Shadows of the Ancients (18 page)

“Uh oh,” I heard Ashley say from her spot on the front stoop of her apartment, where she parked her ass and refused to leave.

“I’m that girl. I’m the one who takes everything wrong. I’m the one who shouldn’t have expected a call to begin with. The girl who should have known better to begin with, but since I didn’t, it’s my job to swallow it all down and play nice in the end.” My eyes were angry slants with flashes of green by the time I looked at Evan. “I’m the girl who just told you to get the fuck out of her car, because she doesn’t want this kind of wishy-washy drama. I thought you were different. I thought you were genuine and real, but I was wrong. I am not going to sit here and have you try to tell me I’m taking things out of context, when I know exactly what’s up. You left last night, without even saying good bye, because my dad told you too. My dad, who is a lesser wolf to you. You could have told him you were going to say goodbye first. Actually, knowing my dad, he would have respected that more. You didn’t though, you just hauled ass and ran. This morning, not a single fucking word either. I had to overhear a conversation to know that you had issues with your brother, and your family, and words with my dad today. All of which apparently made you too cowardly to even call me and tell me you didn’t want to see me again. Then you follow me here, get in my Jeep, and insult my intelligence. BUT I’m THAT girl. The one who’s misconstruing things?” I did not drop my eyes from his the whole time I was ranting. “No, sir, I don’t think I took anything the wrong way. I think your actions speak pretty clearly, and I was just some fucking joke to you. You marked me and sent me home not even knowing your name. You stood up there in front of my pack, and told them you were my intended. You told my parents that you wanted to be bound. And it was all a joke at my expense.” My words were starting to get choked up on my emotion, as I inwardly chastised my tears for trying to fall. “The worst thing is I don’t care if any of them believed you. I don’t care what they’ll all think of me now. I’m angry because I was stupid enough to believe it.”

“No, they need to work this out for themselves, Ash.” I looked over to see Asi holding Ashley back from coming to me.

“Jess?” She was asking permission to come comfort me, but I didn’t want anyone’s comfort. I just wanted to go home, become one with my wolf, and run this all away. I shook my head no again, so she wouldn’t keep trying to come to me.

“What can I say to make this better?” Evan asked me.

“Not a damn thing. You can get out though, instead of continuing to embarrass me in front of my friend.”

“Jess, I’m not…”

“Seriously, just get out.”

This time, he actually listened and got out of my Jeep. I didn’t hesitate, as soon as he shut the door I took off, and headed home. I had about thirty minutes worth of driving to get my shit together before I got home and had to face my parents, and tell them that I no longer had a mate.

The ride home didn’t help. I was just as keyed up when I pulled into the drive as I had been in front of Ashley’s apartment. My hands were shaking, and tears were continuing to spill down my face. The ache in my chest burned, and at the same time it felt like there wasn’t enough room to hold all the pieces of my shattering heart. Everything felt tight inside me, and all I wanted to do was collapse in my bed, and cry until the pressure released, because it had to release at some point. I couldn’t even imagine the heartache a wolf must go through when their long time mate died. I understood now, to an extent, why many of them didn’t survive their mate’s passing. It hurt too much. I hadn’t even known Evan long, and it hurt already. My wolf was wounded inside. She already knew he was what she wanted, and she sat still deep inside me, wounded by the rejection as I climbed the stairs in my house, headed for my room.

“Jess?” My mom called out from the kitchen. I ignored her, and was already half way up the stairs when she finally caught up with me. She had been calling me the whole time, not just once. “Jessica Marie, what is the matter with you?”

“Mom…” My resolve broke, the pieces I was trying really hard to keep together, shattered. “I don’t understand.” The tears fell, and big ugly sobs pulled me down until I collapsed on the stair I had been standing on.

“Oh, Jess, what happened? Is it Ashley? Is she alright?” By now, my dad was coming up the steps to meet us too, and I was in my mother’s arms like I had been so many times as a child when I was hurt. She cradled me to her chest, rocking back and forth, hand gently running over the top of my head, in a soothing motion.

“Jess, what’s the matter?” My dad asked.

