Five Years of Secret Love, He Married My Best Friend novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Couch

Emmett takes Willa in and she tears up the Elder's check, then Jarrett collapses burning on the porch.

I was sitting on my own boxes when Emmett Dray pulled up in his pickup.

He was Jarrett's beta, twenty-nine, with a short brown beard and a canvas jacket that had never once been clean.

He got out, looked at the bed frame on the porch, and said a word his mother would not have liked.

"I didn't come from him," he said.

"I know," I said.

"I came because I was in the hall."

He started loading my boxes into the truck bed without asking.

"Emmett, you don't have to."

"My couch is ugly but it's long enough for you."

I laughed, and it came out wet, and I hated that.

He kept loading.

We were on the last box when the cane tapped on the path behind us.

Winifred Colefield stood there with her cardigan buttoned and her chin lifted.

She was seventy-two and she walked like she owned the ground.

"Miss Penhallow," she said.

"Elder."

"You made a scene in my grandson's hall."

"I asked him a question in front of his pack."

She took an envelope out of her sleeve and held it out.

"There is forty thousand dollars in that check."

"A check for what?"

"For a new life in Spokane or anywhere you like, and for your silence about the last five years."

I opened the envelope.

The check was crisp and signed in her tight old hand.

Emmett stopped moving behind me.

"You knew," I said.

"I have known since the first winter."

"And you let him hide me for five years."

"I let him do what a young alpha does."

She said it flatly.

"You are a very pleasant girl, Willa, and you are rogue-born, and that is the end of the matter."

"Rogue-born."

"Your mother had no pack, and her blood has none."

My mother had died of a fever in a motel when I was six years old.

Winifred knew that, because she had signed the paper that let me in.

I tore the check in half.

Then I tore it again, and I put the pieces back into her envelope and pressed it into her hand.

"I will decide where I go myself," I said.

Her mouth thinned.

"You will regret that."

"Probably," I said.

"But I'll regret it in the open."

She walked off with the cane tapping.

Emmett whistled low through his teeth.

"Remind me never to hand you a bad check."

The pickup smelled like coffee and wet dog.

He drove me to his place at the edge of the territory, a one-story cabin with a woodstove and a couch that really was ugly.

He made grilled cheese and put a plate in front of me.

I couldn't eat, so I stared at it.

"Can I tell you something?" he said.

"Everyone's telling me things today."

"I run Jarrett's calendar."

He sat across from me and picked at the crust on his own sandwich.

"Eight months ago he took that silver blade across the ribs, and it never healed."

"I know that."

"The fever comes in bad stretches."

He looked at me straight.

"Every bad stretch I ever wrote down was a week you weren't with him."

My stomach went strange.

"The conference in March, when you were at the archive in Seattle," he said.

"He collapsed twice and couldn't get out of bed."

"That's stress."

"Maybe."

"It's a coincidence, Emmett."

"Maybe," he said again, and I could see he didn't believe it either.

I slept on the couch with my boots on.

Sometime past midnight there was a fist on the door, hard enough to rattle the frame.

Emmett was up before I was.

He opened it and stepped back.

Jarrett was on the porch on his hands and knees, and he was burning.

I could feel the heat off him from across the room.

His shirt was soaked through and torn open at the collar.

Black veins ran up from his ribs, over his chest, and up the side of his throat.

He lifted his head and found me with his grey eyes.

"Willa," he said, and fell on his face.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend