Chapter 4 — The Anniversary He Forgot

Isaac found my eyes in the mirror somewhere past the second mile marker, and then again at the flooded stretch, and again when he slowed for the gates.

Three times he opened his mouth, and three times he put both hands back on the wheel and drove.

I sat behind him with my bag against my stomach and my coat still wet through the shoulders.

You've eaten the same way since you were nine.

He hadn't looked up when he said it. He hadn't had to think about it at all.

Isaac carried my bag to the door and set it inside on the tiles.

"Let me call one of the girls back," he said. "Mrs. Delaney's ten minutes down the road."

“I sent them home myself.”

"Luna—"

"I want the house empty tonight, Isaac."

He stood there with the rain coming off the porch behind him, and then he took a step back.

"Ring me," he said. "It doesn't matter what time."

I shut the door on him and put my back against it, and the bag went out of my hand and turned over on the tiles.

The tissue came apart when it landed. The stick slid out and stopped a foot from my shoe with the two lines facing up at me.

I got down and picked it up and sat on the floor with it.

The dining room was still laid out through the doorway. Two candles stood untouched beside the lamb gone grey under the light, and the wine had been breathing since six in a bottle nobody had poured.

Five years, and I'd been telling myself he was simply a reserved man. Some men are.

Then I'd watched him scrape onions off a plate for a woman who never had to ask.

I folded the tissue back around the test and put it in the drawer of the entrance cabinet, under the spare keys, and I shut it.

Then I cleared the table.

I did the plates first, and I did them properly, stacking them the way Mrs. Delaney likes them stacked. The ribbon came off the box and I wound it round my fingers and set it down. I lifted the tart he likes, the one that takes four hours, and carried it through to the kitchen.

Then I picked up the lamb.

I scraped the whole thing into the bin, and the fat came off the dish in one white sheet and hit the bottom, so I put the dish in the sink and turned the tap on it and left it running.

The card was still propped against his glass. Five years. Thank you for all of them.

I crushed it in my fist and threw it after the lamb.

Then I went around the room and tore down every paper flower I had hung that morning. One of the strings had caught around the light fitting, and I pulled until it came free with a piece of plaster.

The balloons printed with silver fives went into the corner. I stamped on the first and kept stamping until every one of them had burst.

Then I stopped in the middle of the room, my arms full of crushed paper.

There was nothing left to tear down.

The door opened nearly an hour later.

I smelled him before he came through it—whisky, rain and the scent that was only his.

Darius entered the dining room and stopped.

His gaze moved over the bare walls, the bin bag beside the sideboard with ribbons spilling from its mouth, and finally the two untouched glasses on the table.

“So that’s what tonight was about.”

I didn't answer him.

"You should have said you'd done all this." He put his keys down on the sideboard. "I'd have got Isaac to move the drinks. It's not worth what you did tonight, Aurelia."

I waited.

I gave him the bare walls, the table set for two and the silver fives crumpled among the burst balloons in the corner. Every piece except the answer.

I waited for my husband to put them together.

"I'll have him book somewhere tomorrow," he said. "Wherever you want."

Tomorrow.

I picked up the last plate and went past him with it.

He followed me to the kitchen door.

"Are we still doing this? Because I was a little close to her?" He leaned in the frame. "Her husband died in front of me Aurelia. Sometimes she needs somebody who knew them both, and I'm not going to apologise for that."

I put the plate down.

"Is she your friend, Darius?" I turned round. "Or is she the first girl you ever wanted, and you've never got over it?"

He didn't say anything.

The tap was still running behind me, I reached back and shut it off, and he still hadn't said anything.

"Whatever there was," he said at last, "was over before I ever met you. You're my mate. You're my Luna, and she's a widow I grew up with, and if you had any dignity you'd be able to tell the difference."

"That isn't a no."

"Aurelia."

“Then why did you accept the bond?” My voice rose, and this time I let it. “You could have rejected me. Five years ago, in front of everyone, you could have said no and let me go. Instead, you took me as your mate and spent five years punishing me for not being her.”

I went for the hall.

He caught my wrist before I got past him.

"Stop talking like being my Luna has cost you." His grip wasn't hard, but it didn't move either. "You have my name. You have my protection. There are women in this pack who'd cut their hands off for where you stand, and you're standing in it telling me what I owe you."

Behind him the wall was empty where the flowers had been.

"I want a divorce."

He froze.

"Say that again."

"You heard me."

"Five years," he said, "and you want to burn it down over one night in a bar."

