by Lynn Red
In that one moment of doubt and fear and pain, she couldn’t say.
She didn’t need to.
All she needed to do was run.
6
Laney couldn’t think. If she tried, her brain just started to ache from the inside out. Something from deep inside the lizard part of her amygdala yanked and pulled at the rest of her gray matter, until whatever consciousness she possessed was little more than an irritant.
She wanted to sleep. She wanted to crawl into a bottle, she wanted to vent to Elaine, but... it was kiddie time.
Rolling over on her side and taking the pillow off her head, where she’d either been trying to block out the sunlight, or slowly smother herself, she wasn’t quite sure. Intellectually she knew that this was just a flash in the pan. This thing with Rip was just another in a long string of relationships that never got off to any start at all. If it had gotten going, nothing would have worked out anyway. She wasn’t the type to want a spotlight, or a paparazzi, or anything else following her. And that’s all assuming he wasn’t full of shit in the first place.
After running back to her place and showering for approximately an hour to clean off any shred of self-loathing she could manage to scrub with a bar of nice soap and a luffa. With a strong sense of purpose, she scrubbed and scrubbed, and before she knew it, she’d actually started feeling better. Or at least, she felt cleaner, and she didn’t have any more burrs in her hair, so that was a start.
When she got back to bed, and saw there were two hours left before she had to be at the library, she figured she could either spend the time sleeping for no real reason, or she could go to work playing detective on this guy who would be her mate.
She managed to type “RIP BL” into the Google bar on her phone before her arm went limp, her eyes dropped, and she enjoyed about an hour and a quarter of deep, blessed sleep.
“You’re fine, Laney,” she said as she rolled out of bed and climbed to her feet. The squish of her leopard-print area rug gave her a little comfort, as it centered her in a way that she couldn’t quite explain. “It was just a flash in the pan thing that you’re better off without.”
She couldn’t shake the feeling though. Maybe this time, she really had gone off too quickly. Maybe this time was the one she should have taken a chance on; this was the one she should have gambled with being hurt over.
She shook her head, staring into the mirror. Thoughtlessly, she stuffed the tail of her shirt into her jeans, buttoned them, and exhaled the pants-buttoning suck-in. The buzzing phone on her nightstand jolted her out of the brief exercise in self-doubt. “Hello?” she asked. Elaine clicked her teeth. “Okay, yeah, yeah,” Laney said before her friend could talk. “I’ll be there in a few, bad morning. Just...I’ll be there in a few.”
Kiddie Time didn’t start for another half-hour still, and even if Laney should have been there at half-past eight, she knew it didn’t matter enough to get stressed out over. But her cheeks were flushed and burning. Her ears prickled and she couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on or why the hell she couldn’t concentrate on anything.
But, there wasn’t a choice. She had a vague hope that maybe being distracted by a bunch of screeching cubs would keep her mind off of whether or not she’d just made a life-wrecking mistake. On the other hand, she couldn’t imagine how she had screwed everything up, just by not going out with some guy.
After all, it was just a date. It was just a guy. Even if he was God’s gift to lionesses, she didn’t need anyone like that. She didn’t need any ego-driven politician... even if he wasn’t really a politician.
That’s what stuck in her head. What was he? And why did it bother her so much that she couldn’t figure it out? She’d never been the sort who needed to stick people in a box and categorize them to keep herself sane. But here she was, confused and irritated and desperately needing to get her ass out the door, but couldn’t quite manage, not just yet.
She flipped through a few screens on her phone and opened up her browser. The headlines came fast and hard when she hit search, but it was hard for her to make much sense of any of them.
RIP BLACK VANISHES, LEAVES NO TRACE, one of them, from a seedy-looking gossip site read. RIP BLACK ON THE RUN FROM THE LAW reported another. A third claimed that Rip had faked his own death and the last one she bothered to read informed Laney that the man she’d previously been flirting in the woods with was a DANGEROUS TERRORIST who would stop at nothing to DESTROY EVERYTHING.
None of it made any sense.
