Page 56 of Scapegoat

“Shit…” I stumbled a step when I saw Jamie sitting on a chair on my porch, nursing a coffee. “Oh my god, Jamie—”

“Hey, don’t get yourself worked up on my account,” she said with a slow smile, then peered past my shoulder to where the guys’ truck was turning around and heading for the main house. “Looks like you solved your little wolf problem.”

“I did.” I shook my head sharply. “But you came rushing over here and ditched a job—”

“And I will again, if those boys fuck up.” She stared at me steadily. “That’s what families do, Kai. They turn up when they’re needed and they go back to their lives when they aren’t.” She smiled then. “There’s a job over in Healesville I can take if you’re doing OK?”

“Yeah, of course.” My cheeks felt like they were burning from the shame I felt. “You should definitely take that job.”

“Only if you don’t need me,” she said, then got to her feet. Just like always, when she wrapped an arm around me, I went stiff until I forced myself to let a breath out and hug her back. “So, how’d things go?”

“I…” I stepped back and turned to look out, staring at the sky and the sheep, but not really seeing them, only able to see the memories of the life we’d spent together and the possibilities of the life we could have ahead of us. “Nothing’s changed and yet everything has.” I paced back and forth across the wooden floorboards. “I think that’s what I was scared of, because the moment I saw them, it all came back. Everything.” My hands flexed and fur prickled across the backs, there and gone again. “I’ll love them forever.” I finally managed to meet Jamie’s gaze again and when I did, I saw a softness there. “I didn’t want that, didn’t want that… weakness.”

“Nothing weak about love, kid,” she told me. “That shit is so strong it can have mothers lifting cars to get their kids out, make families strong or tear them apart.” She rubbed a hand down my arm. “It can transform your life, but only you can say whether that’s in a good way or a bad one.”

I nodded slowly, the golden haze starting to subside.

“Before they…” I let out a sigh. “Before Mum pulled her shit, I would’ve said good, one hundred percent of the time. Always good.” I nodded slowly. “But then she—”

“If your mother is the only drawback here, then remove her from the situation. Those boys don’t want you to go back home, do they?”

“Wouldn’t matter if they did,” I replied. “Mum was exiled from the pack for her bullshit. I didn’t even need to leave.” I looked up then and met Jamie’s gaze squarely. “She did.”

“So there’s nothing standing in your way.” She smiled, grabbing my arms and giving them a squeeze. “That’s good, kid. It’s all I ever wanted for you. Since the moment I met you, you’ve been hurting but now…?” I couldn’t keep staring into her eyes, not when the skin around them began to crinkle, her eyes shining with emotion. It stirred up an answering one in me. “Now I’m starting to see that lift. I feel like I’m starting to see the woman behind the trauma.”

My breath came in long, slow, noisy whistles because… what she described? Sometimes you hang onto pain, not because it feels good, but because it’s all you’ve got. And letting that go? It’s terrifying.

“So, you too tired from your sleepout with those boys to have breakfast with me?” Jamie asked, breaking the spell I was under. And just like that I smiled. Breakfast. Cooking for someone. I went inside to the kitchen to pull out ingredients. But she settled her butt against the sink and smiled. “I was thinking we could go somewhere for a feed, not suggesting you cook.”

“The roadhouse is probably falling apart since I quit,” I said, then winced as I heard my own words. “And the pub doesn’t open for a few hours. I’ll cook…”

Jamie just shook her head slowly, but her smile softened as she sat down at the dining table.

Cracking eggs into a frypan and then laying down rashers of bacon was a ritual so familiar that it helped to settle me, ground me. Being with the boys was like some kind of crazy dream, dragged from the depths of my subconscious, but this? I’d been doing this since I was old enough to stand safely in front of the cooker at home. I knew how to do it and it was something practical to be accomplished that didn’t rely on too many variables. I pushed thick-sliced bread into the toaster and set the kettle to boil, the sounds of bacon crackling, the rumble of the kettle bringing me right back to the here and now, although still on autopilot. Just focus on cooking the whites but not the yolks of the eggs and make sure the bacon doesn’t burn. Swipe a generous slather of butter across the toast when it pops up and then lay the eggs across the toast once they are cut into halves, placing the bacon in neat lines on the other half of the plate.

“Where’s yours?” Jamie asked as I walked over and put the plate before her.

“I’ll just grab—”

“Where’s yours?” Her tone was full of the authority of her years, but if that wasn’t enough, those faded blue eyes stared into mine until I was forced to look away. Jamie wasn’t a wolf, but she had plenty of dominance throbbing there.

“I never really eat breakfast,” I told her. “You know that.”

“You don’t because your shitty family trained you to put their needs first and by the time it came around to seeing to your own, you had nothing left for yourself.” She got to her feet, then searched through my cupboards before she found another plate. She set it down on the table beside me and then half of the food I’d made was pushed onto my plate. “You eat breakfast while you’re with me, you know that.”

She shot me a meaningful look as she echoed my own words, not looking away until I picked up a piece of toast and started to nibble on it. But when I did, my stomach began to rumble. One eyebrow raised, Jamie stared, but she nodded when I began to eat, only starting on her own food then.

Part of me wanted to linger over the food, draw out the process, because I knew what was coming next. I couldn’t say what I really felt to Jamie: that I wanted her to stay, to be my support network as I tried to navigate whatever the hell was going on between me and the boys. But I couldn’t do that. She’d already dropped a job and come running over here and for what? There was no emergency, no problem she needed to solve and so she needed to get back to work. But the wolf whined and paced inside me as we both rose to our feet, once breakfast was done.

Jamie was pack and so were the boys, according to my beast, so she was never able to understand why we had to live apart from either of them.

“Call me,” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders and staring into my eyes. “If anything goes wrong, or you need help. Hell.” She shrugged and shot me a rakish smile. “Even if you just want to gloat about rolling around in the hay with three fine specimens like those boys. Call me. You got that?”

I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t. My throat was closing up, my heart always breaking any time anyone left, but that was something I couldn’t share. So I just flung myself at her, wrapping my arms around her and holding her tight.

And she hugged me back, showing me in more than words that she was there for me. Which was why she would always have my undying loyalty. I’d tear the head off a trucker who dared be rude to her, rip the throat out of anyone who dared get in her way. But she didn’t need that from me, so I just hugged her instead, for far too long, smelling the scent of citrus in her perfume, the traces of savoury bacon and egg on her breath and the scent of her, which for me had become the scent of home. But then I forced myself to stand back, nod and let her know I’d call her.

“I’ll be back this way in about a week. And if I don’t hear from you,” she said, “I’ll be on your doorstep, demanding news.”

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