Unfated Mates: A Forbidden Coming-of-Age Werewolf Romance

Caleb crouched low beside the house, his black fur shrouded in the darkness of the night, while he watched the man in the truck guzzling the last of his beer. The car door flew open a moment later, accompanied by a loud belch, and the man clambered out to stagger towards the front door.

He would have preferred a chase, running after him, terrifying him for a while first, rather than lying in wait. The thrill of the hunt wasn’t something he’d indulged in lately, since he’d been trying to live as a human, but these humans lived too close to one another. The man would scream and someone would be sure to call the cops or—worse—try to help the man themselves. And Caleb didn’t want to risk hurting anyone else.

The man fumbled at the lock, and Caleb’s muscles strained with the effort to wait. He needed to silence him in his first lunge, but the man’s head was down too low.

“Fuckin’ bitch,” the man muttered before grunting once he managed to jam the key in the lock. “That’s right, open for daddy.”

Caleb dug his claws into the earth, locking his snarl in his throat before it could escape. This was it. If he waited any longer, he’d have to go inside, and they might not dismiss it as an animal attack.

The man shoved the door open just as a bolt of darkness flew toward him, and he turned his head toward the side of his house for just an instant—but it was long enough.

Caleb’s jaws clamped into his throat, capturing his strangled cry and crushing his windpipe while warm blood spurted into his mouth. The man’s hands clawed at him desperately, ripping at his fur, and Caleb slammed him to the ground, dragging him back into the darkness where he’d been hiding.

Sickness filled his gut as the man’s attempts to free himself became more feeble. This was too easy. Far too easy. His death should have been more painful. More terrifying and humiliating. He should have known exactly why he was dying and who he never, ever should have touched.

Caleb consoled himself by tearing his claws through the man’s stomach, relishing the brief spasm that went through the body before the heart gave out at last. He shook the corpse viciously, hearing a bone snap when a leg hit the side of the house. Too loud. The limp form fell from his jaws as he spit him out.

His blood was disgusting, and Caleb wanted nothing more than to piss on him and leave. But that would invite curiosity. Questions. And Caleb’s parents had told him they must always keep their existence hidden from humans. Of course, they’d also told him never to hunt humans, but some of their rules made more sense to him than others.

He bit into the body, tearing through it quickly. If he left it in enough pieces, hopefully they wouldn’t notice none of it had been eaten. Coyotes in the area had been known to tear into dogs on occasion, so Caleb mimicked their behavior as much as possible.

A few minutes later, he darted back toward the woods, racing to the rocky area deep inside where he’d left his clothes. He wouldn’t leave a trail showing the change in tracks, and his shift would take care of all the blood on his coat. It would mean walking a few miles on human legs back to Nat’s, but there would be no sign to lead anyone back to her door. Nothing to link his female to the mangled body of the grotesque creature who had dared to hurt her. Nothing to take him away from her.

“It’s two in the morning!” Nat hissed, pulling him inside and closing the door. The air of the trailer sat stale and sticky on his skin, and he leaned into her quickly to breathe, her warm, sweet fragrance a balm to his tortured lungs.

“I missed you,” he murmured, nuzzling her as he picked her up to carry her back to their room. Caleb wasn’t sure why Nat bothered whispering. Her mother was passed out on the couch as usual, and nothing seemed to wake her.

He fought with disgust each time he saw the woman. She’d helped him, and he was grateful, but she’d also abandoned her daughter for years, leaving her to fend for herself against predators far worse than anything Caleb had faced in the wild. He could never forgive that.

But now he was here, and no one would hurt her again.

“Would you put me down!” she whispered again, smacking his back while he kicked the bedroom door closed. Her heart was beating really fast, and her scent had changed to the one he loved so much, but she seemed mad at him, too. He looked down at her with a frown but didn’t let go.

“You shouldn’t have been waiting up for me.”

She kept smacking him, her heart hammering against his chest, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Why are you hitting me? I know you think I’m attractive right now.”

Her choked sound was a mix of frustration and something he couldn’t figure out, and she shoved her hands against his chest.

“You are the most ridiculous…cocky…would you let me go!” she exploded, finally looking up to glare at him.

Her face was really red, and he thought about telling her, but he’d tried that before and it never went well. Maybe she really did want him to let her go.

He could feel the sadness in his eyes when he released her.

“Don’t you dare give me that look!” she fumed. “I’ve been worried for hours! You can’t just come back and…and…”

Her high pitched little yip was too cute, and he couldn’t help grinning. She grabbed a pillow and slung it at him, and he let her hit him, still smiling.