The Rip she knew wasn’t some kind of dangerous dissident. Hell, he wasn’t even slightly intimidating. He tripped over a damn tree root, after all. “I don’t even know him,” she announced to her own reflection in the mirror when she looked back up and stuck a barrette in her hair to hold back the cascade of copper. “Why am I defending this guy? He could be a complete psycho. He could be a goddamn monster. All of this shit could be true. Then again, when’s the last time I read something that I found via Facebook post had any truth to it?”
She sighed and let her phone holding hand fall flatly to her side. It thumped against her thigh, and Laney closed her eyes tightly shut. A tear that she couldn’t quite figure out, but that she felt from the very depths of her soul, rolled down her cheek hot and fast. Then another followed, and before she knew it, every single question she could ever imagine was coursing through the channels in her brain.
She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, dropping the phone straight onto the ground. Luckily there was carpet underneath her, but it still landed with a hefty thunk. She didn’t bother looking at her feet though.
And worse than how she was feeling, she couldn’t figure out why she felt that way. Was it just that she was so hard up that anyone showing any interest in her at all? Was it maybe that she believed what he said and needed, so badly, so damn badly, to have something real and meaningful in her life that she was willing to throw caution to the wind?
Then Laney’s temper started to flare. She slammed her fists into the top of her dresser and stared into her own beet-red eyes. “I don’t need this. I don’t need him. And if I’m falling apart to the point that I convince myself that I do, then I need to start going back to therapy and get the fuck over all this.”
She bent over, plucked her phone off the ground, and walked straight out the door, not bothering to look around her, not bothering to fix her hair. She slammed her front door shut, fumbled with her key just long enough to get it halfway into the lock. It wouldn’t turn. It wouldn’t go the rest of the way into the keyhole.
“God damn it!” Laney growled. “This is bullshit!”
Her own anger confused her, scared her, and sent a wave of heat through her stomach. This wasn’t the same warmth she felt with Rip. Hell, it wasn’t even the same way she felt when she’d initially got angry at him. This was something deeper, something hellish. This was something she had bottled up for years and years, and for some damn reason, had just decided to come spilling out all at once.
She growled again, yanked the key out, and then opened the door just to slam it closed again. Forcing herself to breathe in slow, patient rhythm, she finally managed to get the key in the lock and closed the deadbolt.
If she’d been paying attention as she tromped to her car, or if there hadn’t been quite so many tears in her eyes, or if her vision hadn’t be bright red from fury, she might’ve noticed the rustling in the long, reedy plants outside her bedroom window that she couldn’t quite remember the name of.
As she backed her car up, then tore down her gravel driveway, leaving a cloud of gray-white dust in her wake, Rip pushed out of the bushes, adjusted the jeans he’d picked up from where he left them in the woods, and waved his hand wildly in front of his face, trying to catch a breath that didn’t fill his mouth with grit that turned to mud as soon as it hit his mouth.
He didn’t taste the dirt though. He didn’t even feel the tiny rocks that pelted him as she blasted off onto the main road, showering him wi
th pebbles.
Rip’s gray-caked face drew into hard lines. He gritted his teeth and blinked against the cloud that blew past him. A few moments later, the cloud began to dissipate, but he was still standing there. Rivulets of sweat ran down through the matte-finish covering him, clearing tiny paths before drying into tiny, muddy balls. The sky opening up right then and there and striking Rip with a bolt of lightning that cooked his brain into pudding wouldn’t have made that one moment any more starkly awful.
“Why?” he asked the blowing dirt that was finally clear enough that he could see the road from where he stood. “Why not just...”
He looked at his feet, bare as they were, he felt just as naked. He’d never opened himself up to anyone like that, not anywhere near that quickly anyway. And to have her just run, he couldn’t figure out what he’d done to change her mind.
“It was going so well,” he opened his hands, stared into his scratched-up palms and whispered. “What the hell do I have to do?”
In the distance, he heard wheels squeal against pavement. She was probably a quarter-mile away by then, but his ears were so keen, and his attention so pointed and focused, that he knew it was Laney.
