Page 17

Chapter 16

Too hot to handle

CHARLIE

I wait breathless seconds for Lennox to speak, but he doesn’t. His body goes rigid under my hands and he steps away from me. Ice seeps into his expression and it feels like an invisible but impenetrable wall falls between us.

Oh no, I’m not having that. “I’m not stupid, Lennox. I know something’s going on.” I pace away from him, see the edge and stop in my tracks. Right, I’m on a ledge above a very high drop. “Sometimes I can read your thoughts and I know you can read mine too. You respond to things I don’t say out loud. Only mates can do that.”

He shakes his head. “Family can too. I can hear my brothers’ thoughts, sometimes my sisters-in-law’s too.”

“Oh.” My eyes sting at his rejection. I was convinced we had a special connection.

“You are special.” He takes a step toward me, but I shake my head.

“Why can I hear your thoughts then, if I’m not your mate?”

“We’ve been working closely for over a week,” he points out and when I continue to frown skeptically at him, adds, “Sometimes I can hear Edie’s thoughts and we’re just colleagues, nothing more. Like you and me. It’s not a big deal.”

I lift a hand to my chest, crushed over his denial that I might be his mate, that he also shares thoughts with Edie. “I want to go home.”

“Charlie, I’m sorry.” He reaches for me again and this time I let him, mostly because I don’t want to fall. “It’s complicated and now isn’t the time to explain.”

I look at him incredulously. Now, standing on top of the world after a pretty amazing date, isn’t the time to discuss what we might be to each other? It’s complicated? Ugh. I turn my back on him, breaking his hold.

I feel a longing for Ramón that’s so sudden, so powerful, it takes my breath away. Ramón was uncomplicated. He wanted me from the first and never played with my emotions.

Lennox grips my arm and whirls me around to face him. “That’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair?” I challenge him, daring him to tell me to my face he just read my mind, that he knows I was thinking about Ramón.

Instead, he drops my arm and backs away. He changes to his wolf so quickly, I take a step back, then remember where I am and freeze. He lowers himself to his belly in front of me and I climb on, gripping him around the neck.

Our run back to my apartment is tinged with disappointment, much less exciting than our first run. Did I ruin things, or did he? Maybe we ruined them together. Do I really want an immortal shifter to be my mate?

If it’s Lennox, yes. But not if he doesn’t want me too.

He drops me in front of my building, but doesn’t shift, steadily watching me as I make my way inside. When I look back out through the glass of the closed door, he’s gone.

I walk up to my apartment where Ariana is asleep on my couch, her Ugg-clad feet sticking up in the air over the back of it, her hair trailing on the floor, a book spread open on her chest.

At the sound of the door closing, my sister’s eyes pop open and she tumbles off the couch trying to right herself. “How was your date?” she asks with a yawn, crawling back onto the couch.

“Anti-climactic,” I tell her, dumping my purse on the coffee table and dropping onto the cushion next to her.

She throws a blanket over both our laps. “Dish up the goods. What’s it like dating a shifter?”

I curl my legs up under the blanket. “It was… disappointing.” At Ariana’s crushed expression, I rush to add, “The date was great and the restaurant he took me to was perfection, but he’s running hot and cold. It’s like one minute he’s into me and the next he’s pulling back. He told me it’s complicated.”

“That is disappointing,” she sighs, handing me a half-empty cup of hot chocolate from the coffee table. “I thought a wolf shifter would just run hot.”

I swirl the contents and take a swig, curling my nose at the cold, gritty taste before returning the mug to the table. “Yeah, me too.” I move so I’m facing her, the armrest against my back. “You know me, I’m pretty straightforward, don’t like being dicked around. I’m not sure if I want to date a guy who’s afraid to commit.”

“I get it,” she says, scooping her mathematics textbook off the floor. “You want to know where you stand with a guy.”

“Exactly.” I think about the rejection I felt standing on top of the bridge. It’s not a feeling I ever want to experience again, not when I know what it’s like to be loved. Truly, madly, deeply loved. That love may have been torn away when Ramón died, but I still know the feeling and I won’t accept anything less.

Ariana touches my knee. “You’ve been alone this long and doing great. Don’t compromise who you are and what you want for a guy who runs hot and cold on you. He may be the sexiest piece of tail I’ve seen in a long time, but that doesn’t mean shit if he doesn’t treat my big sister the way she deserves.”

I hug her and we snuggle on the couch for a few more minutes before I walk her to her Uber and wave as the car pulls away from the curb.

She’s right. I’ve waited this long for love, why let myself fall for the first wolf to show a spark of interest? I want more than interest. I want fireworks, cake, dancing bears, bended knee, flowers, and a rocking good time in the bedroom.

Maybe I am Lennox’s mate or maybe I’m not, but I get a choice in who takes up space in my life and I don’t have the time of day for a man, or wolf, who won’t make space for me in his.

LENNOX

I can hear her every fucking thought and it’s tearing me up.

I grip the metal of the fire escape so hard it bends beneath my hands as I watch Charlie and her sister stand at the curb talking.

She waves at her sister, her shoulders bowing, a tear trailing down her cheek when her sister is out of sight. Her sadness punches me in the chest, makes me want to tear down to street level and show her exactly how hot I can run.

The curse . Magdalene’s voice whispers through my brain.

Fuck the curse.

It could kill her. You can’t mess with this sort of thing, not unless you know what you’re doing, and you don’t. Underestimate this magic to your detriment, Lennox.

Vanessa survived, I point out. So did you and Sarina. Why not Charlie, too?

Charlie isn’t like the rest of us and the curse is unpredictable. Do you really want to take such a risk with her life?

Frustrated by the direction of our conversation, I snarl at her , Get the fuck outta my head, Magdalene, or I’ll tell your husband where you’re spending your mental energy. He’ll lock you in that tower and throw away the key.

She’s gone in a puff of green smoke.

But she’s right. I can’t risk Charlie, and the Oracle was clear. I need to watch over her but not touch her. I don’t care about her importance to the Oracle, but I do care how vital she is to her son, her family. To me. She is too important to lose.

Still below me on the street, Charlie squares her shoulders and thinks, I get a choice in who takes up space in my life and I don’t have the time of day for a man, or wolf, who won’t make space for me in his.

I’m gutted by her thoughts, but it’s for the best if she distances herself. Even if it feels like my heart is shattering one shard at a time. What I’m feeling doesn’t matter. Only her. Only Charlie.