Longing for Wolves (Shifter Country Wolves Book 5) (8 page)

“I think one of the men has your shoes,” Ingrid was saying to Calder, still dabbing away. “After you left them in the parking lot.”

“Got my phone, too?” Calder asked.

“Probably,” said Ingrid. There was a long pause as she reviewed her handiwork. “It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough,” she said, capping the bottle. “You ever going to tell us where you went last night?”

Calder didn’t say anything.

“Or do we just have to guess?” she said quietly.

“It’s better if you don’t,” Calder said.

“Where’d you get the suit? It looks familiar.”

“Come on, Ingrid.”

Annika drained her champagne glass and stood.

“I should go,” she told Jessica. “Nice meeting you.”

The wedding went by in a flash, the way weddings do: everyone smiled and laughed and cried. Then they took pictures and got drunk and danced.

In the kitchen, plating a million cookies, Annika and Scarlet could hear the beat coming through the walls.

“What happened with Calder last night?” Scarlet asked. She placed two shortbread surprises just so, overlapping on the plate.

“Nothing,” Annika said.

“Nothing?”

Annika shook her head.

“He was super drunk,” she said. “It was tempting.”

“But?”

“But no more sleeping with guys who need to be fixed,” Annika said. “I don’t need another
project
.”

“I was a project,” Scarlet said.

“That’s different,” Annika said. Scarlet just shrugged.

“He found someone else, anyway,” Annika said. “There’s a giant hickey on his neck, so he got some from somewhere.”

Scarlet didn’t say anything, just looked very, very thoughtful.

“You said someone picked him up from a cabin in the woods?” she said.

“I think so,” Annika said.

“Sam lives in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.”

“Oh,” said Annika. She stared at the cookies, blinking. “I guess that’s better than some random girl.”

“You told him to get his shit together,” Scarlet said.

“So he goes and fucks his ex? That’s not what I meant.”

Scarlet just laughed, and Annika looked at her, confused.

“You’re thinking in twos,” Scarlet said, her eyes dancing. “This is shifter country.”

She grinned. Annika turned deep red, and Scarlet grabbed two plates full of cookies.

“I
cannot
date two men at once,” Annika whispered.

“Never say never,” said Scarlet.
 

She stepped closer to Annika and whispered into her ear.
 

“And if you really feel that way, try not to imagine Calder and my hot boss Sam naked together,” she said.

Then she was through the kitchen doors, carrying cookies into the reception.

She could barely look at Calder for the rest of the night without thinking of Scarlet’s suggestion, which inevitably made her forget what she was saying and nearly drop plates.

I don’t even know Sam
, she thought.
I talked to him once and thought he was hot.
 

For that matter, I don’t know Calder either, other than they’re both projects
.

It was late when she was finally finished carrying all her equipment to her van, and the wedding was mostly over. Annika took one last, long look in the back of her bakery van, then slammed the doors shut.

“Annie,” said a voice behind her, and she whirled around.

“That’s not my name,” she said.

“Sorry,” Calder said. He walked out of the brightly lit house and into the dim parking lot. His tie was undone and he was holding an almost-empty whiskey glass in one hand, his shirt untucked.

Cliché
, Annika reminded herself.

It didn’t matter. He was still fucking
hot
.

“I heard they’re opening up the Tooth and Claw for an after party,” he said.

“Are you propositioning me again?” she asked.

“What would you say if I were?”

“I’d say you’re drunk again, and you’re leaving Rustvale tomorrow, and I stopped involving myself with men who disappear a long time ago,” she said.

Not that I don’t want to see you naked
, she thought.

“What if I don’t leave?” he asked.

“I’ve heard that one before,” Annika said.

He drained his whiskey, then put the empty glass on top of an AC unit. Annika frowned at it, but didn’t say anything.

“You saw Sam last night,” she said.

Calder frowned, then laughed, then shook his head.

“Does everyone know?” he asked. “Is it the giant hickey?”

“I don’t think everyone knows,” Annika said. “But people can put two and two together. Scarlet figured it out and told me.”

“Right,” said Calder. “Yeah, I went and saw Sam. And when I woke up he was gone, and I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what I deserve.”

