In Bed With My Ex's Brother-in-Law novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: Coy's Offer

Nobody in the yard moved.

The words just hung there in the cold, with the whiskey on his breath.

Five years I'd waited to hear him say them.

Now they came up the steps at me, and all I felt was tired.

"Say that again," I said. "Louder."

Coy blinked.

"I'll mark you," he said. "Tonight. You come home and I put my teeth in your shoulder in front of the whole pack. You'd be my mate for real, Shi."

"You've got a wife."

"Paper." He waved a hand at the dark. "That's water. This is us."

Down the lane, porch lights were coming on.

The Bridgers lived in five houses and three trailers strung along the creek below the main house.

A Jessup truck in the yard after dark was the kind of thing every one of them could smell from bed.

They came up the lane in coats thrown over pajamas, in boots with no socks.

Gran had woken up.

She stood inside the screen door with her shotgun broken over her arm, the way she'd met me.

Rance came out and stood at the top of the steps behind me.

He didn't come down.

I could feel him there, heat at my back, his wolf all the way up and standing.

He didn't say a word.

He was letting me answer.

"There's more," Coy said. He looked past me at the Bridger crowd and lifted his chin. "The mares. All thirteen. I'll sign them over to you, and you can have them back on the Jessup place where they belong. Your mother's horses, Shi. Your whole herd."

Somebody behind him whistled low.

It was a lot.

My wolf turned around once inside my chest and lay down.

"You want me to leave him," I said.

"I want you to come home."

"That's not what I asked."

Coy's mouth went thin.

"Yes," he said. "Leave him. Leave this dump. You don't belong at a card table in a bunkhouse."

"And Kacey?"

"Kacey gets marked at the moon like Mother says. The water comes over. Then nobody has to fight anymore."

I looked at him a long time.

His shirt was buttoned wrong. He hadn't shaved. There was hay on his boot.

He'd driven over here drunk to offer me his teeth and my own horses.

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