HOTTIE NEXT DOOR

CHAPTER TEN

Victor's POV

Wait. I set the phone down slowly and stared at the screen.

If I was reading this right, then I had killed Arielle's mother. Not some stranger in the woods. Not a nameless woman I could keep nameless in my head to make it easier to live with. Arielle's mother. The woman whose daughter had slept in my bed, eaten at my table, looked at me with those open eyes like I was someone worth trusting.

I placed both hands on my head.

And the husband had seen me transform back. He had stood there in the dark and watched it happen and he knew exactly what I was. That meant Harrison Hunt could recognise me the moment he laid eyes on me. If our paths ever crossed, if he ever saw my face in the right light, there would be trouble I didn't want and couldn't outrun.

I stood up and went to pour myself a glass of water.

I filled it, raised it to my lips and stood there. I couldn't bring myself to drink. My mind kept pulling me back to the same place no matter how many times I dragged it away. The woods. The full moon. The shift coming on too fast and too hard to stop. I had spent years training myself not to go back there in my head and now it was all sitting right in front of me again, attached to a name and a face I actually knew.

I set the glass down on the counter without taking a sip and moved to the sitting room.

I sat down heavily on the sofa.

Why was I even this bothered?. It happened years ago. I had made peace with it. Or I thought I had. I moved, changed everything, kept to myself, cut off the pack. And it worked. Until now.

Or was it because I slept with her.?

Was that what this was? Guilt wearing the shape of something else, using her face because it was easier than sitting with what I had actually done to her family.

Snap out of it.

I said it out loud. My own voice came back flat and unconvincing in the empty room.

I exhaled and leaned back against the cushions, staring at the ceiling.

She had left me her number before she walked out that door. I remembered watching her write it on the back of a receipt she found in her bag and leave it on the kitchen counter without making a big deal of it. Just in case, she had said. In case of what, neither of us had specified. I had left it sitting there for two days before I finally folded it and put it in my wallet.

I picked up my phone.

I could call her. Just to…I turned the phone over in my hand. Just to what. Warn her.? Apologise.?

I dropped the phone back onto the cushion.

She would misunderstand. Or worse, she would understand perfectly and that would be the end of it. And then what. What exactly was I hoping for on the other side of that call. She had a father. A fiancé. A whole life that had been running long before she knocked on my door and would keep running long after.

The right thing to do was nothing.

Stay out of it. Keep the distance that already existed and let it grow until whatever this feeling was had nothing left to feed on.

My wolf disagreed.

It had been restless since the morning she left . Pacing, pushing, doing that low persistent pull it did when it had decided something and was waiting for me to catch up.

I stood up and went back to the window.

The city spread out below. The noise didn't reach me up here. I pressed one hand flat against the glass and looked at none of it. I was thinking about a girl with red hair.

I thought about the way she had looked at me in that last moment before she walked out. How she had dropped her eyes first.

I pushed off from the window.

This was pointless. Standing here thinking about her wasn't going to change what I had done.

I picked up the coffee from the table. It had gotten cold. I drank it anyway and carried the cup to the sink and rinsed it out and set it on the rack.

I picked my phone up one more time.

I opened her contact. Stared at the number for a long moment.

Then I locked the screen and put the phone face-down on the counter.

Not tonight.

Arielle's POV

The hand that dragged me into the car belonged to a strong man. There were four of them inside. I counted the moment the door slammed shut. What was worse, I couldn't recognise any of them. They all had black masks pulled down low.

"What do you think you're doing? Let me go, you bastards." I struggled hard, twisting against the grip, but his hands were too large around my wrists. I wasn't going anywhere.

The car pulled off. Through the rear window I could see mine still sitting in the road, engine running, door hanging open.

"You think nobody is going to look for me?" My voice came out angrier than I felt. "When my dad finds out I'm missing he'll…"

A cloth was shoved into my mouth before I could finish. The man holding me leaned in close.

"Shh. Be quiet."

I went still. Not because I wanted to. Because the way he said it told me that fighting harder right now was not the smartest move I could make. These men had planned this. They picked the right moment when I was alone and already emotional and not paying attention.

I needed to think. Not react.

I sat back and kept my eyes open, memorising everything I could. The route. The way the light changed as we moved further from the main road. The number of turns. One of the men had a tattoo on the inside of his left wrist.

My heart was hammering but my face stayed flat. Whoever sent them would be expecting me to fall apart.

I wasn't going to give them that.