Page 5

“We’re here.”

Jess inhaled deeply and eased her eyes open, confused. Where was she?

“Come on, sleepyhead. You can go back to sleep inside.”

Kade looked tired, and as she checked the time, she figured out why. He’d driven straight through the night. It was six in the morning, and outside, the early morning light cast a grey hue over a sleepy neighborhood.

They were parked in a driveway, and she recognized the house from the picture he’d showed her. The yard was mowed, and there were flowers blooming in the landscaping. She sat up straighter and blinked a few times, trying to wake up. “How long was I asleep?” she asked. Jess didn’t even remember falling asleep.

“Nine hours.”

“What?” she whispered.

“Hey,” he said softly. “You can sleep as long as you want. You can do whatever you want.”

He was being too nice. The house was probably a halfway house or riddled with mold or something.

Kade got out, and she watched him saunter up to the front of the house and lift a rock in the landscaping to retrieve a key. He opened the front door and left it open.

She could still run. She could get out of this truck and start hiking down the road. She could catch rides to wherever she wanted. But…then what?

That was the question.

Now what?

Jess pushed open the door and got out, then shut the door gently behind her. The neighborhood was silent at this time of morning. The house to her right had a for-rent sign in the yard.

She made her way carefully up the sidewalk and then hesitated on the welcome mat. The house number was all crooked. One of the numbers sat at an angle, but when she tried to right it, she realized the number had been nailed like that. She frowned at the 1010.

“Do you mind if I make a cup of coffee before I go?” Kade asked from inside.

“Why would I mind?” she asked, stepping inside. “This isn’t my place.”

“Well, according to the welcome basket with your name on it, I’m pretty sure it’s at least temporarily yours.”

“Welcome basket,” she repeated, trying to shake the fog of sleep from her mind.

He was standing across the small living room in an open kitchen with woodblock countertops, and green cabinets. Cute. He was pointing to a big basket of snacks.

She closed the door behind her and took her shoes off at the door, then padded into the kitchen, eyes on the basket. There were tons of snacks in it, and a bottle of red wine. Beside it was a note.

Jess,

Welcome to the house! I don’t know what you like to eat, but I put some groceries in the fridge and pantry so you can find your footing before you have to worry about food. The last tenant moved out about a month ago, and the house has been cleaned, and all the bedding is washed. There are towels in the hallway closet. If you need anything, I’ll put my number at the bottom of this. My name is Raynah, and my husband Garret is the one who owns this rental. Let us know if anything needs fixing! Oh, and the propane tank is full for the firepit on the back porch. Use it as much as you want. Can’t wait to meet you. Any friend of Kade’s is a friend of ours.

Raynah Hoffman

P.S. I got a few flavors of creamer for the coffee because I didn’t know what you would prefer.

Surprised, Jess set the note back on the counter and opened the fridge. It was full of food, and was all unopened jars and uncooked steak and chicken still in the grocery store packaging.

“Did she get French vanilla creamer?” Kade asked in a deep, sleepy voice.

He was loading some kind of pod into a weird contraption on the counter.

“Yes,” she answered, pulling out the right creamer for him. “What’s that?” she asked pointing.

“It makes a single cup of coffee quick. Here, you take your coffee cup and fill it with water like this,” he murmured, filling a cup in the sink. “Then you pour it into the back, like this.” He poured his water into the back of the contraption. “You put a coffee pod in here.” He opened up a lever on the front and showed her where he had put a pod in already, then closed it back and put the cup on the little platform in the front and pushed a glowing blue button. “It’ll fill your cup with the perfect amount of coffee in just a few minutes.”

This was so weird. Her old life was in splinters, and here she was, states away, learning how to make a cup of coffee using sorcery.

She meandered around the living room, picking up little décor items that adorned the fireplace mantle, and the coffee table. She made her way down the hallway and looked into the bedrooms and the bathroom. Everything was clean, dimly lit, and homey.

It wasn’t hers though. Stuff like this didn’t happen to a girl like her. Never had and never would.

Exhaustion dragged at her limbs as she leaned against the open doorframe to the last bedroom and looked longingly at the soft bed.

“Go back to sleep,” Kade said from behind her.

She huffed a soft laugh and shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m so tired. I don’t usually sleep nine hours. I feel like I could sleep for three days.” Jess made her way to the bed and sank down onto the edge of it, just to see if it was as comfortable as it looked. It was.

