Chapter 4
DANE
I shook the snow out of my beard on the way up to my apartment, lunch in one hand, a shopping bag in the other.
The storm parked over the county had the town's two plow trucks running around the clock and still losing.
I'd braved it that morning for the mall — sweats in her size, underwear, T-shirts, socks.
From what I'd seen in the laundry basket, Wren barely had enough clothes to last a couple of days.
She'd need more eventually, a real coat and boots, but something told me to go slow.
She wasn't used to help without strings attached, and I didn't want her thinking she owed me for any of it.
I found her in the kitchen, filling a glass of water.
The changes were subtle but there — puffy lips, glassy eyes, slow movements — and the scent, raw and thick, even between waves.
I didn't want to think about what breathing her in during an actual wave would do to me.
"Hi, Dane." She smiled, a light blush rising in her cheeks, and for a second I just stood there, dumbstruck.
Wren was beautiful. Get a grip. No lusting after the kid.
If someone had told me they had a ripe-smelling, lovely young Rare in heat under their roof, I'd have worried they'd pounce on her.
Was it hypocritical to trust myself around her instead? My libido was in overdrive, sure, but I'd never hurt her.
Never.
The curve of her mouth when I brought her food, the look in her eyes over a simple thank-you — small things, and somehow enough to keep my desires chained in the basement of my mind where they belonged.
"Today's special is lasagna," I said, setting the container down.
Her eyes went huge. "The last time I had lasagna was with Milo."
"Her birthday — we burned a week of food money on it." A small frown. "She's probably looking for me."
"Do you have her number?"
"Broke a couple weeks back. Some asshole shoved her off the sidewalk into a puddle." She shrugged, opening the container.
"Nothing I can do about it. This smells amazing."
"Dig in. I need to get back down."
"You won't eat with me?"
I wanted to. I shouldn't.
Her scent burned through me, and some small, ugly part of me wanted to head to the bar two blocks over and lose an hour with a stranger, eyes shut, pretending.
Disgusted with myself, I sat down instead and grabbed a fork.
We ate mostly in silence, sirens passing faintly on the road below and fading again. Wren looked up between bites.
"It's weird. I want to talk to you, but all I can think about is, like... you know."
"My brain's not working right."
"It's okay, Wren. It must be hard, not having someone close to take care of you through this."
She frowned. "You're taking care of me."
"I meant someone close to you." She was alone in the world, really — the few friends she had were just as powerless as she was.
"Like a boyfriend?"
"Yeah."
She shrugged.
"Milo says a Prime's either a problem or a customer, sometimes both, so I stayed away from them on the street."
"There was a guy who liked me once, but I didn't feel it, and there was too much else going on anyway."
"Why are you single?"
I scoffed before I could stop myself.
"What?" Her eyes went wide, and she nearly poked herself with the fork. "Oh — because of the scars?"
"I'm not sitting in a corner feeling sorry for myself. I just don't date."
"At all?" She studied me while she chewed.
"You don't want a mate?" Straightforward, like she was asking about the weather.
"Haven't thought about it in a long time. Maybe one day."
"I get that people can be assholes, believe me. But you're sexy even with the scars."
I snorted out a laugh.
"Thank you, Wren." She was a good-hearted kid, which felt like something close to a miracle given how she must have grown up.
She hesitated, then asked the question I could see coming. "Was it an accident?"
Somehow her guileless questions were easy to answer.
"I'd like to tell you some heroic story about pulling someone out of a fire, but I was just drunk at a party that went south."
"Half the building burned."
"I was too wasted to get myself out fast enough — a beam caught my shoulder, broke the collarbone, took the skin with it."
"My own fault."
"People get wasted every day."
"That's just bad luck." She said it plainly, without flinching or looking away the way most people did.
I found I didn't mind telling it, not to her. "The lasagna's great, by the way."
"I'll tell Tara — she's a Rare too, isn't she?"
"Yes. And no, she still doesn't know you're here."
"Maybe you should tell her. I don't want to cause trouble."
"You're not. It's my building — pub, apartment, and a couple of offices. I can have guests."
Her eyes bulged. "You own the whole building?"
"It's not much."
"Mostly a pile of bills and a boiler that groans like it's dying." I let her think it was impressive a minute longer anyway.
She cleared the plates, and I told her about the clothes waiting in the hall. She went still, blinking.
"Thank you so much, Dane. I'll pay you back somehow. I don't know how yet, but I will."
"Don't worry about it."
"I need to go," I said, reluctant, my lungs already burning from the scent of her.
"I'll see you later?" she asked, her smile a little weak, a little hopeful.
"Sure."
Outside, I slipped into the alley instead of heading straight back to the bar, pulling in cold air until my lungs cleared of her.
It didn't fully work.
Her hopeful smile stayed with me the rest of the day — while I restocked, while I balanced the register, while I told myself for the tenth time that whatever this was building into, I had no business letting it build further.
That didn't stop me from checking the clock every twenty minutes.