Page 22 of Timber Hollow

22

I adore you

nineteen days to full moon

T he next few days I manage to avoid Jay like the plague. I show up early at the Forge, put in my time, and leave before he or Dante arrives. Rinse and repeat. It's in the very few hours that our sleeping hours align that pull me closer to him. No matter which one of us lands in that bed first, I always wake up wrapped in his scent. It's all over my skin, as if we intertwine in the twilight hours.

Cowardice or stubbornness, I don't know which it is that makes it impossible to revoke my offer to share my bed with Jay until his brother is gone.

I manage to make a few things at the Forge. A set of silver cufflinks carved with the face of a wolf is the best of my creations. My other favorite is a single earring, shaped like a dagger. There is a single ruby set into a gold casing, dangling from the carved tip of the dagger. The mate to the earring has eluded me. No matter how many times I try to replicate the design I always end up scraping too deep, gouging into the metal. There are a shameful amount of mistakes in the 'discard' pile contributed by yours truly. That is the only reason the finished dagger isn’t my favorite.

When my day off from both places of employment finally arrives, I sleep until three in the afternoon. Of course, It is unavoidable that I run into everyone when I emerge from my cocoon, driven by the aromas coming from the kitchen. I don't bother throwing anything other than a flannel picked up from the floor and a pair of thick socks on before I leave the room.

I’m able to pad quietly all the way into the kitchen, observing the three of them interact without anyone noticing. Saint is at the stove, stirring something that smells of garlic and spices. A flick of Saint’s wrist tosses the pan, revealing sweet bell peppers and onions frying with something.

Dante is standing against the counter, facing the open doorway. He notices me lurking in the doorway first. Jay's back is to me, his large form leaning against the island. Dante doesn't reveal my presence, instead keeps the conversation going as if I'm not being a creep, standing in the doorway. Of course, it only lasts a moment or two.

When Jay’s spine snaps straight, like he'd been struck by electricity my heart stops. Then he whips around to face me. Before Jay can say anything though, I burst into motion, marching around the island to perch myself on the counter next to Saint. I figure he is the least likely to interrogate me.

I don’t want to have intense conversations. Not right now. And not with Jay.

Tension keeps my spine ramrod straight, and not just from the awkward pause of their conversation. Tomorrow, I fly back to California to deal with Ethan. Which sounds about as fun as drinking bleach. But at least then the car will be mine, and I won't have to deal with rich boy Ethan anymore.

"Good Morning, Gorgeous." Jay rumbles, watching me lift myself onto the countertop. My bare thighs are in danger of being singed by splattering grease, but I don't really care.

"Hello," I chirp, giving a half-wave to the room.

Keep pretending your heart doesn’t skip about a dozen beats just because he says good morning. My wolf snarks, amusement glittering in her golden eyes.

Shut up.

Saint is sautéing Brussels sprouts with the peppers and onions in bacon grease, a well-seasoned piece of chicken resting on the cutting board on the opposite side of the stovetop. It all smells fucking delicious.

"You want some, Tiny?" Saint offers, giving me a small wink like he knows why I'm over here. Like he knows that I'm using him like a shield. Jay and Dante go back to talking about their vehicles, discussing some aftermarket parts they both are considering adding on.

"Only if there's enough for me."

"Who do you think this is for?" Saint breezes back, smiling, giving the pan a little shimmy and toss while he sprinkles seasonings over the sprouts. My chest aches, and I return his small smile. I don't know what else to say. "Do you want anything else with it?" He asks, grabbing a plate from the cupboard, slicing the chicken on a bias, and plating the handful of sprouts.

"Do we have juice?" I ask, accepting the plate and fork.

Dante answers, opening the fridge. "Cranberry or orange?"

"Cranberry, please," I answer, stabbing a piece of chicken with my fork.

"Do you want a splash of bubbly in there?" Dante asks, holding a small can of lemon-lime soda up for my inspection.

"That sounds fantastic," I mumble around my food. The chicken is tender, juicy, and flavorful, perfectly paired with the crisp, caramelized Brussels sprouts. "I'm going to fucking die if you ever decide to stop cooking, Saint."

That comment makes everyone laugh, and I have to fight the smile threatening to break out across my face. It's so easy here, so easy to just exist. The boys go back to talking about their cars easily enough, Saint chiming in here and there about a new lift kit or getting bigger tires for mudding while I devour the rest of my meal. Dante's drink suggestion washes everything down perfectly, the added bubbles tingling my nose.