“Why were you worried? I’m a wolf! Everything else should worry,” he said with a smug smile, grabbing the pillow mid-swing and reaching for her again. She jumped back, catching her foot on the edge of the mattress, and he pulled her into his arms to tumble onto the cushioned surface together.

His smile faltered as he stared down into her beautiful eyes. The pain was only getting worse, and some nights it wouldn’t go away at all. He hadn’t told her, but it had started bothering him even after he shifted, although it was different somehow. Less cutting and more…burning. And no matter which form he was in, it felt like a nonstop race between his desire to be close to her and the pain that always rose up to stop him.

Wait. Were her eyes wet?

“Nat…why are you crying?”

“I am not crying!” She glared at him while a small tear leaked out of the corner of her eye. He leaned down to lick it away softly, a whine sounding in his throat.

“Why are you sad? Please tell me…” He kissed her skin, his body tensing when pain shot into his gut. No. He wanted to kiss her. But his brow furrowed deeply as he continued pressing soft kisses along her cheek.

A whimper laced her groan, and her arms wrapped around him while she buried her face in his neck, stopping him from kissing her. He frowned.

“I thought…I mean, why shouldn’t you…” she clenched him harder. “What if you get tired of coming back?”

He leaned up to glare down at her.

“You still think I would leave? What the fuck, Nat!” Fuck was a new addition to his vocabulary, and he thought it rather nicely captured his feelings.

“Well I know you hate being here! You said it—wearing clothes, going to school. How long until it’s just too much? I’m stuck, but there’s no reason that you should be, too,” she finished with worry in her eyes. Guilt.

He glared harder.

“No reason? You’re my reason!”

“That’s a bad reason!”

“Don’t you ever say that.” He wanted to shake her. To kiss her. He did both before leaning back up, his stomach a hard knot in his gut as he looked down at her soft eyes. “Yes, clothes are stupid and so is school. Although some of the games are okay, I guess. And sitting with you at lunch. But yeah—a lot of it sucks.

“Being able to run and hunt and sleep under the stars was the best part of living for me for years. I love it. But…” Pain hit him again, but this time higher in his chest. His voice softened.

“But then something better came into my life. A lot better. And sleeping with you is so much better than sleeping under the stars, Nat,” he whispered, leaning down to kiss her once again. Her scent rushed through him when their tongues met, and he dug his hands into the bed, struggling to hold on just a little longer.

Her moan plunged a knife through him, and he barely had time to pull back and tear his clothes off before he shifted. He turned in a circle a couple of times, frustrated. It was still there. An ache. His whine pierced the silence of the room, and Nat leaned forward to stroke his fur.

“It was hurting? What can I do?” Her voice soothed him, and he crawled into bed beside her, curling up and laying his muzzle across her neck.

“Caleb,” she coughed, pushing him a bit. “I need to breathe, you know.”

He whined, shifting his position in the bed, needing to be as close as possible. She wouldn’t let him put his muzzle where he’d really like, where he could drown in her scent, where the ache in his gut would somehow be better and so much worse at the same time.

He nuzzled her neck again, licking the skin until she giggled, and tried resting his head on her once more. This time she just sighed and turned a bit until he felt her relax.

He’d asked her to give him time to figure it out, and every day for the past month, he’d tried. But the only thing he’d figured out was that he couldn’t bear being away from her and he couldn’t bear being close to her. And it was getting worse.

At least he could take care of the threats in her life. One down and one more to go for now. And once both of the bad men were gone, he would start going through the list of everyone else who had hurt her, starting with that boy down the street.

The sound of Nat’s breathing slipping into sleep pierced the burning pain in his gut, letting it spread throughout his body in a warm, deep ache. And his own breathing grew steady as sleep opened her arms to him at last.

“Man. Did you see Heather today?” The boy cupped his soapy hands around his bare chest while the shower head sprayed above him. “You can see all the way to here.”

“Oh, I saw! But that’s not even the best part. Did you see her skirt? I sit beside her in Pre-calc, and dropped my pencil a few times. No underwear.”

“Nuh uh!”

“Swear to god. I was so fucking hard, I had to stop dropping it because it was getting too big to bend over.”

The other boy snorted.

“You wish. Now if you were Caleb, maybe I’d believe you! Kid’s only a freshman and already part horse.”

The two senior boys turned their heads toward Caleb where he was just finishing his shower.

