Chapter 5: Jake

When the hell had the cab of the truck gotten so damned small? Jake tapped his finger against the armrest and kept his face pointed to the wind as he drove. She smelled good. Fuck that, she smelled delicious.

In fact, everything about Delilah Henry appealed to him. The long, wavy hair that hung over her eyes. The way she tossed it back as she talked. The tough-girl expression she’d worn when Xavier had made that dig about her privacy policy. And the curves. God, the way her ass looked in those jeans had killed him.

But every time he looked at her, he saw Nash’s stupid vision: a girl, human, with wavy hair, wounded and dying on the floor. Jake standing over her, guilty.

Jake had always thought it was pretty cool, the things his friend saw sometimes when he meditated. The other guys gave him shit for it, especially Harley, but then Nash had started being right about everything. They didn’t give him shit so much anymore.

Nash was definitely a rarity. A shifter who could “see” as Nash had called it. Jake had never heard of it but Nash insisted his whole family had the sight, and back in Colorado, growing up, they’d even done these weird circles sometimes, passing a peace pipe or some shit, and talking about visions like they were movies everyone wanted to go see. He said it was a trait descended from the original shifter polar bears in Alaska. Something about the northern lights making patterns that spelled our futures and our pasts. Hippie bull shit.

It’d been months since Nash had seen anything, and not for lack of trying. Jake could still remember that night a couple of months back with the five them around the campfire. They’d had a few too many. Okay, a lot too many. Xavier had even joined them which was a rarity. They’d gone for a midnight swim in the lake and come back to find Nash meditating or whatever hippie bull shit he did. And then the vision had come.

“You’re going to fall in love with a human. And then you’re going to kill her.”

He’d played it off like it hadn’t affected him, but those words, coming from Nash, terrified him.

He’d brushed it off for months now. Mostly because of the love part. With Xavier resisting his bear’s urges to mate for so long now, that part of Jake had gone dormant too. He rarely saw the same girl more than once. Hell, it’d been months since his last date. Love was the last thing on his mind.

But then Delilah had walked in today and some part of him had known. Even without the recognition of her hair and skin exactly the way Nash had described. His bear had lost its mind the moment she’d walked in. He wanted her. Bad. Now, her humanity practically screamed at him from across the truck. Fragile. Breakable. And he’d be damned if he was the one to break her.

A soft gurgling sound came from across the bench seat. Jake glanced over and Delilah smiled wryly. “Sorry,” she said, her hand on her stomach.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Apparently the red-eye flights don’t serve meals anymore. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

“Well, shit, woman.” He made a quick right, backtracking the way they’d come. “We can’t have you starving on the job.”

He stopped at the first drive-through he spotted and ordered a breakfast meal to go. “I’ll drop you at your motel. You can eat and shower and then I’ll come pick you up and we can get started,” he said.

He lingered at the window, tapping his fingers in impatience. Every time Delilah’s stomach growled, he did too. The cashier seemed like a nice enough girl and Jake’s manners wouldn’t let him fuss at her but his bear’s patience was waning. Over getting her some breakfast? He definitely needed to rein it in. He couldn’t fall for her. Not if it meant her death.