Dannika Dark - Seven Years

Not that people gave me shit. I wasn’t a troublemaker and didn’t hang out with the rowdy crowd. Those were Beckett’s friends, and usually I dodged their parties and went out with Naya. Maybe the whole “tough guy” thing was why Beckett was so appealing in the beginning. Then I realized that sometimes being a tough guy simply meant you were a jerk.

He never changed my oil, either.

I had a small panic attack in the bathroom and spent a long time digesting the facts. Nothing would ever bring Wes back and over the years, I’d accepted his death. But now that sorrow was replaced by anger that his life was cut short unnecessarily. Maybe I wasn’t related to my family by blood, but I loved them fiercely. Being a Shifter? A whole other ball of wax. I didn’t even begin to know how to process it.

I found a chicken potpie in the freezer and heated it up. After devouring the entire meal in less than five minutes, I curled up on the sofa with a bag of Doritos and fell asleep watching Die Hard. I’d found the movie stacked in a large box labeled “Reno.”

The bag crinkled and someone jostled me around.

“Stop,” I mumbled.

“Time for bed,” Austin said, and then I was in his arms.

He set me down on top of a comforter and I nuzzled into the pillow, listening to the sound of a window unit circulating air.

The bed moved in the darkness and my eyes popped open. “Austin?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not sleeping with me.”

He threw the comforter from his side over my legs.

“It’s my bed, so I’m pretty sure I am. Plus, it’s the only room in the house with a window unit,” he murmured sleepily. “I run hot.”

Then I heard a zipper and the bed moved some more. I stayed very quiet, because honestly, I had no idea how to react. I felt a connection with him that time never erases with someone you know, like when you hear a song on the radio and all those old feelings of a special time in your life come flooding back.

That was Austin—he was my song.

I still remembered the sleepovers and how I’d pretend to doze off beside him while we watched a movie on the couch. It was strategic, of course, so I could slide against his shoulder. Wes always had to play bad guy and drag me off to bed, but Austin never seemed to mind. I loved those moments, because when he laughed, I could feel it.

Austin released one of those long sighs with a satisfactory moan once he settled beneath the sheets. Then I started wondering things like what kind of underwear he wore, or if he slept Tarzan style.

I immediately threw the blanket over to his side.

His warm laugh filled the chilly room. “I’m not cold, Ladybug.”

“Why do you call me that? You’ve been calling me that name since I can remember.”

He exhaled through his nose as if he were going to tell me something he didn’t want to.

“Your freckles.”

“Oh. Those.”

“Yeah, those.” He was quiet for a minute and then his voice changed up, softened a little, but had an edge like maybe he was embarrassed to talk so intimately with me. “One summer when you were about five, your mom bought you one of those moving sprinklers. You practically lived outside and ended up with a sunburn.”

I smiled. “I don’t remember.”

“That’s when you first got ’em. It was just a little spray across your nose and high on your cheeks. I was being mean when I gave you the name, but then it kind of stuck. Not in a mean way.”

I still had them, but they were small and faded, and invisible whenever I wore makeup.

“You shouldn’t cover them up,” he said, as if he could read my mind. His voice was soft like melted chocolate, and I turned on my right side, giving him my back.

“Why did you kiss me that night?” I finally asked. That question had plagued me for years, ever since the night Wes was killed.

The cover snapped off the bed and Austin rolled over behind me. “I planned on leaving town that night; I was trying to talk Wes into going. Hell, I thought he was going. We had a deal, but Wes wanted to be Breed, wanted immortality so much it blinded him from making the right decision.”

“What decision?”

“He got mixed up with the wrong people, and they asked him to be a hitman. I told him the last thing he ever wanted was to be in debt with one of us. Breed don’t mess around when it comes to paying debts. I guess he didn’t have it in him to do what they wanted, and he paid with his life.”

Tears sprang up and I pressed my face against the pillow. Austin’s hand touched my hip.

“Don’t,” I warned him. He immediately retracted. “Is that all, or are you hiding something else?”

“There’s nothing else.” Then his voice switched over to dark and threatening. “One of these days, I’m going to find out who he was bargaining with, and they’re going to pay with their life.”

“So why did you kiss me?” I asked again.

