Page 20 of Rejected Wolf's Secret Baby (Rejected Moons 4)

“Threatened you with what?”

“She said I’d better never have a baby with you. She knew if I did, that baby would be a threat to Lonnie. She said she’d make my life and my children’s lives hell if I did.”

“Why didn’t your father intervene?”

“She’s just so manipulative. I’m sure she was feeding him some kind of lie. I know Dad was surprised when I rejected you.”

“But Deidre probably knew you would, after a threat like that.”

“I think she might have,” Alicia said. “I think she was happy. I’d given her another excuse to tell my father how awful I was. So she was berating me, and Lonnie was staring at me like he just wanted to get a bucket of popcorn and watch everything go down, and my dad was acting like I’d broken his heart or something. And I just realized that living here—with them—was too much. I needed to get away for my own sanity.”

“Are you happy out there?” I ask. “With the humans?”

She looks at me. “You really care about this stuff.”

“Sure I do,” I say. “I’d like us to be friends, Alicia.”

She nods. “I’d like that too.”

It feels like something shifts between us then. Like maybe one of the walls that she had up, or that I had up, is finally coming down. Like we can see each other a little more clearly.

Do I really want to be her friend?

Sure I do. Friends can have sex with each other.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I want. For us to be friends—and, occasionally, to be naked.

“It’s good with humans,” she said. “There are problems, just like there are anywhere. But I’ve got a life, and it makes me happy.”

I nod. “I’m happy for you,” I say.

“Really? You are?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. Everyone else seems to want to convince me that I’m not as happy as I think I am, and that I want to come back to the Greystones.”

“Well, don’t get me wrong,” I say. “It would be cool if you came back. But I’d sayyouknow what you want better than anybody else does.”

“I appreciate that,” she says. “Really. You have no idea how nice it is to have someone just take me at face value, and not try to tell me that I don’t know what I want from my own life.”

“You’ve always known what you want,” I tell her. “And you’ve always gone for it. It’s one of my favorite things about you.”

She actually blushes at that. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Alicia blush before—she’s not the type. But it’s intriguing knowing that I can have that effect on her.

And now I’m thinking about all the other effects I might have on her.

Fuck, I hope the night doesn’t end here.

12

ALICIA

I’mnotexactlysurehow we get back to Brandon’s house.

It’s not that my memories aren’t intact, although the beer is definitely doing its job loosening me up. I spend the whole evening laughing at his jokes and quietly marveling at how sweet and empathetic he is. I don’t remember this about him. Did he always have this softer side?

I remember him paying the bill, and I remember that when he got up to leave, I got up with him. I remember the moment on our walk home when I should have turned toward my father’s house if that was where I wanted to go.

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