“Hey, Caleb, how big are you when hard?”

Caleb glanced at them while the locker room grew quiet.

“Still 6’2”,” he grinned, and a few guffaws sounded around him, the noise level picking up once more.

He turned back to finish rinsing off, the smile falling from his face. His time in the locker room had proved almost as educational as the sex ed portion of health class they’d taken at the start of the year. And both worried him.

Was his body that different from theirs? He’d looked up the way wolves mated and their penises didn’t just get hard—they emerged from behind the skin when they got excited and, unlike humans, their boners actually had a bone in them. Did he have another penis on the inside that needed to come out, and that was why he never got hard? Maybe his stomach hurt because something was stopping it.

Except his human body didn’t differ from other humans in any other way that he could tell. He’d had to get a physical exam and shots to be allowed in school, and the doctor didn’t seem to think there was anything out of the ordinary. Nat had been a nervous wreck about it, but he’d been too ignorant at the time to realize the risk he was taking. He understood more now.

But he didn’t understand why he couldn’t get hard. His parents had never explained anything about that, and Caleb didn’t know anyone else like them he could ask. It had just been the three of them living up in the hills, and they’d always said they’d tell him about their families some other time. Caleb hadn’t cared back then; he’d been too interested in running and playing or curling up in his mom’s arms—or fur. If he’d only known how little time he would have before they were taken from him forever…

He shook off the sad feelings and walked out of the shower to grab a towel, wishing he could have just shifted to get clean. But it would look too suspicious for him to always be clean without joining the other boys in the locker room.

“Are you going to ask her out?” Shane, the team’s captain—and starting quarterback before Caleb came along—looked over as Caleb pulled his clean clothes out of the locker beside him.

“Who?”

“Dude. Heather. She just broke up with her boyfriend.”

“Oh. No.”

Shane stared at him.

“You know she likes you, right?”

Caleb frowned, pulling his t-shirt over his head.

“I heard she likes everyone.”

Shane snorted.

“Not like she likes you. And you hang out at her locker all the time. I just figured…”

Caleb’s frown deepened. He certainly did not. The only locker he ever went to was Nat’s. His brow cleared.

“Oh. Her locker is beside Nat’s, isn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah, like you’ve been fooling anyone. Nobody hangs out at their sister’s locker that often, especially a sister that—“ Shane stopped himself and turned back to his own locker quickly.

“That what?”

“Nothing,” Shane muttered, stuffing his gym bag inside and closing the door. Caleb grabbed him before he could walk away, easily shoving him against the locker with one hand. Talk died down around them, and Shane swallowed.

“Look, man, she’s your sister. I respect that. But come on…it’s not like she’s at your level.”

Caleb narrowed his eyes, his hand holding the older boy firmly in place.

“What do you mean.”

“I mean…shit…” His eyes darted around for help, but the other boys suddenly became very busy getting dressed.

His face broke out in a sweat as he looked back at Caleb.

“Look, she seems like a really nice girl. She’s just one of those girls that doesn’t care about…dressing cool or…her hair or…makeup,” he finished weakly. “Which is a great thing! Girls are usually so shallow and—“

At Caleb’s expression, he bit back whatever else he was going to say.

“What’s wrong with how she dresses?” he demanded. He never paid much attention when they went shopping, letting Nat choose whatever they needed. It’s not like he knew anything about clothes. But no one seemed to think his clothes looked bad. Had she been spending more on him? Fuck.

“N—nothing! She looks…fine!”

Caleb made a sound of impatience and shoved him harder into the locker as he released him. He wanted to tell him he was blind. Nat’s big brown eyes could stop his heart with a look. Her pink, full lips tempted him constantly, teasing him each time they parted and her eyes grew soft. And when she was lying beneath him, her hair flowed around her like an angel.

Pain hit his stomach, and he turned away with a scowl. He couldn’t say any of that. Grabbing his bag, he stalked out of the room while harsh whispers carried down the hall to his sensitive ears.

“Dude…” Multiple snickers and quiet peals of laughter met with a low groan. “You can’t say shit about his sister!”

“I know, I know! I was all distracted thinking about Heather,” he hissed. “Jeez…he should be glad she’s ugly if he’s that protective.”

Caleb paused, his hand digging into the strap of his bag as he clenched it, but he stepped forward again after a moment.

She was beautiful. But if the stupid clothes they all wore were so important, he was going to make sure they were the right ones from now on. He just needed to find someone who knew how girls were supposed to dress to help. Maybe he would ask Heather out after all.

