“Shit,” he breathed. “I knew I shouldn’t have come here. Believe me, I don’t have ulterior motives. The last thing I want is to get mixed up in all your drama. It’s not my business, but Ican’t help myself. Krys was right. I’m a glutton for punishment.”
When I bent over and gripped the shelf, my ponytail flipped to the front. “I’m going to be sick.”
He put his hand on my back, and it made me jump.
“Don’t touch me. Please… go.” The dam I’d built was finally breaking, and an ocean of unbidden emotions was about to burst free if he didn’t leave. I couldn’t be this vulnerable in front of anyone. “I need to be alone,” I said, my voice cracking. “Don’t make me ask twice.”
“Gotcha,” he said softly. “But if you need anything, you know how to reach me.”
Archer’s hasty exit barely registered. What did he expect me to do with that information? I had nowhere to go, and on top of that, I was anchored to these books.
I ran my finger down the spine of one of my father’s favorites, remembering how happy we once were. How easy my life had been. Then I thought about what I’d seen at the Arrowhead pack’s house, and I wanted that happiness so much that I’d pasted a wolf on my vision board. Tears spilled down my cheeks. Robyn was right. Creating a visual of my dreams had redirected my focus these past days to whatIwanted in life, not just what Noah wanted.
Once calm, I returned to the vision board and stared at it contemplatively for the next fifteen minutes.
I remembered when cutting out the wolf how I almost snipped off one of the legs. After deciding I’d inhaled too much of the glue, I banished Archer from my thoughts. A wolf could never love a horse.
And why did I keep thinking softly about Archer? Why did he tug at my heart like no one ever had?
Closing my eyes, I visualized a flowery meadow like the onebehind Tak’s house. I heard the thundering beat of my hooves on the soft earth as I galloped against the wind. Yet none of those visuals awakened my animal. She hadn’t shifted in months. I’d seen Milly on one occasion about it, and she warned me that there were consequences to suppressing our instinct to shift. She suggested I work on figuring out why my animal wasn’t coming out before it was too late. Because if she ever did emerge, she would be too wild and uncontrollable and might never let me shift back.
“Cecilia,” Noah sang from the door. “Where’s my girl?”
With those words, I knew he was drunk.
He staggered to the back, knocking into a shelf and dislodging a few books. “Oops.” He wheezed out a laugh.
In the time since I’d seen him this morning, I felt like an entirely different person.
“I stopped by the house,” he said, his words as sharp as a razor’s edge. “You didn’t get rid of all that shit like I told you to. So I got rid of it for you. Including the beer, but I drank that.” He approached the table and gripped the coffee machine. “What the fuck is this?”
“Coffee.”
While shopping, I had gotten the idea that serving free coffee to the first customers of the day might be a fun gimmick. That way, I wouldn’t have to run it all day long and have the smell permeating through the books. It seemed like an easy way to incentivize people to shop early instead of late.
Noah pushed at it. “It’s a hundred fucking degrees outside, and you’re serving hot coffee.” He stepped in front of me and stroked my ponytail. “Look at what Miss Moneybags bought today. I bet you feel superior, throwing money in my face.”
“It’s forus.”
He jerked my ponytail. “I don’t recall asking for rugs in thebathroom.” His eyes skated up to the wall behind me. “What’s that supposed to be?” He ripped it off the wall so he could hold it in front of his face.
“It’s a vision board,” I informed him, seething from the betrayal I had no right feeling.
I wanted to hate him, but how could I condemn him for doing the same thing I had done?
Because you didn’t do it every single night for who knows how long, a voice answered.How many women has he slept with? Remember when his showering habits changed after moving to Storybook? What about the lipstick on his clothes that he always said was from hauling a rowdy girl out of the club? At least you felt guilty about your sin. Maybe you should start wondering how many nights he had sex with a woman and then came home and did the same with you.
Noah squinted at the pictures. “A wolf? Is that what you’re envisioning every night?”
“Those are supposed to represent my dreams, Noah. Do you want to know what each one of them means?”
He barked out a laugh and twirled the cardboard. “Pie? You dream of pie? And books?” With a sharp motion, Noah ripped the image in two and gave me a look of reproach. “Your dreams are boring, Cecilia.”
“Why do you have to shoot down everything I do? Don’t youwantme to be happy?”
He jerked his head back.
“I don’t want to leave this town, Noah. I’m making good money, and I have nice friends.”
