Page 46 of Cold Foot Komodo

“My mother doesn’t like the loss of control. I’m afraid she will show up here.”

Beth nodded thoughtfully. “Do you respond to the messages?”

“Some of them. When it gets to be too much, sometimes I’ll message back. Lately it’s just to ask for space.”

“Well, there is your problem.”

“What?”

“You haven’t learned to set boundaries yet. You’re getting closer, but you aren’t there yet. Consistency is key. If she knows you will respond every fifteen texts, what do you think she will keep doing?”

“Texting.” She leaned back to let the server set their cosmopolitans on the table between them. Sasha waited for her to leave before she spoke again. “What do you think I should do?”

“Talk to her.”

“That doesn’t work.”

“Set the ground rules. Be open with your feelings, tell her the ways she needs to improve, and then ask for a few months of space while she improves or does not improve. Leave it up to her to love you like you deserve, or not. And in those months of space, you spend time working on you, so the man who holds your heart someday doesn’t have to pay for what others made you feel.”

Oh, Beth was smart. She was very emotionally intelligent.

Sasha leaned back, just searching Beth’s face. Her eyes were soft and understanding. A feeling of relief washed through Sasha, because there was now a logical game plan. “Reed was a beautiful distraction,” she admitted. “I miss it. I miss him.” Shepursed her lips. “I know that makes no sense, because I’ve only just met him—”

“Timing is different in a shifter’s world. You can take a year if you want to fall for a human man, but with shifters, they have something extra. You will know if you’re compatible or not quickly. They will choose quickly too. It’ll feel too fast in the moments when you are alone and wondering how a man could get to your heart so quickly, but when you are with them, it will feel just right.”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’ve been confused about.”

“Give Reed time. If he doesn’t come back quickly, you aren’t his mate, and you’ll have to redirect your attention. If you are his, he won’t be able to stay away. I don’t know if it’s magic or science that gives them that drive. It’s just how they work.”

They talked for two more hours, she and Beth. It was easy conversation, and turned from serious stuff to funny stories and joking. She was an easy laugher, and funny. The way she saw the world was inspiring. Beth could see the good in anything.

That’s what she wanted to be like when she was older. She didn’t want to be jaded from life experience, or hate the world, or think that everyone was always out to insult her.

She wanted to see the world like Beth did. She wanted to see the promise in each day.

Sasha had felt such a strange instinct to uproot her entire life and start over here in Darby, and this whole time, she’d thought it was just to be closer to her sister. But there was good here. If she had three months of working on herself, she couldn’t even imagine how proud she would be of the changes in her, and especially if she had space to look up to good women like Beth.

The love she had for her son was admirable, and Sasha had no doubt that she would make a wonderful grandmother for Timber and Wreck’s children someday. Timber was lucky to have a mother figure, and mother-in-law, like Beth.

Wreck was going to be fine. He wasn’t going to end up like his father, because he had the love of not only Timber, but of his mother too. He had his Crew pulling for him. Hell, even Sasha was cheering him on.

It felt like Wreck and the Cold Foot Crew were important, and she was a part of it, even if she was just on the outside of their story, or legend, or destiny, or whatever was happening here.

Chapter Thirteen

Bang, bang, bang!

Sasha startled hard at the booming knocks on her front door. She’d been in the kitchen cutting up chicken to cook for easy meals on her lunch breaks.

Heart racing, she made her way to the door with the knife gripped tightly in her grasp.

“Who is it?” she called through the barrier.

“It’s Reed.”

Reed? She unlocked it and pulled open the door, and for a moment, she didn’t understand what she was looking at.

A mass of gargantuan bodies were crowding her small front porch. Reed dragged King’s limp body through the door, turning sideways so they would both fit.

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