“You gonna ask her out?” Wes asked innocently.
“You gonna give me shit about it?”
“No. I think it’s a good idea. Alana thinks Alexis is single. Plus, you have Serena up on this pedestal, and you need to put yourself out there and literally take any other person in the world out on a date to see she wasn’t that awesome.”
Ryder frowned suspiciously at the back of Wes’s head as he worked. “I thought you said bonds were stupid.”
“Yeah, they are. Sex isn’t stupid, though, and you need your dick stroked. Your ego, too. You talk a big game, have a sarcastic comment for everything, but I’ve seen you at Drat’s. You won’t even get a girl’s number anymore. Serena shook you up.”
“No, she shook up Stewart the accountant. P.S. we need Wi-Fi out here ASAP. It super-sucks having to make my weekly call to Serena in Alana’s café. I’m pretty sure I’m drawing the crowd on Tuesdays so the town can watch my chronic emasculation. I came this close to seeing Dottie today.” He squished his finger and thumb together. “This close.”
“You need to let that dog go, man.”
“Yeah, that’s what Sexy Lexi said, too.”
Wes snorted. “I like her already. Logical, thinks with her head, not her heart. I approve.”
Ryder picked up a stick off the porch and chucked it at him. “You know, bein’ heartless ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
Wes stood and leveled him with a green-eyed glance. “And how did that break up feel, Ryder? How does it still feel?”
Ryder ducked his gaze and refused to answer, but Wes wouldn’t be ignored.
“Huh? How does it feel?”
“Feels like she ripped my insides out,” Ryder admitted low. “Feels like I’m walking around empty.”
“Because you let her walk all over you, man. You completely ignored all the bad shit she was doing to you. Next girl, take your time, go in easy, just have some fun instead of thinking she’s the one. Guys like us aren’t meant to pair up like that.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re flight shifters! We don’t bond like bears, boars, or gorilla shifters. We can’t Turn a human. We don’t give claiming marks. We’re basically humans with the ability to shift into animals. Nothing more.”
“You can’t really believe that.”
“I do. And the sooner you realize it, the sooner you’ll see you’re searching for something that doesn’t exist. How can you ever be happy if you don’t learn to be content with what you have?”
Weston turned around and went back to fiddling with the switch on the four-wheeler. Ryder scrubbed his hand down his short facial scruff. Maybe Weston was right. Maybe Ryder needed to stop searching for a mate and just accept it wasn’t his destiny. It wasn’t his fate to have this epic love story like Harper and Wyatt, like Alana and Aaron. Maybe Beaston had given the prophesy that he and Weston would be friends—blood brothers—for always because he knew there would be no mate bond for either of them.
Fucking Stewart with his tiny penis and fucking Serena for wasting three years of his life with her lies. She’d sworn up and down she felt a bond with him, but she didn’t even know what love was. Hell, he obviously didn’t know what a bond was supposed to feel like either.
Maybe Wes was right, and Ryder just needed a casual sex-capade to get him out of this funk.
Chasing Sexy Lexi’s fine ass would be the perfect distraction.
Chapter Three
Lexi snapped the lid closed on the last plastic container of leftovers and set it with the others in the fridge. She liked this cabin’s kitchen most. Out of all of the high-end rustic properties Smoky Mountain Paradise Cabins owned, this was the biggest and most expensive for clients to rent. The kitchen was sprawling. Shining granite countertops gleamed in gray with dark speckles and veins of black shimmer, and the cabinets had been stained a rich walnut color. The appliances were new and stainless steel, and the stove had six burners instead of the four the other cabins had.
Her clients, Mr. and Mrs. Randal, had been awesome to serve. They’d emailed her the exact menu a month in advance and reserved her personal chef services for four meals of their seven-day stay. They’d chatted cordially in the hot tub on the back deck as she’d prepared the hors d’oeuvres, and they’d giggled like newlyweds during the four-course meal she served them.
They were here celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and Lexi had admired them all through dinner as their laughter echoed around the house. She wanted that. Someday.
Perhaps not right now when she was reeling from what Blake had done, but someday she wanted to fall head over heels in love with someone who only had eyes for her.
She cleaned the kitchen, packed her extra supplies in her tote bags, and then she brought the half-empty bottle of chilled white wine out to the back deck where the lovebirds were enjoying a game of checkers in the shade.
The view out here always astonished her. The cabin was on stilts and sat high up in the air overlooking a gently rolling river with thick greenery all around. The forest was coming to life after a long winter. This was her favorite part of the year, when the Smokies bloomed.
“Lexi, everything was wonderful,” Mrs. Randal gushed.
She grinned and topped off their wine glasses. “Well, I appreciate it. You have been a pleasure to serve. Is there anything you need from town?”