"Tonight didn't do anything. Tonight just showed me what the five years were."

I pulled at my wrist. Darius pulled me back harder, and before I could find my balance, his other hand slid into my hair and his mouth came down on mine.

I planted my palm against his chest and shoved.

He didn’t move.

I shoved again, but then the bond stirred beneath my skin—hot and hungry, recognising his scent, his hands, the mouth I had known for five years. The strength went out of my arm. My fingers curled into his shirt instead.

Darius made a low sound against my lips and pulled me closer.

Then I was kissing him back.

Angry, breathless, still gripping his shirt as though I had been the one to reach for him. My body opened to his before my pride could stop it, remembering every way he had ever touched me and none of the ways he had hurt me.

That was the worst part.

I didn’t hate the kiss.

I hated that I still wanted it.

The doorbell rang.

I tore myself away so quickly that my shoulder struck the doorframe.

Darius stayed where he was, breathing hard. Then a slow smile crossed his face, and he dragged his thumb over his lower lip.

“You don’t want a divorce,” he said.

Rosalie was on my step in a dry coat, with a pack car idling at the gate and a driver behind the wheel.

So she could be driven after all.

"I'm so sorry, Luna, it's the middle of the night." Her hand went to her throat. “I left my phone in Darius’s car when he drove me home. I only noticed after he’d gone.”

Darius was already past me with his keys.

"Stay there," he said, and went out into the rain.

She stepped into my hall and put a little paper bag into my hands.

"This is for you. I meant to give it to you at the table, but with everything—" She smiled. "It's only supplements. Iron, mostly. They say women without a wolf run down faster than the rest of us, and you're carrying the whole house on your own, so I thought you might need the help."

I stared at the bag.

"Luna." Her voice dropped, and she reached over and took my hand. "About tonight. I do know how it looked. I get so lonely in that house that I forget myself, and I would never — please believe me, I'd never want to come between you and your husband."

I took my hand out of hers.

"Stop it."

"I'm sorry?"

"You knew what you were doing at that table," I said. "And you know what you're doing now, standing in my hall at midnight with a driver at my gate."

Her face emptied.

It lasted only a second, but there was nothing sorry in it at all.

Boots sounded on the steps behind me.

Rosalie seized my wrist.

“Please, Luna—”

I pulled away. She tightened her grip and threw her weight in the opposite direction, dragging me forward. The corner of the entrance cabinet struck my hip and cut low across my side.

She released me at the same moment and dropped backwards onto the bottom stairs.

Darius came through the door.

Rosalie lay folded over the second step with both hands wrapped around her ankle. I was still clinging to the cabinet.

He looked at her first.

“I shouldn’t have come.” She forced the words out between broken breaths. “I knew she was angry with me. I only wanted to apologise while I was here, Darius.”

He turned to me.

“Wasn’t humiliating her at the bar enough for you?”

“She grabbed me.” My voice came out sharp enough to cut across the hall. “She dragged me into the cabinet and threw herself down those stairs.”

Darius did not even look at me.

Rosalie caught hold of the banister. “I can stand.”

She tried to put weight on her foot, but the moment it touched the floor, she cried out and collapsed sideways against the stairs.

Darius crossed the hall before the sound had finished.

He caught her, slid one arm beneath her knees and lifted her against his chest.

“Darius.” I pressed a hand to the pain spreading low across my side. “I hit the cabinet too.”

He looked back at me from the doorway.

Rosalie buried her face against his neck and made a small sound. His attention dropped to her again.

“We’ll discuss how you behaved in this house when I get back.” Then he called over his shoulder into the rain, “Open the door. Back seat.”

He never asked how badly I was hurt.

I stood in my own doorway and watched him place her in the car before climbing into the back seat beside her. The tail lights travelled down the drive and disappeared onto the lane.

Twice in one night, my husband had left me so that he could stay with her.

The pain did not arrive properly until the road was quiet.

It came low and deep, stealing the breath from my lungs. I pushed the door shut with both hands, then reached for the cabinet to hold myself upright.

My fingers struck the drawer instead.

It slid open.

The tissue inside had fallen away from the pregnancy test. Two lines stared up at me.

I pressed one hand over my stomach and reached for it with the other. The hallway narrowed around me, and I remembered that I had sent every other person in the house away for the evening.

My knees gave out.

I came down beside the open drawer with my cheek against the cold tiles.

The test remained above me, two lines facing upwards, barely a hand’s width beyond my fingers.