moment.
What he said was true. Soon the Abatu would be congregating right outside the door, walking up and down the street, knowing they were close but not knowing where.
“You did this to me,” she said, her voice low and deadly. “They didn’t know I was here. They wouldn’t have known had you not come.”
He hesitated a brief moment as guilt flashed through his eyes. “How could I have not come? I wanted to be the one—”
“The one to break my heart all over again? You like seeing me in pain, Malcolm?” She heard the shrill tone to her voice and knew she was being unreasonable and impossibly unfair, but she didn’t care. Hot fury was burning a large path swiftly through her, and he made such a damned good target.
“I love you,” he whispered. “I wanted to be here for you.”
Her eyes narrowed at his audacity. “You don’t know what love is. You’re not capable of feeling love.”
He took a step back as if she’d physically hit him. “Fine. I guess I deserve that. But you’re wrong about me. I only hope one day I can prove it to you.”
She looked at him then, really looked at him. At the sincerity in his eyes and the heartbreak and desperation in his voice. Something inside her softened, cooling the anger that had been burning for so long. She turned away. “I can’t do this right now.”
“I get that. But we have to. We have no choice. You need to come back to the Colony and we need to go together. Now.”
There was no use fighting it. She couldn’t let everyone back home die at the hands of the Gauliacho just because she couldn’t stand the idea of spending the next three days trapped in a truck with the man. She looked around the shop that she’d worked so hard to create, that she was so damned proud of, and fresh tears filled her eyes.
“Don’t you see, Malcolm? I finally got away. I made my escape from the Colony. This shop—” she gestured wide “—you’re standing in is my new life. For the first time ever I’m on my own, discovering who I am, without you. Without the other shifters. Without my—”
She paused as the finality of her words set in. Without my mother.
Now she was forced to find her way alone. Without her guidance, no matter how overwhelming it had sometimes been. Fresh pain seared her insides.
“I like it here, Malcolm,” she said, pushing through the words. “No, I love it here. And here you’ve come, riding back into my life, trying to take it all away from me.”
“I don’t want to take anything from you. I wish I didn’t have to. But you don’t belong here in this dry desert. You belong at home.” With me.
He didn’t say the final words, but she heard them anyway. She knew him well enough to know what he was thinking. What he was feeling.
“I know I hurt you,” he said. “I made you doubt who you are and drove you away. But it’s time to come home. I’m sorry about so many things, more than you’ll ever know. I just hope I will have the chance to make it up to you. To show you I’ve changed.”
“Malcolm, I don’t care if you’ve changed.” Finally her shoulders slumped and she exhaled a breath tasting of defeat and sorrow. As much as she hated to accept it, she would have to go. After a few minutes of silence, she turned back to him.
“I want to know what happened to my mother.”
He stilled.
“What kind of accident? We don’t have accidents.”
He just stood there, his face losing its color.
“Malcolm, what aren’t you telling me?”
She could see his pain visibly racking his face. It scared her. “What?”
“Your mom was shot.”
His words reverberated around the room.
“Shot? How? Who?”
“Scott. We think. We don’t know for sure.”
She faltered, leaning against the counter.
“It was an accident.”
“How do you accidently shoot someone? I didn’t even think... Why would he even have a gun?”
“He was aiming for someone else and missed.”
“Who? This is crazy.”
“I know.”
She looked up at him. “Who could he have wanted to kill so badly, Malcolm?”
And then she thought she knew. It was him. It had to be him. That was why he looked so damned guilty.
“Shay.”
She looked up sharply. “Who the hell is Shay?”
“Dean Mallory’s daughter.”
“You mean your wife?” she said. The caustic taste of her words burned her throat. He actually had the audacity to look confused. His stupidity enraged her all over again. “The woman you threw our lives away for? The woman you’d never met but insisted you must marry? The woman who was supposed to solidify your leadership of the Pack and to hell with everyone else?” She pushed her lips together, refusing to rehash the devastation he’d reaped on her life.
“I’m not married to her.”
The softly spoken words ricocheted through her mind. She stared at him as fury hardened her eyes and trapped her tongue.
“She fell in love with Jason before she ever got to the Colony. They’re probably married by now and leading the Pack together.”
Disbelief overcame her bitterness and broke something loose within her. “But you sacrificed everything, threw everything we had away, just so you could marry this woman and maintain your position of power leading the Pack. And you lost it all anyway?”
“I was an idiot. I know that.” His eyes locked on hers. “I am so full of regret and remorse, I doubt I’ll ever recover.”
“And my mother died because of this woman?”
“Your mother died because Scott or someone in his group wanted Shay dead. They fired, they missed. And now we’re all going to pay the price. But you’re right, I sent Jason to get Shay, I brought her to the Colony. My plans, my scheming set all this in motion. Help me make amends to you, and to the people of the Colony. Come home, Celia.”
She shook her head in disbelief. After all she’d been through, after all he’d put her through, now she had to go back and help him make amends. Every fiber within her rebelled bitterly at the thought. More than anything, she wanted to throw him out, to throw him to the Abatu, but she couldn’t. The other shifters needed her. If she didn’t go, if she didn’t rejuvenate the crystals around the Colony’s perimeter, then within days everyone she knew would be dead.
She couldn’t let that happen. She had to go back.
Even if she had to go back with him.
* * *
Malcolm’s stomach folded in on itself as he watched Celia fall apart and desperately try to pull herself back together again. He longed to reach out and hold her, to comfort her and somehow make it all better again. But there was no way he could do that.
No way he could fix this.
He was a man who got things done, who made things happen. Standing on the sidelines helpless was not something he knew how to do. All he did know was that she was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and he’d been lost without her. She grounded him and kept him sane. Kept the shadows at bay. And he’d screwed that up, too. But he’d learned his lesson. Somehow he had to make her see that. And then maybe she just might be able to love him again.
A