TUCKER: Valley Enforcers, #3 (11 page)

“I’m parked over there,” I mumbled, jerking my head towards the back of the lot.

My mom nodded. “Are you coming over for tea?”

“She’s busy,” Shawn huffed, crossing his arms. His eyes narrowed in my direction.

“
She
can speak for herself and would love to visit, actually.”

May scolded her husband, “Shawn, seriously? I told you to leave it alone.”

“Leave what alone?”

I gave Shawn a pleading look, but his lip curled and he turned to our father. “Emily was too busy with the bear in her bed to answer our calls this morning. We thought she was dead, but she was just fucking –”

Without thinking, I brought my hand back and slapped Shawn. I didn’t care that people were stopping to watch us. I definitely didn’t care about the gasps from my family.

“Who I spend my time with is none of your concern. A shifter is a shifter. Does it really matter if he is a bear or a wolf or a fucking cougar? Would it matter if he was human? Step off, Shawn. I mean it. Leave Tucker out of it. Leave
me
out of it. I’m not in the mood to deal with your petty bullshit today.” Keeping my chin high, I turned to my confused and shocked mother. “I don’t think I’m up for tea, after all. I’ll see you all later.”

Ignoring May’s protest, I shoved my hands in my coat pocket and jogged to my car. Thankfully, nobody followed me. I would’ve felt bad having to drive over Amanda’s brand new Uggs to escape the questions.

Composing myself, I pulled out my phone and tapped on the glass screen. I told myself I wanted to text Kate, but I bypassed her and scrolled down to the newest contact. Tucker. I wrote and rewrote my text three times before settling on:
Hey. I need to hear your voice.
It was a little pathetic, but I was beyond caring.

Apparently, so was Tucker. He never texted me back.

Tucker

The crisp button down shirt was too starchy. My skin itched. I felt like a fucking mess, fiddling with the collar of my shirt or adjusting my rolled sleeves. My leg bounced under the table, and I kept my eyes moving around the familiar dining room. Yup. A mess. And my family definitely noticed.

“What the hell is wrong with you, dude?” Axel asked in a hushed tone, tilting his head to the side to speak to me. There was no point in trying to mask a conversation. We were all shifters. The exceptional hearing thing was more of a pain in the ass than it was helpful.

“I’m fine,” I bit out.

“You’ve been acting weird for days,” Piper agreed from across the table. A knowing smile lit up her face and she stopped thrumming the table to lean forward. “It’s a woman.”

I was trained to not snap under pressure. To not break to interrogations or torture. But Piper caught me off guard, and I knew it showed on my face. “It is not. Just long hours. I’m tired, and I don’t want to go in tonight.”

“Maybe, but there is also definitely a woman involved.”

“Tucker would have told us if he found his mate,” My mom said, though there was question in her voice.

“Jesus fuck, there is no woman and there definitely isn’t a mate!”

“Hey!” My dad’s warning tone boomed down the table. “Knock it off, Tucker.”

The food in front of me didn’t look appetizing anymore and my stomach churned. I pushed back from the table, knocking over my glass in the process. There was a ripple of noise – an angry exclamation from my father, a gasp from mom – but I shook my head and stormed through the house. The noise followed me, but I shoved it aside and hastily put my jacket on. I tuned everything out until I was halfway down my parent’s street.

My knuckles were white on the steering wheel, and if I didn’t have a shit ton of training under my belt I would’ve put a million bucks down on me shifting right there in the car. Every nerve in my body tingled and instead of just feeling annoying and irritating, my clothes felt like they were burning my skin. That paled in comparison to the searing agony inside my chest. But that pain, the never-ending ache, was one I’d been dealing with for days.

Ever since I left Emily’s.

Ever since I saw her text.

Hey. I need to hear your voice.

I needed to hear her fucking voice, too. Hated to admit it, but it was true. I was on pins and needles trying to ignore the cacophony inside my body, but it was spiraling out of control.
I
was spiraling out of control. I tried drowning my emotions with cheap whiskey and even cheaper beer while ignoring everything but my patrols. It wasn’t working. I had to keep trying, though. For as much pain as I was going through, I knew that I couldn’t make it worse by contacting her. I couldn’t make it worse for her by giving false hope.

Emily and I weren’t mates. I didn’t want one. I didn’t need one. Didn’t
deserve
one. Yeah, and I definitely didn’t deserve someone like her. I drew up a mental ‘pros and cons’ list of all the things that I liked about her and all the annoying things, but the like column outnumbered the hate tenfold. Hell, even the annoying things were nice. Like her damn dog. Or the way her hair nearly suffocated me in the middle of the night. Echo, however pesky, was loyal and loving. And a mouth full of hair meant that she stayed with me throughout the night.

