Page 45 of Kidnapped Rejected Mate
“Guess that’s our cue to leave, too,” Aurela says, throwing her napkin on the table like Valerie did, looking pleased with herself for it. “And Mom, for your information, I look fuckinggreatin patterns.”
With that, Aurela reaches back for my hand, pulling me behind her toward the door.
“Aurela,” her mother warns, and we stop for a second, turning back. “If you leave right now, you willneverbe allowed to come back.”
Aurela cocks her head, and in a motion that makes me fall even more in love with her, asks, “Is that a promise?”
I gasp, laugh, then snatch the wine bottle from the table before Aurela pulls me the rest of the way out of the room,feeling invincible the moment we slam through the front door and out into the night.
***
“Oh,gods,” Valerie wheezes, lowering her piece of pizza back to her plate again. “Did you really say that?”
“She really did,” I confirm, laughing and taking another swig from the wine bottle.
We’re up at Valerie and Lachlan’s cottage. After leaving Aurela’s parents’ place, we jumped into the car like we’d just robbed a bank and flew down the street, not stopping until we were halfway back into town.
“I don’t want to go home,” Aurela had breathed, and for a second, my heart sank, but then I realized what she was saying.
After a high like that, it didn’t feel right to go back to my place. I started thinking—maybe we could shift, or go back up to the cabin—
But her phone rang, and it was Valerie on the other end, sounding just as exhilarated as we felt, and she said we should come to their place for pizza since we didn’t really get to eat any of that elaborate meal.
Aurela looked over at me, and when I nodded, she said quickly into the phone, “We’ll be right there.”
The moment we pulled up to the cottage, Aurela was awed by it.
“It’ssocute,” she said, as we stepped out of the car and made our way along the little stone pavers. “That porch—and the windows!”
Diamond-paned windows, with dark shutters bracketed them. Vine growing up the side of the building. Flower boxes lined with little pink peonies.
When we knocked on the door to go inside, there was a single, half-hearted cluck from a chicken somewhere in the yard, and Aurela was in love.
Now, Val has been trying to finish the same piece of pizza for nearly five minutes. But our recounting of what happened after they left is making that hard for her, apparently.
“I just—” Valerie pauses, shaking her head and looking over at Aurela with admiration. “No offense, Aur, but I could never imagine you saying something like that. It’s so bad-ass. It reminds me of—”
She cuts herself short, and all it takes is a glance at her, then at Aurela, to know who she was about to mention.
Tara.
The idea of her hangs heavy in the room around us. Even though this thing with the Cambiases feels finished, like a small win on the books for us, with Tara still out in the woods, it’s impossible to fully relax.
“Sure, you don’t want some of this?” I ask, tipping the mouth of the wine bottle toward Aurela, who pinches her lips together and shakes her head, glancing at the bottle only briefly.
“Don’t like whites,” she says, and I shrug, taking another swig for myself. Normally, alcohol doesn’t affect me, but tonight it feels like a one-two punch. The high of stealing it and the high of drinking it build on one another and making me just a little tipsy.
“So, what are we going to do on Sundays now?” Valerie asks, glancing at her husband, who lets his head fall back against the couch.
“I don’t know,” he murmurs, a tired smile on his face. “Sleep?”
Valerie rolls her eyes. “Or maybe we should start a new family tradition. One with our families.”
Lachlan glances at me, and it hits me for the first time that he and I are going to be like brothers. His children will play with mine, and our families will be intertwined in a way that far surpasses friendship.
“Yeah,” he says, shrugging nonchalantly, back to being cool-and-calm Lachlan after the fury he’s shown off this past week. It’s a little jarring to see how quickly he’s changed his mind, but I’m pleased that he thinks I’m good enough for his sister.
Even if his parents never will.
