Page 31 of To Hunt A Wolf
“Back at you,” he says with zero hesitation.
I don’t bother to tell him my mother would leave him to rot just like she plans on leaving Kari. Hell, she might even leave me if I’d been the one Thiago had locked away.
“My mom’s not going to help,” I say. “Levi’s the only chance I have at clearing my name and freeing Kari.”
“You really think Thiago is going to release her?” Tripp shakes his head.
“He has to.”
“Thiago’s never going to keep his word. Even if you bring him Levi’s head on a platter, he’s not going to do something that doesn’t serve him.”
I hate that he’s right. And that I have no other options but to deal with a man whose default setting is cruelty.
“I have to try.”
“Levi’s not going to let you take him,” he says.
“I don’t plan on giving him a choice.”
Tripp doesn’t respond.
I try not to think about what will happen if my friend decides to stand in my way on this. I don’t want to fight Tripp. But then, I don’t want to turn Levi over to Thiago either.
The fact is, what I want no longer matters.
In the quiet, my full stomach makes me lethargic. Lazy. Or maybe that’s the pain pills I took. I snuggle deeper underneath the covers. My injured shoulder stings with the movement, but it’s not as bad as it was before.
“You hate him so much you’d turn him in to Thiago?”
The question is spoken softly, but my body reacts with a familiar pain in my chest, squeezing until it’s hard to breathe.
“Don’t try to make me feel bad about this,” I snap. “Levi’s the one who rejectedme. He made his choice then. And he made it again the night he left me to take the fall for Crigger’s murder. What happens now is simply a consequence of those choices.”
When he speaks again, his voice is harder than I’m used to. It reminds me of Levi in that way.
“You don’t know a damn thing about consequences, Mac.”
I sit up a little straighter. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He’s quiet for a long moment.
“Remember when Lacey Cartwright asked me to the spring formal freshman year?”
Okay, not the direction I expected him to go.
“Yeah. She was the only one brave enough to approach you. Everyone else thought you and I were together.”
I almost smile at the old memory. Tripp and I have never dated. We played spin the bottle once in sixth grade, and when it was our turn to kiss, we both gagged and left the party rather than be forced to touch lips. There’s not an ounce of attraction between us.
“Yeah, well, I told her no. Do you remember that?”
His humor is gone. He looks way too serious for some dumbass high school dance memory.
“No,” I say. “I don’t remember that. Why’d you tell her no? She was the prettiest girl in our class.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t—”
