Head Hunter (City Shifters the Pack #3) - Layla Nash Page 0,102
of a new start somewhere far from the awful memories of the sanctuary and being abandoned by Dodge, I couldn’t find the energy to follow through. I chalked it up to my body and mind still healing from the torment from the sanctuary. I’d felt run-down and exhausted for weeks since leaving the hospital, and the medications continued to upset my stomach. I’d thrown up a few times and lived on toast and ginger ale for at least a week, even under Mercy’s watchful eyes. I meant to call the doctors for follow-up but never got around to it, and instead dragged myself through every day while trying to find the motivation to do more.
The nightmares certainly didn’t help me get any rest. I slept better during the day, that was for sure, because at least I woke up to light. It chased the first awful panic away before I even realized it was a nightmare and not reality. I hated the dark and kept lights on all the time. I hated to think what it meant for the utilities, but I couldn’t survive the terror every night. It just made me miss Dodge more. He would have made me feel safe. He definitely would have woken me up from those bad dreams before they got to real nightmares.
I circled back through every conversation we’d had, searching for any hint of what he might do. He’d said we would hook up for as long as I was interested, but... maybe ghosting on me was his way of making my interest diminish. He’d gotten what he wanted, after all: a hell of a wild night. Maybe it had just been a conquest, a challenge.
The possibility hurt more than the breaking bones I vaguely remembered.
A week after Mercy left, the gold-haired burly lion, Edgar, and his wife brought me dinner. Isobel, dark-haired and quiet, was kind and brought a soothing energy with her. They also had two kids – a high-energy toddler and a sleepy baby who just wanted to snuggle her papa. The soft looks they traded and their ease around each other made me intensely, insanely jealous. You could practically pick their love for each other out the air every time their eyes met. If I hadn’t already been nauseated, that would have sent me running for the bathroom. The toddler took an immediate liking to me and invited me to their house to play with trains. Isobel followed up with an open invitation to just hang out and watch movies or drink tea. I made some excuses and thanked them for the casserole, but didn’t commit to anything.
They had everything I wanted from life and made it very, very difficult to be around them, even though I knew it was unfair to judge them. From the look in her eyes and the lines around his, I knew neither of them had had an easy road in life. But they’d found each other and started a family, and had what I never really knew I’d always wanted.
Something in Edgar’s face made me suspect he knew why I deferred the invitation. His compassionate smile just made me feel worse for being a jackass when they’d been so generous with their time and making me feel welcome. I stammered something about seeing how the next week went, but they both knew it would probably be a while, if ever, before I showed up. I didn’t want company. I wanted to be alone to wallow in my misery and uncertainty and the awful memories.
It had been almost seven weeks since I woke up in the hospital when someone else knocked on the door. I vaguely recognized the man: Rafe O’Shea, with black hair and dark eyes and a hint of beard on his jaw. The woman next to him, introduced as Meadow, was beautiful in a shy, unassuming way. Her dark curly hair made me instantly envious. I could occasionally get the same kind of curls with several hours with a curling iron and a hell of a lot of hairspray, but hers looked perfect and natural. After my failed hospitality with Edgar and Isobel, I invited Rafe and Meadow in and even managed to offer them coffee and tea.
Rafe looked perfectly comfortable on the couch, studying the inside of the apartment with avid interest. “Even though the lions own this building, it’s on my territory, so I wanted to check in and make sure you’re doing okay.”