Chapter 21: _ Take Her Home
As soon as I slid into the passenger seat of Axel’s Range Rover, I was hit by the warm, spicy scent sifting in the car. It was a heaven of leather, pine, and something distinctly Axel. It made my head swim a little, or maybe that was just the proximity.
He closed the door with a click before settling into the driver’s seat beside me.
Axel’s presence beside me was overwhelming. His hands gripped the steering wheel as he started the engine. The hum of the car vibrated through my seat, making me acutely aware of just how out of place I felt.
He adjusted the rearview mirror before speaking in a casual tone as if the past hour hadn’t been a whirlwind of humiliation, heroics, and... whatever this was.
"I usually come to that butcher," Axel began, his eyes flicking briefly toward me before returning to the road. "But I didn’t think I’d stumble upon you there."
Wait, what?
My brows shot up. Did he just say he usually went there? That couldn’t be true. Not after the butcher himself had practically announced to the entire shop—right in front of me—that he’d never seen the Beta there before.
So why did he say he did? Hold on a second...
It hit me like a ton of bricks. He was trying to play it cool. Axel was deliberately downplaying the fact that he had gone out of his way to help me. He didn’t want me to know the lengths he’d gone to, probably to avoid making me feel indebted to him.
Did he come to the butchery because of me? Or maybe just as he’d done with the Luna wolf hunt incident, he didn’t want to simply accept that he was trying to help me.
Perhaps, he came for other businesses and decided to save me one more time?