As I reached for the handle and climbed inside, he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for any of that to happen.”
I climbed inside, clunked the door shut, and started the car.
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
DECLAN
Watching the cloud of dust block out the back of Brooke’s car, I gritted my teeth and shook my head.
I got why she was upset. As I replayed the last twenty minutes in my mind, I completely understood it.
Brooke had made her independence very clear since the moment we met. She’d been hesitant to invite me in Wednesday night, she’d been uncomfortable at dinner with Guinevere, and—hell—she tried to lie her way out of a cup of coffee the morning after.
I should’ve thought of that before I opened my mouth to Tommy.
I should’ve thought of that before I even brought her to Abe’s.
I should’ve thought.
But I really hadn’t meant it the way she received it.
Calling a woman ‘mine’ wasn’t a matter of ownership in the wolf world. We phrased it that way to make our intentions clear. She wasn’t a blood bag open for another wolf to drink from. She wasn’t available for another man to try to fuck.
It meant that fucking with her meant fucking with me—that she was a part of my pack.
I didn’t actually have one of those, and no, I didn’t want one. But that was how things worked between wolves. Bringing a woman—a Witch Guardian hybrid especially—into a den meant it needed to be made clear exactly why she was there and who she’d come with.
That was me. I was the reason she was there, and I was who she’d come with. So I said she was mine.
I wasn’t saying that she was my property, or my wife, or anything along those lines. I was saying that if anyone came near her, I’d tear their throat out before they could hurt her.
But Brooke didn’t know wolves. She didn’t understand the way we communicated. She didn’t understand that Tommy had already been interested in her, and it was a slap in the face when I showed up with her on my arm. She didn’t understand that when he put his arm around her shoulder, he was assaulting her.
To her, it was a grimy gesture. To us, it was Tommy’s way of saying, ‘I’m gonna take her, do whatever I like with her, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’
I had to say it.
But I should’ve explained all of that before. When I told her to stick close the other night, that would’ve been the perfect opportunity. I knew something like this could’ve come up, and I should’ve thought of the way she’d receive my reaction.
My head rolled back, I took in a slow, calming breath, and ignored the anxious rumble in my stomach.
As my erratic heart leveled, the throb of music seeping from the walls of Spades came back in. Given the fact that my hands were still clenched to fists and I couldn’t unlock my tight jaw, going in there seemed like a bad idea.
I walked to the house instead.
* * *
Everything I could’ve done differently kept cycling through my mind when I lay down. I did eventually doze off, but I set my alarm for seven. Brooke’s alarm went off at nine when we awoke Thursday morning, and I wanted to be awake before her.
So I dragged myself vertical, took a shower, got dressed, and headed out.
Riding a motorcycle at eight in the morning was a lot fucking colder than I was used to, but I sucked it up on my way to the grocery store. Were flowers going to make her happy with me? Probably not, but they couldn’t hurt.
I stopped at that diner down the road to grab donuts and coffee too. I imagined it’d be a more endearing image if I showed on her door with the paper cups resting on the box of donuts like you see in rom coms, but I dumped them into thermoses and hoped she wouldn’t notice how smashed the pastries were from sitting in the saddle bags.
When I rumbled to a stop before her house though, her car wasn’t in the drive.
I knew she wasn’t at work today, and it was only ten after nine. Maybe she’d lent it to Ria?