Page 7 of I Hate Myself For Loving You (Wolf Mates #7)
Chapter Six
“A very! Avery, get up!”
Avery popped an eye open to get a blurry glimpse of Hector standing over her, stroking his favorite bunny, Pinky. “What’s up, Hector?” she mumbled, pulling the covers around her and holding on to the cocoon of warmth she’d created.
“You have to get dressed and come see! I can’t believe you did it, but you did. Thank you, Avery. Pinky thanks you too.” Hector smiled and lifted Pinky’s paw to wave at her.
“How about you gimme a sec and let me brush my teeth and get dressed, and then I’ll come see. How’s that?”
“Okay, but hurry!” Hector scurried out of her room, his broad back a stark contrast to his child-like behavior.
Hector was sweet and innocent and nearing thirty years old.
Sometimes, even Avery couldn’t believe he was a fully grown man.
He was certainly as smart as one, but the maturity level he displayed sometimes was anything but adult-ish.
Nonetheless, Avery had found him irresistible when he’d come to ask for help from her animal rights group. His genuine concern, his knowledge about wildlife, coupled with his simple joy in living had given her all the reason she needed to support his cause.
And now, she needed to find out what had Hector so excited he’d come and woken her up. Dressed and washed up, she headed outside to find him waiting for her with a wide smile on his face.
He tugged her hand, enveloping her smaller one in his very large one. “Come with me. Oh, Avery, you so rock!”
Indeed, she had rocked. Or had rocks, stuck in her spine, that is. Her back was a bit tender from her overt display of uncontrollable lust in the middle of the wilds of Adams land, and as Hector dragged her back to the scene of the crime, she couldn’t help but flush with guilt.
She was feeling very naughty this morning.
But there would be no more encounters of the sexual kind, Miss I Want A Piece of That, she reminded herself.
Her resolve this morning was stronger than ever.
And the view that assaulted her eyes as Hector pulled her toward the clearing where she and Lassiter had banged each other senseless made that resolve weaken.
“See, A? I can’t believe you did it. After last night, when you were throwing stuff around and hacking up wood, I didn’t think you could do it. But you did! It’s really great, Avery. Thank you. All of my bunnies thank you.”
Oh, my.
Well, there it was in all its glory.
A bunny hut to rival the Taj Mahal.
It really was quite a sight with its multi-level tiers and chicken wire sides.
Lassiter . He’d done this and Avery was baffled. What kind of a man, who willingly killed wildlife on a regular basis, built a bunny hut?
Hector scooped her up in a hug. “Thank you, Avery. I love it.”
Avery rubbed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “It…it wasn’t me, Hector. I sucked at trying to make the bunny hut. I mean, I cut things wrong and in general made a big mess of things. I didn’t do this.”
I did, however, have an orgasm of cosmic proportions because of it .
His head cocked in confusion. “Then who did?”
Rolling her eyes, she had to give kudos where they were due. “I think it was Lassiter…”
“Wow-wow-wow. He really digs you,” Hector fairly squealed his delight.
“No, no he doesn’t. I think he digs you , Hector. Or at least, he was trying to help you. Definitely not me.” It was so much like the Lassiter of old to do something like this. She had no other explanation.
Unless…
Unless he was going to take some ghoulish pleasure out of knocking the hut down when he trampled all over the rest of Adams land…
The fuck.
“Avery.” Hector’s tone held a warning. “I see your wheels turning. Don’t do it! It always gets you in trouble!”
Hector’s voice became a muffled haze, rather like the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon. Her anger soared and her mouth began before she was even at his trailer door.
“Lassiter! Get out here, you animal murderer! Destructor of all things sacred! I know what you’re up to and it isn’t going to wor?—”
Hector slapped a hand over Avery’s mouth with a clap. “Avery Palmer, shut up!”
Her eyes opened wide with surprise while Hector dragged her backward, his arms like steel bands around her, leaving her immobile. “Mmmmm,” she protested against his big hand.
“I said shut up, Avery. Sometimes a gift is just that. A gift. It doesn’t have to have any ulterior motive behind it.
