“I sincerely hope you are.” His tone made it clear he doubted it would happen.
It sparked a surprising irritation. “I may not be an empath, Dr. Tyler, but I can tell when you think I’m full of shit.”
Callum smiled. “So prove me wrong.”
Julio picked up the Rubik’s Cube and twisted it. “Is that what they call reverse psychology?”
“I’m not your therapist. I’m an empath, and you’re a shapeshifter. There aren’t rules and guidelines for this.” For the first time in months, Callum unbent enough to sigh and run a hand through his hair. “I know what you went through in January because I’ve seen Kat, and she felt it. Therefore, I’ve felt it. But feeling isn’t experiencing. So think about it, Julio. Think about if you want to talk about that experience. With me, with anyone. Just think.”
Think. It was the last thing he wanted to do, something that would undoubtedly bring up memories and all the unresolved shit people loved to hear about. Better to push it down, forget it ever happened. It wasn’t as if people didn’t survive worse every day.
But he couldn’t say any of that to Callum. “I will. I promise.”
“Good. I’ll get in touch with you before I fly back to England.” Rising, the empath offered his hand.
Julio shook it. “If you didn’t, my sister would call you and demand to know why not.”
Callum’s sudden laugh was warm, almost fond. “What your sister lacks in empathic power she more than makes up for in training and sheer will. She’s a formidable woman, and I’m just as happy without her chasing after me. So don’t get me in trouble.”
“Yeah.” Julio put the toy back on the corner of Callum’s desk. He’d screwed it up, but he wasn’t surprised.
That was what he did these days.
Friday night at Mahalia’s was the closest Sera came to cutting loose. It was the place she felt safe, surrounded by shapeshifters and spell casters, watched over by staff trained by Nicole Peyton, princess of rebel wolves.
With a beer in her hand and the promise of another waiting for her inside, it felt good to lean against the wall in front of the bar and indulge in a moment of feeling alone without being alone.
Josh would have to be crazy to pick a fight with her here, where one shout would bring the half of the bar with shapeshifter hearing pouring into the street, ready to do violence.
Josh would have to be crazy, and she didn’t want to believe he was. Not in her mind, and not in her heart, where she’d loved him like a stupid, desperate girl.
Her gut knew, though. Her instincts knew, which was why she’d already tensed by the time she caught his scent. No one else smelled like him—cheap cologne and synthetic leather and engine grease and coyote, and that was the part that had tugged at her again and again, even when things were bad, even when they were careening toward terrible.
He was like her. They belonged together.
She sidled closer to the door, though she couldn’t see him yet. Just a shadow five feet to her left, a figure that hadn’t yet stepped into the circle of light spilling out of the entrance. “You can turn around and walk away now, and I won’t have to scream and get a dozen wolves out here to kick you bloody.”
He stared back at her—she could feel the weight of it—but he didn’t move. “You could have already done that.”
“I could have.” Julio was inside, and if he came charging out, Josh would be a speck on the sidewalk. “I don’t want you dead, Josh. I only want you away from me, okay? So go away.”
He took a single step forward. “I came to talk, Sera. Just talk.”
Even now, after everything, he sang to her blood. The human part of her knew the coyotes were dying. The coyote understood only enough to claw for a solution. A healthy male of her species—the only one she’d ever met who wasn’t related to her.
Together they’d make babies who would suffer as much as their parents and grandparents had. “I said everything I had to say when I divorced you.”
“You didn’t say jack shit,” he retorted. “You had your daddy’s girlfriend the fancy lawyer do your talking for you.”
“Yeah. That was me saying I didn’t want to talk to you again.”
“Except you did.” Josh ran a hand through his hair. “You still do, don’t try and deny it.”
She didn’t. But the longer she let him talk to her, the stupider she felt, like the horny blonde in a horror movie who ended up stuffed in a closet because she was hard up for a good lay.
Except Sera wasn’t hard up—she was drunk on instinct.
It would get her kidnapped or killed. Instinct rooted her feet in place, but she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Julio Mendoza is inside that bar. If I raise my voice, he’s going to come out here and erase you from history. And he won’t care if I want to talk to you.”
His jaw tightened—and so did his fists. “Is that how you deal with life these days? Something bugs you, you throw a goddamn wolf at it?”
Bravado and bluster were all she had. “My KitchenAid mixer’s at home.”
“Which is where you should be.” He took another step. “With me.”
“Fuck you, Josh.” With him closing in, she had no trouble baring her teeth. A snarl followed, a low warning, and she clenched her hand around the neck of her beer bottle. “You lost me when you decided to hit me.”
“You—” He halted in his tracks. “It wasn’t like that, Sera.”
As if the damn day wasn’t branded in her memory. “I remember how it was. You found the birth control, you got pissed off and you hit me.”
“Because it’s selfish and stupid,” he hissed. “Is that what you want? We die and that’s it? No more coyotes? It’s not a fucking joke, it’s reality.”
“Your reality.” All she had to do was conjure her mother’s confused face and wild, crazy eyes to know that. “I’m not going to have daughters who’ll be chased by every male coyote out there as soon as they hit puberty. I’d rather fuck a wolf and have human babies.”
His face blanched and then reddened. “Then you’re not just selfish. You’re a fucking freak, like everyone said.”
“I’m a freak?” Her voice was rising, turning angry, and she didn’t care. “I’m not the one who had to go seduce some kid half my age and hide in the middle of the woods.”
“No, you’re the one who liked it,” he spat. “If it hadn’t been me, it would’ve been some other asshole.”
There it was. He’d reached into her heart and dragged out her darkest fear. “Bullshit.”
“Yeah, your dad’s friend. What was his name? Jacobson.” A glimmer of satisfaction broke through Josh’s glower. “You had your eye on him, right? Does Julio Mendoza know about that?”
No one did. No one but Josh and Alec himself, who’d handled her teenage rebellion with a curt lack of amusement. The one time she’d come on to him, he’d smacked her into place with the disgusted pronouncement that he didn’t fuck kids—and a deadly serious promise to tell her father if she didn’t shape the hell up.
How many humiliating secrets did Josh know? Enough to guarantee she’d never want to look Julio in the face again.
It wasn’t worth going back to Josh. “Yeah, Julio knows,” she lied. Then she piled on the lies, wrapped them in steel-willed determination. “Julio knows and he doesn’t give a shit, because he’s man enough to not be threatened by things that don’t matter.”
Josh stepped even closer, close enough to loom over her. His voice lowered to a growl, and the hair on the back of her neck rose on end as his breath soughed over her face. “Liar.”
Then he spun and stalked away, around the corner and out of sight.