Enigma (30 page)

Instead of answering, Jackson pushed the remainder of his sandwich away. “Can I ask you something? Full disclosure.”

Wary, Patrick nodded.

“Does it matter when Anna comes around, as long as she does?” he asked quietly. “A month, a year—will it make any difference to you? Or are you done?”

He’d been blaming all that pain on his shoulder, but the agony slicing through him started in his heart and shattered upward to stick in his throat. He tried to swallow, and it only made it worse. “Anna’s not coming around.”

“Humor me, McNamara. Just answer the question.”

There was no answer, because he’d been lying to himself from the start, and lying to her too, with all his bluster about how he was so tough, how he could take anything she dished out. The man who wanted to keep up with Anna Lenoir had to be a rock. Physically sturdy enough that she wouldn’t have to worry, and emotionally solid enough to weather her fear.

He was neither. Too broken, and too breakable. A liability, one that would crush her heart and get her killed. And the worst fucking part was that he still wanted her. His role in this little drama should have been as the selfless hero, the one tough enough to walk away and save them both.

He couldn’t even get
that
part right. “Are you really going to make me say it?”

Jackson stared at him for too long before taking a sip of his beer and shaking his head. “Trying to wrap my head around the situation, that’s all.”

Because the man seemed earnest—and because Patrick was too damn weak to turn away what felt like an offer of friendship, the only one he might get—he struggled to find the right words. “I love her. That’s not going to go away. Not in a month, not in a year. But it doesn’t change everything else.”

“No, everything else is up to her.” Jackson raised both eyebrows. “It’d be true anyway, but we’re talking about an alpha shifter here, and I happen to know a few things about those.”

Patrick stilled. Jackson’s wife wasn’t a wolf, and with no hierarchy to balance her against, it was easy to forget her respective strength. But he’d seen her tear through men who got too close to Jackson in a fight. “I suppose you do.”

“Yeah, I do. And rule number one is to check your ego at the door.” Jackson flashed him a knowing look. “You try playing games because you think you know what these women need or want to hear, and you’re just going to screw yourself.”

Patrick couldn’t help bristling. “I think I have my ego in check.”

“Like how you can barely walk, but you still trudged your ass over to the fridge to fetch me a beer?”

“Fuck you.” The curse lacked heat because Jackson was right, and Patrick drained half his beer to get the taste of that realization out of his mouth. “I don’t care that she’s stronger than me. She’s the one who cares.”

Jackson snorted.

Patrick ground his teeth together. “You telling me she doesn’t?”

The other caster shook his head. “I’ve known Anna for a few years now. The one thing I’ve learned? She’ll surprise you. She’s stubborn, so you think she’s dead set on something, right? But you give her new information, and she’ll up and change her mind.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “She’s not afraid to be wrong. Are you hearing me?”

It was hope, and hope was a thousand times more painful than dying. Hope got under your skin, made you
feel
, and he’d been counting on polite, boring numbness to carry him through the next couple decades. “Are you saying I should be chasing after her?”

“She’s a wild thing, McNamara. You can’t chase her down. But if you’re patient, you can stand still and wait for her to come to you.”

Maybe he did have an ego problem, because it was hard to give voice to the quiet panic fluttering in his chest. “It’s not the waiting that kills me. It’s knowing she might leave again. What’s changed?”

“Other than a few miracles here and there?” Jackson gathered up the rest of his lunch and tossed it into the bag. “Oh, not much.”

Patrick had thrown the word around, but he hadn’t really thought about it. Miracles gave people hope. They made people believe. He’d waved his flaming sword like a goddamn angel and brought Oscar Ochoa back from the dead. Kind of.

Maybe he needed to start believing again.

Patrick polished off his beer and reached for his chips. “You should finish eating. Enjoy a meal without a shapeshifter kid around. At the rate everyone’s getting knocked up, we’re all gonna be wrestling for food for the next twenty years.”