If Lassiter did this, and I can’t think of whom else might have, then fine.
I’ll say thank you myself . You keep your big, out of control mouth shut.
It might work when you’re fighting bad guys who kill little animals for profit, but it isn’t always necessary.
You’re so ‘rage against the machine’ all the time, Avery.
Like everything is a big conspiracy or something.
Chill out.” Hector let her go with a slight shove and put his finger to his lips. “Now, shhh.”
Rage against the machine ? The world had gone mad and forgotten to send her the memo. Who was this Hector, all reasonable and forgiving of a man who wanted to trash his home? “He’s trying to tear up the very land this hut is built on, Hector,” she protested yet again, albeit weakly—quietly.
“You know what, A? I don’t know that I’m so sure of that anymore.
I know you think he built this so he could take some sort of sick pleasure in tearing it down when he builds his condos, but I just don’t believe that anymore.
I think he built it to impress you. I think it’s his olive branch to you. ”
Yeah, and Avery would bet he hoped the branch had thorns on it so he could stick it up her ass.
Clucking her tongue, she shook her head. “I doubt that, Hector.”
Hector’s lips thinned. “You doubt everything, Avery. You’re a real downer sometimes. I’m telling you, let this go for now and let’s see what happens. Keep your mouth shut and let me thank Lassiter. You can go think up new ways to convince yourself he’s evil.”
Avery was speechless. Stunned. Rooted to the spot, watching Hector’s retreating back go off to thank the almighty Lassiter.
Her eyes narrowed. Lassiter was up to something and there was no time like the present to find out what it was. She wasn’t falling for this Lassiter has a heart crap. He might have had one once, but not anymore.
* * * * *
Avery stood by the large maple tree in full fall bloom, just beyond Lassiter’s trailer. Under the cover of night and the howl of the wind, Avery was feeling safe. The position gave her a bird’s eye view of his back door. The sliding glass door where she watched him talk to his pet parakeet.
She’d shifted as a precautionary measure. Now, in wolf form, she curled around the trunk of the tree, perking her ears to see if she might catch a phone conversation, or anything that might lead her to understand what had brought Lassiter here.
I’m not the boy you once knew. Lassiter’s words were as close to the truth as it got for Avery. They had stung her ears the other night and the more she thought about them, the more regret lingered.
She and Lassiter had gone to school together.
His last years in high school were spent mostly with her.
Avery, the awkward teenager, and Lassiter, the foster child of caretakers he just couldn’t identify with but loved nonetheless.
They’d met when she was in eighth grade and Lassiter in the tenth.
She’d met him in an after school accelerated math class held at the local high school.
Lassiter had stopped a bunch of boys from picking on her and for whatever reason, from that moment on they’d been friends. He was quiet much of the time, but when Lassiter spoke, it was like a kernel of wisdom Avery clung to.
Meaning. It was always said with a purpose and with meaning. Lassiter’s life hadn’t been easy, shipped from foster home to foster home, until he’d come upon the Fullers. A kind, older couple who’d taken him in at twelve and loved him like their own.
Yet, Lassiter always had a dark side Avery couldn’t reach. It was deep and layered, rank with a smell Avery could never quite pinpoint. He was as different as Avery was and those differences bonded them.
Lassiter was a loner—a loner no one screwed with. That didn’t stop them from talking about his pale skin and sunglasses when he wasn’t around, though.
He wore them all the time, making Avery want to tease him about it.
But she didn’t because Lassiter didn’t tease her about her gangly, awkward body and her braces.
Yet, because he wore those sunglasses all the time, she’d decided in all her teenaged fantasies, he simply was cool and mysterious.
Like, maybe it was his thing. The thing that set him apart from every other boy she knew.
He’d treated her like his kid sister and though Avery had wished it differently, she’d respected their boundaries and kept her schoolgirl crush to herself.
She’d had enough of a stigma already, hiding her half-were heritage. Yet she never felt like the dork everyone else thought she was when she was with him—even if he didn’t know her deepest secret.
