Page 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

ELENA

“Derek?” I choke as my ex cuts through the crowd toward me. It’s so weird seeing him here after almost two years apart that it takes my brain a moment to catch up.

Derek is the shifter guy I dated for six months back in Boulder. He’s tall and handsome with sandy-blond hair and cool gray eyes, but his looks hold no appeal for me anymore.

“You here for the wedding?” Derek asks.

“Yeah,” I say, nervously tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.

I’m not sure why, but having Jake in the same room as my ex is awkward as hell. It’s worse when I realize that I’m still touching him.

Jake’s left hand is splayed across my thigh, and his right hand is resting on my stomach. I can feel his body heat burning through my dress.

As if he read my mind, Derek’s flinty gaze slides up to Jake, who stands a good three inches taller. “Who is this?” he asks, his voice smooth and dark .

There was a time I found that voice incredibly sexy. Now it just makes me feel sick to my stomach.

“This is Jake,” I say, resting my hand over his before I realize what I’m doing. I hurriedly snap it away. “He’s a . . . friend.”

Jake stiffens against me.

“A friend, huh?” Derek’s voice is practically dripping with condescension.

“We go way back,” Jake rumbles. “I’ve known Elena her whole life.”

Derek’s mouth stretches into a sneer, revealing the sharp points of his canines. I can feel the testosterone rolling off these two.

“ Oh ,” he says. “Your Raf’s friend from the neighborhood.”

The disdainful emphasis Derek places on the word “neighborhood” makes my insides clench with a defensiveness I haven’t felt since junior high.

Yeah, my family didn’t have a ton of money growing up, and we lived in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood that my white classmates would refer to as the “bad part of town.”

The people on my street weren’t bad. They were just poor — especially Jake’s family.

These last few years, housing prices have shot up so much that Denver’s poor can’t afford to live there anymore. They’ve opened a Starbucks and a Whole Foods three blocks from my house, but Derek’s implication still makes me bristle.

Was he always this stuck up?

“I don’t live there anymore, but yeah,” says Jake.

Derek lets out a short chuckle and offers his hand. “I’m Derek, by the way. Elena’s boyfriend. Maybe she’s told you about me.”

“ Ex -boyfriend,” I mutter at the same time Jake says, “Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

I can hear the smirk in his voice as he shakes Derek’s hand. Derek’s nostrils flare in irritation, and I sense the conversation is about to go south.

“It was nice running into you,” I say to Derek, hoping he’ll take the hint. “We should grab a drink and catch up later on this weekend. Who knows when we’ll get another chance?”

Hopefully, never.

Beneath the steady throb of the music, I hear a low growl from the wolf behind me.

“Why wait?” says Derek, his smile turning predatory. His gaze flickers to Jake again before settling back on me. “There’s no time like the present. Let me buy you a drink.”

I hesitate. I only said what I said to be polite. There’s nothing more awkward than “catching up” with an ex, and I have absolutely no intention of grabbing that drink. I was hoping he’d forget in all the wedding craziness, but I can’t exactly refuse now that he’s putting me on the spot.

“Maybe a dance?” Derek coaxes, turning on that charming smile that’s allowed him to be so successful in sales.

“We’re actually in the middle of something,” Jake butts in, and I feel a rare swoop of gratitude for the overprotective, infuriating, and confusing shifter who’s digging his fingers into my side.

“Yeah,” Derek chokes. “I saw exactly what you were in the middle of. ”

“Then you should know it’s not a good time,” says Jake coolly.

The air crackles with a wolfish energy that makes me shrink back against Jake’s chest. I’m not sure if all humans can sense when two wolves are about to erupt into violence, but I can. Call it a special skill I developed growing up among shifters.

“Actually, I think it’s a perfect time,” says Derek, sneering as he looks Jake up and down. “Wouldn’t want word getting back to Rafael that his old pal from the ’hood is making his sister look like a whore in public.”

The words hit me like a punch to the stomach, and I feel Jake’s body turn to stone.

“What — the — fuck ?” I blurt before Jake even has a chance to get all hot and bothered. My whole body thrums with rage, and I feel a familiar jab in my temple that lets me know I have a migraine coming on. “You wanna rewind and try that again?”

“Sorry, babe. But that’s how you look.” He shrugs and tosses Jake a withering stare. “That’s what happens when you hang out with trash. They make you look like trash.”

“Jake is not trash,” I growl, my hands shaking with fury. Hell, my whole body is shaking. I don’t remember the last time I was this angry, and the intensity of the feeling scares me.

