“Nicole—”
“So…yeah.” Nick refilled her glass with more liquor this time. “I’m going to be vicious, May. I’m going to lock Nick Peyton in that box and never think about her again, because I can’t.” A ragged sob escaped. “If I start to wonder what kind of life she might have had, I won’t be able to do what I have to do.”
“What is that, exactly?” Mahalia rounded the desk and took the glass from her hand. “You marry this Maglieri boy, and what then? What does it accomplish if you’re both miserable as hell on fire?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?” Nick rubbed her aching head. “Babies, May. Power and legacy, everything the wolves hold dear.”
“Maybe some of them, but not Derek. Not you.”
Stop, please. “Do you really think what I want matters?”
Mahalia’s jaw tightened, and she leaned one hip against the edge of the desk. “It should, especially to your future husband.”
Nick snatched the glass back with a small growl. “Luke is as much a pawn in this whole thing as I am.”
“So marry him.” Mahalia’s tone was decidedly casual. Too casual. “Surely it’s not so different from human marriages of convenience. Marry Luciano, and then you both agree to lead your own lives.”
“No.”
“Hear me out—”
“No, May, you don’t understand.” Desperation drove Nick to pace the floor. “Even if it wasn’t a shitty thing to do, Derek couldn’t take having me belong to someone else.”
“Even if you had an—an arrangement?”
“Even then.” She stopped by the window and leaned her forehead against the glass. “I know you’re trying to help, to find some way, but you have to listen to me.” Tears streamed down Nick’s cheeks. “If there was a way for me to be with him, I’d do anything, go through anything. But there isn’t, Mahalia, and you have to—have to stop…”
“Shh.” Mahalia wrapped her arms around her and rocked gently. “It’s just not fair, honey.”
“Yes.”
She hesitated. “He loves you. If that helps.”
“I know.” Nick could barely choke out the words around the sobs that overtook her. She’d rather he hated her for what she’d put him through, for not keeping her distance in the first place. Knowing that he loved her—even though that love was impossible—didn’t help at all.
Chapter 17
“I think we should make Penny full partner.”
Andrew looked up from the clinic blueprints he was studying. “You do?”
Derek turned his attention back to the wall. Whatever spells ran through the wiring made his skin prickle every time he touched it, but at least the low-level discomfort distracted him from his misery. That had been the general idea of doing pro bono work for Franklin’s clinic in the first place—tax their bodies so they didn’t have to sit around and think so damn hard.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t working. Not for him, anyway. Derek scraped the extra spackle into the plastic container in his hand and finished his pitch. “Yeah. I sucked at the office stuff to begin with, and you’re not going to feel like doing it for a while. We can’t do it on our own anymore.”
Andrew leaned on the worktable they’d set up in the middle of the room. “Are you thinking of leaving?”
“No. Absolutely not.” Because there’s nowhere to go.
“Okay.” Andrew spoke slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. “Then I think Penny would appreciate it. She works hard. She’s good, and she’s earned it.”
Derek slapped another gob of spackle on the wall and smoothed it over the joint, his movements automatic. “I tried too hard after the attack. Tried to go back to my normal fucking human life like nothing had changed. It’s starting to seem like that was a really dumb idea.”
Andrew came over and picked up another small bucket. He hissed when he touched the wall, a soft growl issuing from his throat. Then he laughed a little. “No. No, we’re not human anymore.”
There it was, the sum of a miserable night’s realization. We’re not human anymore. How much of the past two years’ misery could he have avoided if he’d stopped fighting his instincts? If he’d acknowledged that easygoing Derek was gone and let himself be…
Derek laughed. “How pathetic am I? Over thirty fucking years old, and I don’t have a goddamn clue who I am. At least you’re not going to waste two years pretending nothing’s changed.”
Andrew kept his gaze on the wall in front of them. “From the way Alec talks, I don’t have that option. I could hurt someone if I don’t face things.” His knuckles turned white, and the solid plastic handle of the spackling knife creaked.
Magic flared. This time, it was the power in Andrew instead of the wards in the walls. Derek recognized it easily, the twitchy, tense prickle of a wolf who wanted to break free. “Has Alec taken you running yet?”
“Every day.”
That made the primal energy roiling inside his friend even more alarming. “You going again tonight?”
“I’m picking up dinner when I’m done here and heading over.” He finally met Derek’s eyes. “You want to come with me?”
It would have been easy to force a challenge right then, and part of him wanted to. Part of him wanted to shed his human form and vent his rage and loss in a fight that would wear him out and establish which of them was the strongest.
Derek looked away before the temptation overtook him. “Yeah. I think so.”
“Good.” Andrew tossed the bucket on the ladder between them. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Do you have the urge to just kick my ass? Because I want to punch you, and I don’t get it.”
Derek bit off a laugh. “Welcome to my world. I was just thinking about taking a swing at you.”
Instead of looking relieved, Andrew flashed him a disgruntled look. “I understand why Alec would bug me, but you’re my best friend. I don’t want to fight with you…but I do.”
He tried to remember the way Alec had explained it to him. “Because we’re both tough assholes, and the wolves like to know for sure who’s tougher.”
Andrew looked surprised by his own nod of agreement. “That makes sense. In a completely nonsensical way.”
“It’s not going to be the same with the women, just so you know.” Derek took a deep breath and concentrated on smoothing the spackle knife over the wall. “I mean, sometimes it will. But you might be more interested in”—love—“fucking before fighting.”
“So I hear.” His ears turned pink. “So long as the urge to hump women’s legs doesn’t overwhelm me, I think I’ll make it.”
His sanity would be much preserved by not knowing what kind of urges Andrew might have now, especially where they related to Kat. “It’ll get better,” he said vaguely. “It did for me.”
“I remember,” Andrew said somberly.
The knife’s handle snapped in Derek’s hand as the thoughts he’d so carefully guarded circled around to Nick and the way he’d felt every time he’d seen her. Casual flirtation had turned into a deadly serious game overnight, until all he could see when he closed his eyes was the fantasy of her head thrown back and her lips forming his name…
He slapped his palm against the wall, and the magical wards zapped him so hard he jumped back with a muffled noise. “Fuck. Fuck, I’ve got to get out of here.”
Andrew didn’t say anything, just thumped the lid back on the bucket and hammered it into place with two careful blows of his fist.
Nick could see Michelle quaking from across their father’s office. “Are you cold?”
“No.” The denial came too fast, as if her sister hadn’t even heard her. Michelle sat with her ankles crossed and her hands resting primly in her lap, but her white-knuckled grip was as obvious as her trembling.
“All this waiting gives me ulcers.” Nick rose and paced behind the desk. “Stupid sexist bullshit.”