Instead, I’d had to save myself.
The bell rang out front, signalling a customer’s arrival. I vaguely heard a voice calling out.
Chester cursed quietly before capping his pen. “Be right with you!”
I looked up from where I was elbow deep in feeding solution. “Want me to go?”
“No it’s okay.” Chester got to his feet. “You’re doing a cracking job with that, keep going.”
I hid the glow I had from the praise. “Okay but if he’s hot I call dibs.”
Chester rolled his eyes, but I knew he wasn’t mad. I’d kept my voice low so the customer wouldn’t hear. “Don’t you have enough visitors in your bed to keep you busy?”
“Exactly, they’re visitors.” I waggled my rear and smirked. “They’re just passing through while I wait for Mr. Right.”
I might have been a fuckboi, but only because I was searching for the one. I hadn’t needed a prince to save me, but that didn’t mean I didn’twantone. And if I enjoyed kissing lots of frogs while I searched for my prince? Well, I wasn’t going to feel ashamed about it.
Chester disappeared to help the customer, and I continued with my work while keeping half an ear on the conversation out front in case my boss needed me.
The customer’s voice was oddly familiar. Like a nagging memory I’d forgotten but knew was there. I shrugged it off. I was probably imagining things.
I froze as Chester gave a choking cough. Was he okay? Istrained to hear, wondering if I should rush out there or not.
“Sorry about that,” Chester wheezed. I relaxed, but immediately tensed up again at his next words. “You know Finn?”
The stranger spoke. “Yep. He’s basically family to me.”
Fuck.Fuck.The customer was a shifter. He had to be. I inhaled deeply, trying to stay calm. So long as it wasn’thim,everything would be fine.
“Anyway, I’m after a bouquet and you came highly recommended,” the shifter continued. “My name’s Evan, by the way. Evan McCarthy.”
My blood turned cold. I jerked back so swiftly that the bucket with the feed solution crashed to the floor. I didn’t stop to clean it up. Didn’t even think to wipe off my hands. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t see past the red haze filling my vision. Couldn’t hear past the thundering in my ears.
I barrelled out to the front of the shop, and sure enough, there he stood. Evan fucking McCarthy. The shifter I’d thought would be my saviour, but who’d instead condemned me. “You.”
The years hadn’t aged Evan—of course they hadn’t—but it was still a shock seeing him without the cloud of memory covering him. It didn’t help that I was seeing him with adult eyes now, noticing details that a child wouldn’t have. Aspects that, on any other man, would’ve had me drooling. The wide expanse of his chest. Hands so big they’d span half my back. A dimple flashing under the dark stubble. Bulging muscles that his clothing did nothing to disguise.
I hated that I noticed them now.
I shoved between Chester and the counter, instinctively trying to protect him. Evan wasn’t like the others. He didn’thold any of the qualities wolf shifters were known for. I knew that now. “How fucking dare you come in here?”
I was vibrating with fury. Chester said something behind me, but I couldn’t hear him. Not when Evan was looking at me with…amusement.
He thinks this is funny?
“Leave, now,” I ordered, forcing my shaking hands into fists. I wouldn’t show weakness in front of Evan. Not now, not ever again. I’d done so once before and paid dearly for it. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but get out.”
And what did the fucker do? He grinned. As though my reaction to him was amusing, somehow. “So you’re fine with Finn, but ye draw the line at me.”
Was he for fucking real? “I don’t have a history with Finn.”
Evan stiffened, confusion crossing his unfairly handsome face. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ve met before. I would’ve remembered.”
The fury combined with a new emotion. The crushing weight of sorrow. What’d happened had sent my entire world crumbling to the ground, all because of Evan.
And he didn’t even remember it. It was so insignificant that his brain hadn’t bothered to file it away.
But it wasn’t insignificant to me. How could it be, given everything that had followed? I remembered everything. Every. Fucking. Detail.