“What did you say?” I kept repeating it to him for a minute as my face contorted in anger and hurt. “What did you say to him, that he doesn’t even want me anymore?” My dad reached out to touch my shoulder. “Don’t touch me!” I yelled at him. “You did this! You sent him away, and then you made sure he stayed away! How could you? I was happy, for once. You’re never happy for me though. You tried to force the wrong person on me for so long, and when the right one comes along, you did… what? I don’t even know. You drove him away.” I was yelling, taking it all out on my dad, because he was an easy target. It was easier to believe he had caused Evan’s change of heart, rather than to believe Evan played me for a fool.

“What did you say to him, Jameson?” There was an edge of anger in my mother’s voice as she questioned him. My dad’s eyes were too large for his face, which told me he was at least partly to blame for this mess. He hadn’t gone easy on Evan. It was no excuse for him to just walk away from me, but it was apparently one of the things that made it easy for him to do so.

I kept flashing back to the look on his face when I was yelling at him in the Jeep. He never flinched, never showed any outward emotion, other than annoyance. “Please, just leave me alone for a while.” I whispered, and I was on my feet, unsteadily making my way to my room. I shut and locked the door, and fell face first into my bed. The phone in my pocket was vibrating, repeatedly, but I ignored it. Actually, I took it out of my pocket, and threw it across the room. I’d pull myself together and take this all in stride tomorrow, but for now, I just wanted a moment to wallow in my fucked up life, without interruptions.

I couldn’t get beyond the fact that I thought last night was so magical, and yet it apparently meant nothing at all. Evan acted as if nothing ever happened by morning. I lie there, on my bed, face down in my pillow, crying my eyes out over the loss of something I never really had to begin with. It didn’t matter how stupid a part of me felt I was being. I needed the release, and when I was spent, I slept.

I woke up sometime later to dark skies, and rain beating down on my window. There were voices raising downstairs, and for once I didn’t care what was going on. I tuned them out, threw a pillow over my head, and tried to go back to sleep. It didn’t work out that way when Ashley burst through my bedroom door, “Jessica? Are you okay in here?”

“So much for that lock I used to have on my door.” I grumped from under the pillow.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” She said, and she meant it. “I’m a strong bitch now!” That was Ashley, taking a moment to marvel in her own awesomeness. “Jess,” she shut the door behind her. “No wonder you didn’t answer your phone.” She walked across the room and picked it up off the floor where I had thrown it. “What the hell did your phone do to you?”

“It kept buzzing when I was trying to feel sorry for myself.” I said with absolutely no enthusiasm whatsoever.

“You’re funny, even when you’re not trying to be, you know!”

“No offense Ash, but can we get this over with. I’m tired, and I just want to go back to bed so I can wake up tomorrow, and go back to being the Jess that doesn’t care about this kind of stuff.”

“Jessie,” she sat down beside me and put my phone on the bedside table. “My heart broke for you earlier. Do you really think that all of this was a joke to Evan?”

Oh boy, just those few words tightened my chest again, and suddenly there was no room for my heart to beat in there anymore. “Ash, I don’t really want to talk about it now. I’m done, with all of it. I just want to finish school, and not have to worry about anything else okay? Can I do that? Can I just sleep it off, cry it out, and forget?”

“I don’t know, can you?” Ashley pushed me so that I slid over on the bed to make room for her to lie down next to me. “Jess, how did we go from the talk we were having this morning to this in a day?”

“I wish I knew. I was kind of left out of the equation today, Ash. What am I supposed to say? While you were busy with your happy morning after conversations I had a stranger ask me if I was okay. No one else, just a stranger. I didn’t even know there was anything wrong, or to be worried about.” I hadn’t even realized the tears started flowing again until I went to adjust the pillow beneath my head, and realized it was wet. “Do you remember two weeks ago, when I didn’t give two shits about dating?”

“I remember two weeks ago when you were promised to Douchebag Zach!”

“Yeah, well, somehow that almost seems better in hindsight. He might have been a douche, but at least he actually wanted me.”

“Jess, seriously, do you really think Evan didn’t, doesn’t want you?”

“Of course I think that. Why wouldn’t I?”

“He came to talk to you today, but you yelled at him and sent him on his way, Jess.”

