Jaxson (River Pack Wolves 1)(35)

Or that he’d had sex with a witch on the office furniture.

She balled up her fist and pounded it against the wall of the elevator, again and again. It wasn’t fair. Not to Jaxson, and not even fair to her. She knew she could never get close to someone, not the way Jaxson wanted, but she’d never had anyone come into her life and make her want that so badly.

She stomped her way across the ground floor. It was dark outside. The drama of the rescue had carried into the night, and then her heart-stopping love-making with Jaxson kept them even later. It had to be past midnight. Her body still thrummed with the pleasure he’d given her, but her face was a sopping mess of tears over having to leave him. But she had to… it was better to walk away now before it got any worse. Any more heart-breaking.

She managed to hail a cab even though she could barely see through the tears.

When she got home, she tore off her clothes—they reminded her too much of Jaxson—and crawled into an oversized sweatshirt. Then she curled up in a ball in her bedroom and sobbed until her head ached more than the broken-hearted pain in her chest.

She didn’t remember falling asleep.

The next morning flooded her room with light. Every muscle ached, so she dragged herself to the shower and tried to wash away all the salty tears and lovemaking that still clung to her. All traces of Jaxson swirled down the drain.

Her phone buzzed all morning, which she spent eating ice cream and watching whatever was on the free TV channels. And trying to not think about Jaxson and everything she would never have with him. When she finally checked her phone midday, there were a dozen messages from him. She deleted them unread and turned off her phone.

She’d told him she was in love with a man she could never have… and that was true. Only the man was Jaxson. She could never be his mate, and Jaxson deserved to have a mate—someone to share that magical bond with and lead his pack with and raise pups with. Shifter pups. She couldn’t give him that either. Only some kind of half-breed, like she was.

She didn’t know how that worked for shifters, but it was dangerous enough with witches. She couldn’t even imagine what crossing a half-witch with a full-blooded-shifter would produce. Something unstable for sure. Her half-witch powers certainly were. Unstable. Uncontrollable. Better left stuffed away and unused.

Her mother was a witch; her father was a human; now they were both dead because of her. She couldn’t think of any better reason not to mess with the laws of nature than that.

Maybe she should quit Riverwise.

The idea churned her stomach even harder, so she pushed it away.

This was why she never got close to anyone—never allowed herself to get too close. She hated to admit it, but she had picked all those loser guys intentionally. They were the kind who would cheat on her eventually and give her an easy out. A reason to leave. A reason never to get serious. Because she couldn’t afford to love anyone.

Then Jaxson dropped into her life, as unexpected as a thunderstorm on a sunny day. Only she had a dangerous power deep inside her, like a lightning bolt waiting to strike. It had already struck her parents out of the blue, for no reason at all.

Except even that wasn’t true.

She had been angry with them. She couldn’t remember what she had been upset about, but her twelve-year-old self had been really, really pissed over something that was probably nothing.

Her mother made no secret about being a witch, and Olivia had tried to please her by learning to conjure spells. She could do the simple things—glamours and spells that curdled milk or rattled cabinets. But anything real—anything powerful—and Olivia had been one big disappointment after another.

Until one day when something… switched on.

It was like a lifetime of static buildup discharging all at once. She had turned her parents to ash. Both of them, gone in an instant.

Olivia had huddled over the tiny pile of gray dust that, a moment before, had been the two people she loved most in the world. Aghast. Horrified. Unbelieving that she had done this horrible, terrible thing. If the spell she had unleashed hadn’t caught their apartment on fire, Olivia probably would have stayed there, frozen, until she died of hunger or thirst. Or a broken heart. But the fire department came, and the firefighters pulled her from the building.

She didn’t remember that part, but people told her about it later. She just woke up in the ambulance, sucking in oxygen through a mask and remembering… remembering that she had killed her parents.

With a power she didn’t understand and couldn’t control.

So she’d locked it away.

And away it had stayed. Successfully. But there was no way she could afford to get close to someone like that again. And no way in hell she was risking the life of someone as brave and good and decent as Jaxson River. She had spent her entire life trying to keep people like from orbiting into her life… and trying to find a way to make her life count for something. To make up for the past by doing something good with the future.