Page 14 of Secrets and Ruin

“Thank you.” He kissed my neck. “Did you need something, or were you just checking on me?”

“Now, you have to promise me you won’t react poorly if I tell you something interesting I learned after you left the house,” I said, not really answering his question.

“Jacky…”

“Promise.”

“I promise. Whatever it is, you can handle it, and I won’t react to it poorly.” He was telling the truth, his scent surrounding me with love and worry.

“Arlo and Benjamin are both crushing on Carey,” I said, deciding to be blunt. “I caught their scents as I was grabbing something from the living room and had to pass by Arlo.”

“Fuck,” Heath groaned, his head becoming deadweight on my shoulder. “No…”

“Yeah.”

“Landon is going to fucking kill one of them.”

“I bet it’s been brewing for a while, and we’ve been too busy to notice,” I said, trying to theorize why I only noticed today. “I mean, looking at how the boys hang out with her and their limited availability in a friend group….”

“I think you have the right of it,” Heath said, lifting his head. “They’ve been spending a lot of time together, and we’ve been busy with other stuff, like getting Dirk safely to his father’s. I don’t doubt others might know and didn’t feel the need to say anything.”

“You won’t do anything, right?”

“I won’t do anything. I’ll watch for any signs a fight might break out, but I don’t think Arlo has it in him to attack Benjamin unless Benjamin pushes him, and Benjamin would never.”

“If they fight, Carey will never date either of them,” I pointed out. Carey had yet to have a proper boyfriend, go on a real date, or anything similar. She almost had that chance once, just a year ago, with a human boy from her school. She didn’t have the patience for werewolf bullshit, though, so I didn’t have much hope for Benjamin, much less Arlo.

Beyond the werewolf part of the equation, I had a feeling about who Carey might have a crush on. Carey spent most of her time with a boy in Mozambique, talking all day and night by any means necessary—Jabari’s son, Makalo. I didn’t ask her about Makalo because I didn’t want confirmation. She didn’t bring him up to me or anyone else. We all knew they spent a lot of time together, the physical distance not hampering their friendship at all.

“You’re right. They need to learn to deal with this sort of thing. Emotions like that are a natural part of life. Carey will need to learn to establish boundaries if one of them asks her out or causes trouble with the other.” He wouldn’t get involved outside of safety reasons. There were only two things Heath wanted for Carey that truly mattered. One was that she enjoyed a normal life—we had to settle for as normal as we could give her. The second was her safety.

“I think we can trust her,” I murmured, kissing his forehead. “And if she needs help with those boundaries, we’ll be there to back her up.”

“If Benjamin or Arlo try to test any of those boundaries, they’re going to learn exactly how long I can make an order stick,” Heath huffed, but I knew he would be fine.

The more I saw him with the other werewolves, the more sides I saw of him, though that didn’t change him in my eyes. Everything he did always went back to the root of who he was. He was a man who would do anything for his family, butanythingstill had its limits. He wasn’t unreasonable. His responses always felt appropriate for the situation, and I knew that came from his years of experience. He wasn’t perfect, but he tried his best. Today was evidence of that. He’d lost his temper more than he wanted but hadn’t acted on it.

“I love you,” I whispered in his ear before nipping his ear lobe.

“I love you, too,” he murmured, pulling me closer. He was silent for a moment, then chuckled.

“What?”

“Teenagers. Somehow, some way, they always end up the center of attention and distract us by giving us more to worry about.”

I laughed. If that wasn’t true, I didn’t know what could be.

“I have a feeling I’m going to miss Dirk even more in a few days when it sinks in that we’ll only have the teens around,” I said as my laughter came to its end. By Heath’s blank face, he’d already figured that out. We still had Landon, but he was going to be moping for most of the next two weeks.

“Maybe we can adopt them out,” I said pragmatically, wondering if there was anyone who would be willing to do it.

“We’ll drop them on Landon.”

“I like that plan….” It would keep Landon busy and might keep from other problems with Arlo and Benjamin. Maybe. I knew we’d have to warn him before he figured it out. I was willing to deal with all of that, though, for one important reason.

“We might finally get some alone time…”

Heath finally gave me his wolfish smile, a glint in his eye.

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