Page 109 of Wolf Cursed
“I choose you too,” I admitted.
He gave me a rueful smile. “Even after everything?”
“You’re making it easier and easier,” I said.
He laughed but turned quickly serious again. “I’m just… I’m tired of losing the people I love. I can’t let that happen again.”
“We’ve both lost people,” I said. “And we’ve both been alone because of it.”
“Not anymore,” he insisted. “You don’t have to do this alone. I’m here for you. I want you to know you can count on me. We’re going to find a way to end the curse. And summon your wolf. And we’ll either become part of the pack or we’ll start our own. No matter what, we do it together from here on out. Okay?”
His words slid into the cracks around my heart, shattering the resistance until every single wall I’d left around it came crashing down.
“Okay.” I nodded, a tear sliding down my cheek.
He reached up and pressed his thumb to the moisture, wiping it away. “You’re my home now, Ash Lawson. You’re my heart.”
“My heart’s already yours,” I whispered. “Just don’t break it.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Somewhere between my walking tour through Kai’s childhood hideout and him telling me he’d choose me, I’d forgiven him. I hadn’t meant to. In fact, there’d been a solid plan somewhere in my head to make him beg or grovel or maybe run naked through Ridley Falls to prove himself or something. But all of that had gone out the window the moment that tear had fallen and he’d wiped it away. I was a sucker for a hot guy acting as my Kleenex, apparently.
By the next morning, my heart had landed solidly in #TeamKai territory while my brain had remembered the whole “curse” conundrum and gone back to strategizing just how we were going to make that particular problem go away.
Tonight, the twins and I were all headed to Kai’s to figure out exactly that, which basically just meant the workday dragged by slowly. Kai was in the garage most of the day on a customer job that made it impossible to get a minute alone.
Drake was especially watchful. More than once, I caught him staring at me or Kai with a weird look on his face. Right after lunch, he went home early. Stomach ache, according to Oscar. I made a mental note to ask Kai what that dude’s deal was, exactly, and then went back to my invoicing and scheduling. Anything to get this day over with.
The moment the clock struck five, I flipped the Open sign to Closed and ran upstairs to change.
“Where’s the fire?” Oscar called.
He’d cornered me at lunch in between customers and phones ringing and the other techs coming in and out for their refrigerated leftovers. I’d denied anything strange about the conversation with the twins yesterday, but then I’d walked through the garage to talk to Mick about an invoice code and noticed Oscar and Kai in the corner together with heads bent and voices too low for me to hear over the air compressor.
After that, he’d looked equal parts stressed and resolved. Maybe even hopeful. And he’d made it clear he knew we were up to something tonight.
“I want to get to Kai’s house before the rain hits,” I said.
A storm had been rolling in all day. I’d never ridden a motorcycle in the rain, but I had a feeling it wasn’t pleasant. Kai had already told me to hurry and gone to pull his bike around front.
Upstairs, I shed my work shirt, which was really just an old collared Polo that Oscar had outgrown that had the Twisted Throttle logo on the lapel. In its place, I threw on a tank top with my thrift store jeans and shoved my feet into my boots then hurried back downstairs again.
“Hey, kid,” Oscar called as I headed for the front.
“Yeah?”
“You don’t owe this pack anything,” he said.
I stopped short, trying to figure out where this was coming from. “I know that.”
“I’m just saying. If it’s a choice between your safety and this damned curse, choose yourself. You got me?”
“I’m guessing Kai told you the plan?”
He shook his head. “He told me enough. I don’t want details because then I’m culpable. You just make sure you come home in one piece because I’d hate to have to triple-murder all your new friends for failing to protect my niece.”
I smiled and leaned over to plant a kiss on his forehead. “Don’t go soft on me, old man.”