Annika sat down on the back bumper of her bakery van and patted the space next to her. Calder came over and sat down.

“I’m not really sure why I’m talking to you about your ex-boyfriend,” she said. “But did you tell him how you feel?”

“How come you’re not sure?” Calder asked. “You jealous?”

“We’re not talking about me,” said Annika.

“I didn’t tell him, no,” Calder said. “I got dead drunk and then I ran miles through the woods and tore tooth holes in my only suit, only to show up on his doorstep with no idea what the fuck I was going to do if he actually answered his door.”

“And he answered it.”

“Yeah,” Calder said. “He answered it, and I was drunk and horny, and we talked
exactly
enough to figure out that we’re both single, and then I got this hickey.”

Annika raised both her eyebrows and swallowed. She tried not to think of Calder and Sam, both naked, Sam’s mouth on Calder’s neck.

“And then he was gone in the morning,” he said. He turned and faced her, his eyes searching hers. “You jealous now?” he asked softly.

“No,” Annika said. “Do you want me to be?”

Calder moved closer and put one hand under her chin. Annika let it happen, the rough skin on the pads of his fingers tickling her.

“Not at all,” he said.

Then he kissed her, and his lips were soft and warm and surprisingly gentle. Annika knew she should back away, but instead she found herself leaning into him, her hand coming up to cup Calder’s cheek as she moved her mouth against his.

Instead of deepening the kiss, he pulled away. His hand was still on her chin.

“You’ve never been with a shifter before,” he said.

“You can tell?”

“You called him my ex-boyfriend, for starters.”

“So my terminology is wrong.”

Calder ran a thumb along her cheekbone.

“I don’t want you to start something with me that you can’t finish,” he said. “For my sake.”

Annika laughed and stood from the bumper of her van.

“Calder,” she said. “When I’ve started something with you, you’ll know. Fix your shit.”

He leaned against the van’s closed doors and looked at her.

“Okay,” he said.

Chapter Eight

Sam

Sam knew that it hadn’t been fair of him to leave before Calder woke up, but he’d done it anyway.

It wasn’t that he wanted petty revenge, or that he thought that Calder deserved it. Deep down, he knew he was afraid of what Calder was going to do, going to say sober. He didn’t want to hear the other man say that it had just been a drunk fuck. He didn’t want to hear Calder stumble over apologies, or say he never should have come, or call it a mistake.

So he shifted early in the morning and stayed shifted until late that night, running through the forest in wolf form, hoping against hope that Calder would be at his house again when he got back.

He wasn’t, of course. He was at his sister’s wedding, and Sam knew that he probably had something wedding-related to do afterwards. It hadn’t stopped Sam from hoping to see Calder again.
Anything
to get his mind off of whether Calder was leaving Sunday, the moment the wedding was over and he was free to go again.

 
I don’t even know where to find him
, Sam thought, lying in his bed early Sunday morning.
Is he staying with his parents? At Greta’s house? Somewhere else? Is he gone already?

And then, the question he hated himself for asking:
that wasn’t just a drunk fuck, right?

He split his day between wolf time, cleaning the cabin, and trying to think of something else he could do to get his mind off things.

Around eight, Scarlet texted.

Calder’s at the Tooth & Claw
, it said.

Sam frowned. Why the hell was Scarlet texting him Calder’s location?

And?
he texted back.

It was a little while before she texted back.

He has the biggest hickey I’ve ever seen. The rumor mill says he’s upset that you took off before he woke up yesterday.

Sam blinked. What the hell?
 

He and Scarlet rarely talked about their personal lives. Hell, they didn’t talk that much at all; they tended to work together in a peaceful, quiet camaraderie, and Sam liked it that way. He wasn’t surprised that she knew his backstory with Calder and Marie, since that was common knowledge, but he hadn’t known that she had
opinions
about it.

There’s a rumor mill?
he texted.

It’s just Annika, actually.

So the cute girl from the bakery was also involved.

For a split second, Sam let himself hope. He didn’t really know Annika, but he knew that she’d sparked something in him, even if he was determined to be a miserable bastard about Calder this weekend. He put his phone into his pocket and frowned at the wall of his cabin.

What if
, he thought.

“Fine,” he said out loud to his empty house. “I’ll go to the bar.”

Sam parked on Main Street and walked. As he turned the corner, he saw someone sitting on a motorcycle, helmet under his arm, frowning at his phone. Sam stood still, just watching.

As if he knew someone was there, Calder looked up. He slid his phone back in his pocket without looking at it again and shook his hair out of his face.

“You heading out?” Sam asked, walking over.

“Just back to my sister’s,” Calder said. “I’m house sitting while they’re on their honeymoon.”

“How long is that?”

“Two weeks,” Calder said.

They looked at each other for a long moment.

“Do you have to go over there right now?” Sam asked.

“No,” said Calder. “It’s a nice night, you want to take a walk?”

Sam nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “That sounds good.”

They didn’t talk for a few blocks, until they were almost out of town. Sam’s hands were in his pockets, and he felt muted by the sheer weight of the things that he
could
say. He’d practiced the whole way over, muttering to himself in the car, but now he had no idea where to start.

Another block, the end of town. They found themselves by the river, on a boat ramp that hadn’t been used for ages, and they looked out at the water.

Start anywhere,
Sam thought.
It’s too tangled of a mess for the starting point to even matter
.

“Sorry I left yesterday morning,” Sam finally said.

“I deserved it,” Calder said. “Thanks for the suit, though. That was a lifesaver. Maybe literally.”

Sam let himself smile a little.

There was a long pause before Calder spoke up again.

“I wish I hadn’t left all those years ago,” he said.

“I think you needed to,” Sam said. “You couldn’t stand seeing her everywhere, and after a while, you couldn’t stand seeing me see her.”

“That’s a reason to leave for a week, maybe two,” Calder said. “A month, tops. Not seven years. But the longer I stayed gone, the harder it felt to come back.”

“What’s done is done,” Sam said.

“I missed you,” Calder said. “I missed you both.”

“I miss her too, but not how I used to,” Sam said. “There’s no question mark there. I’m never going to not miss her, but she’s gone. That’s it.”

“I missed you exactly the same,” Calder said. “I used to go to gay bars looking for men with green eyes and tattoos, but they were always disappointing. I did a lot of sneaking out of apartments early in the morning.”

Sam laughed.

“Nobody matches my sexual prowess?” he asked.

“I never got a hickey the size of a fist from any of them,” Calder said. He looked over at Sam.

Sam craned his neck around and looked at the hickey, still vivid and purple, on the side of Calder’s neck. Calder hadn’t even tried to cover it.

“That’s pretty bad,” he agreed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t lie,” Calder said, grinning. “You’re not sorry. You wanted me to remember
exactly
where I’d been, and you wanted half the world to know, too.”

I didn’t want him to be able to think nothing happened
, Sam thought.

“Did they?”

“Yeah.”

There was another long pause, and Calder laced his fingers through Sam’s, warm and familiar. Calder looked down at their hands, then at Sam’s arm.

“I’m scared that I’m the same,” Calder said. “I’m afraid that I left and did all these things that I thought would make me better, that would make me fix myself, and none of it worked.”

He swallowed and looked over at Sam.

“And then I got back, and I saw you, and
you
changed. You got through it and you did all this self-improvement, and now I feel left behind, in the dust.”

“Calder,” said Sam.

“You look different,” Calder went on. “Remember when I knew your body by heart? I don’t anymore. Not because I forgot but because I got left behind.”

“I lived in our house for a year after you left,” Sam said. “I told myself I was going to live there forever. That I was going to die there, with all her things and all your things, and by God, I believed it. For a long, long time.”

He swallowed, remembering that year. He’d felt like a ghost, like he haunted the world instead of living in it.

“And then, one morning, I got up and I threw away a pair of her shoes.”

Calder squeezed his hand.

“Then I threw away more, and I learned to cook and I started an apprenticeship and, for fuck’s sake, I started
meditating
. I went to a shitload of therapy. I moved out of that house. And years went by. And one day I realized that I was never getting either of you back but maybe everything was okay anyway, that I could get by picking up blue-eyed men in bars and running a tattoo shop and reading thick Russian novels at night.”