Page 53 of Full Moon Frenzy

“It wasn’t about the score, Adi!” He whirled to face her again, radiating fury. The pitch-black scent of his wolf was so close to the surface now, a building growl that vibrated against her. “It was never about the score! I couldn’t trust you, Adriana. And I liked you. I thought we had something real together. And you showed me how wrong I was.”

She was shaking in fury. And remorse? She wasn’t sure, but she sure as fuck wasn’t going to soften enough to contemplate it with him. She’d choke before she apologized for staying one step ahead. “You went out of your way to poison people against me! All you had to do was crack a joke, and you had the attendings eating out of your hand. And you made sure they all hated me.”

“Guess what, Adi. You’re not all that likable. It didn’t take much.”

He was already through the front door, jogging down her front steps. She hated herself for the furious tears that burned their way into existence. Avrille was outside across the street, talking to her neighbor, a smartly dressed satyr, their mouths open as they watched perfect Trapp Hemming storm out of her house.

“You are a horrible person, Trapp.”

“I guess that’s another thing we have in common, then,” he spat back at her, just before she slammed the door, shutting him out, sinking to the floor as the sobs overtook her.

Trapp

The smell of the Black Sheep Beanery was familiar, one he could pick out with his eyes closed, regardless of the situation.

He’d not been back to the coffee shop since that disastrous morning when the first crack in his smiling, outward mask appeared. Grayson’s house had been a refuge, a good place to hide and lick his wounds, and he had given the expensive coffee machine on his brother’s pristine countertops a workout over the course of his stay.

He didn’t especially want to be back at the Beanery now, but when he’d stormed out of Adriana’s townhouse, Trapp hadn’t remembered until the door slammed behind him that he would be navigating the world on foot, unless he wanted to stand at the corner of her street, a spectacle fifty yards from her front door, and wait for the trolley like the pathetic loser he was.

Instead, he’d let his adrenaline carry him, practically stomping his way up the steep hill, remembering too late that Owen lived in the same development and had likely not yet left for work. By the time he’d reached the center of town, the throbbing behind his eye had become a liability and was only going to get worse the longer he went out without caffeine to soothe it.

He was a fucking fool for thinking anything with her would be different this time around. He was every bit as idiotic as Grayson often claimed for wanting it to be different. This is what you get for being so gullible. Fool you once, shame on her. Fool you twice, almost twenty years later, shame on her again for being the same back-stabbing bitch, but double shame on you for still being hot for it. Shame on you, shame on your wolf. A whimpering whine came from within. Yeah, you. Fucking idiot.

Trapp braced himself for the hard looks and tight eyes that would greet him in a place where he’d once received nothing but warmth and smiles; for heavy, awkward silence and the cautious, tiptoeing whispers of a town that loved nothing more than gossiping about the Hemming family. He didn’t bother softening his expression, knowing his scowl was the polar opposite of what was expected from him, that he was completely off-script now, but with the way he felt, he didn’t really care.

“Trapp, oh my stars! I was so worried about you! We haven’t seen you in so long, and then I heard all about that terrible accident! The helicopters went right over our house! And in that weather?!”

He blinked. Xenna was off and running, exclaiming to the goblin on the line beside her to get him a hot coffee, regardless of the orders stacked up in front of them. Her smile was warm, her eyes full of affection, as if he’d stepped into a rerun, an episode of the Trapp Show from the previous month. He might have been a gullible simp, but not that gullible.

Trapp did not approach the counter as he might have once, remaining in line, silent. He didn’t need anyone’s special treatment, holding out the cup of house roast the goblin had scurried around the corner to deliver as though it might bite him.

“Plus, you know.” Xenna rolled her eyes, shaking her head, continuing the conversation over the heads of the troll and minotaur ahead of him. “Everything going on with this doctor at the clinic. I feel horrible that you’ve gotten mixed up in her whole mess.”

Trapp froze at the mention of her, his heart thumping. His jaw clenched, his shoulders going rigid, a cold prickle flaring across the back of his neck.

“What are you talking about?”

The sheepwoman’s smile faltered at his flat tone, a missed line, their scripted universe tipping for the space of a second, recovering a moment later.

“Well. Apparently she did a lot of dishing over drinks with Muffy, and you know Muffy can’t keep a secret to save her life. Whatever happened between the two of you is beside the point; I just think it’s classless to kiss and tell that way. And then Nif was chatting with one of the moms from the playgroup who said she has a terrible bedside manner. It’s just a lot of stories with a common denominator; that’s all I’m saying. I just hope your chief sees through it as the work of a troublemaker. I can’t believe she’d try to audit you, as if you’re not doing things completely by the book!”

His eye twitched. Xenna had turned her attention to the minotaur by then, giving Trapp a chance to absorb her rapid-fire disclosures.

“Rourke, what are you bringing to the firefly picnic? Don’t think you can get out of it.”

“Oh, you’re going to acknowledge my presence now? Sexy fireman time is over?”

Trapp couldn’t hear them. There was a rushing in his ears, his wolf whining, whimpering, curling low. He had won. It was a total, unmitigated victory. Adriana had made the rookie mistake of trusting the residents of Cambric Creek, like a fool. Her neighbors, her co-workers — she had trusted them to simply let her exist without dissection. She had told a story to the wrong person, and had evidently had several stories told about her in return.

Stories were engines; they breathed with life of their own. People repeated stories because they enjoyed inhabiting them, and with each retelling, the story changed shape, grew uglier, turning a good doctor just trying to do her job and fit into her new town into a pariah, simply because one of the crybaby mothers at the community center play group didn’t like seeing little Gillie-Beth crying from a shot. The gossip engine that fueled Cambric Creek had completed an Uno reverse on Adi with the exact same savage, unthinking speed it had used on him.

He could slip back into his role with ease, Trapp realized.

All he had to do was deliver the right line, the right smile, always landing his mark, slide right back into that rerun and let the past month slide off his back, revise itself, the same way he’d done to his break-up.

Instead, a white-hot rage shivered up his spine, a red mist spotting before his eyes.

They didn’t know her. They didn’t know the odds she’d overcome, putting that two-room trailer she’d so furiously recounted behind her. They didn’t know the lion’s den she had entered at Mercycrest, surrounded by vicious wolves like him, who hadn’t hesitated to use the power of his name and his easy charm as weapons against her.