Page 33 of Defeated

“Is there anything you want to grab while we’re here?” Chris’s eyes flick to my lips, lightning quick, and I think of his kiss again. “It might not be safe to come back here after.”

We’re lucky we hadn’t walked in to find the shifters ransacking my apartment. They’d been in here, though. My broken lock bore testament to that. But, surprisingly, they had left my things alone. Just wandered around, barely touching anything. I guess the thing they’d come for wasn’t here, so they weren’t interested in anything else.

Now I look again at the pieces of my life, the precious few things I have and have spent two years moving around with me.

It doesn’t take long.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Chris sweeping his gaze over my belongings. A flush creeps up my throat at my worn-out things, at the thin sheet on my bed, and the shriveled apple in the fruit bowl in the kitchenette.

I’ve been on my own for years, and I have precious little to show for it.

When he wanders over to the stuffed toy on my bed and picks it up, I hold my breath. “You left your pack?”

I consider how to respond, then eventually say, “Yeah.”

He studies the bear a little longer and then flashes me a wry smile. “You did better than I did when I left mine.”

“I don’t see how I could have,” I snort, taking in my apartment and seeing all of its failings. I hadn’t thought it was that bad when I’d found it. Now all I can focus on is the mismatched paint, the rust on the refrigerator, and the wobbly round table with the single hard-backed chair I’d eat my meals from.

I don’t even have a couch. I’d either sit at the dining table in the kitchenette, or on my bed, staring out of my single window. TV’s cost more money than I’ve ever had, so there was little else to look at but the sky. Mostly, I slept. Working nights meant I was usually too tired to do much else but nap, check Colton’s apartment, and wait for my next shift.

And yet, this is the best place I found for myself. The places before this…

All I can say is it was easy to move on from them and never look back.

We should leave before the shifters come back or my landlord comes along, spots the broken lock, and demands I pay to fix it with all the money I don’t have. The moment we stepped in the door, I’d been ready to grab my stuff and leave before Chris could continue quietly judging me. Now I want to stay a little longer and hear about how he turned his life with precious little around.

Maybe I could do the same.

“I didn’t have an apartment. Just a bag I lived out of. Easier to move from motel to motel that way. Along the way, I saw a lot of places between Iowa and Winter Lake.”

“I saw a lot between Washington and New Jersey,” I say.

I hadn’t meant to tell him where I was from. Although I wait for him to ask me about my pack, the mate I was eager to tell him about but who is missing in action, and why I’m living in such a tiny studio, he only smiles faintly.

“After a while, everywhere starts to feel the same. Sometimes, I’d wake up and it would take five minutes to remember where I was.”

“Me too. Once, I was convinced I was still in Minnesota and was so confused when I opened my curtain and the San Francisco bridge was in the distance.”

He grins at me. “I never made it to San Francisco.”

I should have realized it much sooner than I do now, but Chris wasn’t quietly judging me as I thought he was. He was thinking of his own past.

“Too far to travel?” I abandon hiding the weird brown stain on the wall since he doesn’t seem to care what my apartment looks like.

He shakes his head. “Too expensive.”

Yeah. After one night in a motel, I knew I had to leave. That time it wasn’t a pack chasing me away, it was the price of the cheapest rentals. Every single one of them was way out of my budget. I found a job, but I’d have had to sleep on the street.

“Traveling around wasn’t all bad,” Chris continues. “I got to see the country. Maybe some sights some people never get to see.” But he says it with a sad look in his eyes that makes me think he was as much running away from someone or somewhere as I was. “What about you?”

“Same.”

Lie.

I didn’t think anyone would want me.

After Harlan, for the longest time, I believed the problem was me. That if I’d been beautiful, or smarter, or whatever it is Harlan wanted, then he would have treated me as someone he wanted instead of someone he thought was beneath him.

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