Page 48 of Feeling the Heat: Part Two
Jackson: Wait, you think River is the tough one? Seriously??
Ambrose: It’s not me.
Jackson: I meant me! I’m the tough one!
River: The last time I accidentally bumped against you, you yelped like a baby and then proceeded to clutch your arm like you’d been mortally wounded.
River: Camille won’t need me. She’s going to be amazing, as usual.
River: Also, stop texting her while she’s at work.
Jackson: Oh shit, sorry!
“Is that who I think it is?” Lauren leans in to glance down at my phone.
“It’s not what it looks like!” I squeak, realizing I’ve been sitting here reading messages mid-conversation. I quickly swipe away and silence all incoming notifications before shoving my phone away.
Lauren raises an eyebrow at me. “It’snotthat pack of men obsessed with you and trying to win you back?”
“No, it is.” A smile curves my lips at the mention of them,even though I’m trying to be cautious. It’s really hard not to smile after the past few weeks of their daily texts and the voice memos we trade back and forth. Or the care packages they’ve been sending every few days, filled with an absurd amount of snacks, fancy omega toiletries that I’d never purchase for myself, and things from their laundry that I huff like an addict and squirrel away in my nest.
They’re so sweet to me, it seems fake.
“Then what do you mean, ‘it isn’t what I think’?” Lauren prompts, giving me a knowing smile.
“I… it’s…” I rake a hand through my hair. “I didn’t want you to think I’d gotten back with them right away. We’re going slow. Taking our time. I haven’t even seen them in person since?—”
“Since the night you left in the middle of the launch party?”
There’s no guilting note in Lauren's tone, but she’s my boss and I left a professional event for our company, so I still grimace. “Yeah. Well, technically, since the morning after…”
She shakes her head. “If you ask me, it was very convenient that you happened to have a heat spike the night of the launch party you desperately didn’t want to be at.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “And that your pack happened to be in attendance.”
“It’s not my fault they were there! How did they even get on the guest list?”
Wait, howdidthey get on the guest list?
I’ve been so caught up in negotiating this tentative thing with the pack and working hard to prove to Lauren that I’m not a flake and hiring me wasn’t a mistake, that I hadn’t examined that detail.
Lauren shrugs. “Not sure. Maybe Amina added them by mistake.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “Amina is the most organizedassistant in the universe. She wouldn’t add random people to the list.”
Her painted red lips that match her pantsuit twitch.
“You added them!”
Lauren’s smile widens. “Maybe.”
I frown at her. “Why? I thought you wanted to murder River. Why would you let him come to the launch party?”
She sighs. “I know, I know. But you were really struggling. Astrid and I were worried, so when Jackson reached out with his own concerns and asked for our help to get you in a room with them again, I couldn’t say no.”
Oh. Damn, that’s embarrassing that my friends felt like they needed to give me an intervention. “Was I really that bad?”
I already know the answer. Now that I’ve spent a few weeks not depriving myself of the pack, the difference is mind-boggling. I don’t cry myself to sleep and wake up from bad dreams wanting to go back to bed because I preferred them to reality. I don’t spend all day on edge, unable to focus. I’m still using Bessie, my strawberry cow, but now that she’s wearing Ambrose’s t-shirt, she works a million times better.
“Hey.” Lauren places a hand on my arm, her touch grounding me. “It’s okay that you weren’t okay. There’s no reason to be embarrassed. I hope you see our intervening as a sign of how much we care about you. Because let’s be real, I wouldn’t have let River within a mile of you if I didn’t think it would help you.”