I find Jay's eyes on mine when I set my now empty plate down, so I ask "What?"

"Want to go for a ride with me?"

"To where?"

Jay smirks, but shrugs before he says "It's a surprise."

My mind whirrs with all the possibilities as I look him up and down, but eventually, I answer with a shrug of my own "Sure. Why not."

Jay's wolfy eyes glow from inside, primal satisfaction evident all over his face. "Go get dressed." His eyes linger on the lengths of my legs as he orders me out of the room.

Excitement bubbles up as I follow his command, and I am grateful for the distraction. Even if it means spending more time with him than I should, getting pulled into Jay’s orbit.

Before climbing into bed last night I'd showered off the bar, falling asleep with my hair still wet. It means the lengths are fairly wavy already. A few strands are kinked weirdly though, so I twist them around the end of my comb after spritzing with water. The result is questionable but good enough. I end up just pushing the strands behind my ears.

While I decide what to wear, I wash my face with a bit of cool water and then swipe a moisturizer over my cheekbones. A second glance into the mirror makes me swipe a few coats of mascara over my lashes and a dusting of shimmer to the inner corners of my eyes. Then I grab a tinted lip balm glazing my cupid's bow without much thought behind it.

Jay hadn't been wearing anything specifically fancy downstairs, so I tug my favorite jeans over my legs, and a black long-sleeve tee over my shoulders. The same flannel I'd been wearing goes overtop of that. November in the woods is easily as muddy as spring sometimes, so I also grab my boots before leaving the room.

Jay is once again waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. I don't know what that look in his eyes is, but it sends a shiver up my spine. "Ready?" He asks as I make my way down to him.

"Yep. Do I need anything else?" I have no idea what we're doing, but I have some money tucked into my flannel pocket. The one with the button. I leave my phone behind, knowing that if I tempt fate I’ll end up shifting, leaving it behind.

"No?" His reply is a question all by itself. I just smirk and push my feet into my shoes, sloppily lacing them. When he leads me through the doors, dusk is already upon us.

"I hate daylight savings." I grouse. Losing daylight at barely 4 pm has always felt like the short end of the stick.

"Yeah, but then we get more time with the stars," Jay replies, tugging me by the hand toward his pretty blue GT.

"Sure, that's one way of looking at it." Giggles want to burst free as he pushes me into his car, a smile on his lips. My lips feel stretched to their limit when he does a silly jog around the vehicle and hops into the driver's seat.

"That's the best way of looking at it. Everything going dark isn't so bad." He says, shooting me a quick grin as he backs out of the lot and begins driving.

I roll my eyes. "Sure, Jay. Whatever you say."

"What do you want to listen to?" Jay asks, holding out the AUX cord. When I take it from his outstretched hand, anxiety bubbles up, unbidden.

"What do you like to listen to?" I ask, thumbing through the music player on my phone.

"That's not what I asked. You pick, Gorgeous." He says, refocusing on driving through traffic in town.

Picking music seems like an insurmountable task right now, all that I can think about is how often Ethan would make snide remarks, mock the music I would choose or just outright say it was awful. Ethan's voice in my head plays on repeat as I try to make a selection.

"Where are we going?" I ask if only to fill the silence so that it doesn't seem weird that I'm taking forever to choose a song.

"I told you it's a surprise." Is all that Jay has to offer me. My eyes roll automatically. Finally, I end up just putting my music on shuffle, deciding just to see what happens. If nothing else, maybe he'll be a dick and make it easier for my heart to let him go.

You are in far, far too deep, Artemis Hunt. I grouse to myself, and my wolf stays silent.

A half-hour later, with nary a stray asshole comment about my music choices, we're still driving. The sky is pitch black, the tops of the trees disappearing into the sky. The headlights of Jay's car illuminate the night, but our eyesight is far superior to a human's. I wouldn't go so far as to say we don’t need them, because driving without headlights is just plain dumb.

I start singing along with the music when a favorite comes along. I pretend not to notice the way Jay sneaks glances at me.

He makes my head whip towards him when he starts singing along with me though, my mouth falling open. I can't tell what I'm more shocked about— that he's singing, or that he likes the same music I do well enough to know the words.

"What's wrong, Gorgeous?" Jay asks, picking the notes of the song back up.

“I—um, nothing,” I say brightly, going back to staring out the windshield. Jay chuckles, grabbing my hand and pressing a kiss across my knuckles. My stomach bottoms out.

"I adore you," Jay says it like he's said it a thousand times. He says it like he means something else. Something I don’t allow myself to dwell on.