Nat’s face lit up the moment she saw him waiting at her locker, and the bands in Caleb’s chest began to ease. He leaned his head against the cold metal, certain if he moved toward her he would end up burying his face in her neck.

Her heavily fringed brown eyes sparkled while her cheeks grew pink and round, trying to suppress her smile. So fucking beautiful. She was wearing one of the few pieces of clothing that didn’t bother him: a thin, faded dress that fell in a straight line from her chest to her ankles. He couldn’t see her body very well, but he could feel everything when he held her close. And he desperately wanted to hold her close right now.

“Hi,” she breathed once she was beside him, still sparkling up at him for a moment until concern crept into her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

Everything but her.

“Long day,” he said, moving to the side so she could put her books away. But the small group of girls who always seemed to be gathered at Heather’s locker spilled into their space, bumping Nat back a few steps and turning with a gasp to Caleb.

“Oops—oh my goodness! I’m so sorry!”

Caleb glanced irritably at the girl, ready to pull Nat back, but then he remembered he needed help with shopping. His eyes turned to Heather putting her books in her locker calmly, and his gaze wandered down her body. She wore a long-sleeved top with a matching short skirt in some sort of soft looking sweater material that hugged every curve. Nat would look so good in that. He’d be able to see her figure for once and feel every part of her body when he pressed her close to him.

He raised his eyes again to talk to Heather and saw she’d turned a bright red. The girls around her were giggling, and he glanced back at Nat wondering if he’d done something wrong.

Her face was pale, and she dropped her eyes immediately. Shit. He’d definitely done something.

“You know,” the girl who’d bumped Nat out of the way simpered up at him. “Heather was just saying how she needed some help getting our cheer equipment loaded up for the away game.”

“Shut up, Megan!” Heather hissed.

“What? Caleb is strong and could load your, um, car for you really well, I bet,” the girl smirked while her friends tittered around them.

Caleb frowned, looking back at Heather. If he helped her, maybe she’d help him.

“I can help.”

Heather hesitated, her face still rather pink.

“Well, if you want to, I have my car parked out back. It shouldn’t take too long, and I could drop you off after.”

Shit. Now? His eyes went back to Nat, but she was staring at the ground and he couldn’t see her expression.

“Or whatever.” Heather shrugged and tucked her blonde curls behind her ear, turning back to her locker.

He just wanted to get home and bury himself in Nat’s scent. But a temporary delay would be worth it if it meant figuring out how to buy the things for Nat that she should have.

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

Heather swallowed and closed her locker, stepping back.

“Great. Well, it’s this way…” she said, turning to walk away, waiting for him to walk with her.

Fuck. Couldn’t he just meet her in whatever classroom it was? Nat didn’t seem happy with him, and he wanted to talk to her first. But Nat moved in the opposite direction before he could think of anything to say.

“I’m just going to catch the bus today. See you at home,” she mumbled.

“Wait—you need your coat!”

“No time,” she said over her shoulder, hurrying down the hall.

Caleb watched her, frustration etching a line between his brow.

“Man, I wish my big brother looked after me like that! She is soooo lucky, Caleb,” a girl crooned.

“She looks after me, too,” he frowned, his irritation growing when the girls all giggled.

“Oh, if you were my big brother, I’d be looking, too.”

“Megan!” Heather put her hand over her face.

“What! I’m just sayin’…”

Their chatter swirled around him while worry gnawed at his stomach. Was Nat upset with him? He wanted to go after her, but he had an opportunity here to do something for her and he needed to use it.

His choice made, he fell into step beside Heather to ask her about her clothes.

Caleb grabbed the box out of Heather’s car.

“Thanks a lot, Heather!” He beamed at her from the sidewalk while she stared up at him in confusion, still in the driver’s seat but no longer leaning over the way she had when she’d stopped the car.

“Do you want me to come in and show her which outfits go together…?”

“No, I think we can figure it out. See you at school tomorrow!”

He waved and turned toward the trailer, his pulse racing as he imagined Nat’s surprise. The car behind him didn’t move until he’d disappeared through the screen door, but he barely noticed, closing it behind him to hurry down the hall.

“Nat!” Bursting through the door, he found her sitting on the bed with papers spread around her. He grunted in frustration when she didn’t look up and dropped the box to grab the papers and toss them off the bed.

She sat unmoving, watching his hands, but she didn’t lift her eyes.

