“Trust me.”
I WILL BE THERE
TIME AND TIME AGAIN
Keegan MacIntyre & Sissy Donovan
Keegan was the last person who should be giving anyone else advice when it came to relationships. It had taken a very literal near-death experience to actually kick-start his own with the woman he had loved from afar for hundreds of years, the same woman he had felt too afraid to approach with any sort of interest, convinced she could never possibly feel the same. He was far from an expert, and yet as he stood in the doorway to the TV lounge watching the way the sole occupant slouched into the cushions of the sofa he couldn’t help but feel compelled to offer some advice anyway.
She hadn’t heard him step into the room, hadn’t smelled him either if her reaction was any indication, her eyes widening just a fraction and her body starting a little, but she didn’t look unhappy to see him as he stepped around into her field of vision. “Hey,” she greeted him with a smile that only just reached her eyes.
“Hey.” Keegan sat down, perching for a while on the edge of the cushion, feigning interest in whatever it was she was watching. A movie of some kind, he assumed from the illuminated digital display on the DVD player, but beyond that he had no clue. It didn’t matter. When he slouched back to sit beside her properly, he turned his gaze from the screen to the she-wolf at his side.
Sissy looked distracted to say the least, her fingers toying idly with the edge of a blanket she had draped over her lap without really needing its heat; it was more for comfort, he suspected, just like the cushion she went on to tug closer. That too ended up on her lap. Her fingers went from toying with the blanket to toying with the corner of the cushion instead. Her eyes were on the screen but she wasn’t watching the movie, Keegan suspected, and she was chewing the inside of her bottom lip.
“If he can’t see what’s right in front of him,” Keegan began, turning his own attention to the movie, “then he’s an idiot.”
That got Sissy’s attention. Blinking, as if to bring her vision into focus, she turned her face towards his. “W-what?”
Keegan slouched a little more. They were on the same level now, so he didn’t have to look down on her, a common problem when you were one of the tallest wolves in the pack. It wasn’t often he got to look his siblings in the eye like this. “Marshall,” he said, though he knew there was no real need to clarify. Sissy had heard him; she was just struggling to comprehend what he’d said. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
“Oh, no, he just-”
“Sis’.” Keegan smiled, giving her the gentlest of nudges with his elbow. “Trust me.” Keegan knew that look when he saw it on the face of another. He had been wearing it himself long enough to recognise it instantly on others. “He’s crazy about you.”
Sissy was quiet for a minute, no longer pretending to watch the movie she had popped into the player, her gaze dropped to the corner of the cushion now instead. “Yeah?” she mumbled. “I don’t know.” The softest sigh slipped out of her. If Keegan hadn’t been sitting at her side he doubted he would have heard it. Her slender shoulders lifted and dropped in a shrug that was almost defeatist.
Keegan straightened a little, but only so he could put his arm around her shoulders and tug her closer to him for a brotherly hug. “Hey,” he said, pulling her attention back to him. “Like I said, if he can’t see what’s right in front of him?” He offered her a smile, fond and warm. “He’s an idiot. The biggest idiot.” Just as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head, he heard and felt Sissy’s soft laugh. That was more like it.