Page 51 of The Golden Receiver

“Evie?” Kieran asked, one of his eyebrows raised.

Okay, maybe it was.

“Do not call me that,” I warned him. “They get away with it because they’re basically family.”

“Basically?” Nick snorted. “I’m telling Kali that you said we’re only basically family.”

“Speaking of, we need to go,” Charlie reminded us, practical as always.

“Nice to meet you.” Kieran’s words sounded painfully polite. Then he continued down the path. I couldn’t take my eyes off him as I watched him walk away.

“Oh, you like him, like him,” Serena singsonged. “I knew you were crushing, but you’ve got it bad.”

“Shut up.”

“Oh, no, we are talking about this,” Serena teased. She looped one of her thin arms through mine and started dragging me toward the parking lot. Nick and Charlie followed us. “Does the human know you’re crushing on him? Or is he painfully oblivious? He seems like he might be the oblivious type.”

“What does that even mean?” Nick questioned. “How does someone seem like the oblivious type?”

“Ugh, it’s a thing. But does he know?”

I shrugged. I didn’t have an answer to that question. I knew a shrug wouldn’t be enough for Serena, but I couldn’t answer it. If Kieran knew I had a crush on him, he’d never let on. He knew I was attracted to him because we were hooking up. He knew I liked his company because we spent time together.

Maybe he did know, and if he did, I wasn’t sure if it was a good sign or a bad sign.

Maybe I did need this talk with Serena, Nick, and Charlie. Maybe they could help me figure it out.

They didn’t.

All they did was tease me about my crush and ask invasive questions about if Kieran and I had kissed. I’d ended up running back to campus after our meeting instead of risking round two of their questions. Besides, running as a werewolf was just relaxing. It got me out of my head for a while. I was able to just follow my instincts.

I chose to ignore the fact that every instinct led me back to Kieran.

Literally.

I ended up outside his dorm room door, listening to the quiet noises going on behind it. Which was invasive and wrong.

I forced myself upstairs to my own room and pretended that had never happened.

The next day, Kieran was back to normal. He asked me about my night with the pack and listened when I told him about our plans for the blood moon. It would be dinner at the warehouse followed by our annual run. I would probably sleep there that night, and I’d run back to campus in the morning. It wasn’t like shifting back to a human before the sun came up would be an option.

He looked excited about the idea of running with me when I was shifted. I almost offered to shift right then to try it out, but I didn’t.

The day was normal all the way until we got to the eleven-on-eleven drills during practice.

One minute, we were lined up. Our center snapped the ball to Eric. I started to run the route that was called, dodging and weaving around defenders. Kieran was supposed to be running another route, one that didn’t take him as deep up the opposite side of the field.

Except he didn’t make it past the line of scrimmage.

He was tackled even though he didn’t have the ball. I heard the metallic sound of the whistle and Coach Shaw shouting at the defender who had tackled him. I saw Eric lean down to help Kieran up. My heart was racing. Anger burned in my blood.

There was no reason he should have been tackled.

I started running toward the defender who had hit him. I was practically vibrating with rage. I could feel it happening.

An uncontrolled shift.

It had been years since it happened. Like it hadn’t happened since puberty. I could feel my body trying to change shapes, and I tried to hold myself together. I forced myself to breathe, but every breath was filled with Kieran’s scent. Even across the field, he was all I could smell. All I could think about.