“Of course not, but I want you with me, Ness.” He slowed to a stop at a traffic light. The last one before the winding path that led to the headquarters. “Wasn’t last nightincredible?”
“Itwas.”
“Then why are youhesitating?”
Keeping my gaze fixed on the windshield, I said softly, “It was incredible because ofyou.”
He tugged on my hand, dragging me nearer. “Look atme.”
I looked. At his swept-back hair, his dark eyes, his full upper lip, his slightly thinner lowerone.
“I once told you about my oldest memory, but I never told you about the memory that’s marked me the most. The one that’s been playing on a loop in my mind for the past six years. You, tiny, skinny, fragile you, coming into the headquarters and asking us to train you, to acceptyou.”
The memory crimped the edges of my heart. “You all said no. Well, all of you except August, Nelson, and Everest.” I tried to snatch my hand from Liam’s, but he tightened his grip. “I let you go once—welet you go—and it was a mistake. I would love to blame it all on my father, but that would be unfair. Truth is, we were cowards. Almost all of us. We were a brotherhood. We thought having a girl in our midst would change us, would change everything. And it does change everything, Ness, but the Boulders are ready forchange.
“A new Alpha will rise tonight. A new era will begin. Be part of it. You are as strong, as cunning, as resilient as the rest of us. And a hell of a lot better to lookat.”
“Stopit.”
“Stop what? Telling you thetruth?”
“You already won me over,Liam.”
A smile tipped his lips. “And you won over thepack.”
I rolled myeyes.
“I’m serious. Matt still talks about how you saved his paw. And then Frank told us about your life in L.A., how you cared for your mother until the end, and for Evelyn. And then I caught some of the elders discussing how smart and strong you’d turned out, just like your father, but with your mother’s fierytemper.”
“Seriously, stop it.” I knuckled a tear from the corner of my eye but smiled at the mention of my mother’s temper. My mother had always blazed brighter and hotter than mostwomen.
“Ness, you’ve earned their respect. You’ve earned everyone’srespect.”
“ExceptLucas’s.”
Not that Lucas’s respect mattered. Lucas didn’t matter tome.
“Babe, last night, you let me stay out with them. When I insisted on going back with you, you insisted I stay with them. Lucas’s greatest fear is that a girl comes betweenus.”
“That’s not seriously his greatestfear…?”
“It sort of is. Lucas lost his parentsyoung.”
Lucas had been involved in a car crash a couple years after I was born. A shard of glass had sliced through his eyebrow, leaving behind the nasty scar he still bore. He’d survived because he’d forgotten to wear his seatbelt. His father and mother hadn’t been as lucky, and when the car tumbled down into Coot Lake, they hadn’t managed to unstrapthemselves.
“And then, when his granddad died,” Liam continued, “we were all he had left. He doesn’t hateyou.”
I blinked wet eyelashes at Liam. The air shimmered around his face. I blinked again, and the shimmer was gone, but his faceremained.
Solid.
Real.
I reached out and touched his jaw. “I’ll think aboutit.”
He stopped the car on the side of the road. “You’re not still worried about not being a Boulder, areyou?”
I bit mylip.
