Growling, he pressed his mouth to my pulse point, soft hot lips tasting sensitive flesh, and with a gasp, I came. Dallas threw his head back, teeth gritted.
My wolf arched in my bones, the primal part of me responding to the heat radiating off his skin, the fire raging in his blood as I watched him release. I’d never seen him like this, so close to losing control, his wolf barely caged. And I wanted him just like this. Raw. Hard. Unleashed.
“What are we doing?” he whispered against my throat.
Instantly my stomach shriveled, that morning from almost two months ago when I’d confronted Ethan rushing back.
Look, we said up front this was just casual—
—and then the way he and Hayden had both stared. Like they couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or pity me for being that pathetic. For all the good intentions people had at the start of something new, feelings faded. Those blissful I-can’t-wait-to-see-you texts stopped. You started fighting more than making out. Nothing in life was permanent. It was easier to understand that going in. And even worse than the idea of ever letting someone make me feel that pathetic again was the idea that I might inadvertently hurt someone else in exactly the same way. Worst of all, Dallas, my best friend and maybe the only man I’d ever truly allowed myself to love. Because much as I wanted this, wanted him, it couldn’t happen, and we both knew why.
I grabbed for my shirt. “We should get dressed.”
Dallas lifted his head, eyes a dark inferno. After a beat, his gaze slid away.
“Yeah. Sure.”
We fumbled for clothes. The silence stretched until I thought my chest would explode. God, could the sound of two people breathing be any louder?
Kill me now. I was so going to regret this.
“You’re my best friend. But we both know you and I can never be endgame.”
Back to me, Dallas stilled. “This about your mom?”
“She has no idea we’re still in contact. If we were to start seeing each other—” I bit my lip. “We could still hook up. This doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Wow. Okay.”
“You think I came here looking for a random hookup, sweetheart?”
For one hopeful, breathless moment, my heart fluttered in my chest, that indescribable, incandescent feeling of being seventeen and in love, of having a boy who looked at you like you were the only person in the world, and nothing could ever go wrong as long as your hand was clasped in his warming me from my fingertips to my toes. And then reality came rushing back like a knife to the chest.
“I can’t.”
Striding over to the window, Dallas raked a hand through his mop of dirty blond hair. I stared at the rigid muscles of his back, trying to ignore the way my heart was pounding so hard it was starting to hurt.
“You never want to talk about those four years I was gone.”
I closed my eyes, the kitchen suddenly so quiet I could hear the heat radiating off the ovens, the buzz from the fluorescent lights overhead causing my pulse to spike. I was suffocating, sure every terrible, shameful secret I’d ever buried beneath a pillow, scratched from a page, and sworn never to think of again was written across my face.
“I know you say you’re past it, but I would understand if there was a part of you buried deep that still hates me for what I did to you that night. And for me being so closed off when I first came back. But you’re beautiful, funny, and you bake the best damn cupcakes in Texas. Any man would be lucky to have you. It’s killed me watching you date loser after loser when you deserve someone who will trip and fall on his ass running up the steps to kiss you when he gets home every day.”
“Ugh, can we not do this?” I blinked at the sudden stinging in my eyes, begging, pleading with him not to come any closer, unsure what I would do if he did. “And for the thousandth time, I don’t blame you.”
“You should. Everything that happened that night was my fault.”
“Don’t,” I pleaded.
“You think I don’t beat myself up every day for accidentally infecting you? For everything that happened to you after, to your mom? You think I wouldn’t give anything to go back in time and make a different decision? If I’d thought, for even one second—”
“I forgave you a long time ago. It wasn’t… it was a freak accident.”
I bit back a curse. This was why we didn’t do this, why despite the fact that Dallas texted me at 2 a.m. just to have someone to yell at when the Cowboys lost, had his produce guy put me on speed dial, and texted me so many times when he was cooking I’d had to upgrade to a higher data plan just for the twenty variations of pineapple salsa he’d sent me in the past week alone, I’d never wanted to talk about the four years he was away. He’d already been hurt enough. I swiped at my eyes, but not fast enough. Dallas drew a raw breath.
“Just—” He clawed a hand through his hair. “Will you answer me one thing? I have to know—”
I gripped the edge of the counter, gutted by the rasp in his voice and wishing more than anything that we could have gone back to the easy snark and banter that had gotten us through every day for the past five years.
But this was Dallas, the person I went to when my mom’s panic attacks kept me up all night and there was literally no one else in the world who understood that in the morning I just needed a chest to cry on, arms to hold me, and zero questions asked. Dallas, who sent an extra-large platter of beef ribs, coleslaw and crispy French fries across the street once a month like clockwork when he knew I was starting my period. Dallas, who once drove three hours with me on Black Friday just to go to my favorite baking supply store down in Austin that sold these completely adorable silicone whisks in crazy whimsical shapes that I hoarded the way cute baby dragons did chocolate gold foil-wrapped coins. And didn’t even make fun of me for being a total girl.
Okay, much.
And as I watched his face twist as though he were being stabbed, it felt like that knife was passing through me, too.
“Did you love my brother?”
I took in the sharp, too-beautiful downward turn of his mouth, the hard resignation in his eyes, and knew whatever answer I gave, it wasn’t going to matter. Some wounds you could scar over, but never truly heal.
“You should go,” I said quietly, digging my teeth into my lip before I could say the rest. That we had nearly destroyed each other once before. And I wasn’t sure I could survive pain like that again.
He cursed under his breath, but a second later, the bell over the door jingled, a rush of icy November air swirling through the room as I began to silently cry.
3
Dallas
THE SUNDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING dawned with a winter storm warning in effect for the Texas Hill Country, and skies that were the stormy gray of eyes I was doing my damnedest not to think about. After sending half a dozen apology texts to Lacey—that she ignored—I turned off my phone just to keep myself from smashing it. We hadn’t talked in two days, which was forty-six hours and twelve minutes longer than our longest fight on record since I came back from Calgary (my chicken was not dry and she was a total shit stirrer.)
Not that I was counting.