Page 52 of Wolf Lost

The look that crossed Dez’s face was thoughtful, almost as though he agreed, but he shrugged. “Ash is special. Bad things shouldn’t touch him.” He leaned in and kissed Sawyer again. “Like you.”

Sawyer snorted and leaned in to give his own kiss. “I’m no Ash, but I get it. I want to protect you too.”

Dez didn’t act like that was an odd declaration. If anything, he looked downright pleased. He frowned down at his leg. “If we’re gonna call Ash, we should borrow Gavin’s phone. I hate to ask, but—”

“On it!” Sawyer called, already slipping out of the truck and running back into the cabin.

He burst back through the door to find Gavin laying a sheet out around the chair, like the drop cloth they’d used to keep from getting varnish on the floor of the cafe. Sawyer’s eyes went round, and he looked at Mark, who stunk of sheer terror.

“Um, we need your phone to call Ash. I guess we both left ours at home.”

Gavin rolled his eyes but pulled his phone out of his pocket and tossed it to Sawyer. “It’s fine. Just leave it in the Rover. This isn’t going to take long.”

The smell that followed Sawyer out of the house suggested that Mark had pissed himself.

He slid back into the truck, staring at Mark’s car and the door beyond. Was Gavin actually going to kill him? And if he did, did Sawyer care?

Dez reached over and pulled the phone out of his hands, then whispered in his ear, “Don’t look so conflicted. Gavin’s not a killer. He’s just real convincing.”

And that was it. Sawyer burst into laughter. He laughed all the way through Dez calling Ash to send him home. Tears streamed down his face, and he wasn’t even sure if he was laughing because anything was funny.

When he found himself crying into Dez’s shoulder a while later, he supposed not.

“It’s over?” he asked.

Dez put a finger under his chin and tipped it up so their eyes met. “It’s over. And like I told him, if I ever get a whiff of him in our town again, I skin him and leave him for the crows.”

The matter-of-fact way Dez said it was somehow chilling and reassuring at the same time. They both glanced down at Dez’s hand, and... nothing happened.

“My leg hurts like a bitch,” Dez said, out of nowhere. Then he continued. “But I’m sorry I let that make me act like an asshole. I should have better control over myself. I shouldn’t have said what I said. It was shitty.”

“It was,” Sawyer agreed. “I might have been a little oversensitive. I know you don’t think like that.”

Dez shook his head. “I don’t expect you to give me the benefit of the doubt because I’m not usually an ass, or I probably don’t mean it. I did a shitty thing, and I need to do better.”

Sawyer leaned hard against him, wrapping his arms around that solid chest and taking a deep breath of Dez’s perfect, rich scent. “Okay,” he agreed. And that was that.

They continued sitting there together until Gavin walked out of the house, wiping his—clean—hands together as though to brush dirt off them. He looked up at them and marched over, so Sawyer rolled the window down and held out his phone.

“Everything okay?” Gavin asked, looking between the two of them. It was obvious that he meant between them, and nothing about Mark.

Dez nodded and leaned his head against Sawyer’s. “You were right. I was an asshole.”

“Well, I do know you pretty well,” Gavin said, deadpan, but there was amusement lurking behind the words. “We should go before he comes to. If he were human, I’d say we have a couple of hours, but he’s not, and there’s no reason to test it out. It’ll make a bigger impression if he wakes up alone.”

Sawyer was taken by the urge to go see what Gavin had done, but he had the feeling that if he went into the cabin, he wouldn’t find anything different from the last time.

Some things, he thought, he was better off not knowing.

30

After All

“Wolf Pack Coffee,” Ash said. He was trying to sound certain, but false bravado didn’t work for him. They all looked at him, unimpressed, and he threw his hands up. “Fine, you guys come up with a name for the shop.”

Kareni patted him on the shoulder and slid his coffee cup toward him. “That might be for the best, dear.”

Ash scowled, but he didn’t actually scowl at her, and took a sip of his coffee. It was kind of adorable. If Ash weren’t entirely gay, Dez would swear he had a crush on her.

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