“I’m not scared,” I lied. “I’m being realistic. This was always temporary.”
“That’s not true—”
“Go home, Harris.” I turned away from him, unable to look at his face anymore. Unable to watch what I was doing to him. “There’s nothing for you here.”
Total silence followed my words, a yawning chasm between us.
Then, in a voice gone thick and strange, Harris said, “Fuck you, Reed. You finally got what you wanted.”
I flinched. But I deserved way worse.
And then I got it. Because the floorboards creaked behind me as he turned around and walked to the door. Each footstep fell in the empty bar, loud as the crack of a gunshot.
With everything inside me, I wanted to turn back around and tell him I didn’t mean it, that I was terrified and being stupid and that I loved him so much it was killing me. But I didn’t. I stood there, frozen, staring at the bottles of liquor on the wall as he left my life for good.
The door slammed shut behind him. And then he was gone. I was alone again. And that was the way things had to be.
Although I wasn’t sure, deep down, if I really believed that anymore.
* * *
Moving on autopilot, I found a piece of paper and scrawledClosed for the dayon it and taped it to the front door. Then I locked the deadbolt and pulled all the shades.
I went back behind the bar, grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the shelf—Jack Daniel’s, because of course it was, one less to count later—and poured myself a glass. I downed it.
Then another.
After my fourth shot in a row, I gave up on the glass entirely and drank straight from the bottle.
The burn of the alcohol was good. It gave me something to focus on besides the look on Harris’s face. The way his voice had gone strange and awful when he saidyou finally got what you wanted.
I took another swig.
My wolf was still howling, clawing at me from the inside, but I ignored it. It didn’t have the capacity to understand why I’d sent our mate away. It didn’t care about logic or safety or even the good of the pack. It only knew that Harris wasoursand we’d driven him off for good.
I drank more.
The bar was too quiet. Too empty.
I considered going back to the commune, but I couldn’t face any of them. Not yet.
The bottle was half-empty by the time I finally let myself think the thought I’d been avoiding:He’ll never forgive me.
And why should he? I had told him we could make it work, that I wanted him to stay, and then I’d turned around and gutted him without warning, saying the cruelest words I could find.
He’d never trust me again.
I took another drink.
But he’ll live, I told myself firmly.He’ll go back to LA. He’ll be safe. That’s what matters.
It didn’t feel like it mattered.
It felt like I’d just made the worst mistake of my life.
I was almost all the way through the bottle when the room started to finally blur at the edges. I staggered into the back office. I had a cot set up in there for when I either crashed out at work or one of the patrons was too drunk to get home safely.
I collapsed onto it.
