Free Werewolves in Love 3: Ready to Run by Kinsey Holley Page A

awkward, looking everywhere but at each other, keeping their distance, unable to think of anything to say.
    He offered her the first shower. She practically ran to the bathroom, closing the door behind her with an audible sigh of relief.
    He flopped down on a bed and called Nick, who answered on the first ring.
    “B, listen,” said his Alpha by way of hello. “First off, I left a present in your bank account. You done good. Second. Why’d you leave before the Feds showed up? I’ve been on the phone with them for hours—they’re going nuts to talk to you.”
    So Bryan told him everything, and Nick had plenty to say about it.
    When he got off the phone an hour later, Sara was still in the shower. He stretched out and laced his hands behind his head, thinking about what Nick had said and wondering if a motel this size could run out of hot water.
    “What are you going to do with her?” Nick had asked him.
    He’d told her she could stay at his place, but the idea of her actually living there, even for a short time, scared him to death. He’d never contemplated her being a part of his real life.
    He’d be responsible for her in Houston, at least for a while. She didn’t know a soul. She needed a job, a place to live. She had to start a whole new life, and it meant a big disruption in his.
    “Since when do you go for fae girls?”
    He didn’t. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Sara didn’t behave like a typical fae female. She wasn’t flighty, impulsive, dramatic, narcissistic, emotionally unstable, trouble with a capital T —all the things some guys found sexy, but Bryan found fucking annoying. None of that meant she was suitable long term.
    He didn’t like thinking that way, but at least it took his mind off the perverse and irrational part of him that loved the idea of having her around on a day to day basis.
    How long could a female stay in the shower?
    He put his ear to the door, but all he heard was running water. He should’ve been able to hear her moving around in the tub.
    So he knocked.
    “Sara?”
    No answer. No sound of a body moving, fingers in hair, picking up soap, arm brushing the shower curtain, nothing.
    Had she passed out? Was she drowning?
    Way to go, dumbass. Leave the drunk chick in the shower all by herself.
    “Sara?” he called a little louder. When he still got no answer, he banged on the door a couple times. “Sara! Answer me!” Jiggling the doorknob, he saw it wasn’t locked and pounded on the door one more time. “Sara, answer me or I’m coming in.”
    He waited one more second, then barged in.
    She didn’t look up when he jerked the shower curtain aside. With her arms wrapped around her legs and her head on her knees, she sat huddled and motionless at the end of the tub, barely out of range of the ice cold water pouring from the shower. She was shivering, whether from cold or shock he couldn’t tell.
    He leaned in to turn off the water, then grabbed a thin towel and dropped to his knees beside the tub. “Sara? Come on, time to get out.”
    She still didn’t answer. As he was deciding she’d gone truly catatonic this time, she turned her face to him. Her eyes were red and swollen, her cheeks splotchy. The look of exhausted misery on her sweet face squeezed his heart.
    “There’s something wrong with me,” she whispered abjectly.
    “You need a doctor? I’ll find an emergency room. Come on.” He took her arms to pull her up, but she didn’t move.
    “No,” she protested weakly, taking a gulp of air and shuddering. “Not like that. Not— I mean— I’m not sad.”
    “What?” Tending to a drunk, naked, traumatized fae chick in the bathroom of a cheap motel was way outside his skill set.
    “I’m scared, and I’m worried, and— And— And—” she took a few more gulps of air to quell the hiccups. “And I miss my friends, but— But I’m not sad. About my family. They’re all dead, and I don’t feel sad. I just— I just—” Her delicate features crumpled