Another growl, this one accompanied by a snapping of teeth. “Make me.”

I could feel Charlie tense behind me, and then a wave of something washed over me, causing the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end. I knew the moment it hit Makya. His eyes, which were trained defiantly over my shoulder, widened and then dropped their gaze to the floor. He looked back up almost immediately, but his eyes focused on me instead of Charlie. “This is your only free pass, Wolf Girl. Cross the line one more time and there will be no mercy.”

“But there will be more cheesy lines, right?”

Makya swung, but I managed to get my face out of the way, making certain he accomplished nothing more than catching Kit’s attention. Less than a minute later, Kit and his tree trunk arms were asking Makya to leave and suggesting he never come back.

When there was nothing left to see, I turned around and looked at Charlie for the first time. Most everyone in the club had on designer fashions, trying to pull off some look they found in a magazine, but Charlie managed to look sexier and more sophisticated than any of them in his plain black T-shirt and well-worn jeans.

I stared into those green eyes I avoided for so long and almost choked on the desire welling up inside. “Dance with me,” I commanded

The muscles in Charlie’s jaw tightened, but he grabbed me around the waist and pulled me towards him. We quickly found a rhythm, our bodies swaying as our eyes stayed locked together. I focused on the sound of his breathing, the beating of his heart, both of which matched the beat of the music.

“Kiss me.”

He hesitated, and I thought for a moment that he wouldn’t do it, but then his lips were on mine, hard and unmoving. I pressed against him and eventually his lips parted and began to work against mine. An onlooker might have seen raw passion as we clung to one another, but it was desperation driving our hands and tongues.

After what could have been minutes or hours, I only knew that the band was playing a different song, Charlie pulled away. His lips were swollen and his chest rose and fell visibly with every breath. I was shocked to see tears glistening in his eyes, threatening to fall.

“Scout…” His voice was raw with emotion, which only made my own eyes well up. I opened my mouth, but there were no words, so I did the only thing I could. I turned around and ran out of the bar.

Chapter 17

I woke up in a strange bed. Before I could ascertain my whereabouts, a glass of water and bottle of Aspirin was placed next to the alarm clock professing it to be 7:47. As I hefted myself up I began to understand their necessity.

“How are you feeling?” Charlie asked, adding a small bottle of V-8 juice to the bedside table.

“Like I just sat through an entire Justin Bieber concert.”

“Headache and nausea?”

“And an overwhelming desire to die.”

Bits of the night before came floating to the surface, causing the urges to puke and perish to grow in intensity. Charlie had found me quickly since McGuire’s was conveniently located in the middle of a soybean field. I was a snotty mess as he ushered me to his truck. After that, things got a little fuzzy, but I did remember Charlie trying to scoop me up to carry me into an apartment building on the south side of town. Unfortunately, I’m way too long and gangly for him to manage it. We settled on a half-carry, half-drag type scenario, which became especially complicated on the staircase.

“Not surprised. Goat Girl said you had five LITs. What the hell where you thinking?”

Of course he wanted to be all chipper and talkative now that my brain was threatening to leak out my ears.

“First, it was only three.” I think. “Secondly, the name is misleading. I don’t think there was any tea in those things at all.” I counted out three Aspirin, then added another one for posterity’s sake. “And third, I thought my Shifter metabolism would burn through the alcohol too fast to cause any damage.” I sat up further to avoid choking on my water and watched the room tilt to the left, then the right, and then back to the left again. “Turns out, I was wrong.”

“And you couldn’t have used Jase’s performance at prom to figure that out?”

I felt exceptionally stupid for not having thought of that. “Wolves are bigger and therefore have higher metabolism?”

Charlie shook his head as he passed over the tomato juice. “It’s a good thing the bartender started watering your drinks way down after the first one, or you would be in a hospital with alcohol poisoning. Seriously, what made you think bar hoping with Ashley Johnson of all people was a good idea?”

The V8 tasted as wretchedly awful as tomato juice always does, but I gulped some down assuming Charlie had offered it to me for a good reason. “Doesn’t bar hoping imply moving around to various establishments? Because we stayed at McGuire’s all night. And Ashley was the only person I could think of who would take me.”

“Which leads back to why you wanted to be at a bar.” He looked at me expectantly, but I kept my mouth shut. “Scout…”

“I didn’t want to be alone.” I concentrated on the juice clinging to the side of the bottle. It looked like blood, which didn’t do stellar things for my stomach. “It’s worse when I’m alone and have time to think. So, I went to a place where thinking is strongly discouraged.”

“Half the Hagan Pack hangs out at McGuire’s.”

“I know.”

“If Makya had been in a different mood —”

“I know.”

We sat there for a long stretch of silence, me clutching the glass of tomato juice and Charlie working his Adam’s apple.

“Do you hate me?” I asked when I could bear the silence no longer.

Charlie didn’t even blink, much less answer. I was beginning to think he hadn’t heard me, that I was going to have to work up the courage to ask again, when he lifted his head, pinning me with those anguished green eyes. “How could you think that?”

How could I not?

“Everything is wrong, Charlie. Everything. And it’s all my fault. I was selfish, taking the one thing I wasn’t allowed to have, and now we’re all suffering. You should all hate me. I hate myself.”

“This isn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it is. I’ve ruined so many lives, hurt so many people. And I just keep doing it.” I thought about the bar, about Charlie’s face as I ordered him to dance with me, the pain in the kiss I had commanded. “It should’ve been me who died that night.”