Page 23 of Hunter Moon

Tension drained out of his face, and he smiled up at me as he started telling me about his boyfriend.

12

Brook

Iwas pissed, and it’d been a good long while since I’d been pissed at Aspen Grove.

That was, undoubtedly, because I was a wimp. It wasn’t like there was a good reason for leaving without a word, but when he’d disappeared, I’d worried. I’d waited patiently, sure that he was going to come back and explain everything.

The alternative, that he was dead, just wasn’t possible. My six-and-a-half-foot tall boyfriend wasn’t the kind of guy who went out and died. Got himself shot? Maybe. Crashed his car? Always possible. But then he’d drag himself up and hobble home for Linden to wrap him with bandages and Rowan to bring him warm mulled cider.

So for days, then weeks, I’d expected him to come home, and when he did, I’d wrap myself around him until he felt better. I could take care of him—wouldn’t even mind, so long as he came back.

It wasn’t until Aspen Senior got word that his son had joined the navy that I’d learned he left for good. No ruined Mustang or tumble down a mountainside to justify my worry. He’d just gone.

Alpha Grove hadn’t been the one to tell me. He’d gotten this far away look when he read the letter, and he took to grunting until we all left him alone in his office. It was Linden who’d told me, all soft, sorry eyes because he realized what it meant before it even hit me.

I’d never meant enough for his brother to bother saying goodbye to.

It had never made sense, that we could be happy together but he’d leave so abruptly, so I’d never quite figured out how to be angry with him about it. But I sure was pissed now, and thankfully, there was one thing I liked to do when I was mad—work.

I spent all day in the garage, on my back on a creeper seat under an old Ford truck, breathing in the smell of oil and exhaust in the garage. Even though the bay door was thrown open, the air outside hung heavy and humid, the cloud cover above thick and gray and threatening rain. It trapped the smells of the garage inside, and by that afternoon, I had a splitting headache.

All considered, it wasn’t so bad to be pissed at Aspen. It was better than being pissed at myself for all the bad shit that’d happened. Definitely better than being pissed at Maxim Reid, because even if he deserved it, I didn’t want to think about him at all.

And for all the shit he’d done, Aspen was still a safe target for my anger. He wasn’t going to lash out at me or say I was being unreasonable. He wouldn’t turn my anger back around with claws and teeth.

He was just gonna let me be mad, but dammit, I wanted him to let me be mad to his face, not hide out in the woods like some scared, half-mad alpha at the edge of town, living in the woods like these were caveman times.

With a huff, I slid the creeper out from under the car and stuffed my wrench back in the tool bag beside the car.

“You all right?” Joseph asked, looking up from the paperwork he was doing on somebody’s state inspection.

“I’m good.”

But when I sat there, elbows on my knees, glaring at the stained concrete, Joseph came over. He offered me his hand to help me up.

“You don’t gotta be, you know?”

He hadn’t let go of my hand yet. He was looking down at me with warm brown eyes, full of feeling I sure as hell didn’t want to put a name to. There were too many alphas in my life who stuffed their problems down so deep it leaked out the sides for somebody else to clean up.

Joseph had always been nice. He was one of the younger guys at the garage, a couple years younger than me. But since I’d gotten back from the Reids, he’d been extra nice—like, looking out for me. Helping me up off the floor. Asking half a dozen times a day if I needed anything.

He was hovering, and even if he didn’t mean it that way, it seemed like he was doing it because he thought I was wounded, and he kind of liked the idea of that. He wanted me to be hurt, so he could scoop me off the floor and make it all better. I’d give all my troubles to him, and with his incredible alpha magic, he’d make them all go away and everything would be just plumb perfect.

I wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him. Life didn’t work like that. Nobody could fix anybody else’s shit. If you were lucky, you found somebody you could shovel shit beside, maybe you shared the weight of it a little, but even if I let him, Joseph could try his whole life to make me feel better and fail every second until he was just as bitter and pissed as I was right then.

“I know,” I said shortly. “But I am. Good. I’m good. So... thanks for the hand.”

I let him go and moved to put my tools away, expecting him to get back to his paperwork. Instead, he followed me to one of the shelves.

“I was thinking,” he started.

And great. I really loved it when alphas started thinking. They had such wonderful ideas, like living in the woods and running away and acting like nobody had even missed them at all.

“Would you want to go out and get a drink with me sometime?” he asked. “I’m free tonight. Or whenever. Just, you know, maybe you could use a drink.”

I was pretty damn sure alcohol wasn’t going to fix me any better than his misplaced attentions would.

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