“Nat, I brought you something!” He grinned, dumping the box on the bed, waiting for her cry of delight. It didn’t come.

Nat stared at the pile of clothes without expression.

“It’s from Heather! She took me to her place and gave me so much stuff. You wouldn’t believe how much she has! Her closet is bigger than this entire room!”

He looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to be amazed, but again he was disappointed. His smile dimmed, but he tried again.

“I told her you didn’t have anything nice. I thought she’d help me pick something out, but she just gave me all this instead! Now you won’t have to wear ugly things anymore! Her stuff is all soft and once I really started looking, I could see why it’s better than the stuff we’ve been getting. You’re going to feel so much better in these!”

When she still didn’t react, he grew frustrated.

“Come on—I brought you something…” he whined. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

Nat stared down at the pile of clothes in silence, her eyes wide and dry. Finally she reached a hand out to touch one of the dresses.

“You’re right,” she said in a small voice. “They’re much better. Thank you.”

Caleb’s brow pulled together. She didn’t seem very happy to have them. And he knew she hated the things she had.

“She put some makeup in, too. She said not to use too much—just add some eyeliner and lip gloss to start. And she said you should use…“ he dug around in the box. “…this product for your hair. She said put it on after you towel dry it and then just let it air dry.”

Nat stared at the bottle he was holding out to her before taking it.

“Thank you,” she repeated as quietly as she had before.

Caleb suddenly felt like growling.

“These are gifts, you know!” He flopped on the ground beside her, thoroughly disgruntled. “You told me we’re supposed to be happy when someone gives us a gift.”

Her eyes turned to his at last, and his breath caught as pain shot to his stomach.

“Sorry,” she whispered, looking every bit like she had when he’d first seen her in the woods. “This was very kind. I’m just…not feeling very well. Do you think you could go run for a while? I want to finish my homework and lie down.”

A second bolt of pain hit him. She wanted him to go away? She never wanted him to go away.

“Maybe…I could help with the homework.”

Nat shook her head.

“It’s algebra.”

“Well, then I’ll do the laundry,” he suggested.

“I did it while you were gone.”

Caleb looked over in surprise. Had he been gone that long? The light outside was fading so he guessed he had.

“Then I’ll make dinner,” he insisted, getting up.

“I’m not hun—“

“You’re eating!” he snapped, not looking back. He resisted slamming the door behind him but still closed it with a loud click before marching down the hall.

He had eaten the Spam she brought him. He had pretended to like everything she brought him. But she couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to be happy about the huge pile of super soft clothes he got her from the girl at school who everyone seemed to think dressed perfectly?

Caleb slammed a pan on the stove, ignoring when Nat’s mother groaned at the sound, and started making dinner.

The last time he’d slept so horribly was during a particularly violent storm when even the trees couldn’t shield him from the constant downpour. But he would have rather had that a thousand times than spend another night with Nat’s back to him, flinching each time he touched her. In the end, he’d slept on the floor, the sick feeling in his gut waking him every few minutes.

Now he was sitting on the front step, breathing in the fresh air while he waited for her to get ready. She was taking longer than usual.

The door opened behind him and he turned to find her bundled up in her large coat, the hood over her head and her eyes down. He could see one of the new dresses falling a few inches beneath the hem to just below her knee, and she’d paired it with her ankle boots and one of the new pairs of socks. Weren’t girls supposed to wear small shoes with dresses? He’d have to see if he could find her some shoes. Too bad Heather’s feet were a lot bigger.

Nat kept her head down while they walked to the bus, which didn’t improve his mood, and by the time they made it to school he was glaring at everything.

“You don’t need to go to my locker today,” she said softly once they made it inside, and he turned his glare to her, not bothering to answer and even more furious when she didn’t even look up as he stomped beside her.

He threw himself back on the row of metal beside her, crossing his arms and continuing to glare at her. She opened her locker and stood staring inside blankly, still not looking at him, before finally beginning to remove her coat.

A sudden heat rushed through him, burning in his stomach, and he stood paralyzed for just a moment before grabbing her and wrapping the coat back around her body tightly.

“What were you thinking,” he said, his voice hoarse. “You can’t wear this one to school.”

Her eyes looked up at him uncertainly.

“It…looked like all the others,” she whispered. “Is it that bad?”

Caleb felt like his eyes must be wider than hers at the moment. Was it bad?

“Caleb!”

The girls squealed as they approached with Heather, running up with far more familiarity than before. Caleb released Nat, trying to breathe steadily.

