Page 62 of Defeated

He cocks his head. “Because you don’t want me there?”

“Because it isn’t fair. This is something I should do on my own.”

“Now you don’t have to. I’m coming with you, and then we go home.”

I slide my arms around him, tilting my head back as I sound out a word that makes my heart pang. Or maybe it’s envisioning a future with a guy I’m struggling to imagine not having in my life.

“Home?” I ask, wishing he would kiss me again.

He lowers his head and proves he knows how to read my mind. “Home.”

And then he kisses me.

22

ZOE

It’s like I never left.

Two years later, everything is the same. The farmhouse, the apple trees to the left of the house, the kitchen garden on the right, and the clearing the men would play football on Sunday afternoons.

I hadn’t believed I would come back to Pack Burton in the Washington backcountry and everything would look as if I hadn’t left it.

Chris pulls his car to a stop in front of the farmhouse and cuts the engine before squeezing my hand. It’s shaking. All of me is shaking, and I swear I’m going to throw up in the next five seconds.

“You okay, sweetheart?”

My heart doesn’t melt the way it’s taken to when Chris calls me that. I’m too busy absorbing the farmhouse up ahead, and my old packmates spilling out of the front doors and down the porch steps.

I gulp. “Not really.”

I can’t believe I’m really here.

We made the briefest of stops in Winter Lake after we packed up Colton’s stuff, which, as Chris had predicted, hadn’t taken long at all. Only a few hours.

I fell in love with Winter Lake.

No one had told me how pretty the retirement town was, with its pastel-colored Mom-and-Pop stores and friendly locals who’d waved when they’d seen us.

Chris’s packmates had met us outside Penny and Colton’s house to help unpack the U-Haul, and everyone had been so nice, including Aerin, the very pregnant, smiling Luna, and Mack, the friendly dark-haired alpha.

As I helped unpacked Colton’s stuff, I spoke with everyone, and at no point was I tempted to sprint off into the distance to get away from them. They were nice. All of them. Adela, Aerin’s grandparents, Warren, Tina, Bennett, and Helena. All strangers, but soon to be packmates.

“Family.” Aerin had smiled. “We’re always happy to add to our family.”

I hadn’t wanted to leave, but I’d known I’d had to. If I don’t cut the ties connecting me with a past I hate, I don’t think I’ll ever be free of it—and of Harlan.

Chris and I spent a couple of days at his house before we made the long drive here. I’d have preferred to fly to get it over with as soon as possible. Chris had seen it as an opportunity for us to get to know each other a little better and make a road-trip out of it.

It had been fun, seeing famous landmarks on our way, staying in nice hotels, enjoying travel for the sake of traveling instead of getting away from someone or something.

I have never laughed so much or had so much fun before.

Now we’re here on this late afternoon day as the sun is setting in the distance. The blissful holiday feeling I’ve been soaking in with Chris for the last few days evaporates as if it never existed.

I’m here, the last place I ever wanted to be, and it was my choice to come.

Why did I come back when Chris assured me we didn’t have to?

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