Badger to the Bone (Honey Badger Chronicles #3) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,119
room. The first thing he noticed was that one of the windows had been boarded up. Yep. Something bad.
Letting his gaze sweep the room, he saw Zé stretched out on the couch.
“You okay, man?” Berg asked, assuming that at some point the new shifter had gone through that window. He’d been around the MacKilligan sisters long enough to know it was extremely possible.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” the cat replied on a very long sigh, which was not the reaction Berg had expected. Especially if Zé had been in some kind of fight. Most shifters found fights exhilarating, not sad. Yet the way Zé was gazing up at the ceiling . . . he appeared sad.
“Where’s Max?” Berg asked.
“She went to get Chinese food.”
“Okay.”
Zé didn’t say anything else so Berg continued on through the dining room and into the kitchen. That’s where he found Charlie. If she’d had another crazy day with her family, he’d find her baking, because that was how Charlie dealt with her stress. But that was not what he found.
Instead, the woman he loved was sitting at the kitchen table with her head resting on her stretched-out arms, and the three dogs he didn’t really want at her feet. He knew this was bad because even the dogs seemed depressed.
“Charlie”
She sighed, sounding a little like Zé. “Yeah?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she obviously lied.
“Are you sure? Because you seem a little bummed.”
“No, not at all.”
“Okay.”
“Just wondering where I went wrong with everything.”
Not just went wrong with some specific thing, but with everything. Oy.
“Where you went wrong with what?” he asked, wanting her to be specific.
But nope. “Everything. Where I went wrong with everything.”
Berg tried to find a space for his foot on the floor between Charlie and the dogs. When he didn’t hear a yelp from any of the three on the floor, he crouched next to Charlie and brushed her curly hair off her face. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”
She sat up straight but didn’t look at him.
“I think I’m a horrible sister,” she suddenly announced. “I’m ruining their lives. At least I hope it’s ruining their lives and that I haven’t already ruined their lives. I want them to still have a chance.”
“Charlie, that’s crazy. You haven’t—”
“I think I should move out and let them enjoy the wonders of life.”
The wonders of life? Seriously? He hadn’t been gone that long. What the fuck could have happened since he’d left on a last-minute protection job with his sister and brother the night before to bring out “the wonders of life”?
Berg hadn’t known Charlie that long, it was true. She’d exploded into his life and he’d been figuring her out ever since. But even though Charlie and her sisters were different from other shifters he’d ever known, the three of them were also the fiercest beings he’d ever known. It was as if Charlie had been created out of steel, Max titanium, and Stevie gold.
But in less than twenty-four hours, the strongest woman he’d ever known had been reduced to a crumpled mess talking about “the wonders of life.” What the hell had happened?
“Okay,” Berg said, standing up. He reached down, put his hands on Charlie’s hips, and lifted her out of the chair.
“What are you doing?” she asked, but she didn’t seem to really care whether she got an answer or not.
Berg carried her into the living room and over to the couch.
“Move your legs,” he ordered Zé, settling her down when the cat finally moved a bit so there was some space.
He turned on the TV and put one of Charlie’s favorite horror movies on: The Exorcist III. Because . . . why not?
Berg left the two depressed shifters and stepped out of the house just as Max was pulling into a spot right in front.
“Hey,” she said when she stood at the back of the SUV, opening the door so she could get the food. “What’s up?”
“What happened with your sister?”
She stopped, looked at him. “Nothing. Why?”
“She seems to think she’s ruined your lives . . . ? Does that sound familiar?”
“God,” Max said with an eye roll, and reached into the back of the SUV to start carrying the food into the kitchen. “She didn’t blow up anything, did she? Did the Feds come by? Should I smuggle her out of the country again?”
“I’m not talking about Stevie. I’m talking about Charlie.”
Again Max stopped, turned to look at him with one of the bags of Chinese food in her hands. “What are you talking about?”