Wild Cowboy Wolf, page 16
Dakota had reached her limit—and the pho wasn’t even done cooking yet.
“I didn’t know he had a wife. It’s not like I was trying to be the other woman!” she shouted.
The words came out before she could stop them.
Me looked at Dakota as if she were hurt—and disrespected—because Dakota had shouted at her. “You don’t have to yell,” she scolded.
Dinner was oddly quiet after that, until Dakota was about midway through her pho and Blaze made her younger sisters, who’d only sat down a handful of minutes earlier, actually glance up from their phones and laugh. Teens were obsessed with the things, even when they were wolf shifters. Her brother was late, or a no-show, as usual, though Me hadn’t yet started to complain, or worse, make excuses for him. Not that Dakota was paying much mind to the conversation. She was too caught up with embarrassment at her own behavior. Not entirely in regard to how she’d spoken to her mother, though that was definitely a part of it, but mostly about the things she’d kept from Blaze.
If her mother hadn’t let it slip, would she even have told him about any of that? They didn’t talk much about when he’d been abroad and she’d still been here, alone and sometimes…not. Did she want to talk about it with him? What did it say about her if she didn’t?
It wasn’t until her mother had served up dessert, a delicious homemade pear ice cream with bits of tiny chocolate chips sprinkled on top, that she realized how self-absorbed she was being. Dakota had just shoved a bite of the frozen cream into her mouth, spoon still in hand, when she glanced across the table and noticed Blaze staring at her.
No, not staring at her. Staring through her. Like he didn’t really see her there.
That haunted look was in his eyes again, like when he’d shown up on her doorstep the other night, as if he couldn’t see her. She realized then that she’d been seeing far more of that look from him as of late and she’d been too caught up in her own troubles to notice.
“Blaze?” she said.
He didn’t answer, just sat there with his spoon dangling from his hand as if he still didn’t see her.
“Blaze?” she said it a little louder.
Immediately, Me looked over from where she’d been scolding Dakota’s sisters to put their phones away, and a worried crease pinched her brow. Gently, she reached over and nudged Blaze’s hand with her own as if the hardened warrior might break.
Blaze startled as if Me had shocked him, eyes darting around frantically like he didn’t know where he was or what he was doing there.
“Blaze,” Dakota said again.
His eyes fell to her and stayed there.
The fear there shook her. “Blaze, are you o—?”
Blaze shoved back his chair, not letting her finish the question. “I’m sorry,” he muttered under his breath. “Excuse me.” He tore from the room, spoon clattering to the floor behind him as he went. A moment later, Dakota heard the sound of the front door slam.
She could hardly breathe. She didn’t know what had happened to trigger the episode for him, but the fear in his eyes had nearly crushed her and somehow that made her realize she had to tell him that she—
Dakota moved to stand, to go after him, but Me caught her hand.
“Give him a moment,” she said. She gave Dakota’s hand a tight, reassuring squeeze. “But once you have, then he’ll need you to pick up the pieces.” Me cast her a sad, knowing look.
Not mother to daughter but mate to mate, a partner of the kind of man and soldier who’d been broken and still struggled to put himself back together again.
A large lump crawled inside Dakota’s throat. Maybe Me did know what it was like to be in love with a best friend. Her parents hadn’t been friends before they’d fallen in love, but weren’t all true loves in some way friends?
Someone who you could share your life with.
“I only want the best for you. For you to let yourself be happy and have what you want. I like Blaze, because you love him, chó con. He makes you happy. I can see it in your eyes.”
Dakota nodded with a sudden understanding of why Me had been pushing her and Blaze together for years. Not because Me adored him, and not because he reminded Me of the great love of her life, Dakota’s father, but because whenever Dakota had been broken over the past ten years, she’d needed Blaze to put her back together again. He made her happy, if only she’d stop chasing her other goals long enough to stop hiding from how she really felt. He was her person.
And right now, he needed her, too.