Letting myself think about her was dangerous territory. I had a tendency to spiral out of control. To pick up my phone and start to type out a message to her. Even in a drunken state, I always deleted them. It was better that way.

They like to say that for shifters, time doesn’t mean shit. Maybe it doesn’t, but growing up in a human world made me a little predisposition to believe that I couldn’t love someone after a few days together. I cringed, hand slapping against the steering wheel as I turned down the icy county road leading to the foothills. Love. I didn’t love Emily. I couldn’t. Axel and Piper – that was love. They were fated mates, and they waited months before getting married. The fucking devil on my shoulder was quick to remind me that they hid their mate marks from our parents for weeks before hand, though. That my Alpha, Beta, and half my fucking clan claimed their mates almost instantly.

It just didn’t feel right, though. How could I love Emily when I didn’t have anything of my own to base it off of? I felt more for her than I’d ever felt for anyone, but my relationships in the past were limited and immature. In high school, they were fueled by sex and annoying nagging text messages and petty drama. Post-graduation, still fueled by sex. I cut out the dumb shit, but that left me with mostly dumb girls. It was nice for a while, but the bar scene got old fast. None of those girls shined a light to Emily, anyway.

She was on a fucking pedestal. I couldn’t decide if she was up there because she was unattainable or if she was just so damn perfect that nothing and nobody would ever compare to her. If I closed my eyes, I could see the little dusting of freckles on only the right side of her face or hear the harmonic trill of her giggle. I was a goner, but there was no way in hell I’d admit it out loud. No way I’d listen to the roaring beast between my rib cage. I wanted to – stars, I wanted to – but we needed time apart. I needed time to settle my soul.

Someone like me doesn’t deserve someone like her.

Emily’s determined, hard-working, stubborn in the best way possible, sexy, funny – the list was never ending. She’s a woman I’d be proud to call mine. One that I knew my family would love not just because she accepted me but because she was a great person.

And me? Yeah, I’m determined and hardworking. Stubborn in probably the worst way possible. My ugly ass scar isn’t a deterrent to her, and somehow I make her laugh. Emily brings out the best in me, but I know I’d only bring out the worst in her. Tainting her with my weaknesses would be like throwing dirt on her fire.

How could I provide for her when I was struggling to provide for myself? My savings was growing – Deacon paid Enforcers fairly and swallowed clan fees – but I was still trying to figure out how to be an adult. The tremors from my attack still shook my walls from time to time. I was too inexperienced, too weak, to know what was going on around me. I didn’t react in time. I was too soft. I couldn’t protect my brothers or Alexis, but my beast wanted to protect someone he loved? Unlikely. My heart sped up, threatening to explode. I’d never put Emily in a situation where her life would be threatened, and if that meant keeping her away from me then I’d do it.

If I could put all of that aside, I still had no idea how to deal with her brother. My bones prickled with the need to shift at the thought of the asshole. The sneering tone and the way he looked down on me as if being a wolf was far superior to being a bear. His hand was wrapped so tightly around her arm that I was certain he’d leave her with bruises. That alone made me want to kill the prick. If he wasn’t insulting me, he was insulting Emily. She spoke highly of her family, so I was completely fucking shocked to see her brother act like the king of all douchebags.

But she stood up for
me
. She defended
me
. And she dismissed
me
.

She needs you, too. She needs to hear your voice. You’re going to deny her that? Really?

Like a wind-up toy, my jaw clicked three times as I tried to swallow my emotions and keep the bear quiet. I couldn’t have him riled up before a patrol.

Airy wisps of fear and disgust moved through the holes in my heart. Two children from her pack had been slaughtered. They’d been skinned and their carcasses were left like discarded trash. Even if they weren’t shifters it would’ve made me sick. I hated leaving Emily when her pack was going through something traumatic and potentially dangerous, but I also knew that her Alpha was a strong leader. She complained about him and his sons, but I did a little digging and found out that Matthew Silver and the Silver sons were like royalty. She was better off with them than she was with me.

So any time I looked at my phone and thought of texting her, I turned it off and buried it under a pile of laundry. Any time my thoughts turned to her, I forced them out of my mind with booze and work. And any time I even considered getting in my car and going thirty over the speed limit so I could see her, even if for a few minutes, I threw myself a pity party.