"Yea?" I answer, turning to look at him. It's a mistake. We're apparently at our destination because he pulls over, and turns off the car. And now , I have his full attention.

"Yeah."

"Since when?"

"Always."

I don't know what to say back to that. So I open my door and get out, looking around. We're at the scenic overlook, the one that looks down the valley. You can see almost the whole town, lit with an amber glow, shrouded by the trees.

But the sky is what grabs my attention. The vast expanse of black is dotted with stars, twinkling against the light of the Moon. She’s creeping up on half full, but hanging so low in the sky that it pulls my wolf to the surface.

"What are we doing out here, Jay?" I ask, face still tilted towards the expanse of black.

"This." His mountainous shoulders rise and fall in my periphery. "I wanted to come out here, you looked like you could use a break. That's all."

"Why do you come out here?"

"To think. It's quiet. I like the stars." Again, those shoulders rise and fall.

There are a thousand things I could say, to steer this conversation toward subjects I actually know how to navigate, but I don't.

Instead, I just grab his hand, giving his fingers a gentle squeeze."Thank you, Jay." His pulse jumps under my fingers, and he returns the small squeeze before my hand slides out of his.

"Anytime." Jay’s eyes are still on me, and I think I might spontaneously combust if he doesn't stop looking at me like that, so I again break the nice moment with a question.

"So are we just gonna stand around, or are there chairs or what?"

Jay smiles, but retrieves a blanket from the backseat, laying across the grass with a flourish. "Ta-da."

Laughter bursts out of me, catching me by surprise making my belly ache, and tears leak out of my eyes. This side of Jay is one I used to see all the time when we were kids. Before we blurred the lines between friendship and more.

"Oh, my mistake." I chortle, taking a seat on the blanket, and leaning back on my palms. The town seems far off, even though I know it's not. We're still within town limits, technically. It's just the part that stretches into the forest.

Jay leans back on his elbow, stretching his legs out before him, one knee bent. Comfortable silence stretches for a few minutes before he speaks again. "So are you ever gonna tell me where you went for all those years?" He asks like we’re talking about the weather.

"You never asked," I reply, looking for constellations. The light from the town would make them impossible to spot for a human, but with my wolf so close to the surface of my soul, I can see better. Can make out the glow of the stars burning light years away.

"I'm asking now." Jay's reply is immediate, and I can feel him burning a hole into the side of my face with his eyes. But I know if I look at him I'll notice the way his muscles bunch in his long sleeve pushed to elbows. I'll notice the patch of skin at his waist left exposed just above the line of his jeans. The line of the fabric of his boxers. I'll notice his hands, and start thinking about how they feel roaming all over my body.

"Well." I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "I had a bunch of money saved from random jobs and graduation... So I bought a bus ticket to the farthest place on the line and found a Pack. They let me work in the diner for a while. Rinse and repeat until I turned twenty-one, then I moved on to bartending."

"That's rather vague."

I shrug, catching my lip between my teeth. "It was simple. I just wanted to get out."

"Was being here really all that bad?" Jay asks, and something in his voice makes me want to turn my head and look at him, but I don't.

I know deep in my bones that there are people out there who have suffered far far worse than me. I had a roof over my head. Food. A family. I can't help how I had felt so very alone in my mom's house growing up, despite being the fourth one living there though. Maybe that is why being a Lone Wolf hadn't ever bothered me. I've always been alone. " Bad ? No…"

"Bad enough to make you drop off the face of the Earth for seven years." Jay counters.

I snort. "I didn't drop off the face of the Earth, Jay. I was in California. Well, at the end anyway. "

"The land of eternal Sunshine," Jay says in an old-timey voice, waving a hand in the air.

"More like the land of endless dickheads. Except Sam. She's cool."

"Shifter?"

"Yea. Anaconda."

"Sexy."

"Extremely. She plays for the other team though." I reply like I'm consoling him, reaching out to pat his arm.

Jay smiles, capturing my hand to press a kiss across my knuckles again. "I think I'll survive," he says, soft lips pressing another quick kiss to my skin before he lets me go.

One single giggle slips through my lips, turning my entire face red with embarrassment. I flop back on the blanket, laying fully on it to hide my face. "That's a relief." I find myself saying.

"Yea?"

"Sure."

Jay lays down with me, our shoulders touching. "Which one is your favorite?"

"The Dragon," I reply, pointing to the space between the Big Dipper and Polaris. "Yours?"

"The wolf, obviously. Can't see it here though."

"You would pick a constellation you don't get to see."

