Page 14 of Can't Be Love

“You’re sure about this? We’re only here a week,” Maddie reminded me.

“I’m sure. I think it’s just being in a foreign territory and all the strange smells,” I lied. “It has my wolf on edge, and I just need to go home.”

“I can escort you back,” Patrick offered.

“No, I’ll be fine. I called Kyle and he’s arranging for someone to pick me up when I arrive. It’ll be fine,” I assured them.

I hugged each of them goodbye, thanked Zach and Cora for their hospitality, and then I ran like the chicken shit I was. The further away from Collier I got the more I expected to relax. In truth, the more distance I put between myself and Thomas, the more miserable I felt.

By the time my plane landed, I was an emotional mess. As I exited the airport, Cole Anderson stood by a car waiting. Cole was Kyle’s second Beta and he sat on our Pack Council. He ran a tattoo parlor in town and he was the sexiest thing to ever set foot in Westin Pack. I had been crushing on him for as long as I could remember.

Every time I saw him, or caught a whiff of his scent, my heart would race. He was my idea of the perfect man, and he wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole. Oh, he liked to flirt, and I knew he hadn’t gotten his bad boy heartbreaker image for nothing, but he had always kept me at arm’s length despite my best efforts to change his mind.

I had been barely seventeen the first time I got the nerve up to proposition him. He was older, more experienced, and I had told him that’s what I needed for my first time. He wisely turned me down, though seventeen-year-old Lily had been devastated.

The pain of that rejection was only a fraction of what was settling in my heart the further from I got Collier. No—the further away from Thomas. I didn’t want it. I didn’t even want to admit it, but the pull towards him was far greater than I had been prepared for.

“Hey, gorgeous,” Cole said, opening his arms to hug me. Any other time I’d run into them, ecstatic for even that brief moment of connection. Now, my wolf was already snarling in my head at even the thought of any other man, especially Cole, touching me.

“Hey,” I said, walking past him and putting my suitcases in the trunk.

“Okay,” he drawled out before kicking into action. “Let me get those.”

I left him to deal with my bags and settled into the front seat. I put my earbuds in and tried to tune out the world as he got into the driver’s seat and pulled out.

“Wow, Patrick warned me something was off. I can’t believe he didn’t see it,” Cole said.

I took out my headphones and turned to stare at him. I hated knowing they were talking about me, and even more that they were worried. They wouldn’t have warned him otherwise.

“What exactly can’t you believe?” I asked, feigning disinterest.

“There’s only one reason I know of that Lily Westin wouldn’t flirt with me anywhere, anytime.”

“Sorry to bruise your ego, Cole. I’m just not in the mood right now. Not even for you.”

“So why are you running?” he asked.

“Running from what?”

“Your true mate. You met him, right? He’s a Collier wolf? Maddie suspected, so Kyle asked me to come check it out. You’ve been flirting with me since you were just a little pup, and not even a second glance today? I knew the day would come eventually, but I always thought you’d be screaming it from the rooftops for the whole world to hear, not running away.”

“Who said I’m running away? I’m just having a bad day and want to go home,” I lied, refusing to address the issue he’d just thrown in my face.

“Did something happen? Did someone hurt you?” he asked, changing his tone and going all Alpha overprotective on me.

I rolled my eyes. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a big girl now, Cole. I can handle myself.”

“Oh, I’m fully aware of what of a big girl you are now.” He gave me a smoldering look that should have had my panties melting, but I felt nothing. He stared at me for a few minutes. “Nothing? You’re going to give me a complex here.”

I punched him in the arm. “Stop teasing me.”

“Then talk to me.”

I looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “We’ve never really talked. Why do you think I’d start now?”

“Fair enough. But you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“I’m not talking about it,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest defiantly. We drove in silence for a moment longer. I couldn’t stand the silence and the lack of sexual tension between us was starting to freak me out. “You’d never understand anyway,” I blurted out.

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