My phone beeped with a message from a number I didn’t know. I frowned and checked it, wondering how anyone had gotten the number since it was unlisted and protected from all the bullshit robocaller lists.
Curiosity won out when I saw it was a link to YouTube and tapped it. My eyes went wide when it was Lady A’s “Need You Now.”
“Oh, he’s good,” Zack bitched from my left.
I glanced at him and nodded, understanding what was going on. Craftsman had either changed his phone or gotten a burner just to talk to me because I’d blocked his number. Too bad it hadn’t been months and months ago, or when I’d been desperate to hear from him.
Still, I listened to the song, the words gorgeous, but the message not doing a damn thing.
“Two can play this game,” I grumbled. I sent him the link to Kameron Marlowe’s “Giving You Up.” It was perfect, talking about how his partner walked away, and it changed him for the better, making him someone who would never accept her back.
Perfectly applicable.
It was a few minutes later, the next message came, making me think he’d actually listened to the song. I almost smiled when it was a link to Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time.” I watched it and burst out laughing.
“What?” Zack asked when I had to stop.
“My mind is a scary place.”
He snorted. “Not just yours, but what’s so funny?”
“I’m having a flash of him in this outfit Cher’s wearing, strutting around on a destroyer in heels with cheering sailors.”
Zack blinked at me, and his loud laugh echoed in the quiet forest.
Yeah, I was special. I responded with Avril Lavigne’s “Let Me Go.”
“Wait, doesn’t she change the words at the end to ‘don’t let me go?’”
“Shit,” I groaned, but then shook my head. “It’s not literal.”
“Still, might be time not to keep playing, as it seems like you’re open to him trying,” he suggested.
Fair enough. Part of me wanted to let Craftsman try. I missed him—all of them. Blocking them, cutting myself off from them, had killed part of my soul. All I had wanted was for things to work out with two of them, things maybe progressing with one, and… I honestly didn’t know what I had wanted with Lucca, but he had mattered to me more than I’d wanted to admit.
I sniffled, wiping away errant tears as I realized maybe that was a subconscious slip, as I had been so desperate for Craftsman to not let me go, and maybe I still was. Maybe I wanted him to fight for me even after he had abandoned me.
Oh fuck it, I didn’t know what I wanted. Especially when I caved and clicked on what came in next.
Bryan Adams’s “Please Forgive Me.” The tears came freely as I picked up the pace, as the ballad talked about the intensity of their love and how the physical was so much more than physical. We had had that. I had felt that with Craftsman. He was the man who showed me that making love wasn’t simply words, but something that changed a person.
“I hate him,” I rasped as I ran faster.
After I finished the obstacle courses and was heading back, he sent me a message with a link to Adele’s “Hello.” It was another apology song, and I was seconds from demanding if he’d looked up a list or something.
Zack snagged my phone after I’d listened to the song and pulled something up, handing it back.
I gave him a quick glance and saw he was smirking. Oh good.
And it was. He gave me great ammo. There were many reasons I liked him and his cousin after all.
Craftsman came into view, and I restarted the song Zack had opened, singing One Republic’s “Apologize.” I smirked as I did because the whole song was about it being too late to apologize. Too much had happened, too much time had passed—it was simply not an option.
Fitting.
Craftsman grabbed my arm as I went past him, yanking out my earbud as well. “No, it’s not too late. It’s never too late. I love you.”
I snorted as I yanked my arm away. “Yeah, sure you did. What’s this really about, Julian? You done with your latest project and want to get laid?” I stood my ground when his eyes went wide that I would say that in front of Zack, glancing at the wolf as if saying he didn’t want the man to hear this. He was the one who had pushed this. I turned to leave, but he blocked me again.
“I never—”
“Do you need crystals?” I asked, studying him closely. “Is that what this is? You ran out of the crystals I gave you and found more interesting than the woman you bullshitted that you loved?”
He flinched at what he saw in my aura. “You—how can you really think that?”
“That’s what you showed me,” I sneered, hating when people turned things around as if I was the problem. “Whatever. We’re over. I don’t love you anymore. I’m over you.”
Relief filled his eyes at what he saw in my aura, but was kind enough not to bust me.
I ground my jaw and pulled back my shoulders, squaring off with him. “I don’t want to want you or trust you enough to give you another chance. I will get over you.”
That made him flinch, as it was the absolute truth. “Don’t say that, my sweet—” He reached for me, but I dodged him.
“You don’t deserve me or another chance,” I rasped. “I was abducted, branded, and someone planned to use me as a blood cow—and my children—forever, and you were working.