But Derek apparently doesn’t know when to shut his damn mouth. “You wouldn’t fuck me , but you’ll fuck him on the dance floor in front of everyone?” He chokes out a breath of humorless laughter. “Typical.”

I bristle. I wasn’t fucking Jake. I might have wanted to, but we were just dancing.

“Is this who you’ve been saving yourself for?” Derek demands. “Some piece of shit who wants to make you look like a slut?”

My mouth falls open in shock and fury. That’s when Jake tackles him.

I don’t even feel Jake move behind me. His body becomes a blur as he dives past me, and I feel the vibration of Derek’s head hit the floor.

Jake’s fist flies out and connects with Derek’s mouth. Blood splatters the floor, and somebody screams.

There’s a roar as the crowd moves back, and I hear more shrieks and yells as Jake lays into my ex. Derek knees him, and the two shifters roll.

Girls in short dresses and heels stagger away as Jake lands on top and continues pummeling Derek. Two burly guys in black T-shirts burst through the crowd. One of them makes a grab for Jake and earns an elbow to the jaw for his trouble.

Finally, the humans manage to peel the two shifters apart. Derek is thinking clearly enough to let one of the bouncers yank him to his feet, but Jake just keeps on swinging — his face a mask of lethal rage.

Somebody screams as his fist slams into Derek again, and that sound seems to bring him to his senses. His body goes slack, though I can see a muscle working in his jaw as the bouncer marches him through the crowd.

Carmen catches my eye through the sea of people and mouths, “What the fuck?”

I shake my head, still buzzing with adrenaline. The truth is, I have no idea how things escalated so quickly.

In the six months we were together, Derek never uttered a derogatory word in my presence. He never put me down, and he was nice to my mom .

Our breakup had been amicable — or so I’d thought. I guess he was a lot saltier about me never sleeping with him than he’d let on.

It wasn’t personal. I hadn’t been that into any of the boyfriends I’d had in high school. When I went off to college, I’d dated a little, but it was never anything serious.

Derek and I had only been seeing each other for a few months when I had my accident, and I broke up with him three months into my recovery.

For six months after the wreck, I didn’t think about anything except dancing again.

The doctors were uncertain if I ever would, but there was no doubt in my mind.

I had to dance again, or there was no point in living.

First, though, I had to sit up. Then I had to stand. After that, I had to put one foot in front of the other and take my first step.

For months, I fought to dance. There was no room for anything other than reaching that goal. There certainly wasn’t room to think about sex, which was why I’d cut Derek loose. I couldn’t afford to have any distractions, and Derek had seemed all too happy to let me go.

I suppose I could have found time to date in the nine months I’d been in Boston, but I was stupidly holding onto my V-card. I could kill Derek for throwing that in my face.

I let out a huff and storm after the guys, if for no other reason than to make sure they don’t kill one another. The bouncers shove them into the alley, which smells like rotten meat and French fries.

The harsh orangish light from the street lamp falls across Derek’s face, and in that moment I realize that I don’t know him at all .

He wipes the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, tosses me a filthy look, and limps toward the sidewalk. Jake watches him go, shoulders tense, and I don’t know what to say.

All the defensiveness I felt on Jake’s behalf disappears, leaving an icy fury in its wake.

While I hadn’t expected Derek to lash out like that, I could have dealt with his insults.

In fact, him doing a complete one-eighty and making an ass of himself saved me from having to make awkward small talk at the wedding and deflect any we-should-get-back-together vibes.

But Jake attacking him made his insults more public and searing than they’d been when they were just words.

I can’t go back inside the club. It was clear to anyone watching that they were fighting about me, and it’s all the other bridesmaids will be talking about.

Carmen’s friends are nice enough, but I’m sure some of them have pigeonholed me as “Carmen’s Latina friend from the neighborhood .”

As if this weekend wasn’t going to be awkward enough with Derek as Rowan’s best man, now I have to interact with him after he said all those horrible things and got a rise out of Jake.

I’m not sure why that last part bothers me so much. Maybe because it makes Jake seem like the thuggish hothead that Derek implied he was. But that’s not Jake, and I can’t stand for an asshole like Derek to walk away thinking he was right about him.

Grinding my back teeth together, I turn on my heel to walk around to the front of the building, pulling out my phone to call an Uber. I’ll text Carmen from the car and explain what happened. She’ll be bummed that I had to call it a night, but she’ll understand.

“Where are you going ?” Jake’s voice is a low growl that makes my insides quiver.

I don’t understand how Jake still has this effect on me after all these years, but right now, it just pisses me off.

“Back to the hotel,” I bite out, not turning to look at him.

I’m not sure if I want to deck him or kiss him, and that pisses me off even more.