Fighting with Fire #2 ✔

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟔 - 𝐄𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫

Changed?

We hadn't seen each other for four or five months, and Theo greeted me with you've changed?

I never should've let myself fall so goddamn hard for him. I loved him back, but stupidly I didn't say it back, and now it felt like I'd lost him forever.

"Yeah." I shrugged, concealing my feelings. "I've been working out quite a bit."

"I can tell." His eyes dragged lazily over my body.

Staring at him as he did so, I bit my tongue slightly, not letting my hormones take control of me as that gorgeous guy checked me out. I could feel the fire igniting within me.

Keep your emotions in check, Ember, breathe. Just breathe.

I breathed.

"So, you found your pack?" I asked as we started walking out of the airport.

"Yeah." He nodded. "Jason, Abi, Ryder, Storm and Jade — they're all alive. Three of us are dead, and there's a fourth missing."

"Oh., I said, unsure of how to respond.

"It's fine; we're working through it." He shrugged. "Anyway, I've got my anchor back now."

"So, you're pack's your anchor again?" I asked, chewing my lip anxiously.

"Yep." He nodded, looking happy, complete.

I swallowed; I wasn't his anchor anymore — I mean, why would I be? But, still, it hurt deep down inside that he didn't care about me in that way anymore.

"Where did you park?" Brushing my thoughts aside, I squinted in the sunshine across the car park. "Did you even drive here?"

"Yeah, I did actually — I just had to park on the other side of the parking lot," he replied. He hadn't even looked at me after checking me out.

Okay, so maybe I'd 'changed' a little, my uncle had me on tough training programmes every day: pushing myself to my limit physically, emotionally and mentally. Combined with eating better than I'd ever done in my life, it wasn't really too surprising to me that I'd 'changed'.

When we finally got to Theo's car, it turned out to be a rusted old pickup truck.

"Nice truck." I joked as I climbed inside of it, ignoring his offer to take my bags.

"Whatever." He huffed and started it up. "It used to belong to Ryder's dad, I guess you could say it came with the ranch."

Much to my surprise, the engine chugged to life and then trundled along the road. The total journey from the airport to his pack's ranch was about half an hour.

The only thing that kept it from being painful and in an awkward silence was the stunning landscape that surrounded us. When we left Missoula and headed further into the mountains, I was in awe as I stared outside the window — still adjusting to being sat on the right-hand side of a car without a steering wheel in front of me.

"You okay?" Theo asked without looking at me.

"Yeah, fine," I fibbed, beginning to feel a little jetlagged.

I let my head roll back against the seat, angled so I could watch Theo without seeming like I was.

He'd changed as well. He was definitely still serious, but he seemed happy about his pack. When I'd asked about them his face practically lit up, only to fall when he talked about the people who had died. He'd not shaved in a while, by the looks of it, so he had grown-out stubble on his jaws, that made him look like a rugged Montanan mountain man, kind of sexy.