it had taken everything in me to finish dinner.

“I kinda wanted to talk to Cole and his friend some more. Maybe watch the game,” Ashton said as he fingered a hole in his jeans.

That had depressed me even more. Because I couldn’t handle being around my ex, I’d disappointed my son. Great. Whenwe’d gotten home, he’d locked himself in his room, that shifter puberty making the kid moodier than ever.

My makeshift office was set up in my bedroom, the laptop and printer sitting on a desk near a window so I could look out at the woods beyond. Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to get to work. The only bright side about our last-minute cross-country escape was that, as a writer, I didn’t have to worry about finding a new job. My job was wherever my computer was. I had several outstanding assignments with a couple deadlines approaching, but I tended to work pretty fast, and it wouldn’t be a problem—if I could focus, that is.

By mid-morning, I’d gotten some work done. A few notes on current projects, a couple thousand words written on my most recent assignment. And I actually managed to finish editing another assignment and send it in. Thoughts of Cole faded as I got into a groove.

My phone rang, pulling me out of the zone, and I glanced at the screen in irritation. The number was unknown, but from the area code, I knew exactly who it was. Perry. Gritting my teeth, I declined the call and blocked the new number. Ever since I’d left, he’d tried to make contact with me—texting and calling from different numbers, emails sent to my personalandwork emails, even pings on my social media messaging apps, begging and pleading for us to come back. Every message had an explanation that it wasn’t as bad as it had looked, or he’d messed up. The best one had been an email he’d sent the second night we’d been gone. It was so ridiculous, I’d committed it to memory:

Babe, please come home. I fucked up. I know. Please!!! I didn’t mean it. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. We can move away like you wanted. Find a pack or whatever for Ashton. I swear to you, what happened with Shawna was a complete and total ACCIDENT!!!

An accident? In what way could the scene Ashton and I walked in have been anything like an accident? What happened? Shawna had come over for a cup of milk, they’d tripped over each other’s feet, and somehow while falling, all their clothes had flown off? Then,oopsie-daisy, he fell on top of Shawna and his dick hadaccidentallyslid into her? What a crock of shit.

A few minutes later, another call came through. Same area code, but different numbers. I rarely gave my number out to anyone. Perry must have bought a bunch of prepaid phones or something, hoping I’d answer one of them. Asshole. I declined that call as well.

Less than five minutes later, a third call came through.

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