Chapter 2

Bratt

Well, this was the best day of my life.

It wasn’t every morning that a beautiful woman ran into you like a speeding train, but I wasn’t one to complain. At least not until I saw her blue eyes roll and flutter with the impact.

My coffee splattered all over my black T-shirt, seeping through to my skin. Lucky for morning-jog Barbie that my temperature tended to run a bit higher thanks to the lycan blood coursing through my veins. A toasty 104.9 was the standard temperature for a grown wolf, which made it harder for us to burn from warm liquids.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was disappointed that the sexy little blonde didn’t laugh at my joke straight away, but at the speed she was running, running into me probably felt a lot more like running into a solid oak tree rather than a person. When she wobbled a bit, I quickly grabbed her forearm to steady her.

What followed thereafter was an adorable litany of the small woman fretting over me. There was something strangely endearing about her fussing; her suggesting that someone so tiny could break a rib or even hurt me at all was an idea that brought no small amount of humor to the situation.

God, how long had it been since I flirted with someone? Ages, now that I thought about it. I’d sworn off women entirely while my son grew up. His mother had been a nightmare, but I knew it harmed him to grow up without a mother figure. However, everything about this woman gave me pause—the way she looked, the way she smelled… it all drew me in.

There was the pleasant musk of a woman who’d gone for a run. The sort of salty tang of her perspiration mixed with the lingering scents of laundry detergent, shower gel, and shampoo. But along with it, buried underneath all of that, was the acrid scent of fear. She’d been running from something, maybe from someone.

That immediately set me on edge. I looked behind her as I set down my empty coffee cup, putting my other hand on her shoulder, practically ready to move her behind me if this was a case of some creep having gotten too close with some knock-out drug before she managed to get away—her adrenaline helping her cling to her consciousness just long enough to get help.

She looked over her shoulder, back in the direction she had come from, and I smelled the faint twinge of her fear again. But the smell left as quickly as it came, whipped away in a breeze conjured by a passing car. When she looked up at me, her big doe eyes made me want to forget my stacked-up meetings and Noah’s first day of school, throw her over my shoulder, and just spend the rest of the day showing her exactly how well my body could function even after our little fender bender.

I hadn’t felt like that in years, and I had to remember feelings like that were dangerous. Feelings like that made me forget good sense. Feelings like that led to broken hearts.

“I’m fine, so sorry for ruining your morning,” she said.

“Believe me, this is the best morning I’ve had in a while,” I promised her with a smile, even as I realized I wouldn’t be getting her number. Probably best not to even get her name. Now that she wasn’t going to pass out in the street, she wouldn’t have some creep coming after her. Best to cut this interaction short.

“This is my favorite coffee place. You should go in and get yourself a drink before you go running, just in case. You have a good day now.” I finally said.

“W-wait, can I buy you another coffee?” she asked.

I almost wavered. Almost gave in.

But I didn’t.

“Another day, maybe, if we run into each other again—or if you run into me, I guess.”

“Um, yeah. S-sounds good,” she said, and I tried not to read into what sounded almost like disappointment.

I turned from her and headed down the street to my car, then made my way home.

My home was my treasure. I’d built the entire thing from the foundation to the rooftop. Not single-handedly, of course. But I had drafted the plans, sourced the materials, hired the team to build it, and broke ground on the project when the time came.

I’d purchased the land back when I was still with Olivia, my son’s biological mother—or egg donor, as I liked to call her. Back then, I was working as a foreman before I started up Fur Sure Solutions. Back then, I was so hopeful that I’d finally found the one. My mate for life. There was nothing sexier to me than Olivia, and the fact that she carried my son in her womb only made me more drawn to her—more reliant on her.

I’d had no idea just how fleeting her loyalty was. I’d been an idiot. But I knew better now.

My house wasn’t all too far from the Daily Grind, perhaps a twenty or thirty-minute drive. I wasn’t looking forward to Travis’s inquiry about why I’d not come back with coffee—or why it was all over my shirt instead of in my hand. Hopefully, I’d find some way to dodge the question when I got home because Travis was never one to let the damned matter drop when it came to the subject of my love life.

Busybody human. I couldn’t believe I’d let myself become best friends with him.

I pulled into my driveway, parking the Jeep next to my work truck. I hopped out of the car and made my way through the frosted-glass door in the carport, stepping into the comforting familiarity of my modern beach home. The first thing I saw was Travis sitting at my bar, holding a newspaper.

He was dressed in his customary black turtleneck and gray skinny jeans. Travis had worn pretty much the same thing since I met him in high school—back then, he sported band T-shirts, but the colors were always the same. He wore his blond hair in a tidy combover, a welcome change from his old grungy long hair from his teens and early twenties. Now, he really looked the part of my accountant and the vice president of my company.

He looked at me and arched a perfect blond brow. “Where is your coffee, bro?”

“DADDY! THINK FAST.”

The second voice came from the stairs right next to the carport door. I looked up to see Noah, my son, standing about halfway up the stairs. His sneaker-clad feet were right at my eye level.

“Wait, Noah—”

Too late. He had already leaped into the air, flying down the stairs like a daredevil.

My arms shot up, almost with a mind of their own, it seemed and caught him mid-air, his laughter ringing through the air. His little dimples and the bounce of his shiny curls almost made me forget that we’d been working on getting him to stop jumping off the stairs. Almost.

“Noah, kiddo, what did we say about jumping down the stairs?”

“Daddy, I’m not gonna hurt myself,” he said back to me. “I’m strong like you.”

“Yes, you are, which means you can bust up my reclaimed wood floors, and then I would have a very expensive problem on my hands, wouldn’t I?”

“But you have lots of money, Daddy,” Noah said.

“He’s not wrong,” Travis said from his perch, turning the pages of his newspaper.

