Page 1 of Leave Me (Shift MC #1)

Riley Jones

H aving a crush on your best friend in high school was a cliché, but mine came with a fun, torturous twist. My best friend was a girl, and I was a gay guy. Maybe I was bi? I wasn’t sure, but she was the only girl I ever wanted to kiss or hold hands with in a more-than-platonic way.

In late May of our sophomore year, she had finished the baseball season as the only girl on the team.

Our school wasn’t big enough for most teams to have a full roster, so they were often co-ed.

She was also on the football and wrestling teams, with broader shoulders than mine, and she had always been stronger than I was.

I wasn’t attracted to her feminine features, only the masculine ones, which made the whole situation even more confusing.

King—which was her last name, and she made sure everyone called her by it—sat beside me on our high school bleachers.

Her dark auburn hair was cropped short, despite teasing from our classmates, and her muscular arms were on display in the hot afternoon sun as she leaned her elbows on the bench behind us.

“It’s almost summer break, and I feel like we barely hung out all year,” King mused, eyes closed and a small frown on her face. “Let’s make sure we get more friend time this summer.”

“Sure you won’t be too busy with the boys?” I asked, referring to Aurelius Kazen and Enrique Bravo, who were in the King pack as well as on the sports teams with King. On paper, Rel and Ricky made a lot more sense for her to be friends with.

“Pfft, those numbskulls will be too busy chasing tail,” King scoffed, and I knew she didn’t include herself among the girls they were after. “I want to go swimming at the waterfall, and they get weird when I get naked to shift.”

“But I don’t?” I couldn’t help asking, wondering if King knew my secret.

“Nope.” She rolled her head my way, assessing me.

My best friend always had this charismatic quality that made you want to be around her, but also squirm under her scrutiny.

If she presented as an alpha, like we thought she might, King would be the next pack Alpha.

I already followed her around like a devoted puppy, though I barely counted as part of the pack, being less than half shifter .

Nibbling my lip, I knew I couldn’t come right out and say I wasn’t straight when I wasn’t even sure what my sexuality was. Instead, I hedged. “Why?”

King turned her body towards me and seemed to be deciding something before finally speaking, “Because I’m not a girl, anyway.”

Oh…Oh! I thought, feeling my eyes widen, but thankful for my ability to think before speaking. I took her words in and rolled them around in my head with what I knew about King.

She—he? King —was athletic and highly competitive, though I knew girls could be those things.

King hated dresses and makeup, but didn’t dislike helping her little sister dress in pretty things.

She preferred working on motorcycles over dolls, even when we were younger, but that was part of her family life.

In general, King rejected all the trappings society associated with girliness.

When her face started to pinch with how long I was taking to respond, I jumped in with my overriding question, “Do you want to be called a boy, instead?”

King shrugged, but answered with heat behind her words, “What if I do?”

“Okay,” I nodded. “Then I should start thinking of you as he and him in my head, yeah?” I clarified.

“Yeah. I’d like that,” King confirmed and gave me a rare, shy smile, so different from the usual cocky smirk they showed to the world.

Scooting closer, I wrapped an arm around her— his —waist as King squished my softer body into his warmth.

My throat clogged with emotion when I heard him sniffle, but I didn’t lean back to confirm it, not wanting to break the moment.

I could have stayed held against him forever, but he eventually pulled away far enough to look me in the eye.

King rarely let anyone see deeper emotions. Except with me.

“C’mon, I gotta get home.” King stood, holding a hand out for me. I took it and was sad when he let me go to walk down the bleachers to the field.

We settled into a companionable silence as we cut through the forest instead of taking the main road. My place was on the way to King’s, but my mom was working, so we kept going until we hit Wolf Creek Road and the path to the pack house.

My grandma was the shifter in my family, but she died when I was still little.

My non-shifter dad didn’t wait for me to be born before he ditched my mother, so he never knew about our family secret.

My mom cleaned the large pack house, though she had never shifted and didn’t like the pack Alpha, King’s dad.

For good reason. Alpha King had been a raging alcoholic since his wife had died.

“What’re you thinking about so hard?” King nudged my shoulder, pulling me out of my thoughts.

For some reason, my brain decided to tell a different truth, not wanting to bring up my friend’s troubled home life. “I think I’m not straight. ”

“You think, huh?” King asked without looking over her— his— shoulder at me, where I’d stopped in my tracks on the dirt road, the house looming just past the trees.

“Uh, yeah. Pretty sure,” I hedged, picking up my pace to walk beside him again. It was easier to say big things walking side-by-side than face-to-face.

“So, you’re like, bi, or…?”

Licking my lips, I checked King out and thought about the fact that my one exception to boys wasn’t an excuse anymore. “No, not bi.”

“That’s cool, Ri.” We’d made it to the base of the steps to the pack house, and King turned to give me a crooked smile. “Pretty sure I’m not straight, either.”

“Oh?” My voice broke awkwardly over the short sound. Was I delusional, or was King flirting with me?

When I was about to ask something ridiculous, like, ‘ Do you like chubby blonds?’ the front door of the large house slammed open, smacking against the outer wall.

King and I jumped back, and I hadn’t even realized we’d gotten so close. The sight of Alpha King glaring, a mostly empty whiskey bottle dangling from one hand, threw ice water on whatever was happening between King and me.

“Why do you bother with this half-breed?” Alpha King slurred and tugged at his ripped jeans.

He’d lost weight and was gaunt, but I didn’t miss the handgun holstered at his hip.

“Your little friend won’t even present. Not even a half-breed.

Not worth half your time.” He chuckled to himself over his rude joke.

He was right, though. I wasn’t likely to present a secondary gender, since my mom hadn’t, and she was a half-shifter.

“My girl’s gonna be the next alpha, and she…” Alpha King took another swig and pointed the bottle at my friend, whose hands were in fists by his sides, where he’d stepped in front of me. “She needs a real man to pass on the King genes.”

“Not a girl,” King mumbled under his breath, but I caught it and hated his father a little more.

Before I could do something stupid, such as telling Alpha to shut the fuck up and not talk to my friend like that, my mom elbowed past him and marched down the stairs, her cleaning supplies swinging wildly in their bucket.

“Riley, we need to go home.” Mom raised a brow and begged me not to say anything. She was shorter than me, with wide hips and a frilly apron over her worn jeans and cardigan, but I knew when she meant business.

“See you Monday,” I called out to King, noticing how his head was bowed but not able to see his face as my mom dragged me towards the driveway.

“Monday,” King nodded, but if he said anything else, it was drowned out by the sound of his father falling over his own feet.

The King men became useless when they lost their wives.

I wasn’t sure how King put up with his drunk father, taking care of his little sister and grandfather since both his mom and grandma had died, but I knew it wouldn’t last. My biggest worry was that he’d decide he was done with the pain and hassle, and he wouldn’t stick around our small town forever.

Two years later, the day after he graduated from high school, my fear became a reality. King left Blue Lake for good.