Austin didn’t answer but rolled over and pounded on his pillow a few times before settling in. I had a feeling I might never know the answer to that question, and maybe there was no answer. Maybe all these years I had built up in my head something that had meant nothing to him.

I sat up, unhooked my bra, and tossed it to the floor.

“Take off your pants,” he said.

God, if those words didn’t heat me up. “I’m fine.”

“Lexi, I can’t see in the dark. Get comfortable,” he insisted, shifting in the other direction. Indifferently.

I mentally sighed and tugged off my jeans, sliding between the crisp sheets. The window unit chilled the air with every passing second.

“Promise to take me home tomorrow?” I asked.

Silence, at first.

“Austin?”

“I promise.”

“Shhh.”

I nuzzled my head against something warm.

“Damn, she’s got a nice ass,” a man’s voice whispered.

“Not really my type, but I’d tap that.”

“What, Jericho has a type now?”

“Tits and tats, that’s where it’s at, Denver,” he said with a chuckle.

“Well, I like a nice ass. And that’s top of the line. Look how it cups just below the panty line.” Then the sound of air hissing through teeth. “Damn.”

“First time you been close to one of those?” Jericho asked with a chuckle.

“Shut it.”

Then I blinked my eyes open and realized what I was nuzzling against that was so warm and solid.

Austin.

He was on his back, arms spread out, and I was covering him like a tablecloth at Thanksgiving. My right leg was hooked around his hip, and my body fit snugly against his right side.

I lifted my head and saw that my red hipsters were a little too close to his black jockeys. Not only that, but we had an audience. Denver and Jericho were standing at the door admiring the view and watching us like a double feature.

“Get out!” I shouted so loud Austin flew up and nearly flung me off the bed. His arm snaked around my waist just in time and pulled me onto his lap.

So there I was, bent over Austin’s legs like a bad girl about to get spanked.

Chuckles from across the room were cut short when Austin spoke. He didn’t yell like I had, but it was contained, controlled, and quiet. “Get the fuck out.”

The door closed.

I scrambled to get away and yanked the comforter over my legs.

Austin got out of bed and slowly hitched up his jeans, yawning hard and ending it with a growl. I could still smell him all over me.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I complained.

He cleared his throat and combed his fingers through his hair a few times. It was messy and nice all at once. I admired the medallion he wore around his neck that dangled when he bent over to pick up his shirt. “Because I was busy sleeping?”

His indifference only made me look desperate, and it felt like we were right back where we started. My old feelings toward him needed to end. I was tired of chasing a shadow of my past. Time had changed both of us, and I didn’t have much of a heart left to give to a man who didn’t want it.

I leapt off the bed and stepped into my jeans, yanking them over my hips angrily. Didn’t even care if he was watching me. I tucked my bra into my back pocket—straps hanging out and all.

Austin circled around the bed and blocked my exit. “Where you going?”

“Home. Remember?”

“Lexi…”

“Don’t do that. You promised you would take me home.”

“Why are you mad?” He still sounded sleepy and the fact he wasn’t wearing a shirt wasn’t helping any. Not when I could see his defined abs, and then one of his pecs twitched.

Damn. It wasn’t fair that after all these years, Austin still looked as hot as he ever did, while I just looked like the same old Lexi. I’d filled out a little more as I used to be a beanpole with long legs in high school, but some men just got better with age.

I pulled on the doorknob. “I’m not mad. I just don’t like being controlled.”

His body language altered and I could almost feel the heat licking off him. “Is that what Beckett did?”

“No, no. You’re taking it all out of context. Don’t go beating up any more of my old boyfriends, okay? You’re not my brother. That’s what Wes should have been doing.”

Oh, God, I was going to cry again. When my bottom lip quivered, I quickly looked away.

Without warning, Austin yanked me into his arms. I fought against him but he held on tight. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save him,” he whispered in a broken voice.

My breath hitched as the apology summoned painful memories of the night they found Wes’s body. Austin was over that night and lost it, slamming his fist into the wall. All I could hear were my mom’s screams as I stood catatonic in the middle of the living room while the trooper delivered the news to my dad. Then Austin had tried to hold me and I broke free and fled.