Page 115 of Puck My Life

Deacon picks up his phone and calls Marilyn. He’s calm, his voice even as he explains everything that’s happened.

“We will fix this,” he promises.

I don’t hear what she says, but Deacon flinches. “If it comes to it, we will retire from the team rather than allow bad press to come out.”

I freeze.

Would I?

Fuck yes. Of course, I would.

Vae is the single most important thing in my world. I’m not going to lose her when I’ve just found her.

“Okay. Now,” Deacon looks at me, and his voice trembles with the depth of his rage, “we’re getting back together with Indy.”

I pause, feeling my whole world shatter and crash around me.

“How are we going to tell Vae?”

Deacon growls and shows me a text message. “Indy is taking our choice from us. Looks like we’re throwing a party.”

Raynor gets up, and the chair slams into the fridge and breaks.

“If you guys so much as touch her willingly, I will kill you both.”

He storms out of the house and disappears.

“Are you ready for this? We need to make Vae think her heat meant nothing. It’s going to hurt her. It’s going to hurt us to hurt her, but we have to protect her from this. We need time, Mal. We cannot let Indy know how much she means to us or what we just did.”

I nod my head, but I’m not. Not even a little bit. I don’t want this.

Deacon picks up his phone and calls Indy.

She picks up on the third ring.

“Have you decided to do the right thing?”

Deacon doesn’t smile. He doesn’t react. “We’re having a party tonight; do you want to come over?”

Vae

PAST

The parties have never held any interest for me, but I love seeing the glow that Malcolm gets. Deacon dances a lot, and I spend a lot of time discreetly watching him and torturing myself.

Raynor plays live music sometimes but just chats and talks.

I end up in my room, with headphones on, studying something or reading the new advanced reader copy from my favourite author.

Despite the scare two months ago, it turns out whatever-her-name-was was not pregnant. And we could prove with whom she spent her heat with. It was a huge scandal, and she and her heat friends ended up being escorted off the campus and a public apology was made to my pack.

I push that aside because something has been eating at me. This sense that I need to change things, that this pain is inevitable.

I open up an email and send the author a message.

“What would your characters do if they’d all known each other since they were kids? Would they still fall in love?”

The response takes a while to come. I’m almost asleep when my phone chimes.