Page 93 of To Challenge a Wolf

Trevor gave a low purr-growl of sympathy, which was annoying, but Rhett let him have it. “Guess it makes sense you’d stand it better than I did at eighteen.”

“Just as likely my half-melted brain hasn’t fully caught up yet.”

Trevor gave a low rumble of amusement.

The silence in the truck was less prickly after that. Rhett ought to answer Vivian’s text, but he couldn’t. His sarcasm had dried up on the drive. His armor of indifference, his wolf strength… Everything had crumbled to dust. He had nothing left but the heart she’d been asking for all this time. The heart that might have been enough for her if he’d given it freely to begin with.

Well, maybe he had to respond with his heart, stunted though it was. Set aside the sarcasm, indifference, strength. Respond without his armor.

Half an hour had passed since the first text, and the truck had crept only a few miles, but the phone app still claimed their ETA was slowly ticking down. Rhett pulled up Malachi’s text again. Stared at it. Tried to believe everything Malachi did.

Then he started typing.

You’re right. I’m doing this all wrong but I’m doing it. I will be at the address you sent me.Now in 32 min. I hope you’ll be there. I hope we can talk.

Ten minutes went by. Rhett took long, calming breaths as her silence piled up on his chest. He worked his jaw and pressed his tongue against his lower front teeth to keep from clenching them.

Twenty minutes.

“I don’t want to talk,” Rhett said.

“I didn’t say anything.” Trevor’s scent briefly spiced with amusement.

“Fine.”

His truck was moving steadily now. His wolf heart had begun thudding like a drum. An arm-wrestling match might help.

He wasn’t romantic, but showing up empty-handed felt sort of pathetic. He tried to think of some symbolic offering she wouldn’t throw back in his face…and then he knew. When his phone app routed off the highway at last, he told Trevor to turn in at the next gas station and park for a minute.

Rhett navigated out from her address and, in five minutes, found what had to be the family restaurant she’d praised. The detour didn’t take long. He still felt feverish, but the nausea had passed for now, so he ordered Trevor to stay in the truck and made his way inside on his own. Good to know his willpower was still top-tier.

Soon they were again on their way to Vivian, while Rhett’s right hand began to freeze around a cold sundae glass and he tried not to spill its contents.

“Later I want to hear the story behind that,” Trevor said.

Rhett grunted. His strength had barely lasted long enough to get him back to the truck, and the fever seemed put out with him for daring to walk a hundred steps. He rested his head against the seat back and focused on not dropping the glass.

When the phone app announced their arrival, Trevor parallel-parked in front of a row of brown-brick townhouses. “Looks like her address is on the end.”

“Stay here,” Rhett said.

“You were looking shaky earlier.”

“I can make it. Stay in the truck, and if she lets me in, go for a drive until I text you to come back.”

Rhett’s hand trembled around the sundae glass as he trudged up the steps to a plain slab porch. Enough already. He couldn’t face her as a weakling of a wolf. He had to offer his mate everything he had left, and he had to do it without flinching. He knew what he wanted most in the world. Time to go for it.

He knocked, then stood there for at least five minutes. He knocked again. Maybe she hadn’t heard the first time. He knocked a third time as the essence of sea salt and pineapple approached from the street.

“Didn’t she know you were nearby?”

“Yeah,” Rhett said.

“Would she deliberately leave to avoid you?”

No, not Vivian. She would stay to tell him off. Unless…he was no longer worth a fight. He hunched in place as chills wracked his body, as fever rose in his cheeks. Trevor took the glass from his hand as it tilted to spill a pink drop at his feet.

“Sit,” Trevor said.

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