“Seriously? He blamed me for misunderstanding things. He only texted because you told him to, and I overheard you and Asi talking before I got up and left to go get my Jeep. He wasn’t planning on sticking around. So, what good would talking to me about it do?” I punched my pillow, as I sat up. “You know me. I’ve never been one of those girls who goes out and falls in love with every guy who pays her a compliment. I’m the opposite of them. I had a guy hitting on me today, granted he was human, but he was at least nice to me. I wasn’t interested in the least. I don’t know what it was about Evan, but I really liked him. Call it chemistry, or fate, or wolf magic, I don’t know. But there was something there – for me anyway.”

“Maybe there is for him too, and he’s just trying to protect you from the mess his family is going to cause?”

“Really, because that’s a cowardly move.”

“What? How so?” Ashley actually sounded angry now, which just fueled my anger in turn.

“He marked me out of the blue, and I had to come home and face my family, my pack master, and my intended bond mate with his scent all over me. I had to do that alone, until he showed up. I stuck by it though. I stood with him in front of my pack, and allowed his claim on me to stand. I didn’t know how my father challenging Marcus was going to play out. Honestly, Marcus could have won, and I could have lost my father, and been punished, and shunned from the pack.” I had to tone down my voice, because I was getting a bit shrill and loud. “I did all those things, despite not knowing him that long, and then I stuck it out, and made sure we were taking the time to get to know one another and make sure it was going to work out. Hell, I was so caught up last night, I would have…” I sighed. “I guess that would have been one way to find out the feeling wasn’t really mutual, when the bond didn’t take. Maybe he saved me from that hurt by doing it this way.” I moved over further, toward the wall, and curled back up, lying face down on my stomach, with my face turned away from Ashley now.

“Jess, maybe you should try talking to him. I saw you two together. I don’t know what all happened today, but it has to be fixable.”

“Ash, I appreciate you coming all the way out here, but I’m tired. And I don’t want to think about it anymore.” I heard the front door open, and wondered who could be leaving this late at night.

“Just answer me one thing.”

“What?”

“If today hadn’t happened the way it did… if you had woken up next to Evan, or he had called you after he left, would you be ready to give up?”

“That’s just it, Ash, I didn’t have a chance to give anything up. It was decided for me. I wanted him.” I all but whispered the last four words. “He didn’t want me.”

Ashley rubbed her hand over my back a few times while she said, “I’m sorry, Jess.” She got up and left the room. I heard her walk down the stairs, speak quietly to someone, and then leave the house. I fell asleep again shortly after that.

Later that night, I felt the edge of my bed depress as someone sat down on it. I didn’t bother moving, or looking. I figured it was my mom or Ashley, and if I pretended to still be asleep, I might get away with not having to talk or cry anymore. So, I stayed still, and kept my breathing even. Before long whoever it was simply laid down beside me, and didn’t move much either. I started to drift off to sleep again until I felt an arm circle around my waist, and that was definitely not Ashley or my mother. It was a masculine arm, and I had a moment of panic flair up inside me, before I allowed my wolf to taste his power and tell me who it was.

“Evan?” I whispered as my wolf pushed closer to the surface.

“Shhh, it’s me. Don’t freak out.” Evan said hastily.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, keeping my voice down. I turned my body so that I was facing him instead of with my back to him. It was the first time since the car that I’d seen his face. He looked as bad as I felt. I wasn’t sure what that meant though.

“I’m sorry, Jess. You were right, earlier.”

“About?”

“When you said that you did all those things, knowing that you could lose everything, and I walked away at the first sign of trouble.” He sighed heavily. “It wasn’t me I was worried about though. It was you. I needed time to think things through, because I couldn’t drag you into my family’s crazy world and have you hurt by them. But I can’t do this. I can’t have you thinking that I never cared, or that it was all a game to me, Jess. I’ve never felt like this with anyone before. That connection you feel isn’t just one way. It’s here, inside me.” He held my hand up to his chest, to sit right over his heart when he said that. I was taken aback. Thrown for a loop would be an understatement.

“What are you doing here? In my bed?”

He let go and got up immediately, taking a seat in my desk chair instead. “I’m sorry, I just…” He was leaned over, elbows on his knees, and let his head dip down into his hands. He slid them back through his hair, which was hanging loose around his face tonight. “I’m sorry.”