“Tamara.” I blurted out the redhead’s name, not knowing what else to say.
“Tamara?”
“She likes you, Liam. I couldn’t do that to her.” My excuse was pathetic, eye-roll-worthy pathetic.
“Let me make something very clear, I don’t give a crap about Tamara.”
“But-”
“Go out on a date with me.”
“Liam-”
“One date. And I promise to wear clothes.” One side of Liam’s mouth quirked up.
Of course, thatmade me acutely aware that he was naked. “Lucas said there was no dating within the pack.”
“Lucas is a dumbass, and it’s a bogus rule. I know for a fact that two of the wolves in our pack are together.”
For the briefest of moments, I wondered who, but then I focused back on the matter at hand. “We’re opponents. Opponents can’t date.”
A nerve jumped in his jaw. “Says who?”
“It wouldn’t be ethical.”
“Really?” His face loomed over mine.
I licked my lips that felt as dry as my throat. “Yes. Really.”
“Drop out then.”
That snapped something in me. I ducked away from him. “Is that what this is about?”
“What?” His forehead grooved.
“You’re trying to make me drop out?”
His eyes darkened, and he gave his head a little shake
“Why don’t youdrop out?”
His jaw clenched. “I’ve been working my entire life toward this, Ness. You only want this to piss me off.”
“That’s not true,” I blurted out. But it was true.
So. Damn. True.
He crossed his arms in front of his blood-flecked torso. “You didn’t go against me because you hated the idea of having a Kolane in charge?”
Instead of answering him, I used the momentum of our quarrel to drive in my previous point. “See? We can’t date, Liam.”
He snorted but didn’t disagree with me. Then again, his bedroom door flew open.
As he took us in, Matt’s eyebrows shot up. “Everything all right in here?”
Liam glared at me. For someone whose dying wish had been to kiss me, he seemed over it.
“Yeah,” I mumbled, planting my gaze on the large oaf of a man standing in the doorway instead of on the infuriating one standing inches from me.
Matt flicked his attention to Liam, who remained as still as glass.
“Can you take me home?” I asked Matt.
“Of course.”
I started walking away when Liam’s voice made me halt. “Why do you want to lead this pack, Ness?”
My cheeks burned from being put on the spot. “I don’t have to explain my reasons to you.”
“I just hope your reasons are noble, because these are good men. Men who deserve someone honest, with the pack’s interest at heart.”
I stared at Matt’s dirty boots.
I swallowed over and over, but my saliva kept getting jammed up. Finally, I managed to wheeze out, “And they’ll have someone deserving of them.”
For the first time in a long time, I was speaking the truth.
Because it wouldn’t be me.
I would make sure to lose the next test. I wasn’t sure how yet, but I was sure it would come to me. If I lost, Julian couldn’t hold that against me. Could he?
He probably could. He’d probably rescind his offer to speak to the PI. Or if he’d already spoken to him, he’d call him back. But it wouldn’t matter because Liam would already have heard it from me.
After the next test, I’d confess.
I’d confess it all and free myself of the debilitating guilt. And if that meant groveling for my life, then I would drop to my knees and grovel. My only hope was that Liam would show me the mercy his father had been incapable of showing my mother.
Ispent every minute of the next three days with Evelyn. If these were to be my last hours on this earth, there was no one I wanted to spend them with more than Evelyn. Several times, she asked me what was wrong. Nothing. That was my answer. Nothing plus a cheerful smile.
But she knew me better than that. She also knew there was no point in pushing me. That when I walled myself off, there was no breaching my brick-and-mortar shell.
Next week, my fate would be sealed.
I thought about the wedding with a heavy heart. Remembered I still needed a dress. I tried to call Everest for help, but Lucy told me he’d gotten dire news about Becca and that he’d hit the road to clear his mind.
I didn’t want to hold his sorrow against him, but I was sad he’d left me behind. I didn’t wallow too long in my loneliness, though. After days of avoiding August’s calls and messages, I’d answered him that morning. Like a dying person, I was putting my life in order, and part of that order was thanking August for caring, even though I didn’t really understand why he cared about me in the first place. I was no longer the innocent little girl whose hair he’d ruffled and whom he’d taught to whittle wood into animal statues.
As I wiped down wine glasses in the pantry, my heart squeezed so tight a sharp pain spread through my chest. I was wallowing again. God, I didn’t want to wallow. I drove my focus outward, on the chirpy conversation of the two servers who worked nights and weekends at the inn. They were discussing going clubbing at The Den.