Howl (Monster Boyfriends #1)

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

JAMIE

I try to focus on work for the rest of the day, but everyone who comes into Double Double wants to know about the “brawl” that happened in front of Bound and Buried. No one seems to know exactly what happened, and I’ve heard everything from Patrick hanging the sheriff upside down by his ankles (I have no idea how that scenario got so mixed up) to Ethan and Aidan getting into a shouting match over Raegan.

I have no intention of setting anyone straight, so I just nod along or shrug and claim I don’t know anything. Because somehow, throughout all the chaos, no one seems to be talking about me. It’s as if the few who had a front row seat mutually decided to redact me from the plot. Or they just forgot I was there.

I really hope it's the latter, because if they think they’re doing me a favor, they’re wrong. Pretending I wasn’t involved suggests I have something to hide, and once people start catching on, they’ll start to ask questions.

I can’t believe I let some pathetic asshole, whose worth amounts to less than the dirt on my shoe, get inside my head. Though I can’t deny the fact I dropped the ball when it comes to overestimating the size of his balls, I didn’t think Patrick would really try anything. I assumed he was all bark and no bite, but apparently I was wrong.

It’s not that Patrick is even an actual threat—I could break him like a twig without blinking—but one look at Raegan and the marks he’d left around her neck, and I was seeing pure red.

I’ve never felt so territorial before. I felt this innate need to protect and piss all over her to mark my property, but that would be totally insane. Probably also illegal? How do you ask for consent to pee on someone? So instead, I opted for killing him. I was very close to doing just that when the mayor casually stepped in. The sheriff is typically clueless when it comes to the true goings on in this town, but Mayor Musthaven is like a hawk. He’s been the mayor of Shadow Hills since its founding, and little happens without his knowledge.

I lost control.

I didn’t think about who was watching or what any of them thought. Their opinions meant nothing, as long as I got my revenge on the prick who hurt my girl.

My girl.

That’s the thing, isn’t it?

She’s not really mine, and I’m starting to lose track of all the reasons why.

Because she doesn’t see you that way, I remind myself. And you’ve never told her you’re a frickin’ werewolf!

As much as I wanted to go straight to Raegan’s side, I had to get out of there. Knowing Patrick’s hands had been on her made the wolf inside me nearly claw its way out from under my skin. Patrick’s fingerprints on her skin were like a taunt begging me to mark her myself. I wanted to kill Patrick and claim her as mine right then and there, in front of the entire town. No one would touch her after that.

I would have if Aidan hadn’t stopped me. I knew I was walking a very thin line with so many eyes watching the scene unfold, but my blood was pumping so loudly in my ears it blocked out all the other voices, except for his. If not for Aidan, I would’ve made a mistake I couldn’t turn back from.

It isn’t just that I’ve hidden the truth from Raegan. All paranormals are supposed to be registered in Shadow Hills, but I never did. My parents reached out to my uncle, the alpha of the Shadow Hills pack, and informed him about my first shift, but that information was never passed on to the mayor—or anyone else for that matter—and I never said anything. I think, at the time, I convinced myself that if the paperwork was never filed, that meant my wolf didn’t exist, and I could keep on ignoring what I am.

Hiding things from Raegan, however, was more of an accident.

The whole situation is kinda ridiculous if you ask me, but the lie has gone on for so long that it would be too disruptive to bring it up now. You know when someone gets your name wrong when you first meet, but you don’t correct them, and then three months later they’re still calling you by the wrong name? It’s almost impossible to correct them after that, because there’s just no good time to bring it up.

That’s what it feels like hiding what I am, only a lot more difficult.

The first time I met Raegan was in the high school courtyard where she would take me on a guided tour of campus. We hit it off pretty well. Our banter felt natural, and she was easy to talk to about nothing and everything at the same time. She mentioned her mother was a witch, and in that moment, I was seconds away from telling her I was a paranormal too. But the conversation got away from me, and the words just never came out.

The memory flashes before me as I pour my hundredth cup of coffee of the day.

“So you’re a—” I start to ask, but she answers my question before I’ve fully asked it.

The girl is not afraid of speaking her mind, and I find I’m appreciating her confidence compared to other girls her age. She’s two grades below me, but I feel as if I share more in common with her than my fellow seniors.