Jackson eyed him for a moment and then grinned. “Big plans. That’s what I like to hear.”

The plans were the easy part. He could lie to himself for a while, settle down into a new life and try to believe in a happy ending. But the more he believed, the harder it would be to wait. It was already tempting to walk out the door, chase her down, make
her
believe too.

Trying to make her believe was why he kept losing her.

His only hope was to keep distracted, so he pinned Jackson with a grumpy glare. “Don’t get too excited. While I’m sitting here, patiently waiting to see if my life’s gonna suck or not,
you
have to teach me how to use all this magic I can’t seem to control. No one wants me wandering through life with my subconscious driving.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal.”

Anna was busy shoving things into a box when someone knocked on the door of the apartment she’d once shared with Sera. A week and a half had passed—a week and a fucking half—and her heart still jumped into her throat, because it might be Patrick.

Stupid,
she chastised silently, crossing to answer.

Kat snatched her hand back from the doorknob and shoved her keys behind her back before turning pink. “I wasn’t going to break in.”

“Really?” Anna stepped back and waved her in. “What would you call it, then?”

“Using the fact that my name’s still on the lease as an excuse to be nosy?” Kat strode past her and stopped in the living room when her gaze fell on the boxes. “Shit.”

“I settled up through the end of the lease term.” Anna turned to hide her burning cheeks. “Don’t tell anyone, okay? They’ll just try to talk me into sticking around.”

“Oh, unlike me?” Kat pivoted and frowned. “I know we haven’t always been BFFs, and yeah, you’re super hot and used to bang my boyfriend, so that was a little intimidating at first…but I
like
you. So don’t think I’m gonna kick you out of town.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m leaving on my own.”

“But
why
? You saved the world. Or at least a tiny corner of it.”

“And there’s plenty more left to do out there.” Besides, New Orleans wasn’t safe anymore, not with all the happy couples moving back—Julio and Sera, Carmen and Alec. Even Nick and Derek were looking at picturesque houses in the Garden District.

Then there were the echoes. Memories filled the city, especially the apartment above the bar. Nick had offered to give Anna a stupidly good deal on it, but it was the one place that reminded her of Patrick more than any other. Most of the rest of their time had been spent on the road, in a series of bland, interchangeable motel rooms, but it had all started there, in that tiny apartment.

No fucking way.

“Oh,” Kat whispered. She was clutching her chest, and she looked like she was going to cry.

Anna scrambled for something to head it off. “I’m not falling off the edge of the earth. I’ll be back around. I always am.”

“Anna, oh my
God
…” She sucked in an unsteady breath. “I’m not trying to snoop, I swear I’m not. But you’re—how are you still standing?”

Goddamn empaths. Anna folded the flaps of the box closed, set it aside and pinned Kat with a flat look. “What am I supposed to do, cry?”

“Uh, yeah.” Kat dropped to the arm of the couch and rubbed her hand over her chest. “Sob, weep, punch walls—well, maybe don’t do that. I want my deposit back. But
goddamn
, if I felt half this bad, I’d be weeping in the bathtub.”

If Anna had had that kind of fight left in her, she might not have to walk away. “You’ll take care of him, right? You all will. That’s enough for me.”

“Well, I will,” Kat retorted, an edge creeping into her voice. “But come on, Anna. Really? You think Sera’s going to bake him cookies and pet him after he runs her best friend out of town? You think any of your friends are? Since when do you lie to yourself?”

“They will.” The words tried to explode out of her, but Anna forced them out slowly. Firmly. “Because Patr—because he isn’t running me out of town. This is me,
my
choice, and I’m making it.”

Kat narrowed her eyes. “You know, I can’t tell. I can’t tell if you believe it or not. I guess that means you can’t, either.”

Her patience was fraying, and even her deep, bracing breath didn’t ease the burning pressure behind and between her eyes, the sensation she’d learned to recognize over the last week—tears. She’d been running fine on autopilot, but with Kat poking at sore spots, her composure wouldn’t last long. “Are you done?”

