Lib Novel Page 39
“Damn,” Olivia says, when I’m finished. “Maybe I should have been staying here a long time ago.”
I stare at her, and she shakes her head, putting a hand to her forehead.
“That is not what I meant,” she laughs, “I think I’m just ready to get some sleep.”
“Right,” I say, nodding, “I think—I think you still have a pair of shorts here, if you want them.”
I don’t think, I know. Because they’re tucked into the bottom drawer of my dresser, and I pretend not to notice them each time I put my clothes away.
“Yeah,” she says, “that would be great. Could I get a shirt as well?”
My throat feels swollen, stuck, so thick I can’t swallow, but I nod, turning and grabbing the shorts for her and one of my old t-shirts from the drawer.
“Classy,” she says, holding the shirt up. It’s from Comic-Con back when I was a teenager. It’s one of my favorites, and, when she comes back out a moment later, wearing it, it’s like I can’t breathe.
Why am I holding myself back from her, again?
Family, my brain says. She wants kids.
I clear my throat and gesture for her to take the bedroom, then turn and march myself to the couch. I stare down at it, wondering if it would be dramatic to ask her to duct-tape me down. Then, I hear the click of the lock on the bedroom door and nod before dropping down onto the couch heavily.
For some reason, I have a terrible feeling that things are just going to keep getting worse before they ever get better.
***
I wake up to the sound of someone in the kitchen, and my entire body freezes. As slowly as I can, I reach down, trying to find my knives, cursing under my breath when I realize they’re in the bedroom with Olivia.
How the fuck did a vamp get past my systems?
As carefully as possible, not stepping on any creaky parts of the floor, I get to my feet, creeping into the kitchen. Is the vamp…looking in my refrigerator?
His front is facing the light, illuminated, and his back is just a silhouette. Grabbing a knife from the counter, I launch myself at him. He rears back instantly, pushing me back so I hit against the pantry hard.
It knocks the air out of me, and I gasp, reaching for the knife where I dropped it. It doesn’t smell like a vamp—he smells like a shifter—like—
“Don’t fucking move!” someone yells, and I turn to see Olivia standing in the entrance to the kitchen, a shotgun pointed at the man standing in front of me.
“Don’t shoot!” I say, at the same time, he says, “Well, hello, cutie. Where the hell did you come from?
“What?” Olivia says, blinking, when he turns around, offering me a hand up. I take it, scowling at him and thinking about how I’ve calibrated my systems to ignore my DNA and Olivia’s DNA so I wouldn’t have to disable it each time I came home.
“Zane,” I say, setting the knife on the counter so it clatters. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Byron, who is this?” Olivia asks, still holding the gun like she might still need to pull the trigger. I grab the barrel, pointing it to the ground and sighing.
“He’s—”
“What?” Zane says, giving Olivia a dazzling smile and picking the knife up from the counter, spinning it on the point of the blade. “Byron never told you about his big brother?”
Chapter 16 – Olivia
The man standing in front of me is handsome.
Like, drop-dead gorgeous handsome. Every bit of his skin that I can see is covered in elaborate, swirling tattoos, and his roguish smile makes his teeth glint in the moonlight. He has dimples. If I wasn’t so tangled up in Byron, it might actually pull me in.
His scent is confusing to me—almost all him, and nothing of his pack. I keep taking deep breaths, trying to place him, but I can’t. He’s definitely not from Rosecreek—is he from a nearby pack I haven’t heard of?
“Brother?” I ask, dumbly, finally loosening my hold on the gun. My gaze swings to Byron, who’s rubbing his hand over the back of his neck. “You have a brother?”