Werewolf Wedding(52)

I didn’t like it, but what the hell did I have to lose, right? I had actually gotten heated pretty quickly, come to think of it, so why not give the guy a chance to talk himself out of being an insensitive, obnoxious, frat-boy like idiot?

Crossing my arms, I stared at him pointedly. If I could, I’d have tapped my foot. No idea why, but I’ve never been able to do that without watching the foot, and then giggling and this was not giggle time.

“You’re right, of course,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest, leaning back against his desk and exhaling in a long sigh.

“I can’t believe you have the nerve to—wait, what?”

“I said you’re right. I was an insensitive prick. But that’s not even anywhere near enough for what I did.” He rubbed his eyes and then flipped his hands upside down and shrugged. “I... can’t explain it. When Dane showed up at my office, the very damn day that I met you, it just seemed perfect.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “You’re telling me that he made this dumb bet before you met me? Then why was it me you decided to suck into your stupid little web?”

Jake shook his head and brushed the hair back out of his eyes. He stared at me for a moment, his gunmetal eyes shimmering in the sunlight coming through the window and pooling at his feet like it was bowing before his greatness. He opened his mouth enough that I could see his perfectly straight teeth and slightly oversized canines. But then before he spoke, he chomped them shut, squeezing his jaws taut, emphasizing the statuesque qualities of his cheekbones and his sculpted chin.

Finally, after just about making me weep with anticipation and longing for him to touch me again, he started pacing.

As I watched him, the fantasies rolled through my head. Why couldn’t we just run away from everything? Why did all this wolf bullshit have to matter? If he really loved me the way he said he did – if he really did feel all that hokey fate stuff – then why the hell did it matter what anyone else thought?

But as I watched him circle his desk and wring his giant hands – which, by the way made his forearms flex – another thought occurred to me. It mattered because it just mattered. I was just about to open my mouth to ejaculate my grand revelation when he cut me off.

“I want to run because I want to be someone I’m not.”

Talk about a way to kill a bunch of whining in the bud.

He was still wringing his hands, but added squeezing either wrist to his nervous movement repertoire. “It’s hard to say this stuff because honestly, I never have. I’m the alpha. I’m the leader, you know? Everyone looks to me to solve problems, and I generally do just fine at it. But the thing is, even though I put on like a big shot, I don’t feel like one.”

You could hear a pin drop across the alley and in the lobby of the bank across Denton Street. I thought about arguing with him, but kept my mouth shut. This seemed like one of those times not to spout off and try to get a word in. And besides, I really didn’t know what I was going to say.

“My brother, Dane, he’s... well he’s got his problems.”

“Lots of them,” I added, and immediately felt stupid.

“Yeah, no, he definitely has plenty of problems. My dad – our father – he tried so hard to get Dane to think like a leader instead of a rebel. He spent his days here, working to build this massive commercial empire. And then he went home and spent his nights worrying about Dane and on the few nights my brother wasn’t out carousing somewhere, Pop tried to teach him things.”

Jake sat down, started the ball clacker thing to going, and got back up. The thik-thik of the balls matched the short, halting steps he was taking, and as it happened, the breath going in and out of my lungs. “I’m guessing it didn’t work?” I asked just to keep things going. I had no idea when Dane was going to show up, or call me home, or whatever, so I thought getting to the point might be good.

A chuffed laugh, and then a sigh as he shook his head were my answers. “Yeah, that’s one way to put it. The other way to put it is that Dane is like the living embodiment of the word ‘anarchy’, which I’m sure you know now that you’ve spent a few days with him and seen how he acts.”

“It bothered me,” I said, thinking back to dinner, “the way he talked to your mom. Greta was so nice to me, she talked and talked, and then he just...” I winced slightly, remembering his venom. “I get it, people don’t like their stepmoms sometimes, but holy shit was he wild.”

Jake nodded. “That was one of the things that made our dad take him out of the succession. Mom – Greta – she was never anything but nice to him. She bailed him out of jail more than once, and even lied to one of his teachers about him having some weird disease so he could pass high school botany.”

“He’s just so angry,” I said, as a cold chill ran through me. I hugged my elbows to hope for a little warmth past the towel I had wrapped around my shoulders. “When I’m near him I can feel the... the hate.”

Jake was nodding as I spoke. “And that’s exactly why. Our dad was panicked. Well, he never panicked. He was concerned, let’s put it that way. He worried that if Dane took over the pack, decades of work in keeping our kind safe would go straight down the toilet.”

“So you agreed?” I asked. “But you didn’t want to do it?”