***
Blaze tore out of Me’s cabin, the taste of chocolate and the floral sweetness of Asian pear still lingering on his tongue. Adrenaline gripped him. His pulse raced. He could feel the vein that ran along the left side of his temple throbbing. It wasn’t always sound that brought it on like they showed in the movies. Sometimes it was smell, feel, a certain tilt to someone’s head, taste. Taste always wrenched him back the fastest, until even his wolf couldn’t discern up from down, left from right, leaving him trapped again. A prisoner in his own fucking psyche.
The bitter cold had seeped into him first. He hadn’t truly known cold until Russia. Cold so freezing that even his wolf shivered with it. Hands, toes, paws. It didn’t matter. They were all fucking freezing along with the layer of ice that would attach itself to tender eyelashes. Eventually it got so cold you went numb, they said. But that was the problem. Blaze had never been good at numb. He’d only ever been able to fake it.
It was spring. Maybe March. He couldn’t remember the goddamn date any more than he could control the memory eating away at his skull. It didn’t matter. In Russia there’s rarely true warmth, only different kinds of cold. This was so cold the wind would take the breath out of a man and the air felt thinner as it drew into your lungs. Snow wasn’t covering every inch of the ground anymore, but you’d better believe you’d freeze to death come nightfall.
The trees of the forest loomed in the distance. He hadn’t shifted in nearly three months. They’d warned him of that since basic, but every time his eyes caught on that tangle of gray and white limbs, inside his wolf would flay him open, fighting, clawing to get out. How did these fuckers live like this?
They’d just come from the warmth of dinner. The food had been better than usual, more robust and filling than the cold borscht they’d been eating every night for the past week. That should have tipped him off. The Volk celebrated food with food. The meal had been unctuous, warm and fatty in a way that was meant to stick to your ribs—a stew with tender bits of meat he’d never tasted before followed by little chocolate candies with jelly made with Russian Krazulya pear inside.
It’d been the first sweet he’d had in a year. The meal had of course been finished with vodka that was so goddamn close to water that the Volk drank it like water. Here, vodka didn’t freeze. Water did. It had to have been not long before nightfall, considering they’d just eaten their last meal of the day, but it was that kind of gray that blocked out the sun enough that he could never tell what time it was. The kind of gray that made every other dull color brighter—the army green of his uniform, the dead yellow grass beneath his feet, the brick of the camp buildings in the background, and the red on his arm with the Volk emblem that looked all too reminiscent of the Soviet band. Every bit of it dead, drab, lifeless. Save for the blood color of that red. He’d sworn to himself only three weeks in that if he ever made it out alive, he’d never resign himself to living each day in these drab, soulless uniforms ever again.
The atmosphere as they padded out of the barracks, conversing in Russian, was lighter somehow, airy. It’d been moments like those when he’d almost convinced himself that the U.S. government had gotten it wrong. They loved to use shifters as their weapons of warfare without ever actually acknowledging their existence.
Maybe the Volk weren’t so different from his pack. Maybe they weren’t bloodthirsty monsters who’d wiped out so many of Russia’s wolf populations that the few small packs that remained would be forced to join them, to become Volk or die. Maybe, maybe it’d been easier to think that, to depart from reality than to admit that he saw parts of himself in those sick fuckers, that he understood some of them, had become their friend. That’d been his assignment: become one of them while feeding information back to the U.S. base in Moscow.
That was when he’d seen them, ten of them, lined up on their knees in a depression in the ground that had probably been the remains of a trench back in World War II. That was all trenches were ever good for—spilling blood.
Time had slowed then. He remembered hearing the sound of Stanislav’s deep voice beside him. The laughter, the clap of the other wolf’s hand on his shoulder. Blaze froze. No, not wolf. They weren’t wolves, not like him. They were Volk, different. Or were they?
Ivov had pulled them up first. The mother of a family of three. The children wriggled and cried beside her. The eldest was only a teen. Ivov didn’t even ask if the she-wolf wanted to join them or die. She was screaming, staring Blaze straight in the eye, begging and pleading for him to do something. But he couldn’t hear her.