“Dude, you are so full of it!”

A couple of the guys who were in the locker room the previous day walked up with the girls.

“We heard everything about you and Heather. Everything.”

“I told you—nothing happened!” Heather said, flustered as she opened her locker.

“Yeah, except he was in your bedroom with you…for like an hour…”

Caleb struggled to follow what they were saying while Nat stood in front of her open locker, slowly removing her coat.

“We were just going through my clothes,” Heather said, turning red immediately. “I mean the clothes in my closet. Not the ones I was wearing.”

The laughter only increased around them.

“Shane is going to be so jealous. You know he was hoping—holy shit!”

Caleb closed his eyes when Nat turned around at last. He felt her looking up at him, worried, but he didn’t dare look back—he wasn’t sure if he could resist shifting if he did.

Not that he needed to look. The image in his mind was all too clear.

She wore a soft blue cap-sleeved dress with a low scooped neck. Very low. So low, she evidently hadn’t been able to find a bra she could wear with it. The fabric was thin…so, so thin it showed every outline. The urge to drop to his knees and suck her nipple between his lips had nearly overwhelmed him. He’d never seen them before. Her bras were so thick…he hadn’t known. But now he knew, and he wanted to bang his head in the locker behind him until it hurt enough to distract him from the pain in his gut.

And the pain didn’t end with her breasts. The dress hugged every curve, dipping into her thin waist before gently flowing over the soft, plump curves behind her. He knew how those felt, when he’d been pressed against her at night, but being able to see them as she moved…

Her hair looked different as well, flowing over her shoulders in glossy waves that looked so soft and framed her face so beautifully. A face with eyes that seemed impossibly larger somehow today and tender lips that glistened as if touched by the morning dew. He wanted to lick her everywhere.

And by the scent in the air, so did the other boys. He opened his eyes again and glared at them furiously, shoving them back when they didn’t even notice, unable to take their eyes off Nat.

“Shit—uh—“

“Sorry—going to class now—bye!”

The boys took off while some of the girls released small sounds of outrage.

Caleb grabbed Nat’s arm and pulled her away quickly toward her next class, trying to block her from male eyes as much as possible. What had he been thinking! If he survived the day, he was shredding every last piece of the new clothing.

Shane had been right. It was much better when they thought she was ugly.

By lunch, Caleb was miserable and thoroughly regretting his stupidity. He just wanted her back in a package that didn’t torture him every second with wanting her and wanting to kill every guy suddenly looking at her.

Nat was waiting in line to buy lunch, and Caleb had let her go up without him for once. He’d been struggling with shifting all day, and his nerves were frayed. Besides, he seemed to have adequately terrified the boys who were all staying far away from her, so Nat was surrounded by Heather and her friends for the moment. Safe.

So he sat at the lunch table with his back to her, desperate to keep the image of her standing in line from eroding what little remained of his self-control. He couldn’t resist listening in on her conversation, though, and only vaguely nodded along with whatever was being said at the table. His attention was focused on picking up the sounds across the loud room.

“Don’t be mean, Megan,” Heather was saying.

“I’m not! I’m just saying that when you get rid of your trash, you shouldn’t be giving it to trailer trash or look what happens! Now you look like you chose slutty clothes. She doesn’t know how to wear them with class.”

Caleb went cold inside and the remaining sounds in the cafeteria faded away while he listened. Someone just moved to the top of his list.

“I didn’t have any bras that wouldn’t show,” Nat said, and Caleb’s stomach clenched at the shame in her voice.

“Well then you shouldn’t have worn it! Jeez. Why not just parade around school naked?”

Caleb waited for Nat to tell Megan that she never seemed to have a problem showing the outline of her nipples, but Nat said nothing more. He turned around at last and everything seemed to pour over him at once.

She was achingly beautiful…but she was hurting. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her body, covering her breasts, and her head hung low. Caleb wanted to rip the girl’s head off, but guys weren’t supposed to be rough with girls. But she could. Nat could slam her head on the wall—the girl was smaller and Nat was definitely stronger. Why wouldn’t she defend herself?

He turned back around, continuing to listen as a few of the other girls joined in to criticize Nat a bit longer before switching subjects, shutting her out completely. By the time they headed back to the table, he no longer even pretended to answer when someone spoke to him. He didn’t bother waiting for Nat to sit down but grabbed her arm and dragged her behind him to exit the cafeteria.

He’d had enough. They were going home.