Often, Lassiter had told her, her opinionated mouth would bring her trouble, but back then he’d chuckled more than he’d scowled over her rants about one thing or another.
Lassiter always said less was more.
They’d shared a common bond in their love of animals.
At the time, Avery was working after school at an animal shelter and she’d managed to wrangle a job for Lassiter, too.
He was diligent in his duties. The animals adored him and it’d seemed like he’d liked them right back.
He had a way about him that drew them to him.
Even the orneriest of domestics could be soothed by Lassiter. His low, honeyed tone of voice and his easy, gentle hands never failed to amaze Avery when she watched him in action.
For two years, before Lassiter graduated and moved away, they’d been the best of friends. When he left to go to college, Avery had cried herself to sleep every night for a month.
Her parents had fretted over her and her mother had threatened to drag her into therapy if she didn’t get over what she’d called Avery’s “bizarre attachment to the pale boy.”
Sure, he’d called once in a while and she’d gotten a letter or two, but it would never be the same as sharing French fries on a park bench after work, watching the sun set.
It would never be the same as the time he’d brought his portable radio to the park and slow danced with her after she’d gone to the ninth grade Spring Fling and no one asked her to dance.
That moment, the moment when he’d held out his hand to her from her place on the park swing, would forever turn her insides out.
She would always remember the warmth his arms around her had brought when she’d buried her face in his chest, fighting tears.
The comfort he’d offered with no words but with a gesture, a gesture Avery could still feel imprinted on her heart.
It would never be the same as being able to talk with him for hours on end about nothing in particular and everything that was important in her world.
After a year or so, Lassiter didn’t call anymore and Avery moved on, but she’d missed his presence for a long time thereafter.
She’d lost track of her lifeline who’d been something so much more than a friend to her.
He’d become an integral part of her life, and his leaving, something Avery knew he’d eventually do, left a void that couldn’t be filled by anyone else.
When next they met, it had been in California, and then nothing about Lassiter was the same.
Nothing .
He was cold and angry and bitter, but over what she didn’t know. No longer the skinny geek she’d once known, their physical attraction was instantaneous, but Lassiter wasn’t interested in strolling down memory lane.
If he’d been surprised to see Avery picketing his condos, he hadn’t shown it.
She shook off the memory, probably because it still made her heart yearn for the sweet boy he’d been. Her protector, her first love, her everything. Before California, she’d regretted never telling him how she felt about him. But now? Avery decided she was better off.
Refusing to be drawn back into the past by silly sentimental journeys, Avery padded closer to Lassiter’s sliding glass door. The steps leading up to it were rickety at best. Narrow and wooden, they creaked with each step she took. She could only hope the roar of the wind hid her ascent.
Cocking her head, Avery listened at the sliding glass door while Lassiter talked to his parakeet as if it were his only friend in the world.
“This is Adams land. It has to be the right Adams because there’s nothing else left after this. I don’t know what to do, Bud. I’ve looked and looked and nothing, but I can feel it’s here. Damn it, I know it’s here.”
What the hell was here ?
“Hereherehere,” the parakeet mimicked back.
Lassiter put his hand in the cage and stuck a finger out for Bud to hop onto. Bud went willingly and Lassiter took care in taking him out and setting Bud on his shoulder.
“I could use a little help here, my man. Wanna read the letter again?”
Letter?
“Nonononononono!” Bud flapped his wings and squawked in protest, skittering from side to side on Lassiter’s broad shoulders.
The parakeet nipped at Lassiter’s ear and he chuckled. “Okay, so what you’re telling me is we’ve been over it a million times, huh? Okay. No more letter.”
It was as if the bird understood Lassiter. What had isolation turned him into that he shared confidences with a parakeet ? Talk about eccentric. Who did he think he was? Dr. Doolittle? He’d always been good with animals, but this was nuts.
Leaning further toward the door, hoping to discover what this letter was about, Avery hit the banister of the stairs and scuffled to remain on the small landing.
Her nails scratched the surface with a painful screech, echoing into the dark night.
The sound bounced around the trees like a ping pong ball.
That’s what she got for not getting a damned manicure.