“Oh god no,” she says exasperatedly. “Just your everyday boring human.” She laughs and waves a hand flippantly as if to say ‘Here I am!’ “I prefer it, honestly,” she adds, “The paranormals in my family are way too much drama. It’s nice being normal, don’t you think?”

My words are frozen on my tongue, but my head is nodding anyway. I’ve somehow agreed without realizing and now she thinks I’m human. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being human. I even find myself sharing her opinion of how simple life is without paranormal gifts, because it is. It was.

Before my seventeenth birthday, everything made sense. Now my world has turned upside down, and I’m lying about it in the only place I shouldn't have to.

I come back to reality when I feel the sting of hot liquid spilling over my hand. I yank it back, almost spilling the overfilled cup in the process. “Damn it!”

“You okay?” my barista Casey asks. They’re our newest pack member and part of the privied group who knows the truth about me.

“I’m good.” I shake out my burning hand. The skin is red, so I shove it beneath a stream of cold water in the sink. The pain subsides momentarily, but I’ll have to cover it if I want to keep working, and that’s going to sting. I try to remember if I have anything to treat it with when the door dings and I see Raegan walk up to the counter.

I look up to meet her beautiful, bright blue eyes and see they’re sad.

“What happened?” She steps in front of the line of patrons and leans forward to pull my hand across the counter. As she inspects it, I’m pressed flush against the cash register.

“Raegan, I’m fine. Just a little coffee spillage.”

“Do you have mustard?” she asks.

“Why would I have mustard?”

“For sandwiches.”

“I don’t sell sandwiches.”

“You should.” She huffs and almost shoves my hand back across the counter.

Okay, I’m guessing she’s upset.

“Kiki’s is right across the street.” I’m so lost in our back and forth that I forget what we’re even talking about. “What does mustard have to do with this?” I hold up my stinging left hand.

“The acidity counteracts the burn,” she explains.

“That’s actually a myth,” Casey interjects. “I think it’s bad to do that.”

Raegan and I look at them with mild shock. The fact this kid said more than three words is probably bigger news than what happened with Patrick, but I shake it off quickly.

I motion for Raegan to follow me to the stockroom, leaving Casey alone with a line of nosey patrons, their face mirroring that of an abandoned puppy.

Raegan and I enter my office to the right of the storage area and close the door. It’s a cramped space, no bigger than the size of a walk-in closet, so when we sit down our knees are wedged between one another. I pull a first aid kit from the bottom drawer of my desk and open it. There’s a box of bandaids, an expired tube of ointment, and a roll of gauze with about five inches of material left on the roll. I look at the scant supplies, wondering just how much Raegan is judging me right now. I don’t ever remember using this kit let alone using everything in it. Did I even buy this, or was it here before I bought the shop? How old is that ointment?

“I think mustard is probably safer than this shit,” Raegan grumbles, inspecting the crusted tube and prying the top off. Guess she agrees with me. She curls her lip at the sight of the dark brown and unknown substance in the tube then chucks it in the trash.

“I guess we’re even now.”

Raegan doesn’t say anything as she starts digging in her bag. She pulls out a rather large pouch and unzips it to reveal a treasure trove of emergency supplies. I lean closer and see she’s got a pair of tweezers, a pack of tissues, mints, nausea medicine, a single period pad, a travel-size bottle of lotion and…aloe?

I fall back against my swivel chair and smile. “You seriously carry aloe around everywhere?” I tease, hoping for some sort of response this time.

“It’s for sunburns,” she says, tone clipped. “But it also comes in handy for coffee burns.” Her smirk is cute as hell, but I’d rather be looking at a full smile. Those are as bright as the sun, and I could stare straight into it all day.

She squeezes a dot of the green goop onto my reddened skin and the cooling sensation instantly soothes the burn. “And yes,” she adds, twisting the top back on the bottle. “I guess this makes us even.”

I glance at the little pink line on her left forearm that will probably be a scar. “This wasn’t your fault though,” I tell her, gesturing to the burn she’s now wrapping with the last of the gauze. “I did this to myself.”

Her brow furrows. “It’s not like you did it on purpose. Either time,” she offers. “Besides, now you know you need to restock your first aid kit.”

