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“I wish you’d stop saying that when things really aren’t fine.”

“What do you want, Matt?” he asked without looking at me. “I can’t do anything for you. I’m not sleeping with a married man.”

I closed my eyes for a second and exhaled. “I’m not married anymore.”

9

Elias

“You're not?” I turned to face Matthew. Had he really just said what I thought he'd said?

Matthew spread his arms. “I'm divorced,” he said as if it was no big deal.

Like hell.

“You can't just say something like that without following it up with an explanation!” I had so many questions. What had happened? When had it happened? And what did it all mean for me, if anything at all?

I could justnotimagine Matthew getting a divorce. When he was younger, he'd always been very firm about knowing his duties as an alpha and his duties to his family and fulfilling them.

The one thing that had bothered me about him. How stubborn he was in his views of what an alpha needed to be. But unlike me, at least he'd known his place from the get go. It had taken me a painful lesson to learn mine.

“There isn't that much to say,” Matthew claimed. His arms sank to his sides. “Danielle is a lovely woman and she was the perfect wife. She just wasn't perfect for me.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “She wasn't good enough for you?”

“That's not what I meant to say.” He shook his head. “It's not that she wasn't good enough for me, we simply weren't good for each other, I think.”

“The way we weren't?” I asked before I could stop myself.

He visibly cringed. “You know it's not the same.” He took a step toward me, and I had to keep myself from taking a step back, because his proximitydidthings to me, even after all these years. He locked eyes with me and it was like all the days and weeks and months I'd lived without him vanished in a puff of smoke, making me feel like a kid again. Like a kid with acrush.

God dammit.

I drew in a breath.

“We had problems,” Matthew said. “But compatibility was never one of them.” His lips quirked up. “Neither was chemistry.”

He came another fraction of an inch closer.

I stood still, heart pounding.

He pressed his lips to mine, and, without thinking, I leaned in. I couldn’t help myself. This wasMatt.And for one glorious moment, everything else ceased to matter.

Sadly, that moment didn't last longer than a second or two. Then reality came crashing back in.

What was Idoing?

I had no idea, so I withdrew from Matt and directed the question at him instead. “What are you doing?”

He gave me a small smile. “You never said what you'd do if I kissed you, so I figured there was only one way to find out.”

“You're out of your mind!”

“And you liked it.”

I bent down, grabbed some snow and flung it at him. He simply laughed while Fiona barked at the both of us.

“Okay, okay,” Matt said eventually. “I won't kiss you again unless you ask me to.”