If I Were Allowed To Love You

Nineteen

"Married," Theo whispered, dejected. "After twenty-five years, I find my mate, and he's about to marry my best friend, who is your mate. What the fuck?"

"Yes, can I get a corndog with mustard, please," Ryan asked a vendor, and Theo screamed at the sky. "Screaming is not going to change anything."

"How the hell can you eat right now," he cried, wiping furiously at his eyes. "I never even got to meet him, and he's now engaged. I missed a chance I didn't even know I had. And you lost your chance to be with Melissa for good, yet you decide to buy a fucking corndog."

"That's because the rejection I faced for seven years has finally crashed back to me at full force," he replied as he took a bite. "Trust me, it fucking sucks that Melissa is with someone else, but I had a seven year gap where I was away from her. I had the chance to move on. It was nice to dream for a little while of the chance to be with her in the future, but there's nothing I can do now. She's marrying someone she loves a lot. She's going to be happy, and I'm happy for her."

"Didn't you want to be the person who could make her happy?" Theo asked. "Didn't you want to be the person who would make her smile?"

"I can still be that for her. She's my soulmate, but I'm not hers. Maybe I'm meant to be friends with her for the rest of my life, and as heartbreaking as that is, I'll suffer for her, because I love her so much. That's what it means to be in love."

"Don't you want to cry?"

"Not now," he whispered with a smile. "I'll cry when I'm alone. But for now, this is a happy moment for both our mates. As sad as it may be, we need to be happy for them. They're humans, and they've found someone they want to spend the rest of their lives with. To be a mate is to put the other's happiness before our own. So we should celebrate tonight for them and their sake. They deserve this night."

As difficult as it was to believe, Theo nodded in agreement. He knew who his mate was, and at the end of the day, he was going to marry someone else. As painful of a reality as it was to accept, he knew he had to. There was nothing he could do. His best friend was in love, and he had waited for her to find happiness in her ever-troubling life since the day he first met her. He assumed it would be with his brother, but if she found it with someone else, he was happy for her. Even if it was his own mate.

Though he said the words himself, Ryan had difficulty believing his own words as well. He got his hopes up, and they were shot down. Melissa would marry her best friend's mate, and he refused to get in the middle of it by telling her about how he was a werewolf and how they were mates. Happiness was bliss, and as long as she would never know, then she would never feel the same guilt from before as she struggled with her feelings for him, wondering if dating him would cause her to break apart his family. She was happy with someone else, and no matter the difficulty, he planned to support her.

Ryan sat next to his brother, acting as a shoulder for him to cry on as they waited for everyone to leave the circus, thus allowing them to talk to Melissa in private. As the sun finally disappeared over the horizon and only street lamps and truck lights were left to illuminate the circus grounds, Ryan perked up and whispered, "Melissa."

"Man, fuck you, I wanted to scare you," she laughed.

Theo jumped off Ryan's shoulder and screamed in glee when he saw Melissa. Replacing the pain of his mate with the joy of seeing his best friend, he ran up to Melissa and picked her up, spinning her around as he laughed loudly. Ryan smiled as he stood up from the bench and stepped over to the two.

"Your hair is shorter."

"That's the first thing you say to me?"

"It was always your average blue pixie cut, but now it's shaved and short and so beautiful." Theo clasped his hand over his mouth and blinked back a new wave of tears. "And you're about to get married."