“No way will I let this go,” he snarled, clenching his fists. “I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care if I have to pull the moon out of the sky, I’m not giving up. Not this time. Not now. Not ever again.”
He scratched at the dirt with his toenails. Sweat ran down the sides of his face as he clenched his muscles and scowled. But then, a split-second later, as his anger and confusion melted into purpose; into desperate, determined, steely-eyed confidence. “I’m not letting you go,” he said again. “No way in hell am I going to miss out on the only woman I can’t get out of my mind. No way I’m letting the only girl that made me laugh, then smile like that get away. Not now, not ever. I don’t care what it takes, Laney, you’re mine. I’ll make you believe me. I’ll make you understand.”
His voice fell into low, almost dangerous tones. “We’re all animals,” he whispered. “Underneath all our rules and our bullshit, we’re just animals who want to get let out of our cages. Without you, I’m as pinned-in as anyone else. But with you? I feel free, like I never have. No way in hell am I gonna let this get away.”
Rip crouched down and with a single thought, ripped his jeans into ribbons as his legs twisted and his bones shifted. He threw back his head, with the huge mane cascading all around it, and shook the world around him with a roar so fierce and terrible that he thought Laney probably heard it.
“If you did,” he whispered into the air, “good. If not, you will soon.”
His legs flexed, his muscles flared like arc welders blasting, white-hot into action. He didn’t know exactly where he was going, as he’d gotten completely turned around and confused between the bouts of unconsciousness and the apparent narcolepsy he’d started to have. But none of that mattered just then.
Nothing was on his mind, including how he’d ended up in Redby Township of all damn places, at all. Not except Laney, and his single-minded drive to find her, claim her, and make her his.
And he wasn’t stopping. Not now, not ever, not until he had her.
7
“Nothing happened,” Laney said. “I just had a bad morning. Hangover,” she claimed, though clearly not believing anything that came out of her own mouth.
“Right,” Elaine said as she pursed her lips. “You saw him again, didn’t you? Either that, or you finally figured out who he is. One of the two. And I’m not sure which would be worse.”
Even though the last thing in the world she wanted to do was engage even further in the hell that swirled inside her own head about what she was doing, Laney couldn’t deny herself the opportunity. “Wait,” she said in a short, curt voice, “what the hell are you talking about? You knew who he was?”
“No, not really,” Elaine said. “I mean I had an idea. I didn’t think it could possibly have been the same guy though. I mean, I know you’re kind of braindead about the whole world outside your head, but I couldn’t honestly believe you didn’t know who Rip Black was. He’s been plastered all over the damn news since he disappeared.”
“Yeah,” Laney said, “about that, he told me everything.”
“So you did see him again!”
“It’s a long story,” Laney said, even though it really wasn’t. She just couldn’t get into it right then, maybe not ever if she had a choice. There it was again though, confusion pecking at the back of her head; her undying need to know things that she couldn’t deny herself. She hated that she needed it, and she didn’t want to know any more than she already did, but she had to know.
“Did he do all the shit the papers say he did?” she asked, nervously watching the cubs gathering for Kiddie Time. Of all the things she wanted to do right then, entertaining a gaggle of pups and kittens wasn’t high on her list, but at least it would distract her a little. If nothing else, that would be a shred of welcome reprieve. “Because some of the things I read were pretty horrifying accusations. Some shit about being a terrorist?”
Elaine shook her head. “You’ve been reading gossip rags. The short answer is ‘no he didn’t.’ But that said, he’s been on the run from... well, someone. He’s all into the whole ‘be your animal self’ thing which apparently flies in the face of some people in power. Although, I have no idea in the world why he decided to disappear to Redby Township of all places. And what the hell’s going on out there?” She pointed out the front door where a modest crowd of people had gathered.
Laney shrugged her shoulders, ignoring the growing crowd. “I read one thing that said he faked his own death. To be honest, I thought it was really stupid and possibly the dumbest thing I’d ever read until I started reading more.”