All he could hear was the ringing in his own ears. All he could see was the small hand of the little boy beside her, young enough he’d likely never even shifted into his wolf yet. Blaze turned toward Ivov and yelled something in Russian. He couldn’t remember the hell what, but Ivov had only looked up at him at the exact moment Blaze felt several flecks of the she-wolf’s blood spatter onto his face. He wished he didn’t remember what came next. The confused look in Ivov’s eye as he exchanged a concerned glance with Stanislav and asked Blaze in Moscow-accented Russian, “But didn’t you enjoy the stew?”
Blaze had thrown up every night for a week after that. Hadn’t eaten for sixteen days—
A small hand clamped down on his shoulder. Blaze gripped the other hand hard, rounding on Ivov and shoving him back as he reached for his—
Dakota.
A whoosh of breath ripped from his lungs, the release of the memory nearly knocking him sideways. It wasn’t Ivov’s meaty wrist he was death-gripping, it was Dakota. Dakota’s face twisted with pain as he…he…
Instantly, he released her, staring down at his best friend, at the woman he loved, in horror. He was shaking now, from head to toe. “Kotes, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was—”
“Shhh,” she hushed him, pulling him into her arms. “I know. I know.”
He dropped to his knees in the mountain dirt, suddenly feeling too weak to stand as she cradled his head against her shoulder.
“Shhh. Shhh.” Dakota stroked her fingers through the locks of his hair, the sound of her hushing whispers reminding him of California and the sea, of days before he’d been majorly fucked up.
Eventually, Dakota sat on the ground beside him, bringing his head into her lap.
They stayed there like that for a long time, sitting on a cool patch of grass outside Me’s cabin porch. The porch lights went dark eventually, around the time when Me and Dakota’s younger sisters likely climbed into bed for the night.
Blaze stared up at the stars, the vast open sky of the Montana night, feeling the soft, smooth caresses of Dakota’s fingers stroking through his hair.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Dakota finally whispered.
Blaze shook his head. He’d never want to talk about it, even though deep down, he knew he needed to. How did you talk about things you’d lived through that broke you, that even remembering nearly caused you to break all over again?
He didn’t know the answer.
Taking his silence as a response of its own, Dakota nodded, choosing not to push him. She’d always been good at that, being tender with him, understanding even when he didn’t want her to. She saw straight through to the core of him, beyond all the bravado and sarcastic bullshit right into the mess he was underneath.
She was quiet for a long time again until she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
It’d been so long since either of them had spoken, Blaze wasn’t certain he had it in him to respond. Not after he’d nearly…
He closed his eyes, fighting back the torrent of emotion and anger that caught in his throat as if he could swallow it down like it’d never been there. If he had hurt her, he would have never forgiven himself. The tremor in his voice came out gruff and tormented. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Kotes.”
Dakota shook her head. “That’s not true. I’ve been so caught up in this thing between us that I didn’t notice that the past was catching up to you again. I’m your best friend. I should have realized—”
“Don’t,” Blaze warned. “It’s not your job to fix me, Dakota. I’m a grown man. I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can, but…” Dakota cupped his cheek in her hand, forcing him to turn toward her. “You don’t have to. You’d do the same for me. You have before. You’ve dried my tears and scraped me off the floor so many times when I’ve messed up that I—”
He twisted away from her. Placing a hand behind him, he pushed to his feet and brushed off the damp bits of grass that clung to his jeans. “It’s not the same, Kotes.”
