‘Smell is sorted, so is the extra strength and not accidentally sprouting claws if someone pisses me off.’ Lucas had told me a couple of days ago how Aster had thrown his favourite pair of pyjamas on the fire. He’d tackled his bestie and told him he was the worst, but had retained his essential humanity despite the bubbling rage. ‘It’s sound that’s still getting me. I jump at stuff happening a mile away.’
‘You’ll get there,’ I reassured him.
‘As soon as I do, I’m racing down the mountains. You’re going to have to clear your schedule because a hug-fest is coming to town.’
I smiled wetly. ‘That sounds genuinely perfect.’
Shuffling on the line, which I hoped didn’t mean Lucas was embarrassed that he’d proclaimed his desire to hold me. I wasn’t lying that his arms around me were what I wanted more than anything else.
‘I’m sorry you lost your scar, Kit,’ he said. ‘That must have been hard.’
I sniffed, but there was no stopping the flood of tears. ‘Yeah.’
Becoming a werewolf had made my life better in so many ways, but it had taken something I’d thought would be part of me for my whole life. My partners never seemed to want to stick around and Mum died and I’d ditched my law degree to take a chance on a bookshop on a tiny Scottish island, but that scar had remained. It represented my tough beginning and the love and care it had taken to keep me alive.
‘Your scarves are beautiful,’ Lucas said.
A smile broke through my silent weeping. Lucas might think his compliments were weird and over the top, but I loved them. Other people so often focused on what was outwardly attractive and they didn’t look any deeper. From the first moment I’d met Lucas, he’d seen more.
It didn’t feel like he was simply saying my scarves were beautiful. The rest of the pack, at some point or another, had tried to talk to me about my unhealthy need to wear them. I didn’t think Lucas would do that.
‘I love them,’ I admitted. ‘Wearing them started as a way to cover my throat so that I wouldn’t accidentally touch where the scar had been or be shocked by my reflection, but now it’s like they’ve almost taken over the job my scar used to have. They ground me when my head is busy.’
The scarves weren’t quite the same, but they were something. I didn’t know if one day I would put them aside, but they were what I needed for now.
‘Thank you for telling me about this.’
‘I wanted to.’ I rubbed my face on a blanket, then blinked at the living room. The light had faded during our conversation. Under the den I’d created, my stomach rumbled.
Lucas laughed. ‘Heard that.’
I eased my feet from under Kat, provoking a piercing death stare but no sudden violence. ‘Want to chat while I make dinner?’
Previous evenings we’d talked for hours, but I didn’t want to assume Lucas would want to do the same tonight. What I’d laid on him was heavy. He might need time to himself to think it through.
‘Of course.’ The note of outrage in Lucas’s voice made me grin as I walked over to the fridge. ‘What are you making?’
The rest of the evening passed with his voice in my ear, mine rising to meet it. The sadness that had been awakened when myscarf caught on Hamish’s dragon wasn’t banished, but it was soothed.
I tried to stop the smile slipping from my face after we finally said goodbye. Lucas’s need to pee could no longer be ignored despite his desire to keep talking and avoid walking in on any kind of sex act between Callum and Aster.
Lucas had made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want to kiss me. He didn’t even want to talk about when I’d asked to kiss him. He seemed determined for our friendship to continue on without a hitch.
But there was one. Despite his unmistakable rejection, my feelings for him were growing. I’d not met anyone before who so effortlessly saw me, who chatting to was always a joy and never a chore, whose scent was wonderful and whose arms I wanted to shelter in on bad days.
I just had to take what I could get. Maybe it would be easier once Lucas was living here again. Then I’d be able to see his desire to only be friends in action. I’d figure out whatever that change to his scent was, since it clearly wasn’t attraction. With my senses constantly battered with his platonic regard, surely my feelings would eventually fade.
I’d made a wonderful friend when Lucas came to the island. I wouldn’t allow myself to be sad that I could never have more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
LUCAS
Ileapt over a boulder twice my height and landed in a controlled crouch on the other side. Ahead of me, Callum was already scaling a practically vertical section of mountainside.
Sweat dampening my T-shirt, I ran over and sniffed out where he’d placed his hands and feet seconds before.
‘You’re doing great,’ he called, before flipping over the top of the cliff face.
