BAD BOY ROMANCE: DIESEL: Contemporary Bad Boy Biker MC Romance (Box Set) (New Adult Sports Romance Short Stories Boxset) (126 page)

“I don’t know what to do,” I said to him when we were sitting between the trees. We’d positioned ourselves between the undergrowth so that being naked wouldn’t be awkward when we talked. It wasn’t strange for either of us, but somewhere it became weird.

“I don’t want to lose her. I know it was wrong to lie to her, but I was trying to protect her, you know?”

John shook his head in dark and I could see his face, grim and serious. He looked the way I felt.

“You can’t hide your animal from her, Reid. She’s married to you. If you wanted to protect her from you, you should never have made her your wife. By saying ‘I do’ the wolf has assumed her as his mate. And you’ve let her into that position where she is vulnerable but powerful. And then you took it away from her because
you’re
scared.

“She’s just a human,” I said, rubbing my face with one hand. “She will never be able to carry the power that a wolf would in the same position.”

“Chandra’s a human too, and we’re fine. She knows who I am and what I can be, and we’ve made peace with it. Hiding it is just going to make her feel like you don’t trust her, and you’re going to slowly lose control over your own wolf because your mate can’t be there for you.”

Was that what was happening? Lately I’ve been feeling worse, like I could never really separate the man and the beast. But no, I wouldn’t accept that.

“My pack is there for me,” I finally said. “They can fill in the gaps. That’s what’s been happening so far, right?”

When John didn’t answer me, I suddenly felt like I’d had it all wrong, like I hadn’t noticed what had been going on, and for some reason I’d missed the imbalance of our pack.

“We’re not what we should be and you know it,”  John said. “We’re the smallest pack in the world and we’re all crippled because our women are home and yours is out of the loop. What we achieve on the battle field is because of the magic, yes. But it’s also because we’re damn good soldiers. We can do it because regular humans can, not because we’re preternatural.”

I took a deep breath and nodded.

“I have to get back and talk to her,” I said, getting up. John got up too and winced. I knew his body was aching. Mine was too, and he borrowed me some of his power when we shifted because he was the first wolf beneath me in the hierarchy. Otherwise I would have drawn from Allegra.

“You know, next time you want to talk about your love life, let’s grab a drink at the pub like regular people, okay?”

Then he disappeared and I was left alone, realizing how much of my wolf dominated my life and I hadn’t noticed. The wolf had been taking over without Allegra, and I hadn’t stopped it from happening because I’d been away from home.

I needed to fix it with her. I needed to talk to her, get her to stay, and start including her in my life. Maybe that would save the marriage that had started slipping through my fingers bit by bit. Maybe it was all I needed to pick up the pieces.

When I came back home the smell of ham hung in the air. She was making a pasta dish, my favorite. I took it as a good sign that she was cooking to please me. When I came into the kitchen she stood in a cloud of steam, mixing the contents of a pan on the stove.

“Can we talk?” I asked her, and leaned my hip against the counter. She was to my side. I wasn’t facing her, and I didn’t have my back to her. I needed to be open enough to listen, but careful enough to protect myself.

“Okay,” she said, not even looking at me, and I took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” I said. She looked at me then, because I don’t think she expected it. She looked like she wanted to say something but then she turned her head back to the pan and kept mixing.

“I know I should have told you. I was wrong. I was trying to protect you, and all I ended up doing was hurt you more.”

I kept quiet, hoping she would fill the empty space with words, and she did.

“I don’t understand why this is happening now. Now that I’m threatening to leave. If I didn’t say anything, would you have carried on the way that you are? Would you ever have told me if I could handle this?”

Would I have? Probably. I had problems but I was set on keeping them my own.

“The point is that you know now, that I
did
tell you, and that I want to fix it with you,” I said. I hoped that was an answer she would buy.

She looked up at me, and her eyes were dark and liquid.

“I don’t want to lose you, she said and then she started crying. I walked to her and took the spatula out of her hand, dropping it in the pan and turning her to me. I wrapped my arms around her and held on tightly. She was small in my arms and her body quivered against mine.

Whatever had gone wrong, we could make it right. I knew we could.

“Do you love me?” she asked, mumbling against my chest.

“I love you so much, it hurts every time I leave,” I said, and it was true. It always felt like I tore apart. She took a deep shaky breath, and spoke again, still keeping her head down.

“Please will you stay?” she asked again. I nodded, because she was the one that had hinted she wanted to leave, not me.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

She shook her head and looked up at me, and there was something in her eyes that I couldn’t place. Fear? Guilt? I breathed in, trying to find her emotions riding the air, and it still didn’t give me a hint. It was disconcerting not knowing.

“I mean permanently,” she said. “Please stay.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, frowning.

“Just leave the army, Reid. Give it up and stay home with me.
Be
with me.”

“You want me to retire from the Army?” I asked, trying to make sense of what she was asking. She nodded slowly, her eyes still on mine. I blinked at her. She wanted me to give up my life. My pack. Anger started at the pit of my stomach and started coursing through my veins. It was like molten lava, flowing through, and everywhere it touched I turned to stone and all the feeling was gone. Only the rage was left.

“You’re asking me to leave,” I said again. It wasn’t a question, but I couldn’t believe what she was saying. “You’re asking me to choose?”

“I guess I am,” she said looking down. I grabbed her upper arms with my hands and held her at arm’s length.

“Reid, you’re hurting me,” she said, her voice suddenly panicky, but all I could see was white light and her voice floated to me from somewhere in the distance.

“You’re asking me to give up my pack, for
you
?”

