Page 23 of Dark

I ducked under a tree branch. “Yep.”

“So when I asked if you were with anyone—”

“I’m not. We’re not together.”

She narrowed her eyes. “But you are sleeping with her.”

Shoving up my glasses, I squeezed the bridge of my nose. “Was. Past tense. And it was just hooking up. There was never any relationship. I don’t do the girlfriend thing.”

Hayden slowed, the answer clearly not what she was expecting. “Ever?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I just don’t.”

She said nothing. And as usual, from her, silence was like getting punched in the junk. I shouldn’t have cared. We weren’t together. And I’d never been particularly good at owing people explanations. It had always been easier to keep my distance. No strings attached.

But this was Hayden Crowe, the one girl who’d always gotten under my skin, lodged herself between my ribs with the heat of a café mocha on a cold day. Who on that fateful Halloween night, whispered my name in a way no one, no one, had ever said it, before or since. Who stared down at the daisy latte with tiny points I’d poured to match her cat ears, then sat across from me on a stool, heart pounding so hard my wolf clawed at my ribs as I slowly drew a pen across her skin, not even trying to disguise the fact that she wanted me. And when our lips finally touched, it was like I’d never known the taste of air.

Hayden, whose heart I shattered that night. My girl with her daisies, who I’d destroy if I ever tried to love.

But right now, my priority was protecting her. Even if that pissed her off.

We reached the edge of the property. Trash and empty beer bottles littered the overgrown weeds. Beyond the chain link, barbed-tongue grass and mesquite snarled the live oaks and scrubby Texas cedar. They must have gotten rattlesnakes crawling out of here like crazy every summer.

I squinted out at the trees.

“Look, I told you last night, we all have our own ways of caging our wolves. Brody runs. Cal hunts. West and August box.” Then there were the ways of not dealing with shit, like Dallas and River’s, but I decided we could wade into that cesspool later.

She rolled her eyes. “And you sleep around.”

“You remember how it felt last night? That fear you’re going to lose control when the moon rises, hunt someone, kill them, like it?” I heard her inhale of surprise when I stepped into her space. “I’ve spent the last seventeen years, since the day I came to stay with Ben and Sofia, fighting every day to keep the monster inside me in check. So don’t tell me you want to hurt yourself one day, then turn around the next and look down your nose at me for doing what I have to so no one gets hurt.”

Her gaze stayed steady. Heat flared through our bond. I didn’t back down. It was a dumb, reckless thing. We couldn’t be together. Hell if I didn’t know that. But part of me, that part I never allowed to surface, wanted to pretend just for a little while like maybe we could. That I could have this. Have her.

“Thought you didn’t do real.”

My lip twitched. “Thought you didn’t care.”

I closed the distance between us. Her eyes lifted to mine, glacier-blue irises I’d sketched a thousand times and never managed to get right. And hell, I wanted to kiss her.

Not like last night, a wild clash of lips and tongues, or even the way I’d kissed her the night she turned nineteen, so drunk off the taste of her I would gladly have sacrificed air never to stop, but hot and slow, the sort of kiss she’d immortalize in a song, then blush like mad every time she had to sing it up on stage.

Tipping her chin, I traced the bones of her face. Her breath stuttered. She was so nervous I could feel her shaking. Her gaze dipped to my mouth, just for a fraction of a second, and I knew somewhere, buried deep, part of her still wanted us, too.

“Hays?” I asked, voice husky. Wanting permission. Because we both knew I was the one who turned our first kiss into a scar. If this was going to happen, for real this time, it had to be on her terms.

But like I jinxed it, just as I started leaning in, Hayden stepped away. And damn if it wasn’t like getting knifed in the chest. She crossed her arms, chewing that lip ring that less than a second ago was about to be mine.

“You’ve never known what you wanted, Ethan,” she said at last. “You didn’t on my birthday. Much less last night.”

The hell I didn’t.

Hayden flinched when I gripped the back of her neck. My fingers slipped beneath the collar of her jacket, finding the thin ridge of my claiming mark. Her eyes drifted closed, and I had to grip her hip to keep her from falling.

Thirteen years’ worth of English teachers could have told you I was hopeless with words. Give me a pad of paper and a box of charcoal, canvas and paint, or the freaking dust on the side of my truck, and suddenly it was like trying to hold back the tide with a broom. Sofia once caught me out on the back deck at three in the morning, barefoot and in my pajamas, sketching by the thinnest sliver of moon. I never even heard her come up, didn’t notice her take a seat on the porch swing, didn’t see her pull the quilt up over her lap. Only when the wind stirred through the grass and I finally caught her scent did I look up, guilty. She smiled, came over to kiss the top of my head, and reminded me there was school in a few hours, so I should try to get some sleep.