Page 11 of Tracking Wolfe

Derek

He’s heading down to Majestic in the morning for a meeting.

I pressed my lips together until they hurt. It was for the best. I’d spent six years trying to avoid Wolfe Marian. This was fate telling me to keep at it.

My brain helpfully supplied images of all the times I’d failed and seen him anyway. Of how fucking beautiful he was, all dark hair and full lips. Of his moss-green eyes and now a crinkle over the bridge of his nose.

His great-aunt Tilly had always called him an “old soul,” and she was right. Wolfe had been serious even as a child. Despite being well-loved and doted on, given every privilege, he carried an internal… something… that showed clearly in his eyes. Something that said he understood the world’s pain more acutely than other people.

I gritted my teeth against the sweet memories of Wolfe’s childhood that tried to crowd my mind.

My own shameful desires had ruined them. How could I have such soft, fond memories of a little kid… and also want to shove the gorgeous man that kid had become into the nearest wall and do filthy things to him?

I couldn’t. I shouldn’t.

I moved into the kitchen and threw both mugs into the sink with a terrible clank before moving to the freezer and pulling out the vodka.

Getting drunk wasn’t something I did often, but on bad nights when my brain insisted on remembering him as a child and also wanting him as a man, I became desperate for a need to escape thought completely.

Sometimes that was finding someone to fuck or trying to actually meet a nice man to date. Sometimes it was trekking miles through the snowy Montana winter.

And sometimes it was getting drunk while listening to music that made me cry like a baby.

I cued up my self-destructive playlist.

And took the first swallow of vodka as Lyra Vale began to sing about a man who would never be mine.

3

WOLFE

I’d never been a lover of exercising, but my dad was right. Sometimes the best way to empty your head of all thoughts was to sweat them out.

The sound of the treadmill in the lodge gym was drowned out by the blaring music in my headphones. “IDGAF” by Dua Lipa wasn’t fast enough, but the words were too good to skip to the next song.

I wanted to scrape out my memories with a fucking melon spoon. Find the little part of my brain that held the image of the way that big man had held Trace’s face like he was precious, the way he’d put his mouth on Trace’s lips and kissed him like he had the right to, and cut that entire section right out.

My jaw ached from clenching my teeth.

This is a good thing.

As many times as I tried to tell myself it was for the best, I still felt like I had a jagged pile of bricks in my gut. How could something good feel this horrifically bad?

Trace was never meant for you.

Of course he wasn’t. He simply wasn’t.

It didn’t matter that we’d spent a million hours together over the years, and every single minute had written Trace Bishop into my heart. Didn’t matter that he’d taught me to trust my instincts or that I’d never felt more safe and valued and myself than I did when we were together. Didn’t even matter that the happiest memories in my very easy life were of him.

He was born too soon. Or I was born too late. Or both.

Trace had made that clear.

But though the man who’d kissed Trace on the porch had been hard to see in the shadows, he’d seemed younger. My age.

Trace turned forty-seven later this year. While he definitely didn’t look it—with his lean muscles and sun-honeyed skin—he was technically old enough to be my father.

And even if I hadn’t known that my entire fucking life, I would have learned it that night over six years ago when I’d finally gotten up the nerve to ask him if he’d ever date someone much younger than he was.