A Mate for Lu - Amy Bellows Page 0,3

with glassy eyes. Have I somehow hurt him? Does he want us to be friends?

Does he want something different than friendship?

“Thank you for all of the food, Lu.” I release his shoulder and step back. My hand tingles from where I touched him.

This is the last time I can have this kind of professional interaction with someone beautiful like Lu. After Jesse’s gender reveal party, I need to cut off all contact with him, whether I want to or not.

3

Lu

Sam leaves in a hurry. Like he’s worried I’m going to pounce on him. And why shouldn’t he be worried? I practically forced him to eat lunch with me. When he’s gone, I know that’s it. Jesse never told me where their gender reveal party was.

Other than a polite email or phone call, I’ll never get to talk to Sam again.

I try to keep cheerful for Mary’s sake. We spend the afternoon in our bear forms, cuddling on the couch and playing with the chew toys Axel bought her the last time he was in town. Cubs need something to chew on when they’re in their bear form, so I was grateful he got them for her. He spends almost all of his money on us.

I’m a drain to everyone in my life.

After dinner, we go through her bedtime routine, and it’s everything I can do to hold back the tears. Sam is never going to look at me again. He’s never going to compliment my work. It’s over.

Whatever “it” was. He never even had feelings for me.

After I put Mary to bed, I pull out the sketchbook I keep under my mattress. It’s full of drawings I don’t want Mary to see. There are a few of her alpha father, back when I still missed him. But the notebook mostly has sketches I’ve done of Sam. In the beginning, I drew his face from different angles. Then his entire person, completely clothed. But at a certain point, it was too tempting to imagine what he looked like without them, and I drew him nude. There are dozens of sketches—all of a man I can’t have. Maybe that’s what this notebook will end up being: drawings of men who don’t want me.

Or maybe not.

My oven has gas burners. I bring the notebook into the kitchen and get out a tin bowl. The click, click, hiss of the burner calms me the way drawing Sam used to. I let this infatuation go too far.

I tear off the last drawing of Sam sleeping naked on his stomach, his body stretched out across the bed. I used to imagine what it might be like to wake up next to him—to feel his kiss on my neck.

Why did I allow myself that kind of fantasy?

The paper catches fire, and I watch the flame turn it to nothing but black ash. If I was stronger, like Cy, it wouldn’t bother me that an alpha doesn’t want to be with me. But I’m not strong like Cy. I’m lonely, and I want someone to love me.

Once the paper burns to my fingertips I toss it into the tin bowl.

I rip the next picture out of the notebook. This one is of Sam sitting in the bed with a book in his hand. His hairy body is bare, except for his socks. I drew this one while imagining what it would be like to read with him before bed. He’d let me rest my head on his shoulder. Maybe he’d laugh out loud when he got to a funny part of his book, and I’d ask him to read the passage aloud to me.

That fantasy catches fire as easily as the first.

One by one, I burn all of the little things I wanted with Sam. The drawing of him hard and leaking—about to penetrate me slowly and sweetly. I know it’s just a stereotype, but I imagined that he’d be a kind, gentle lover because he’s a penguin shifter.

There’s a drawing of him standing in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. A drawing of him cooking in nothing but an apron. A drawing of him working on his laptop in my bed.

I pause before burning the last drawing. This one I drew on a night I was particularly lonely. It’s of Sam fully clothed on my couch with all of his children. Mary is sitting on his lap, and they’re reading a book together.

In my favorite, most desperate fantasy, Sam adopted Mary, and he took care of us. I