“Okay. We can try to be friends.”
The knots in my stomach slowly unfurled. I hadn’t realized I’d wanted her to say yes so badly until she did.
“What do you mean try?”
She leveled me with a glare and her hands went back on her hips. “I’m still mad at you. You’ve got some making up to do before I can call you my friend.”
A stupid smile spread across my face before I could stop it. Callie McCoy didn’t make anything easy and I kind of loved that about her.
“Okay, so I’ve got some work ahead of me. I can handle that.”
She scoffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “We’ll see.”
She turned to leave again, and I stopped her once more. “So, that means I get your number, right? If we’re friends, I need a way of getting in contact with you.”
“You know where I live,” she said over her shoulder as she continued to walk away.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to have to come knock on your door every time I want to talk to you,” I said as I followed after her.
She opened the back door and stepped inside. “That sounds like a personal problem, Carter.”
I chuckled as I walked into the house after her. “You’re not gonna make this easy for me, are you?”
She turned around and met my eyes as she walked backward through the kitchen. “Nope.”
I laughed again and it felt good. After weeks of warring with my emotions and giving her the runaround and avoiding the lodge in case I ran into her, I was finally free. I could enjoy her company without feeling guilty. I could spend time with her and not feel like I was doing the wrong thing.
Now, I just had to make sure I kept my hands to myself.
“Come on, Callie. If we’re friends–”
“Oh, Callie! I’m glad you’re still here,” Mom said as she walked out of the back hall. “I was wondering if I could ask you for a favor.”
Callie gave her a sweet smile that really wasn’t helping me keep her in the friend category.
“Sure, Nora. What is it?”
“Well, you know how I’m trying to get my garden going out back? I was wondering if you’d come with me to pick out some plants for it. I figured you’d know better than me what’ll grow in this area, right?”
Callie turned wide eyes to me before looking at my mom again. “I wouldn’t mind,” she said cautiously, sneaking another look at me in the process.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mom.”
She turned to me, fire in her eyes and feistiness written all over her face. It was like I was ten again and I’d just broken her favorite lamp playing ball in the house.
“Wyatt Carter, I am sick of being a prisoner in this house. I want to go pick out some plants for my new garden and I don’t trust you boneheads to get what I want. Now, if you’d like to accompany us to alleviate some of your worries, I’d be okay with that. But you aren’t stopping me from going anywhere.”
Well, shit.
I sighed heavily and let my tense shoulders fall.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe they were all right.
I couldn’t keep her under house arrest for the rest of her life. She needed to have a life and these four walls weren’t good enough. She deserved so much more, and I needed to let go a little if I was going to give her that.
“All right. We’ll go to a nursery.”
“Tomorrow,” she added.
I turned to Callie. “Tomorrow?”
She glanced at my mom before turning back to me. “I can make that work.”
I sighed again. “All right. I guess we’re going to the nursery tomorrow.”
Mom clapped her hands, a smile wide across her face.
It was in that moment, seeing her so happy, that I realized how unhappy she’d been. Sure, she was safe, and her health had been improving, but what did that matter if she wasn’t happy?
I promised myself in that moment that I’d work toward giving her a better life. A fuller life. One not clouded by fear or lived in darkness.
I also knew that meant we’d have to tell the pack about her sooner rather than later.
My stomach hollowed out at the thought of putting her at risk like that, but I was quickly losing control of the situation.
I turned to Callie, who was listing different plants that would grow well this time of year and wondered if she’d meant what she said. If she and her family would really stand against their pack to protect my mom. I’d never had anyone promise something like that to me before, which made it difficult to believe.
But this was Callie, and everything in me screamed that I could trust her. I just hoped my insides were right because I was betting my mom’s life on them.
“Okay, I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Let me know when you figure out a time,” Callie said as she hugged Mom goodbye.
“Callie, why don’t you give Wyatt your number so he can call you when we figure it out?”
Callie spun around slowly and gave me a narrow-eyed glare before turning to my mom with a smile. “Sure,” she said through gritted teeth. “Give me your phone, Wyatt.”
I gave her my cell gladly and watched as she typed in her number and hit dial. When she handed it back, our fingers brushed, and a chill raced down my spine. I met her eyes again, and it was clear she’d felt what I’d felt.
Which meant if I was going to keep up this friends stuff,
