Marked by My Ex's Biggest Rival novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Pancakes on Enemy Land

Danica wakes in the Brannigan house, gets fed and teased by Addison, hears why Roark kept quiet, tells him she won't be anyone's Luna and goes home to find Kyler and Desiree sitting in her shop chairs.

I woke up in a bed that smelled like cedar, wearing a flannel shirt that wasn't mine.

Then my shoulder throbbed, and I remembered all of it.

The fire. The pendant. The river. His teeth.

I sat up too fast and the room tipped.

Somebody had hung my blue silk dress over a chair by the window.

Outside, the sun was up over the ridge, and I was alive to see it.

I touched my shoulder.

The skin was hot and tender, and right around the bite, under my fingers, I could feel the ring.

A thin raised line, smooth as a wedding band.

"Don't pick at it," a girl said from the doorway. "Mom always said that's how you get a bald patch."

She was tall and gangly, with a long dark braid, freckles and gray eyes I'd seen last night over a set of teeth.

She wore scrubs with cartoon dogs on them.

"Addison," I said.

"You know my name! I'm famous." She grinned. "I put you in my shirt. Roark wanted to, and I said absolutely not, you were unconscious and he's a menace."

"Thank you."

"Pancakes," she said. "Kitchen. Now. You've been burning for six hours, you need about nine of them."

The Brannigan house was a big log place on the west ridge, all windows and dog hair.

From the kitchen you could see straight down to the river and across it, to the Yardley side.

I'd lived over there my whole life.

I'd never once looked at it from here.

Addison put a plate in front of me with a stack of pancakes taller than my coffee mug.

"Blueberry," she said. "I'm a vet tech, so I mostly feed things that bite. You're not that different."

I laughed, and it surprised me.

"Where's your brother?"

"Hiding on the porch. He's been out there since five, pretending to fix the railing." She leaned in. "He's fixed the same board four times."

I ate three pancakes before I could stop myself.

"So," she said. "On a scale of one to Desiree Chastain, how much do you want to kill Kyler?"

"Is there a number above Desiree?"

"There is now."

The back door opened.

Roark came in with a hammer in one hand and his hair in his eyes.

He'd changed out of the cream jacket into a gray T-shirt, and he looked like he hadn't slept at all.

He stopped when he saw me.

His eyes went straight to my shoulder, then back to my face.

"You're up."

"I'm alive," I said. "Apparently."

"Addie, give us a minute."

Addison picked up her coffee.

"I'll be right outside this door," she said, "listening to every word."

She went out the back and shut the door.

Then she opened it a crack.

Roark reached over and closed it again without looking.

He leaned against the counter with his arms folded, as far from me as the kitchen let him get.

"You said June," I said.

"I did."

"You were in my chair for an hour. You got up in the middle of the linework and walked out. You didn't even pay."

"I paid. I left cash on your counter."

"You left forty dollars on a three-hundred-dollar cover-up."

The corner of his mouth moved.

"I'll owe you."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

He looked down at the hammer in his hand.

"You were leaning over my arm, and you laughed at something Krista said," he said. "I smelled it on you. Like the whole room caught fire."

My stomach went tight.

"And you just left."

"You had his pendant on. You talked about him the whole hour. You were happy, Danica."

"I was an idiot."

"You were happy," he said again. "A bond isn't a leash. I wasn't going to walk in and take that from you because my nose said so."

"And if he'd marked me last night?"

"Then I'd have gone on getting my scars covered somewhere else."

"I'm grateful," I said. "I mean it. You saved my life, and you asked first."

"But."

"But I'm not going to be anybody's Luna. Not yours, not his, not anybody's. I just spent four years waiting for a man to decide what I was."

He nodded once.

"Okay."

My wolf rolled over inside me, warm and lazy.

"I need to go home," I said. "I have a shop. I have clients at eleven."

"I'll drive you."

"You're a Brannigan. If your truck crosses that bridge and parks on Main Street, half of town will lose their minds."

"Good," he said, and picked up his keys.

Addison opened the back door all the way.

"Can I come?"

"No," we both said.

She pointed her mug at me.

"You're coming back for dinner Thursday. I'm making lasagna, and you're going to tell me everything Kyler ever said that was stupid."

"That's a long dinner."

"I'll make two."

Roark drove an old green pickup with a dog crate in the back and no music.

People on the sidewalk turned to stare at his truck.

Then they saw me in the passenger seat, in a Brannigan girl's flannel shirt, and they stared harder.

He pulled up in front of Vickers Ink.

My grandmother's name was still painted on the window in gold.

The lights inside were on.

Roark's hand stopped on the gearshift.

"Danica," he said quietly.

I looked through the glass.

Kyler was sitting in my tattoo chair with his boots up on my tray table.

Desiree was in Krista's piercing chair, scrolling her phone, with a fresh plain mark on her neck.

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