“Yes.” We’d already covered this, but she needed the pain. Wanted to punish herself for some reason.
“Was she a magnificent lover, Grayson? This woman you were fond of? One you’ll never forget?”
I growled with annoyance I didn’t bother to control. The bite in her tone had been deliberate, and to get even, I asked, “Was that boy in the motel room a magnificent lover, Noa? Did he make you scream his name? Or have you forgotten it?”
Pink invaded her cheeks. “You know he wasn’t.”
“Are we through, or do you want it, blow-by-blow?”
“She did that for you?” Noa’s fork waggled in the air between us, almost as if she’d stab the subject in question. I grinned at the possessive light in her eyes.
“No.” Flashing some canines, I turned pure alphahole. “I never wanted that kind of intimacy with her.”
“What kind?”
“Profound.”
“Good answer.” Noa attacked her Alfredo. “Laura mentioned an accident.”
“We were evacuating the wounded, using surplus army trucks someone found in Spokane. They were cumbersome, noisy. Clearly marked with red crosses on the sides. Lila was driving a jeep at the head of the convoy. No one expected an attack. Mace discovered where the Alpen got the weapons, some underground network. Destroyed, now.”
“But Lila’s jeep?”
“Targeted with an explosive device.”
The explosion crippled the jeep and blocked the road while the Alpen attacked the convoy. We fought them back. I ran through the details quickly, watching the way the fork in Noa’s hand trembled.
“We put her leg back together.”
“You did,” she said.
“I was part of the team. I got the bones to knit together fast enough for the surgeons to put in the titanium pins, but Lila freaked when she woke up. Tolerated the pins for three days and then ordered the surgeons to take them out. She refused to do that to her wolf.”
“She can still shift when she needs to?” I asked.
“She’s stronger when she does. But her leg will always be weak. And her face will always have scars.”
“The burns?”
“Yes.”
“She blamed you?”
“She didn’t need to—I blamed myself. The explosion was meant for me, but last-minute, I changed the plans, told her to drive. I sent her to that jeep. Wanted her away from the front.”
We paused as the waitress returned to check on the food, then she turned up the outdoor heaters to offset the growing chill. The snowflakes that floated to the ground melted away, although on the streets, away from the heat, the dusting of snow was sticking.
Noa sighed, staring at the light through her wine. “Did your relationship last after that?”
“Through the months while she was recovering.”
“Who broke it off?”
“She did.”
“Why?”
“Lila suffered nightmares. Bouts of anger. She wanted me to love her the way she loved me. And I couldn’t. She said I refused to hear her because she was scarred and useless. I told her no, I’d never see her as scarred and useless. But I also couldn’t love her, and she told me to leave. Anson said it for the best. He didn’t want me in Westvale because it might trigger another episode.”