“Isn’t it?” She stared up at him, warm brown eyes like carved obsidian in the moonlight. “When you love someone, you’re a team. You pick each other up if one of you falls. No man left behind, remember? You told me that the last time that you—”
Blaze shook his head, massaging the tension in his temples as he held up a hand. “Kotes, please, if you keep talking like that, I might actually start to think that you…”
“Blaze, I—”
“Please, Dakota.” He dropped his hands with a god-awful pained sigh. Christ, he was mess. “You don’t need to explain to me. I know you want to take this slow, one day at a time. I know you’re not ready to talk about whatever this is yet, but…” He pressed his lips together into a thin line. One breath in. One breath out. “Please let me pretend otherwise. Just for one damn night.”
“Okay,” she breathed. She nodded slowly. “Okay.”
Blaze hooked his thumbs on the leather of his belt, staring up at the stars again and mapping out Cassiopeia. From where he stood, the constellations and patterns stretched endlessly, the relative silence surrounding them. He heard the breeze blowing through the trees, the open wind, the summer crickets, the soft pull of Dakota’s breath beside him.
But he was still alone with his demons. He always would be.
“There’s something else I need to apologize for.” Dakota spoke so softly, he almost didn’t hear her.
Blaze glanced toward her. She was only years his junior, but she looked so young there, curled up with her legs to her chest like she’d been the other night in the bottom of her shower—unprotected, vulnerable.
Dakota released a long sigh. “About Brett. I know you have to realize that was when I was writing to you, and I–I don’t know what to say.”
Blaze shook his head. Fuck, he couldn’t do this. Not now. “You don’t need to explain anything to me, Dakota. I was in Russia. We didn’t make any promises.”
“I know we didn’t, but…” Her voice trailed off for a moment as she glanced toward the night sky. “That’s why I’m scared. That relationship, it didn’t mean much to me, but when I realized I was the other woman, that I’d done that to someone else, even someone I didn’t know, it…it shamed me. It made me scared of what kind of damage I could do if I really did care for someone, if I made a mistake. You know how I am when I set my mind on something… Sometimes I get so focused on it that I lose sight of what’s important, and I–I don’t want to hurt you.”
She didn’t want to hurt him? The idea that there was anything she could ever do that would get rid of him or make him not feel absolutely crazy about her didn’t even make sense to him. She was a constant. His North Star. There was no redirection. For him, that was just what love was. He knew this was temporary, that she’d realize he wasn’t enough for her, that she deserved better and she’d move on. But how he felt about her would never change. Of that, he was certain. Blaze let out a short huff as an amused grin tugged at his lips. “Kotes, I’ve already forgiven you for every wrong you could ever do me, past, present, and future.”
The sad smile that crossed her lips then made his chest ache.
Blaze leaned down, extending a hand toward her. “Come on,” he drawled.
“Where are we going?”
“For a run. On the far side of the forest, like we used to.”
They both needed it.
She placed her hand in his, and he helped pull her to her feet.
Dakota smiled up at him. “Do you remember when you were still at Caltech and I came to visit you?”
Blaze grinned, scratching at the shadow on his jaw. “Yeah, I do.”
“And do you remember that night we were out roaming the campus at three o’clock in the morning or some other ridiculous hour and I’d talked you into having too many wine coolers with me?”
Blaze chuckled. “Lord, those things taste like cheap sugary shit.”
Dakota laughed. “I was walking on the edge of the fountain outside the Beckham Institute, and my boot caught on a crack. I fell into the fountain and half pulled you in with me. My dress was soaked.”
Blaze smirked. “Yeah, I remember. You said you looked like a drowned rat instead of a drowned wolf.”
“I did.” She chuckled. “God, my mascara was all over the place, but you were a gentleman even though I’d gotten all your clothes soaked.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m hardly ever a gentleman. I just play one on TV sometimes.”
Dakota laughed.
“What makes you bring it up?”
She bit her lower lip, toying with the soft pink flesh there. “I was just thinking that…when you pulled me out of the water. There was a moment when I caught you looking at my lips, and I remember thinking then I must have had way too much to drink because something about the way you were looking at me made me think you wanted to kiss me, and at the time, I thought that couldn’t have been true, but now, I guess I just wondered…” She gazed up at him. “Did you?”
