Regretful Tears Won't Bring Her Back

When my mother told me that I needed to go and stay with my father a year ago, I was less than impressed with it. I knew that our pack was having difficulties as the Alpha had just died and his 19-year-old arrogant prick of a son was our new Alpha but sending me away seemed a little extreme. I didn't want to leave. I was only 16 and all my friends were there and my whole life had been that werewolf pack.

My father had since found a new mate and she is an evil woman who hates kids and especially hated me cramping their style. When I first arrived at their house she acted as though I was a toddler and I was going to completely disrupt their lives. I wasn't a fucking child. I knew how to take care of myself. If they wanted to go out then they didn't need to find me a babysitter. I was old enough to be a babysitter. But she still hated my presence here in the house.

She vowed as soon as I moved into the house that I was going to get a job and take care of myself. They weren't even going to buy food for me. I needed to be completely independent. They weren't going to help me with anything. If I was going to have a phone then I needed to find the money to pay for it. They didn't help me with anything and acted like I wasn't there.

When they did speak to me it was usually because they wanted something. But otherwise, I didn't exist to them. Which I guess I was fine with. I started working at a diner and I was grateful for the job. It meant that I didn't have to be at home and the tips weren't too bad. Everyone in town knew who my stepmother was and I guess they took pity on me. I didn't mind. It meant more money for me.

I tried to live as simply as possible so that I could save up as much money as I could. And once I had enough money saved, I was going to move out of their house. I knew I couldn't stay there for too long. But it was a little hard when I had school as well. And I did every other activity that I could get involved in so that I didn't have to go home.

"Hey Taylor." Someone sang out to me as I was walking out of school one afternoon and I turned around.

"Hey Carter. How's it going?" I asked.

"Pretty good. What are you doing now?" He asked.

"Work." I say.

"Seriously? Can't you play hooky just once? We're all going to the swimming hole." He says. Basically, the swimming hole was just a dingy little creek where kids just hung out and made out with each other. I always knew what Carter was always implying when he invited me there, but I wasn't interested in him like that. Which is why I always declined.

"I'd love to. But I can't. I need the money." I say.

"Your stepmother still refuses to pay for anything?" He asked.

"She's never going to change. She's never going to give me anything. Except maybe give me a hand to pack when I want to move out." I say. And he chuckled.

"Alright. Well, I'll see you tomorrow then." He says.

"Yeah. You probably will." I say.

I walked the three blocks to the diner and I got dressed in my uniform and then I headed out to the dining room and I grabbed my notebook and pen and I started waiting on the tables that I was in charge of for the night.

A lot of them wanted to make little chit chat but that's all it was. Especially the young guys that came in. I was nice but not overly nice. I wasn't going to lead them on in any way possible. I wasn't going to give them the wrong idea. No matter how much they tried to crack on to me or tried to talk me up while I was working. I had to make sure that I set proper boundaries because I've been working here a while and I knew how fast things could escalate into something a lot worse.

"Do you want me to kick those guys out?" My manager James asked as I took their order to the kitchen.

"No. It's fine. It's nothing I don't deal with every day." I say going over to get their drinks.

"Are you sure? One of them grabbed your ass." He says.

"Well, it's a nice ass." I smirked at him.

"Alright. Just let me know if they overstep with you." He says. Just then I got the image of one of the customers bailing me up at the counter once and not letting me pass. He was big and menacing and had that advantage over me. But luckily, I'd had enough training by that point that it wasn't too hard to put him in his place. Before James could even come to my rescue, I had kneed the guy in the groin and bashed his head on the counter. He was the one on the floor bleeding, not me.

"I will. But I can handle myself." I say.

"I know you can." He says.

I took the drinks back to that table of guys and I tried to leave but one of them put their leg up against the next booth so that I couldn't walk past.

"Excuse me. I have other tables to take care of." I say.

"I think you really need to take care of me first." He says trying to put his arms around my waist but I pried them off of me.

"This is hardly the time or the place." I say.

"Well, you have a point there. Where should we go?" He asked.

"How about hell? I'm sure they're already waiting for you there." I say.

