Jericho kicked back his chair and knocked it over. “You guys have it all wrong!” he shouted. “You keep talking like she was a bad influence in my life, but you didn’t know her. She was the best damn thing I ever lost! Twice I fucking lost her.”
He spun around, squeezing his eyes shut and taking another drag. Such an idiot. He’d blown it. Should have never let those women inside the house. Should have been a better man. Should have proposed to her before he lost her. Should have…
“I think you need to cool it and take a walk,” Wheeler said from the entrance to the dining room.
“Go to hell,” Jericho spat, pacing the floor, hair falling in his face as he stared at his shoes.
Wheeler gripped his shoulders. “Be chill. Take a long walk and…”
Jericho shoved him in the chest and knocked him back two feet. Wheeler stalked forward and gripped his shirt in a tight fist, and that’s when Jericho swung. Austin reached to pull him off while Jericho chanted, “Fuck it all!”
“You can get any damn woman you want!” Wheeler shouted.
Jericho struggled against Austin’s vise-like grip. “I don’t want another woman! Don’t you get it?”
“No, maybe you need to fill me in,” Wheeler snarled. “Look at all the trouble she’s brought. Look at what the hell she’s done to you. You’re throwing swings at your own pack brothers. No woman is worth all that.”
Jericho shoved Austin off him and staggered back, his voice cracking. Pain lanced through his chest—the worst kind of searing pain that only a broken heart can bring. “She was worth all that. She was worth everything! I never had a purpose in this world until Isabelle came along. She pushed me into doing the one thing I do well, and that’s music. She gave me a reason to live and I threw it all away,” he growled and shouted all at once. “Every good thing about me I owe to that woman. I fucked up my own life because I couldn’t appreciate what I had right in front of me. All those women—do you think they ever meant a damn thing? I’ve always loved her, I was just too damn scared to think she could love me back. What’s to love? I’m just a junkie, a singer who lets women use him—she should have left me long before she did. But Isabelle stuck it out and never gave up on me. She had faith when I didn’t.” He slid down the wall and covered his face with tight fists. Tears wet his lashes.
“Let’s leave him alone,” Austin murmured.
Isabelle had put her trust in him, hoping he was a changed man. Maybe Jericho hadn’t lain in bed with that woman by choice, but he’d put himself in that situation. He had become a ghost of a man over the years, going through the motions. The women had just become a way to forget how alone he felt.
He picked up his cigarette from the floor and put it between his lips, watching the tip glow orange and crackle as he pulled in a taste. Now he knew with absolute certainty that what he’d felt his entire life wasn’t just a figment of his imagination.
Isabelle was his life mate.
She was the woman he was born to love.
Shifters often talked about born life mates—couples who had an unbreakable connection. A man could sense when his woman was in danger, and Jericho had felt pangs of worry on several occasions, like restless insects crawling in his stomach. He’d felt it bad earlier that night when Isabelle was supposed to be with Wheeler. It was so powerful he almost shifted, but no one said anything had gone wrong, so he’d dismissed it. Maybe he was going crazy.
Wheeler swaggered in and took a seat on the floor to his right. He pulled up his knees and draped his arms over them, tipping his head back.
Jericho stayed silent, stoically watching his cigarette wasting away between his fingers.
“You still got the ring?” Wheeler asked. “You should hang on to it. You might find another girl to give it to.”
As if that were an option.
“What happened with you two last night?” Jericho asked in a cracked voice.
“We found what Delgado’s been looking for. Hawk kept it stashed in a safe in the house where you two were held prisoner. Some asshole was there—one of Delgado’s men. Good thing we found the money and drugs. Now we can get that moron off our ass. These damn humans are nothing but trouble.”
“Wait, hit rewind. Someone was there with you?”
Wheeler touched his cheek and stared at the drop of blood on his finger, smearing it between his fingers. “Yeah. Some asshole tried shoving Izzy in the Jacuzzi. I would have caught him if her hair hadn’t gotten stuck in the jets.”
Jericho’s muscles tensed. “What? Austin didn’t tell me this.”
Wheeler kept dabbing his finger on the small cut. “No, and he wouldn’t have. He was a little preoccupied holding your hair while you puked in the toilet like a little—”
“Get on with your story,” Jericho bit out.
“I had to cut off a chunk of her hair with my knife or she would have drowned in that damn thing. It got tangled up in one of those little…” He twirled his finger in a circle. “Anyhow, now I have to go back and drain the tub. If someone gets nosy and finds a chunk of red hair floating around in there, it’s going to raise eyebrows.”