Page 29 of Coming Home

I shook my head. “No, sport, because of you.”

I didn’t feel bad about being honest, but I did nearly chuckle because she’d walked right into that. She took another sip of her milkshake, then mine. She frowned and stared down at my cup in her hand before passing it back.

“Sorry,” she muttered.

“Don’t be. I always order chocolate just for you,” I confessed.

“What? I thought it was your favorite.”

I shook my head. “Nah, It’s only my favorite when I’m with you, because I love watching you steal it. Always have. I’m actually more of a cookies and cream kind of guy,” I admitted. Shelby was the one person in this world that knew more about me than even I did at times, but she didn’t know everything.

“That’s impossible. How many shakes have we shared in our lifetime? Thousands probably and you always, always, always order chocolate.”

I laughed. “That’s because you used to torment yourself between ordering the cherry or the chocolate, claiming they were too rich together. You’d always order the cherry then wish you’d gotten the chocolate, so it just became my default order with you, always chocolate. I like it the best of those two, but I liked taking that stress off you and watching you just enjoy your shake more.”

I could see the confusion on her face and knew she was thinking back through every milkshake we’d ever shared together.

She was quiet, contemplative as we finished our shakes and got up to leave.

“Thanks a lot, Graham,” I said on our way out.

I held the door open for Shelby out of old habit. It seemed crazy how those little gestures felt so effortless with her. As if on its own accord, my hand gently rested on her lower back to guide her back to my car. Immediate peace washed over me from touching her like that, and my wolf settled at the possessive gesture.

Shelby stiffened, but didn’t move. I helped her into the car then ran around to jump into the driver’s seat. On the way home, I reached to hold her hand. She nearly jumped away from me, as far to the other side of the car as possible, and pulled her hand away as if I’m just burnt her. An internal sting I’d never felt before hit me in the chest. I immediately realized it was the pain of rejection.

“You can’t keep touching me, Ben,” she said.

“I can’t help it,” I admitted. “My wolf is going crazy and it’s the only thing that settles him.”

If it was anyone else I would have eagerly pursued my mate until the bond was sealed, but this was Shelby. We had so much history and thanks to me being a teenage bonehead, not all of it was good.

I knew I had hurt her, and I’d have to live with that knowledge for the rest of my life, but until I came home and saw her for myself, I could never have realized just how badly I’d hurt her by leaving the way I had.

At first I had tried to keep in touch. I returned a few of her letters during boot camp when I needed to hold onto home, not ready to let go. As I settled into a new life without Shelby though, it was just a constant reminder of what I was missing.

I wrote her one final letter to just let her know I was okay when I received my first deployment orders. She kept writing me every single day. Some days they were painful to look at knowing how much of her life I was missing out on. It wasn’t until they stopped arriving that I clung to them for survival.

The thing was, I’d always confided in Shelby, but I had no idea how to tell her that I was still madly in love with her and always had been. I didn’t know how to say she was the only girl for me and that I’d remained faithful to her all these years, even while believing she belonged to someone else.

I didn’t know how to tell my best friend that I missed her so much that I would give up absolutely everything I’d built for myself just to be with her.

The words were right there on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t say them. It wasn’t a shocker that our wolves were falling into perfect synch. I could read her emotions like an open book even as kids, but I could actually feel them now after just spending a few hours with her.

She was still upset and scared. I didn’t know how to fix that.

“Sport, talk to me, please. I need to know what you’re thinking. I get you’re not happy about this, but we’re mating, Shelbs.”

“I don’t know what to say you, Ben. If you had come home even two months ago, I probably would have tossed everything aside and run to you with open arms, but I’ve been working through a lot of shit lately and I’m finally in a good place, honestly, for the first time since before you left.”

I blew out a breath. Things here had been worse than I thought. I understood now why Troy was so angry with me.

“It’s Walker, isn’t it? Your boyfriend?” I asked.

She looked surprised. “Who told you about Walker?”

“Your mother. She’s quite fond of him,” I admitted through gritted teeth. “I get you weren’t burning the candle waiting for me come home, sport, but now that I’m here, I’ll kill him if he lays a hand on you. You are mine,” I said more aggressively than I meant.

She was quiet, and that was never a good sign. Her phone dinged, breaking the silence. It had been doing that off and on all day and she genuinely smiled every time.

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