"Now, that wasn't nice." He says grabbing me again.

"And neither is you keeping me from doing my work." I say.

"We'll talk to the manager and make sure that you won't get fired." His friend says.

"I know that I won't get fired. Because my manager is standing right behind you." I say. And he turned around and so did the guy that was keeping me there with his leg up.

"If you want to eat the meals that you ordered then I suggest you let my waitress go." James says while standing over them. And the guy let me go so I walked to my next table and I took their order.

They saw the whole thing that happened and they looked like they felt a little sorry for me but I pretended like nothing happened.

"Taylor. I'll take their food to them when it's ready. You're not going back over there." James says as he walks past me and I nod my head.

That was a really long shift for me even though it was only four hours because those guys didn't seem to want to leave until James kicked them out. And by the time the place closed I grabbed my stuff and I headed out the front door with the cook. He looked a little concerned about leaving me alone, but he knew that I hated people making a fuss over me.

I walked another block down the road and I made the last training session for the day. I walked into the gym and I saw the pack's head warrior there. He was 6 foot 5 with short brown hair and very defined muscles with his entire back covered in a single tattoo that told a story, which always caught me off guard when I saw it. I could help by stare at it. It was something of beauty, not something that was just thrown together that you see on so many people. He turned to look at me and smiled when he realized that it was me as he was just getting things ready and I got weak in the knees whenever I caught sight of that smile. So I gathered myself and I went to the locker room and I got dressed into a black and white sports bra, black and white tights, socks, and sand shoes.

I went out to the gym and finished helping Ethan set everything up.

"I didn't think you were going to make it today." Ethan says as we were unrolling the mats on the floor.

"I managed to make it as soon as the diner closed." I say.

"When do you find time to do your homework?" He asked.

Ethan was always interested in me and what I was doing. Making sure that everything was going alright in my life. He took a real interest. One of the very few in this pack that did.

"I find the time." I say.

"I'd say so. You never seem to want to go home." He says.

"Would you?" I asked.

"Good point. Is she still pretending like you don't exist?" He asked.

"Of course she is. So does he. Who the fuck cares? Let's get this sorted out." I say pointing to some other equipment, hinting that I didn’t want to talk about it. It's no secret about Victoria and Thomas and how much they hated me. But I always made sure to play it down a lot more than what was really going on. I didn't need everyone knowing my entire personal life. So, we finished setting up the equipment and there were only four others that joined us for the late training session. So, I had to team up with Ethan which is what we always did when there was an uneven number of people there.

We spent two hours training which was typical and then I helped Ethan start packing up the equipment while the other guys left but one hung around like he always did watching me and I always made small talk with him. But that's as far as I’d allow it to go. And Ethan finally kicked him out.

"I thought they were never going to leave." Ethan says shutting the door and locking it from the inside. And when he turned around I ran up and jumped in his arms and he caught me and started kissing me immediately.

"Sorry. Couldn't help myself." I said.

"Do you hear me complaining?" He asked, smirking.

"I didn't think so." I say. And he carried me over to the middle of the floor where the mats were still on the ground instead of the concrete.

He started kissing me around my neck and I grabbed the hem of his shorts and started pulling at them and he grabbed my head and again he started kissing me.

Being with Ethan was probably the only thing that I really looked forward to every day. The training session and how the training session ended. It was the only time when I actually felt important. Like someone around here actually cared about me. We enjoyed each other's company, and even though we made sure that no one knew about us, he still made me feel a lot more special than anyone ever had.

"Well, that was fun." I say, as we were lying on the mat. And he chuckled.

"Yeah. Just a little." He said breathlessly.

I waited for a couple minutes to catch my breath and I grabbed my clothes and I started getting dressed again.

Ethan got dressed as well and I grabbed my bag and he had to lock the place up. He hated me walking home this late by myself so he gave me a lift. But he dropped me off down the road from my house and I walked the rest of the way.

As soon as I got to our small little cabin looking house I walked up the front stairs and I opened the door only to be met with someone's fist right in my face that knocked me flying against the opposite wall.