"Sounds like me, yeah. Picking things I can't have."

"You should probably stop doing that."

"Nah."

"So how come you guys don't all have your own place?" I ask, curious about why the boys had all been renting with my cousin.

"Saint, Dante, and I are waiting for our house to be built." He replies, tucking an arm under his head.

"Like, all three of you are building your own houses or…?" I ask, turning to look at him. It's a mistake. Jay practically hums with power, with sensual promise. I know it would only take trailing my fingers through his hair, a graze of my teeth over my lips and he would give me everything I ask for. If I gave him the go-ahead, he would ravish me right here under the stars.

Is that what I want though?

Or I could tell him I'm going to California tonight. But then we'd be talking about Ethan.. and I don't want to do that.

"Nope. Think of it like the Packhouse. It's going to be big, our own space but still together. They'll be my Betas when I take over."

"And none of you want to live alone , apparently?" There's a teensy drop of teasing in my voice, a smile threatening to crack my calm and cool facade.

"Both of them came from packs that abandoned them," Jay says, and my heart wrenches for Saint and Dante. "If left on their own for long enough, the part of their wolf that remembers what it was like being abandoned emerges. It's hard to reason with them when that happens."

"Oh…How long were they alone?" I ask quietly.

"Not as long as you, but long enough to do permanent damage," Jay responds, locking his blue eyes onto mine.

"So that is why Magnus was so paranoid about my wolf."

"Yeah."

Turning back to the skies, I made a mental note to make sure that Dante and Saint both know that I value their friendship. I truly hadn't realized how much I had missed being part of a Pack. And that is what Jay, Saint, and Dante have become.

My Pack.

"How long until your house is done?"

"A few months still. The walls are up but some materials aren't in yet to continue."

"What is Dante going to do when it snows? Does he have a car in storage somewhere?"

"Magnus is rather anal-retentive about keeping the roads clear from snow." Jay chuckles quietly. "When it does snow, which isn't much these days, it's cleared within the hour. Dante drives his bike or rides with Saint."

I only hum back in response, watching the red and green dots of an airplane flying overhead.

"I'm sure they'll be happy to know you're worried about them."

"Only a little. Don't ruin my ice queen mask." I fire back, a grin now firmly in place. I just can't seem to help it around him.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Jay responds, blue-green eyes roaming all over my face, lingering on my mouth.

As much as I want him to kiss me, I push up from the ground. Staying here with Jay any longer is dangerous for my heart.

"Would you like to make a wager, Jay Temple?" I ask, looking down at him.

"You have my attention, Artemis Hunt." He replies, a smile creeping across his face.

"Do you think you can make it home before me?" I ask, stepping towards the woods, tosing my flannel into his face. I've undressed in front of Jay thousands of times, but this … leaving my clothes for him to pick up before I shift feels different. Intimate somehow.

"In the car? No, probably not." Jay's voice is thick, and he audibly swallows when my jeans hit the dirt.

Looking at him over my shoulder, I toss my bra and panties into his lap as well. Then I say "You should try," before letting my wolf free and tearing through the forest.

Jay does not in fact make it back to the apartment before me. By the time he gets home, I'll be halfway to the airport.

There's no way I’m backing down from Ethan. No way that I’m giving him back the car.

The flight isn’t too long, but I'll be able to sleep a little, at least. It's an overnight flight, taking off at eleven pm here, and landing at two am there. For once, the time zones are working in my favor. From the airport, I'll catch a cab to Sam's apartment to use her shower and her closet. And then from there, I'll head to Ethan's office.

I'm suddenly really glad that I'd left my phone at the house when Jay asked me to go for a ride with him. Otherwise, this entire process would be impossible without my flight itinerary. Well… not impossible but exceedingly more annoying.

Ivy is taking me to the airport, having been there while I looked over the documents Ethan sent my way. Of course, the arrogant bastard is sending me the White's private jet, but he's made my boarding time as inconvenient as possible for me. If this is what it takes to keep the car and keep him off my back though, I'll deal with it.

And anyway, he still doesn't realize I stole twenty thousand dollars from him. So who's the real winner here?

After I sprint up to my room and dress quickly in leggings, a tee shirt, and a hoodie I find my backpack. In it, I toss my toothbrush, my wallet, charger, and a change of underwear. A quick glance at my shelves is all I need to select a book to read at the airport.

While I make sure I have everything I'll likely need for the next 48 hours, I tie my hair up in a messy bun with a big silky scrunchie. The notification chime from my phone tells me Ivy is here.