The feelings I had for Rena…Belle were wrong. It was happening so fast, invading me like an unpredicted storm. I couldn’t allow myself to fall for my brother’s mate. That would ruin us and the pack.
“Did it work?” he asked. “I saw her leaving, and she was pretty upset.”
“Don’t worry, Brother. She will come around,” I mumbled, a lump in my throat. “I won’t let anyone come between the two of you.” I held both his arms and looked him straight in the eye. “Anyone.”
Not even me.
CHAPTER 13
BELLE
I drove aimlessly for hours, trying to wrap my mind around the day’s events. Then it fucking rained—poured—and I had no idea where to go. Katrina had gone AWOL. I didn’t have a single person to talk to or seek help from. Even my therapy started in two weeks in Portland; I didn’t want to spill my heart out to a therapist that currently worked at the university, and that was the earliest appointment I could find in Portland.
At times like these, I missed my mom more than the norm. The one who raised me, not the one who dumped me as a baby. I’d never met my real parents, and I knew so little about them. They were Italians. Some said they died in an accident. Some said they just took off. The bottom line was that they had disappeared, and I was left alone.
I never wanted to dig around and find what really happened. Sometimes, the truth was the worst. Besides, Mom was enough for me. She took me in when I was three. It was just the two of us in a cozy home that was always clean with plenty of food.
She was a great mother and a great high school French teacher. She used to live in the French Quarter in New Orleans. Then she moved to California to be a teacher. That was how I met Katrina. She was a student of Mom’s and visited a lot to be tutored…and when things got rough at home.
I didn’t remember much of what was going on with her family, but I remembered her father used to beat her. Then one day she became the rebel she’d always been and exploded in his face in the middle of our street. I was too young to remember what she’d said, but the man never laid a hand on her or anyone else after that night. In fact, he’d never spoken again either.
Then Mom died when I was eighteen, and everything went south. If it wasn’t for the college scholarship, I wouldn’t know how I’d have wound up.
Still, I’d married a man twenty years older than I was, who beat the hell out of me and almost killed me, but marrying Declan was a normal outcome for someone like me. I didn’t want to be the bitch who analyzed herself to make up pathetic excuses, because I wasn’t. Suffice to have said, I had serious abandonment issues and daddy issues to say the least. These alone would cause anyone to make some serious mistakes, like falling for the first daddy figure I’d met or staying in an abusive relationship afraid of being alone.
But it could have been worse. At least, I had my degree to fall back on.
My job was the only thing that mattered now. I had to protect it no matter what.
My stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten anything but that sandwich at lunch. If I went home, I wouldn’t bring myself to cook anything once I saw the bed. I wanted this day to end in any way, and sleep was the best escape.
Miles from home, I turned on the GPS and drove to the next restaurant. Stopping the car under the Grizzly Grill sign, I eyed the horde of motorcycles parked outside. I hoped this place wasn’t one of those biker’s hangouts.
I hurried inside, sheltering my hair with my bag, making another note to self to keep an umbrella at all times in the car because this was fucking Oregon.
The restaurant was more like a diner with a little bar and a pool table, quaint, small and relatively clean. Certainly not a regular biker’s bar or club or whatever they called it. It was packed with all sorts of locals. Still, I felt out of place with my suit and bag, especially when the leather-clad, big men crammed around the pool table stopped gulping their beers and stared at me.
Pressing my thumbnail, I found myself an empty booth as far as possible from them and scooted in.
The waitress gave me a menu. I was too hungry to look. “Can you please just get me the fastest edible thing you have here?”
“That hungry, huh?” She chewed on her gum, writing down what she decided to be my order.
“And in a hurry.”
She glanced at the bikers over her shoulder then back at me. “They might look scary, but they’re harmless, sweetie. Not the ones you should be scared of around here.”
She ambled away and yelled my order at the kitchen. I didn’t bother to ask her what she meant or even think about it. I just wanted to stuff my mouth in peace and go home.
I ran a tired hand over my neck, massaging it a bit until I hit a sore spot. The mark Alec had left. Quickly, I removed my hand and let my hair cascade down, as if someone would see.
Nobody cares about you or your love bite. Nobody even knows you here.
My eyes swiped the place, confirming my thoughts. No one was looking at me. No one recognized who I was.
Why did everybody keep saying they knew me from the case then?
The waitress returned with my food. A burger, slice of pie and a beer. “Enjoy, sweetie.”
