Being(s) In Love 03 - A Beginner’s Guide to Wooing Your Mate by R. Cooper

someone who doesn’t like cookies. This is aggressively delicious. Like a cookie that wants to be noticed, that demands to be noticed.” Violet grabbed a baked one and ate that too, though it hadn’t been frosted yet. “ I appreciate you, cookies.”
    “How hungry are you?” Theo tried to breathe normally. “You’re talking crazy.”
    “Am I?” Violet went for cookie number three and met Theo’s gaze.
    Theo went to the oven. “Does the town really know? That it was”—he braced himself for the name—“Zeki? How do they know?” Theo hadn’t told anyone but his family and Violet. He didn’t think Zeki had ever told anyone, but he guessed he could have.
    Violet must have had the same thought. “I don’t know. Only a jerk would talk about it. But maybe Zeki is a—” The sentence went unfinished at Theo’s soft growl. “Okay, okay.” Violet backed down. “Maybe he’s not a jerk. But everyone knows anyway. Maybe they always knew and never said anything because he wasn’t in town. I mean, I know everyone knows about your cousin, but no one has said a word about it to him.”
    Theo tried to imagine what was going on with his cousin Albert, then shoved the thought away for later. Violet was right. People might have always known. They might have been testing Zeki today. He took out more cookies to cool but didn’t put any more in. He forced his words out in a quiet rush. “He was at the café this morning… when we washed the trucks.”
    “What?” A cookie hit the floor, and Theo winced. Violet seemed to grow in height, their greenish eyes becoming a definite, harder emerald. “He was in the pack of oglers? That jerk.”
    “I wasn’t a firefighter then. He probably didn’t know I would be there when he sat down.” Theo had told himself that all day. It had to have been an accident. Unless it wasn’t. Unless Zeki Janowitz had shown up there on purpose, but Theo couldn’t imagine why he would, even when he wanted to think it was because Zeki had changed his mind about them. “But….” This Theo would not admit even to his parents. “He was… I could feel him watching me.”
    “You’re worth watching.” He took comfort in how fast Violet answered. But his heart seemed to thrum nervously for the moment Violet took before going on. “I keep telling you that. But, hmm. Good. He thinks you’re hot. Make him want you, then dump him. Let him know how it feels, which I assume is terrible.”
    “You know I’m not going to do that. I couldn’t and I wouldn’t.” Theo was no seducer, and even if he were, he would never punish Zeki for the rejection. Zeki had every right to say no, to say he’d known already and had been hoping Theo wouldn’t notice. That was how it worked, no matter how painful it was. Theo could have said no too. Instead he’d flung himself toward it without thinking. That was how Zeki remembered him, a too-eager, fumbling teenager.
    He cringed, and then stood there wishing he had more cookies to watch over or that they were cool enough to begin icing them.
    “I realize a rejection that deep at sixteen affects a person, Theo, but perhaps you’ve never seen yourself.” Pixies were capable of biting sarcasm when it suited them.
    Theo shook his head. “He didn’t want me the first time. He’s not going to change his mind now. Anyway, that doesn’t matter, because I would never hurt him.”
    “Yes, yes, protect your mate at all costs. Your standard werewolf ‘my instincts say so’ line.” Pixies were also capable of being dicks to their friends when it came to instinctual behavior they didn’t understand. Violet flapped a hand at him. “You won’t let your friends trash talk him even a little. The sheriff gets his weird, scrawny werewolf mate a job and a place to stay, despite accusations of whatever in front of everyone in town. I get it. Today happened and now these cookies aren’t going to get done if we don’t step on it.”
    Theo could breathe again.