“Not helping, Trav. Wait, why is Noah dressed in jeans and a T-shirt?” I asked, looking back at him and hitching my son onto my hip. “I told you to get him dressed in his school clothes.”

“Because, like a certain someone, he doesn’t listen to anyone other than his favorite people.”

“Ahh,” I said, blowing a raspberry on my son’s rounded cheek. “You weren’t listening to Uncle Travis about what to wear, huh?”

Noah laughed and shook his head, but I could tell from the timid tilt of his head that he felt a little guilty at getting caught red-handed not listening to the grown-ups. I set him down on his light-up sneakers, then bent at the waist so I was eye-level with him.

“Go, get dressed in your special school clothes, okay? The ones I showed you.”

Noah, as if needing to assert his authority as the resident kid one final time, shifted into his lupine form. I watched with amusement as he ambled along on his clumsy, large paws toward his room. I shook my head as I went to sit with Travis.

“So, boss, where’s your coffee, hm?”

“Can’t you take a hint and drop something for once?” I asked him. “You’re as bad as Noah with all the questions and twice as bad at listening.”

Travis laughed, folding his paper and setting it aside before leaning back on the granite surface. “Do you remember when Olivia kept trying to get her infant son to recite Shakespeare?”

I rolled my eyes and scoffed. “Yeah, I don’t think she really ever understood children. She used to treat Noah like a chihuahua she could keep in her purse. God, remember that time she had a meltdown because Noah spit up on his onesie?”

“It’s Gucci, Brattson!!” Travis imitated in a voice that was practically identical to the one she’d used back then. I laughed out loud, slapping Travis on the back. He coughed and sent me a withering look.

“We’ve been friends for fifteen years. When are you going to stop abusing my poor back?” he asked.

“As soon as you stop being funny,” I promised with a grin. I looked toward Noah’s room to make sure he didn’t overhear. “I keep trying to wrap my head around it—Olivia and how she was as a mother. But I think she may have just not been built with the patience for children.”

“Yeah, or a human soul,” Travis said dryly. “Kids are perceptive, you know? They can tell when you don’t want them around, when you’re bothered, unhappy…I don’t think it had anything to do with patience. I think it had to do with Olivia being a shit-tier person.”

I nodded once and heaved a great sigh.

Even now, two years after Olivia split from our lives, it still hurt to think about it. I’d thought we were perfect for each other, that I’d finally found my life partner. Hell, I’d thought I was on my way to having a daughter before I learned she was carrying another man’s baby.

“I wish I could just be done with that chapter of my life,” I muttered under my breath. “That sham of a custody hearing ripped all the sutures open.”

“I wish you’d get over it, too. The longer you’re a workaholic, the longer I’ll have to wait to get my dating life started,” Travis said.

His tone was wry, but when I looked over at him, his mouth quirked in a way that told me he wasn’t entirely joking. He was definitely joking about his dating life, but he wasn’t being a jerk about me being hung up on the hurt Olivia had inflicted on me.

“You have to take the time,” Travis finally said. “It’s just one of those things you have to work through over time. It’s like the flu. You gotta let it run its course.”

I nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Noah came out of his room a moment later, wearing his khakis, his slip-on navy shoes, and a matching navy polo with the POSHA emblem embroidered on a tiny pocket on the right side. I couldn’t help the grin that spread on my face, and I held out my arms for him.

“C’mere, little wolf,” I growled.

Noah smiled timidly before running over to me. I picked him up and plopped him down on my knee. I beamed at him, but he was tilting his head down, his mouth pursed in a familiar way, a way that only happened when he was worried about something.

“You nervous about today, bud?”

He shook his head, brown curls bouncing.

“Is it the clothes? Are you sad you can’t wear your superhero sneakers?” I guessed again.

Again, he shook his head, not meeting my eyes.

I tucked my finger under his chin and made him look at me. When he did, his green eyes—his mother’s eyes—met mine. They shone with tears. It broke my damn heart to see him so sad. I’d do anything to fix it.

“What if people at school ask me about my mom?” he asked.

The fact that my son even had to ask that question filled me with a sour tangle of anger and sadness. My throat ached, my stomach twisted, and I wanted to throw the nearest stone through my own glass window.

“You know, Noah,” I said. “There are a lot of kids with only a dad or only a mom. Did you know that?”

Noah shook his head.

“Remember reading the Pinocchio picture book before bed?” I asked him.

He nodded.

“Remember how he only had his dad? Geppetto? And his best friend Jiminy?”

Another nod.

“Jiminy and Geppetto still loved Pinocchio just as much as any mother would, right? Geppetto got eaten whole by a whale. That’s how much he loved his son. You remember?”

“Would you get eaten by a whale for me, Daddy?”

“You bet your little butt I would, kiddo,” I said, nuzzling my nose against his. “I bet Travis would too.”

“Hey, now, don’t rope me into this!” Travis said.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to figure out how to turn him into a cricket shifter, huh? So we can fit him in your shirt pocket,” I said before pretending to stick something in his pocket. “Noah, if anyone asks about your mom, all you have to do is say that she’s not with us anymore, okay? And if people keep asking, you’re allowed to politely say that you don’t want to talk about it.”

“I can say that?”

“Yes, politely,” I said one more time to make sure it was fully emphasized. “Now, go and figure out what you want to have for breakfast while I tell Uncle Travis all the stuff we’ve got to do today.”

“Kay!” Noah said, then scrambled off my knee and ran off.

“Walk with me. I need a new shirt,” I told Tavis.

“I thought I smelled you wearing your coffee. Hit a bump going too fast in the Jeep?” he asked.

“Yep,” I lied.

Having to explain the perfect girl I’d met in town was just not a conversation I wanted to have today.