“When did you read all this?” Elaine asked. “Did you have a big hot date this morning and then decide to research your new boyfriend? What the hell are they doing? Are we having some kind of news conference out front? I don’t remember anyone reserving the front steps of the library... well, ever, pretty much.”
For a moment, Laney was slightly confused about the whole goings-on. “It is kinda weird,” she said. “Looks like a press conference or something. But who the hell would—”
Laney shook her head. The only thought running through her brain was the worst thing she could imagine. Scary as hell, she imagined Rip sauntering up to the steps of the library and putting on a big show about something. Maybe political, or whatever he called what he did—not politics, but philosophy or... whatever it was—but she didn’t want any part of it.
At least, that’s what she told herself. Underneath the fear and the trepidation, she really did want to see him again. She wanted to tell him why she’d run, she wanted to bare her soul and tell him all her terrors. “If I let him in, then I have to admit all the things I’m afraid of are real,” Laney whispered under her breath.
Laney shook her head and apologized for grumbling. “Just forget I said that out loud,” she added. “I don’t much know what’s going with my brain lately.”
“Right,” Elaine said, “so about the reading. When did you do that, exactly?”
“It does take about twenty minutes to get here from my house, you know,” Laney said. “Wait, why are you side-eying me like that? What? I was only looking at the stoplights. I’m crazy, but not stupid enough to stare at gossip rags and dirt sheets on my phone in the middle of driving. Give me a little credit.”
Elaine stared at Laney for a second with her head cocked to one side as she studied her friend’s mood. Every few seconds, Elaine took the opportunity to scratch herself behind one ear, then the other, with her ever present pencil.
“Why do you do those giant crosswords?” Elaine asked, seemingly out of nowhere.
“To pass the time? To keep my brain age down? Normally if someone asked me that I’d figure they were just making conversation but I know you don’t do that, so there must be some—”
“Is that it,
or do you do them because if you sit around in the quiet and just think about things, you’ll fall apart?”
Laney curled her thin top lip into a snarl. “That was pointed,” she said, sagging her shoulders. “You really do think I’m nuts, don’t you?”
“We’re all crazy, baby,” Elaine responded. “But no, my point is that something’s eating you alive and it has been for a long, long time. I’ve never seen you in a slump this bad and before you respond with some kind of pithy answer to what I’m saying, it doesn’t have anything to do with sex.”
“Gee, thanks,” Laney said, frowning. “I guess I should take that as a compliment, but I’m not sure exactly how I’m supposed to do that. Mind explaining what it is that you mean?”
“I mean you’re brilliant and,” she paused for a second to scratch. “Listen, compliments aren’t exactly my strong suit, but no matter how I act most of the time, you’re my best friend and I am here for you. Anyway, you’re brilliant and you’re beautiful and you have no reason to feel shitty all the time, but it seems like any more that’s exactly what’s going on.”
For a long moment, Laney just sat there, alternating between listening and thinking. Maybe it’s true, she thought, biting down on her bottom lip. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe I’m just some kind of emotional loose cannon with no sense of self control or sense of being reasonable. “Oh God,” Laney said, as the realization hit her square in the stomach like a locomotive plowing straight into Superman’s brain and bouncing off. “I’m lonely, aren’t I?”
Instead of replying verbally, Elaine just twitched one of her eyebrows into a shape resembling a triangle. She had this way of making Laney work her way to conclusions that Laney would never reach on her own, but at the same time, getting Laney to think that she was the one who came up with the thought in the first place.
She’d learned a long, long time ago that the best way to get a stubborn-as-fuck lioness to come around to your perspective was by convincing them that they had the perspective all along. It was a good thing that Elaine grew up the youngest sister, and the brothers just above her in the pecking order were twins who turned thirteen when she was ten. Turns out, those lessons applied in all sorts of situations. Not just controlling hormonal, half-wild teenaged boys, but they could also apply very well to getting hormonal, half-wild lioness thirtysomethings to come around to reason and come down from the ledges that they got themselves all wound up on from time to time.