“I don’t know,” Kat replied, watching her warily. “You were tough enough to throw some hard truths in my face about Andrew, ones I needed to hear. Are you tough enough to listen?”

Kat was right about one thing—she didn’t lie to herself. “Not even close.”

“Too bad. This one’s non-negotiable.” She shot off the couch and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Anna Lenoir, you can deny it all you want, but this is the damn truth. People love you.”

It sounded more like a warning than a reminder. “I’ve already talked to Nick, and I’ll talk to Sera too. They’re not going to give him a hard time.”

“I’m not talking about Patrick anymore. I’m talking about you.” Her fingers dug into Anna’s flesh through her T-shirt. “People love you. They want you in their lives.”

The pain sparked something scarier—dread. “I have
friends
, Kat. It’s different. All I have to do is not be an asshole, and things work out fine. They love me because I haven’t let them down.”

Kat choked on a laugh. “Oh, you’re kind of an asshole, but we still love you. And if you ever let us down, that’d be okay too. It happens.”

“Then you’re all crazy.”

“No, we’re all selfish. Who wants a perfect friend getting all judgey every time we inevitably screw up? And we do. Because people do that.”

People do that.
She laid it out like some kind of universal truth, as if the world revolved around a constant give and take of love and forgiveness. Maybe it did, because what the fuck did Anna know? That was the point, the whole unfortunate affair distilled to its essence, exactly what she’d been saying all along.

She said it again now, but somehow it sounded like a plea instead of a denial. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“Who does?” Kat’s voice gentled to a whisper, and she stroked Anna’s hair away from her face. “Think about your friends, really
think
. Maybe I’m the luckiest, because even though my mom joined a crazy cult and got herself and his parents killed, Derek still raised me. Julio’s father tried to off him
and
Sera, and almost killed Carmen and Miguel too. And God, Alec’s family murdered his first wife. Do you think any of us learned how to not be completely hopeless at this shit?”

“But you manage. You get it done.”

“Oh, we do? You wouldn’t say that if you caught us on a bad day. If you saw Nick when Derek’s been smothering her, or had to be within a hundred yards of Mackenzie after Jackson took Cody to meet one of his contacts. The only big secret we have figured out?” Kat nudged the box with her foot. “You can’t get it done if you leave.”

I thought you were worth it.
Patrick’s words, and they throbbed in her brain. Was that the most important thing to him, that no matter how difficult things got or how much they hurt each other, that they never let the bad times win? That they kept trying, kept fighting.

That they stayed together.

Anna had a mother who denied her existence out of pride and shame, and a father with a serious fucking addiction problem. What did Patrick have? A dead mother and a crazy father he’d had to take out himself. He’d even lost his brothers, but he was still willing to walk right through the pain of loss and
try
. For her.

It was a damn humbling realization. “You genius types are annoying. You know that, right?”

Kat’s abrupt laughter held more than a little relief. “Isn’t that why you jocks are always shoving us into lockers?”

“I don’t know.” Anna hesitated. “Did Ben ever tell you he had another brother?”

The humor faded from Kat’s expression. “You mean Arthur?”

“I don’t know his name.” Anna rubbed her hands over her chilled arms. “Did he ever try to track him down?”

“I think so, but—” Kat paled. “Oh God, I’m an idiot. I was so tied up in my own shit, I didn’t even think—Patrick has family out there.”

“It might be nothing,” Anna assured her. “A dead end. But if we’re talking about friends and family, about not being alone…”

“No, you don’t understand. Ben found him a couple years ago. Back when I was still talking about tracking down information on my mom…” Kat hauled her phone out of her pocket. “He did it just to see if he could, and it took him about two days. Arthur Ryan. He married a witch, I think, and they live in Kansas. Patrick has nieces, nephews—the whole deal.”