Page 11 of Jacked-up Mate
“Please, please, omega. If you care about me at all…please leave.” My chest ached as I reached out. The pain of my sprained ankle was nothing compared to the ache of asking him to leave when I so wanted him to stay. Not for my ankle or to help me. But because little by little, I was falling pumpkin head over heels for Foster, and the last thing I wanted was for him to see my curse.
“I do care about you, Jack. That’s why I’m staying. Now, let’s get you into the house.”
“You can’t.” I was panting by this point. In full freak-out mode. He came over and tried to get me to stand, but I saw the lowering sun over his shoulder and cupped his face with my hands. “I’m begging you, Foster. Leave. Something happens to me after the sun sets. I can’t let you see me that way.”
He paused and cocked his head to the side. “I’m not leaving. So whatever you turn into at night, well, we’ll deal with it—together. Can you stand on that ankle? It’s already swelling.”
I gave up as he helped me rise. But I couldn’t put weight on my injured leg. I hobbled inside and made one last plea as the skin on my head tingled. “I don’t want to see how disgusted you are with me. What can I do to make you leave?”
Foster chuckled and shook his head. “Nothing. We all have secrets, Jack. Every one of us. If you and I are going to make a go of this, then I’m gonna find out eventually, right? Or did you expect to see me only when the sun is up from now on?”
No. No, that was not what was going to happen. Once I turned thirty, I’d be a Halloween spectacle for the rest of my life.
The scent of cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice wafted all around me, and Foster smiled. “You smell like fall.”
“Leave while you can.”
“Nope. It’s kind of hurtful, you trying to throw me out of your house but…”
I took one deep breath and felt it coming. I was going to change into a pumpkin head. Right then and there. In front of the most beautiful and kind man I’d known. If I was a different alpha, and not cursed, I would’ve already claimed him, mated him, marked him as my own.
And now, since he’d not left or run when I asked him to, I had to watch his face draw up in horror before he ran for his life.
One second, I had a human head and the next, I was a jack-o’-lantern.
“Oh, alpha. Is this what happens to you at night?”
I nodded, feeling the new heaviness on my neck and shoulders.
Foster had no look of disgust, and his feet were planted firmly on the floor. Maybe he was in shock and couldn’t move.
“Can you speak? See? Taste?” He kept his hands close to his hips after helping me to sit down on the couch. My ankle throbbed, getting bigger by the second.
“Yes. I can do everything I can when human, but I look like this.”
“I’m going to get you something cold to put on that ankle and then you and I can talk about it if that’s fine with you.”
“You aren’t running in terror,” I huffed.
“No. No, I’m not. And I’m not going to.”
He left the room and, though he said otherwise, I thought he might slip out the kitchen door and the last I’d hear of Foster would be the screen door clicking closed behind him. I heard him rifle around in the freezer.
“I found peas and carrots,” he said, coming back in.
He propped my leg on pillows on the couch and then sat on the coffee table. “Is this why you’ve been running from our dates when the sun goes down?”
A sarcastic answer bubbled up inside me, but that would make this even more awkward than it already was. “Yes. Do you blame me?”
“I have to admit, if I had a big change come over me at night, I might hide myself away from others as well.”
I huffed out a breath through my triangle-shaped nose. “A big change? This isn’tAlice in Wonderland, Foster. I don’t go from a little person to a giant or from a human to a ghost. My head turns into a jack-o’-lantern every night.”
“Tell me more about it. Do things feel differently?”
“Yes. It feels like my head is a big orange fruit.” I laughed. We both did. The first time I laughed in this form. Usually, I was doom and gloom and brooding for the rest of the night.
“That has to be strange. You really thought I was going to run screaming and what? Come back with the villagers armed with torches and pitchforks?”
