All Fired Up--A Fated Mates Romance by Jenn Burke

Author:Jenn Burke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carina Press
Published: 2021-02-22T16:39:22+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

When we got home, I went straight upstairs to my room. Vaguely, I heard Colin pause at the bottom of the stairs and say something to someone—Lexi and Anika, or maybe Sam.

I peeled off my clothes and let them land where they would. I’d be annoyed tomorrow at my messiness, but right now I didn’t care. All I wanted was to get horizontal and forget.

Forget about standing on the roof.

Forget about seeing the damage Janie had wrought to her own family.

Forget about how her happy, smiling face had been reduced to...to that bloodied mess.

Colin slipped into my room, quieter than I thought a man of his size could be. “Got my new ID from Sam.”

“Great.”

“I’m now Colin Chan.”

“Alliteration. Nice.”

“Eh.”

He fell silent, but it was pretty hard to find oblivion when he was wandering around my room, poking his nose into things. He stopped at my desk, noticing the piles of sketchbooks. “You draw?”

I pulled the bedcovers tight around me and grunted an affirmative. It was a stupid question, because clearly I did.

“Can I look?”

“Yeah,” I said gruffly, then added, “Thanks for asking first.”

He flipped through the pages of one. It was mostly studies—hands, noses, ears, that sort of thing. He let out a low whistle and moved onto the next, where I’d sketched out various plants in the gardens around the house. A third book held sketches of my family—Wes and Hudson looking all lovey-dovey when they thought no one was looking, Lexi during a ritual of some sort, I forget what now, and Sam in her wolf form.

I didn’t have the energy to stop him from opening the fourth book.

“Who’s this?” He held it up, open to a page with Iskander’s profile. That entire book was filled with sketches of Isk, ones I’d drawn before he...

Well. Before.

“His name was Iskander.” My voice came out raw, more intense than I wanted it to, but the events of the day—seeing Janie—brought all that pain right back to the surface.

Maybe Colin heard it, or maybe he caught on to the was, but all he said was “Oh” and put the book down. He eyed the corner I’d carved out for my desk and the lack of natural light. There were windows, sure, but it wasn’t the sun-draped studio I’d always dreamed of.

“You should use that room on the third floor. The one we—”

“I know the one.” The bedroom with the egress window. It faced the right direction and it had plenty of windows. It was being used for storage, with random bits of furniture in it, but I assumed Hudson or Wes had plans for it. Maybe as housing for one of the band. I shrugged. “Whatever.”

Rather than push, Colin picked my clothes up off the ground, tossed them in the hamper, and started getting undressed himself.

That startled me into sitting up. “You don’t have to—”

“I said I was going to stay with you, and I meant it.”

“I know, but it’s not—I just need to hide from the world awhile, you know?”

He paused.

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