“Effortless?” Bas offered with a smile.
“Exactly, yeah.” I nodded. “It’s effortless with him. The killer sex doesn’t hurt either.” Bas chuckled at my comment, and I couldn’t help but grin back. “I’d never know what I’d been missing if I hadn’t gotten out of my own head and given him a chance.”
Bas’ hand found its way to my shoulder with a light squeeze.He beamed lovingly at me. “I’m so happy for you, Thayer. And proud as hell. It’s comforting to know that you’ve found someone you could see a real future with.”
“Thanks,” I smiled, feeling my cheeks warm at his sentiment. “Don’t go browsing cats for us just yet, though.”
Bas cackled, shaking his head as he retracted his hand. “I won’t push you to catch up with me and Kroven.”
“Thank you.” I paused, my thoughts churning over in my head. “I’ve also been thinking about leaving the club.”
Shock scribbled over Bas’ handsome features, and his brow furrowed as my words took poise for him. “You’re really thinking of leaving Downpour? Why?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I mean, I love dancing, don’t get me wrong. And obviously that’s how I met Qwill. But I don’t know, the more I think about it, the more I realize it’s never really been what I wanted to do. Just because I really enjoy doing it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily what I’m meant to do like I thought.”
Bas nodded, listening intently with the slight shift of his head. “Have you thought about what it is you do want to do with your life? Thanks to Troian, you can kind of have whatever life you want.”
I’d told him about everything my brother had told me about his past, including the sudden wealth I’d found myself in. Bas had been surprised, but happy for me. He’d even joked that today’s trip was all on me, but thankfully that was just him jabbing at me playfully. Seeing how much he’d spent already made me even more glad that he hadn’t been serious.
“I’m not quite sure yet,” I told him truthfully. “But I’ll figure it out. I just need to think on it a little more.” And truthfully, I was desperate to figure out what I wanted to do to keep earning money. Just because I didn’t have to work immediately didn’t mean I was going to completely exit the job force. I just needed more time to ponder.
I stepped back from the rack I’d been busying myself with, leaving my thoughts of my future at bay so that I could focus on what was supposed to be a fun outing with my best friend to distract me from these very thoughts. I deserved a break and to have a fun day out with Bas, refocusing on giving him my undivided attention. “I’m not finding anything that’s really jumping at me here. Wanna try somewhere else?”
“Sure, there’s still a few more shops down the block I’d like to hit.”
We found our way out of the store and soon enough we were reconvening on the sidewalk. I had to shake my head as Bas shifted his three bags from the previous stores between his different hands. I was thankful I only had the one bag to deal with.
“Have you filled up Kroven’s closet yet?” I said offhanded.
“Oh please.” Bas waved me off. “As if I don’t have my own closet at the house.”
“You’d have to.” I simpered, shaking my head at the image of a closet bursting through the wood of its door. If I knew Bas, Kroven was going to have to offer up one of the spare bedrooms as Bas’ closet before the end of the year.
An eerie sensation crawled up the base of my spine. This was the second time I’d felt this since I’d been out shopping with Bas. I hadn’t mentioned it to him because I didn’t want to freak him out and I also didn’t know whether I was truly experiencing what I thought I was or if I was just being situationally paranoid.
It felt like eyes were on me.
I’d felt it in between the first and second shops we’d visited, and now I was feeling it again now that we were back outside. But why would someone be following me?
Briefly, I entertained the idea that maybe someone from Qwill’s tribe could be following me. Maybe the tribe leader didn’t like that Qwill was involving himself with a human andsent someone to scope out what kind of person I was. As possible as that might have been, if something like that were even remotely a possibility, I felt like Qwill would have told me. And since he hadn’t, it didn’t make sense for a virces to be following me.
Shaking myself, I steeled my mental reserve. I was just being weird. No one was following me. I wasn’t nearly important enough to follow, and there wasn’t anything that I’d done that would have warranted such a thing.
I did my best to shake myself more of the notion and revert my attention to Bas. I was about to ask him which shop he wanted to hit up next, but the gasp that fell out of Bas’ mouth then caught me off guard and sent rhythms of alertness along my skin. Turning to face the same direction to follow what had caused his reaction, I noticed a familiar looking woman across the street looking over at us and lighting up. She was staring directly at Bas and waving emphatically.
And on her arm was a beefed up sangamar. He was tall and shirtless, and his pressed black slacks looked really tight against the bottom half of his body. I’d only really seen slim sangamar, like Kroven, down at the blood center when I’d visited Bas, so seeing one muscled up and shirtless was, honestly, a sight to behold.
“Babs brought Exo back with her!” Bas stated with electricity sparking up the excitement in his words. “She’s been on vacation with him in D.C. I’m gonna go say hi real fast, okay?”
“Sure,” I nodded. “I’ll meet you at that outdoorsy shop, I wanna look for some good hiking boots.”
“Sounds good.” He smiled and quickly crossed the street to run over to where Babs and the sangamar named Exo and started greeting them.
I smiled at the sight of Bas bonding with his friends and turned down the street to head toward the shop I’d mentioned. Since the marsh was the closest I could get to the virces tribewhere Qwill now lived, I planned on heading back that way with him in the very near future.
Once I took the slight turn down the block, I could see the shop I was interested in, cutely named Out-Yours, within view. No one was down this way of the block, usually not as bustling as the more fashion forward and food shops that preceded it.
I was enjoying the leisurely stroll alone when I heard something to my left as I started passing the alley housed between the two closed shops I was ambling by.
