Page 61 of Broken

She shook her head. “This is way more fun.”

“Have it your way,” he said. “I’m grabbing a cart before you disappear under a pile of other people’s clothes.”

She piled her things into the cart and they found the fitting room, which was basically a corner with a curtain across it. He watched it move and bulge as she pulled off her sweats and tried on the other stuff, trying to keep his mind off thinking about her naked. Fail.

She showed him everything and asked him to help her decide, which was also a fail because he told her to get everything. It all looked adorable on her. She put it all in the cart again, except for one of the shirts.

“What’s wrong with this one?” he asked her. “It’s a great color on you.”

She gave a little shiver. “Bad juju,” she said. “The person who used to own that had some seriously bad energy.”

He couldn’t resist giving her a hard time. “Worse than shifters, even?”

“Stop it.”

She gave him a half-smile, but she still looked troubled. Without thinking, he reached out and smoothed the scrunch mark between her eyebrows. “Can you really feel the energy in the clothes?”

She nodded. “They touch people’s skin, day after day,” she explained. “Their energy kind of… soaks in. Same for things like a watch or a ring people wear all the time.”

“And you can tell what they’re like from that?”

“Sure. There’s humans that can do it too, but it’s easier for Fae. Sometimes I don’t want to know, though.”

“Yeah.” He wondered what she’d feel if she wore any of his clothes. Maybe he didn’t want to find out. They meandered towards the checkout, but then Ireland got distracted by the stuffed toys. She picked one off the pile. “Aww. Look at this one. Can I have him?”

It was a wolf—similar colors to his own wolf, in fact. Part of its fur was rubbed off, one ear was ripped, and there were holes in some of the seams where stuffing was coming out.

Cole looked him over dubiously. “He’s in pretty bad shape.”

“I don’t care. I like him. Someone loved him a lot once. I could fix him up.” She turned him in her hands, poking the stuffing back inside. She deliberately wasn’t looking at Cole.

Shit. “You can’t fix me,” he said quietly.

She smoothed the wolf’s fur. “Who said I was trying?”

He took the wolf from her. “You think if you get me to talk about the things inside me, it will fix everything. It won’t.”

She looked up at him then. “How do you know this is you?” she said. “I’m a broken wolf too.”

That right there broke his heart. He’d never meant her to feel like she wasn’t good enough.

He put his hand under her chin. “You’re not broken. You’re perfect.” He leaned down and kissed her, and then took the wolf from her and put him in the cart. “Maybe you can fix him up,” he said. “Can’t hurt to try.”

She took some time picking out a ridiculous board game to make everyone play the next time they came over, while Cole surreptitiously looked through the rest of the toys. He found a khaki doll’s jacket that looked like it would fit her wolf, and tucked it into the cart before Ireland saw.

They moved on to the books. She started picking out cozy mysteries and beachy romances, and Cole found a cookbook that looked decent. Boomer had learned to cook from recipes; he didn’t see why he couldn’t do the same. Then he started hunting for something to read.

He found a cart of different books all mixed in together—old and recent, kids’, adults’, paperback and hardcover. He was going through a pile of thrillers when he came on a battered old children’s book. The Velveteen Rabbit.

He almost put it down again. It had been one of his mom’s favorites—she’d read it to him and Boomer countless times, even though Boomer kept saying they should eat the rabbit.

He was just about to put it down and bury it under the other books when Ireland came up behind him. “What’s that?”

“Something my mom used to read to my brother.”

“Not you?”

He shook his head, even though that was a lie. “I was too old.”

She reached out and touched the cover, as if she could read the energy that was soaked into the book from the old owners. “What’s it about?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Some shit about a stuffed animal becoming real.”

She took the book from him and put it in the pile with her own. “What’s that for?” he said. “Your wolf isn’t going to become real.”

“I want to read the book,” she said. “And the wolf is going to be my friend. I’m naming him Wilbur, and he’s going to sit on my bed. Sleep with me at night. Tell me his secrets.”

“What if some secrets are better left buried?”

She gazed at him for a long moment. Then she said, “He can be my friend anyway. I’ll still love him.” And she headed for the checkout, leaving him standing there with his heart feeling like a little piece of it had already been sewn back together.

After the thrift store, they went down to the boutique, where Cole and the girls between them persuaded Ireland to get more clothes. And underwear. And socks, and pajamas.

He just kept watching her face, the way it lit up when she found out she could have nice things. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had so much fun.