Red in the Blue

Chapter 15

CW: Sexual content, including trauma flashback, dissociation

I was starving when we got home and ate a crumbly donut over the sink. James plunked down on the couch with her laptop to place a grocery order we'd pick up before making dinner. I suggested things to her from the kitchen, contemplating another donut before deciding I'd rather just shower and wait for dinner. I disappeared to wash the chlorine and sunscreen away, a little pinker than I had been that morning despite my precautions, and then James ushered me into the nondescript black sedan parked out front and we went to sit in a grocery parking lot while someone loaded bags into the trunk.

I watched people coming and going, jealous of the ease with which they were allowed to move through the world. Even going to the grocery store seemed like a luxury.

"Were you happy to see Cade at the pool?" James asked abruptly.

I looked over at her, my brow wrinkling as I snorted softly.

"I mean...why?"

"Just curious." Her head leaned against the back of the seat, she rolled it over to look at me before staring back out the windshield.

"He was certainly in a different mood than he was the last time I saw him," I griped.

"How so?"

"You didn't hear about The Couch Incident?"

She raised her eyebrows. I regaled her with my most impassioned retelling of the event, her stealing glances over at my expressions and hands, her face shifting as she laughed but also shook her head at me.

"Bowen shouldn't have been asleep when Cade walked in. That's just bad timing. And he wants more than one door between you and whoever might have gotten into the house," she said.

"So you think that was a reasonable response," I said flatly.

"Pretty much, yeah."

I scoffed and slumped back against the seat as the car shuddered with the closing of the trunk and she spoke to the grocery employee out the window.

"Hey, who pays for this?" I asked her. "Do I owe you anything?"

"Nah, I get a budget if I'm assigned to someone."

"Where does the budget come from?"

"The pack, I guess. Taxes. It's pack business."

We pulled out of the parking lot, and I started again, "You have to admit the Cade at the pool today was...in rare form."

"I didn't notice anything weird at the pool."

"He was like...flirting with me."

"You're his mate," she said without interest. "You looked hot."

I gave up and looked out the window for the rest of the drive.

We made pasta and ate together around the coffee table in the living room with the TV on. James and I both agreed we didn't feel like doing dishes and piled them in the sink to "soak" before resuming our positions on the couch. I sprawled over the arm of the loveseat, and James used Irene's cheap markers to color in a floral tattoo I had spanning the inside of my arm, at the v of my elbow. The soft swirling of the felt-tipped marker tickled a little, but it felt nice. There was something strangely grounding about it as my body—in the pool for so many hours that afternoon—felt like it was still floating, gentle rocking undulating under me as I stared at the movie on TV.

I didn't think about Cade. Not the strain of his shirt against that precarious top button as he pulled me from the pool. Not his slacks taut over his thighs as he sat across from James. Not the dark glimmer of his eyes or his teasing smile. Had I seen him smile like that before? Was this the first time he'd smiled at me like that? Daring and amused and unreserved, relaxed. So different from the glower I'd seen of him the other day. Tense alpha and charming one. Two versions. And a third—just Cade, not alpha-like at all, earnestly standing at my front door asking me to give him a chance.