I could smell her fear now, wild and real. And the wolf in me got a nose full and ripped through me. My skin burned so much I felt like I was going to go down in flames. My muscles bulged under my skin, and then tore through it. A howl ripped from my throat and I felt my bones stretch. It hurt, a lot more than usual, and I growled and scared. I only saw white light. My eyes hurt like I was looking right into the sun, and I felt fur creep over my skin until I was covered.

When I could finally see again Allegra was cowering against the wall in front of me, and we were on the other side of the kitchen. I didn’t know how we’d gotten here. She had her arms over her head and her whole body trembled. She wouldn’t even look at me. I could smell her fear, complete now, and I wanted it. I wanted her, and not in a way that made me happy. Her fear was egging me on, bringing out the predator in me.

And I was scared. For the first time in my life I wasn’t just scared that she would fear my monster, I feared it myself.

I forced myself away from her, turned, and ran. I crashed through the house, my body feeling foreign although I knew my wolf form as well as my human form. I was dimly aware of the dining room chair that I left in pieces. The vase on the floor that her mother had given her. The front room window that I’d chosen to exit through instead of the front door.

I turned my attention to my heart, to the pulse, and I called my back. I sent out the signal through our bond, I let my thudding heart fuel them too, and I knew they would come to me because I needed them. I was losing control completely, and I had to choose between my wolf and my wife.

And I didn’t know which I could live with anymore.

Chapter 8

Allegra

I’ve never considered divorce. Not until now. I didn’t think being with someone that was never home could be an issue. You would think that if he was never home we couldn’t really fight, right?

But now we’d fought. Sort of. And I was going to leave. The more I thought about it, the more it hurt, and the more it looked like the only thing I could do.

“God, it’s not even about the fact that in my loneliness I want to find someone else,” I told Charlene. I’d cried on her shoulder about it because she was the one person that could understand. John was a wolf, John was a soldier. And she’d known he was a Ranger. I wondered how it had never come up in conversation. I guess you don’t hear what you don’t know to listen out for.

“Don’t you want to think about this? Your relationship with Reid is so special. You can’t just marry a werewolf and break it off again without losing a part of yourself.”

And she was right. Being married to a werewolf just wasn’t the same as being with a human. I think it had to do with the fact that there wasn’t one but two people I was in a relationship with. Or rather, one person and one animal. But I was sharing. And somehow it made it more intense, fiercer, and more dedicated. Because an animal will give itself over wholly to a person.

I sat curled on the one end of her couch, she was curled on the other end. She’d poured me coffee but I’d only had half. We could talk about everything because John wasn’t home. Big surprise, if he was anything like Reid he wouldn’t be. They were probably together. I doubted Reid was home.

“I just don’t know how to keep doing this,” I said. “I’ve tried everything to make sure that I’m there for him when he comes home. He was the one that pulled away from me. What did he think was going to happen?”

Charlene sighed. “He might be a werewolf, but he’s still a man, and men don’t think. No matter who they are or what they do.”

I wrapped my hands around the warm coffee cup, trying to drink in some of the warmth. I was cold all over, and nothing felt like it would warm me up. Since I’ve decided I wanted to leave him, it was like the source to my heat was gone.

I wondered if he felt it too. It was something that bothered him as much as it bothered me. I thought about his team mates, his
pack
and something dark and bitter swirled inside of me. His pack. His
family
. And what was I? What was left?  He probably didn’t feel anything about losing me. He had them, didn’t he?

“Maybe it’s better this way,” I said. “If I’m out of his life he won’t have anyone forcing him to open up about stuff he obviously doesn’t want to talk to me about.”

Charlene shook her head and I could see she fought the urge to roll her eyes at me.

“Don’t be like that. You and Reid have been perfectly happy for a long time. It’s just a rough patch. It happens.”

“I get that, but it’s not about the fact that we’re struggling. It’s about the fact that he doesn’t think he can trust me with the truth. That he doesn’t think I’m capable of handling who he is and what he does.” I took a shaky breath and flashed on the bizarre scene in the office block the day before. “And the thing that scares me the most as the he might be right. I don’t actually know if I
can
handle who he is.”

Charlene got up and took my half-cup of coffee from me. It had gone cold.

“I just think you’re making a mistake,” she said. “You can fix this.”

I left her house after thanking her for the advice. I can fix this, she’d said. But the problem was that I didn’t believe her. How could I fix it if I wasn’t the one that had made the mistake?  I’ve always been perfectly honest with him about who I was, what I thought, what I did. He was the one that had been hiding stuff.

When I got home Reid was there, surprisingly. He was watching sports on the television, but I doubted he really saw anything even though he as looking at the screen. He had a far-off look in his eye, the one that led me to believe that no matter how normal he tried to be, how much he did what other men did, he just wasn’t like them.

And he would never be.

There was a time that I loved that about him. Now I wished it was simpler, because even if it was boring or average, I would have been able to figure it out and cope with it.

I looked at him the way a stranger might. He was beautiful to look at. Handsome and fierce, rugged with something wild. His hair was always just right and his face just made him look like he was assertive, the kind of guy that knew what he wanted in life. His muscles trained against his shirt and even sitting on the couch he looked ready to jump to action if it was necessary.

And I realized that no matter what happened, he would always be the soldier. Ranger. Whatever. It was a part of who he was. It was just as much another side of him as his wolf was. I walked to the television and turned it off. He just watched me, eyes tracking my movement.

I went to sit down next to him on the couch, perching on the couch with my hands on my knees. He looked at my posture, and I knew he was making assumptions and summaries about me. And he would be right, too, because he was good at what he did and he had an extra instinct that came with the wolf. An instinct that I would never have.