She takes in the messy shelves and cluttered papers across my desk. I don’t spend much time here, mostly because there’s no vent in this room so it gets too damn hot, but the times I do I just drop whatever I’m working on wherever there’s space.

For a moment, I think I see tears brimming in her eyes, but she quickly blinks and by the time our eyes meet again she’s tucked her lower lip beneath her teeth and changed her expression. “I came to make sure you were okay after what happened, but apparently you’re self-harming.”

I know it’s an attempt at dark humor, but I see the genuine concern lingering in her eyes.

“I’m fine,” I promise, though it’s a big fat lie.

How I feel right now shouldn’t matter. I’m the one who should be checking in on her, but I’m weak.

“You’ve been a bit on edge lately.” She fidgets with her hands, wringing them together like I’ve seen her do a thousand times when something is on her mind. After a quick internet search, I learned it’s a method of self-soothing, something she does when her anxiety is rearing its ugly head. “I know this thing with Patrick has been a lot, and I’m so sorry I’ve dragged you into it—”

“You didn’t drag me into anything.” I place my hand over hers and she stops fidgeting. “None of this is your fault. That guy hid his ugliness so he could reel you in. You couldn’t have known.”

I need her to know there’s no reason for her to carry this burden.

She sighs and tells me what I want to hear. “Yeah I know.” Unfortunately, I don’t think I believe her anymore than she does. “So you’re not mad?”

Her question stuns me. “Why would I be mad?”

She hangs her head. “I know you’re angry because of what Patrick did, but why did you avoid me?”

I inhale sharply and feel my heart plummet to my core. The hurt look on Raegan’s face has me seconds away from spilling my guts right here and now. But what can I do?

I can’t tell her why I really walked away, so I say the closest thing I can to the truth.

I take her cheek in my uninjured hand and use the thumb from my other hand to lightly draw a line along the column of her throat where the red marks are already beginning to darken after only a few hours. The dark red hues look like paint I could wipe away with my fingers, but I can’t.

“Rae, I’m so sorry,” I tell her, jaw tight. I force myself to relax. “You’re right. I was mad. I’ve never been so angry in my life.” I gulp. “When I saw what he did, I felt like I was going to lose control. I wanted to kill him, Raegan. I really did. So I had to walk away. But I never meant to walk away from you.”

Her lips part, and I want so badly to lean in further to meet them with mine. I sense her heart beating faster, and when I trail my hand down her arm, I feel her tremble.

Then her eyebrows lift and she shoots to her feet. “Welp, I guess we cleared that up. You’re good to go.” Her tone has suddenly gone from crestfallen to chipper in a matter of seconds. And the desire I thought I saw has dissipated.

We’re so close her torso is right in line with my face. I want to grab her hips and pull her into my lap. Luckily my brain catches up to my dick and I stand. I know she felt whatever that moment was between us, but right now she’s choosing to ignore it, so I have to respect that.

I lean past her to open the door, and I catch the most glorious scent in the world: coconut shampoo and the underlying sweetness of her natural scent.

I linger and breathe her in for a beat too long, and her voice has to snap me back to reality.

“I remember the first time I opened a door,” she teases.

It’s disorienting, like the banging of symbols right in my ear, but I recover quickly. The door opens out into the hall, and we’re met with the cool circulated air of the AC system.

Before she leaves, I grab her arm and gently trace my thumb against the goosebumps on her skin. “Did you go to the clinic?”

Raegan tilts her head and emphatically answers, “Yeah, of course. I’m fine.”

She leans back a bit, creating more space between us, and suddenly I’m cold, a massive contrast to the heat we just shared in my tiny office.

“Are you sure? Rae, he choked you.”

Her hand reaches for her throat but stops, instead choosing to wave flippantly and brush my comment away. “It’s fine. It wasn’t very long. Aidan got there just in time.” Then her eyes narrow. “Did you tell him about Patrick?”

“No.” I answer truthfully. “He was just in the right place at the right time.”

She nods curtly and turns to go. This time I let her.

Before she reaches the swinging door that leads to the front end of the shop, I ask her one last question. “Are you coming back to my house tonight?”

Raegan shakes her head and answers without turning. “I’m gonna go home. Cleetus will be worried.”