Except it wasn’t.
Even if what he said was true, and he was perfectly safe for me, I was not going to be like my mom, who didn’t properly vet any of the men she moved in with and then married. I’d known him for two days, and for most of it, I’d had drug dealers trying to kill me. I hadn’t been thinking rationally.
Now I was. I wasn’t going to put myself in a situation where I depended on a man and had to try to make a bad thing work for my survival. I had a safe career. A sturdy job. Sure, it might be a little boring–besides the whole money laundering thing–but it was one I could count on. I’d never be like Mom scraping by because she had no job skills or career.
Me moving to Montana would be crazy. Even if I trusted Roy completely, it was insane to become completely dependent on a man. Besides my job, I had a life here.
It was a bad idea.
Epically bad idea. I knew exactly how that played out with my mother. Like my mom following a guy to Florida she’d only known for a few days.
Thank God Casey had shown up to talk some sense into me.
Still, I couldn't breathe. It felt like I was having a panic attack. The pain on Roy’s face registered like an icepick screwing into my chest.
I forced my wobbling head to nod. “You should go.”
“But–”
“Please, Roy.”
He stared at me, misery marking every feature on his face. He looked like he wanted to say something then changed his mind. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay.”
The tears poured from my eyes, hot and salty. I pressed my lips together, turned around and ran into the house.
Oh God, why was I so upset? I should be glad I dodged a bullet. Real ones on Friday and yesterday. And one big lumberjack sized one today.
It felt like I’d left my heart out there on the sidewalk–a barely beating, bloody mess.
31
ROY
* * *
My wolf wanted to howl, but the rest of me was numb as fuck.
Dead.
A hollowed-out shell.
My mate didn’t want me.
No, that wasn’t true. She did. I knew she did because those tears she’d cried were over losing me. If she hadn't been destroyed by this, she wouldn’t have been so upset.
No, she was scared. She panicked and made the choice that felt safest to her in the moment. It was a survival instinct, borne out of her tumultuous childhood. She was afraid of reenacting her mother’s mistakes. That was obvious.
Her friend had come to talk sense into her about not leaving with me because…well, because she was human. Humans didn’t know about fated mates. They didn’t understand how we could be sure about a person in an instant. Wolves didn’t need a long courtship to be sure someone was right. We trusted in Fate.
But yeah, I guess finding out I killed my commanding officer made her second guess what we had. I’d been protecting an innocent woman, and he’d deserved it for what he’d done. I wouldn’t go back and change a thing.
Except it’d made Brooke so skittish.
How did this go so fucking wrong?
I started the van and put it in reverse. For a moment, it didn’t move. Like the vehicle itself was protesting me backing out of Brooke’s driveway. Oh yeah. That was because my foot wasn’t on the gas.
Fuck.