There was a lamp on the bedside table to illuminate the room, so she could see Kade just fine as he took her place leaning against the frame, one arm crossed over his chest, and the other holding his steaming cup of coffee. “When I was arrested, Sisters police department wasn’t really ready to contain a shifter like me, so they had to send me a few towns over and hold me in this huge cage designed to contain destructive shifters. I had a lawyer visit me a few times and tell me what was going on with the trial, but otherwise, I was alone down there.”

“That’s awful.”

His lips quirked into a slight smile. “No it wasn’t. I slept for days. No one bothered me. No one needed anything from me. No one was messing with my head. I never slept so much in my life as I did when I was taken from Sister’s Edge.” He pushed off the doorway and pulled something from his pocket, then set it on the bedside table. It was the housekey. “Even if you slept for three days, it’s okay. No one will bother you. No one will need anything from you. No one will be messing with your head.” Kade took a sip of his coffee and then set it next to the key. It was kind of beautiful. Simple. It was just a cup of steaming coffee next to a housekey under a soft-glow lamp. It was a square foot of something peaceful.

Kade reached behind her and pulled the covers down, and she stood so he could pull it back the rest of the way. Then she smiled sleepily, put her purse on the bedside table, and then pulled out the jewelry pouch from her pocket, and set it next to the key.

Kade’s attention flickered to it, and held, but he didn’t ask about it. Good. She didn’t want him to. Not now.

He waited for her to kick out of her socks and pull off her hoodie and then settle into bed. He checked the cut on the back of her arm, but whatever he saw there, he seemed satisfied enough. He didn’t fuss over it too much. She laid down and he reached for his coffee cup to leave.

“Maybe can you stay just a couple minutes?” she asked.

“Until you fall asleep?”

She dipped her chin once.

His bright blue eyes held her gaze trapped for a few seconds, and then he picked up the coffee cup anyway. She thought he would leave. She thought she’d asked something stupid, and the blush crept into her cheeks quickly. He didn’t go though. Instead, Kade sat on the edge of the bed, and took a sip, and then another.

“Why didn’t you leave?” he asked low.

Jess shrugged and hugged one of the spare pillows closer. “I just got stuck, I guess.”

He reached over and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “I imagined you found a better place. I had a lot of time to think in Cold Foot Prison, and that was the fantasy. You were supposed to be better off.”

Whoo her heart. “My fantasy was that you would come back and make it right somehow. I have a picture of you in my phone, from our Promise Day. I would look at it when everything felt too heavy. I imagined who you were. Who you really were. I tried to figure out why you did what you did. I wanted you to be someone better than you were.”

He broke their eye contact and stared at the open doorway he’d come in, like he wanted to escape. And she got it. She understood. She was still a bag of memories.

“If I never see you again, thank you for trying,” she told him.

“Trying to what?”

“Trying to fix things. Setting up a few nights here for me. Being nice. You didn’t have to do any of this. Our contract is done.”

He huffed a breath. “Maybe it was never about a contract for me, Jess.” Kade stood and made his way to the door. “If I never see you again, thank you for trusting me enough to leave.”

She let off a sleepy laugh. “You got the entire Sister’s Edge Crew riled up, interrupted my date night with my next Promise, brawled with said Promise, and destroyed my house. What choice did I have?”

“There’s always a choice,” he said with a grin. “If you were too deep in it, you would’ve Changed and defended your next Promise.”

“I don’t have access to my animal much anymore, remember?”

“Oh yeah? Then why does the cut on your arm look two months healed already?”

And she had no response to that, because dammit, he had a point. A good one. If her animal was still dormant, the healing wouldn’t have happened like it had.

“Fuck that date,” he said. “I’m glad I interrupted it. I would do it again.” There was conviction in his voice. “Goodbye, Stranger.”

She smiled softly at him and wished she could take a picture of him just as he was—standing tall, dimly illuminated with the soft, gold glow of the bedside lamp, eyes bright, hair mussed, looking sleepy and drained, handsome, and smiling at her with an ease he was never able to before, when she knew the Sister’s Edge version of him.

She wished she could remember him just as he was in this moment, not what she remembered of him before.

“Goodbye, Stranger,” she murmured.