Heavy thuds against my window pulled me out of my haze. I blinked a few times to gather myself. Somehow I managed to drive to Justin’s without incident. It was his face on the other side of the glass, eyebrows furrowed and lips turned down.

When I made no movement to get out of the car, he opened the door and shook his head at me. “You gonna stay out here all day? You’ve been sitting there for almost ten minutes, man.”

“Have I?”

A mix of irritation and concern twisted on his face. “Yeah. You have. Aren’t you supposed to be with your family since you’re ditching them for me tonight?”

“Supposed to, yeah.”

“I’m not going to listen to your whiney ass cryptic messages all night. Come on. You have a little bit of time before you’re due in. We’re going to talk about her like men. You’re going to pull your head out of your ass. And then we’re all going to have a happily ever after. You with your wolf chick and me with a gaggle of babes with big tits.”

My head hit the back of my seat. “It was a bad idea to come here.”

“It was a bad idea to sleep with her. It was a bad idea to go off the grid and drive to Missoula to see her. It was a bad idea to ig–”

“I get it,” I growled, shoving him away so I could hop out of my truck. “I’m full of bad ideas and bad for her. There. We talked about it. Can we just play some
Grand Theft Auto
before I have to go to patrol?”

He rubbed his jaw, head bobbing up and down. Sighing with relief, I reached back for the duffle bag that held my spare uniform. I slung it over my shoulder and took two steps towards Justin’s front door when I realized he wasn’t following me. I turned and lifted an arm, motioning for him to follow. He stood like a statue, staring at me like I was the Elephant Man.

“What?” I snapped.

“Just trying to decide when you’re going to stop being such a self-deprecating bitch. That’s honestly why you haven’t called her? You think you’re bad for her? Seriously?” An unamused laugh peppered his voice. “You’re ridiculous, dude. You know, if she’s your mate, you’re putting her through all of this shit that you’re feeling right now.”

“She’s not my mate.”

“Sure. That’s why you stalk her Facebook and have worked your way through half of the liquor supply in the Valley. Are you that fucking stupid?”

“Says the guy who fucks anything with legs.” I dropped my bag and walked over to him, fingers flexing with a shift. I didn’t want to hit him, but it was just under the skin. My bones ached and my mind was frenzied. “Don’t try to give me relationship advice, Justin.”

“You’re my best fucking friend, so if I want to tell you you’re being stupid by not texting your girl – I can. Who I fuck has nothing to do with the fact that I can see you love her. You’re going to drive yourself crazy if you keep this up, man.”

“I don’t love Emily. She’s not my mate. And I swear to God, Justin, I am going to break your face if you don’t shut up.”

In a quick flash, he was stripping out of his clothes. “Fucking do it, asshole.”

I was right behind him. I’d been dying for a fight – picking them for days. I needed the release. Needed the rush. My bear was so close to the surface that I was already partially shifted. I knew I’d never get my clothes off in time to save them, so I took a step back and let the anger take hold. The stiff dress shirt that made it hard to breath was gone in the blink of an eye.

The normal satisfying pain of bones breaking and body growing for a shift was amplified. I savored it. A roar erupted from deep within me; it was so loud I watched the trees tops shake. I felt right in this skin. I could breathe. For the first time in days it didn’t feel like my chest was collapsing. However satisfying it was to shift and feel the fluffy snow beneath my paws, the fur on my neck stood up as Justin’s menacing growl sliced through the tense air.

His stocky black bear came into vision, saliva dripping from a growling mouth. The delicate balance of man and animal inside of me was almost always well maintained. I was good at controlling my bear. But both parts of my psyche were raw and confused. My bear couldn’t decide if Justin was friend or foe, and the human part of me was torn between fighting him or shifting back and ignoring him.

He made the decision for me.

The ground shook as he ran on all fours towards me. I braced for impact, trying to keep my footing on the icy ground. The snow was compacted but slick, and when he hit me we both toppled over. The reigns of humanity were slipping through my fingers. I had enough grip that I knew not to seriously hurt Justin. I was going to make him bleed, though. My bear was more than willing to act on my anger.

I wasn’t sure if the fight lasted two minutes or two hours. We were mid blow when an unidentified force separated us. Through the red haze that covered my eyes, I saw a massive black bear – Vex. Still hyped up on anger and adrenaline, I tried to bypass him and tackle Justin. I made it halfway there when pain erupted in my side and I crashed to the ground. Snarling, I turned to face the assailant.