Chapter 19
Rob drove in absolute silence, his every action, whether a stop or a blink accompanied with a grim expressionless stare. The seats in the passenger side were really too small for me to comfortably lie down, so I sat staring out the window, letting the wind blow in my face. Every now and then I'd look over to check on Rob. He pretty much just stared straight ahead. If he looked my way, I didn't catch it.
Ali called, but Rob ignored the phone, and she went to voicemail.
He parked the car and unlocked the front door in silence. By now, I was used to the idea of staying at his house, but Rob was really freaking me out.
He didn't say a word. Stepping into the house, he tossed his jacket over the chair and strode to the master bedroom. Maybe he'd forgotten I was human under my fur, a very un-were thing to do, but he sure wasn't acting like himself.
I finally barked a question, which sounded more like “Roo?”
He stopped and looked at me, a frown on his face, and now I could see that he hurt, one of those deep emotional hurts that people live with, often in silence, often alone. Only the eyes reveal that kind of pain. He voice was soft, “I'm sorry, Jen. I just need to be alone for awhile. There's a remote on the couch that works pretty well with paws.”
He stepped into the bedroom and shut the door, leaving it open just a crack.
My wolf ears heard him pulling clothes out of his dresser drawer and stepping into the shower. To Ali, a crack in the door is an invitation, but inviting myself into Rob's shower when he was feeling sad didn't exactly sound like a good idea. Again, to Ali, maybe it would. To me...not at all.
He'd actually showed me the remote earlier in a tour of the house. They make all kinds of special tools for the wereanimals with giant paws who are unable to manipulate small objects. I turned on the television, but truly couldn't care less what was on.
I wasn't listening to the T.V. at all. The shower was off now, but the door still closed. I heard Rob climb onto the bed. Then he wept.
Padding to the door, I nudged it open. Sure, he wanted to be alone, but in a spur of the moment decision, I ignored his request. His head was hidden in his arm and his shoulders were shaking. I put my nose on his hand, just to let him know I was there.
Rob stilled. “You can come up with me if you want.”
That was all the invitation I needed. I jumped up and burrowed next to him. He welcomed the comfort. His shoulders relaxed.
We cuddled quietly for a long time.
Rob said,“Grampie Joel died of a heart attack a few years ago. There were witnesses, and none of them knew CPR. They weren't even willing to try.”
Rob loved his Grampie Joe. He was always telling stories of Grampie Joe and his canoe, or the trip to Yellowstone. The fireworks fiasco in the field where all of the fireworks were accidentally lit off at once, while his grandpa sent the kids running for cover. His grandma still talked about that. At the time she was sure one of the grandkids had gotten killed by a roman candle.
I knew his grandpa died, but I never heard how. I stayed close to him, making comforting wolf sounds.
“Not one person even tried.” The anger bled into Rob's voice, the frustration of a time and place that could not be repaired. Those bystanders could not go back and change the moment, but neither could Rob.
I listened quietly and waited.
“While I was in that park, I forgot who I was trying to save. When I took all of those classes, it was because of what happened to my Grandpa. I was counting and compressing and seeing Grampie Joe's ribs under my hand. But it wasn't him.” Rob closed his eyes and took a deep breath, “I'm sorry. I'm fine.”
We had moved from grief to tough guy in a single moment. I snuggled next to him and let him feel whatever he wanted. His eyes were closed. I knew he was exhausted, emotionally and physically from the day. He fell asleep while I wondered how strange it was that I was here lying next to Rob feeling comfortable. I seemed to fit there, although I had to wonder if I'd still fit as my human self.
I guess life-saving is a draining activity. After spending an hour watching Rob sleep, I hopped down, thinking that the day hadn't gone terribly bad, considering that we had actually saved a random stranger's life. That doesn't happen often in a lifetime.
In the meantime, food sounded pretty good, and earlier in the day when Rob opened the fridge for the milk, I happened to notice a raw steak sitting on a dinner plate to defrost. By now, it should be defrosted.
As a were-mouse, I never ate anything like raw meat, so this would be a first. Rob actually fed me raw hamburger the night before. “Just try it. A wolf's tongue loves it cold. I just can't explain it.”
So I sniffed the hamburger for a few minutes before nibbling the tiniest corner. Wow, it was fantastic. Butcher's meat. The grocery stores added chemicals and water and red dyes. Werewolves didn't go for that sort of thing and tended to buy direct from farmers or from the butchers. I didn't dare ask if they ever bought live cows to hunt.
But that was yesterday and I was hungry today. Here I was standing in Rob's kitchen and I realized, I didn't know how to open the refrigerator door. He had to have some kind of mechanism for a wolf to open. That's how werewolves work. Their houses have alternative exits and entrances, and their cabinets and appliances are upgraded for easy access.
I tried to get my snout in between the empty space of the handle, but my nose was too big. Pushing didn't work. Nor did pulling. A growling stomach was not helping matters any and no way would I wake up Rob for something this trivial. No, there had to be a way.
Stepping back, I bent my head with a slight twist, so that I could look at the door from every angle. After several minutes of stalking the refrigerator door, I tried pulling the bottom of the door open with my paw. It was then that I noticed a strange little lever.
Rob had mentioned something about it when he was standing in the kitchen pulling the milk out of the refrigerator, but Ali was in the living room going a hundred miles an hour about some problem at work, and unfortunately, it was Ali to whom I gave my undivided attention. Best friend versus food. What else could I choose?
I put my paw on the lever and the ingenious little device pushed the door open. Carefully lifting the steak from the plate I carried it over to the platter on the floor. The refrigerator turned on. I shut the door before returning to my steak.
What Rob said is true. To a wolf's taste buds, raw meat is like eating candy. The flavor of incredibly fresh meat assaults the senses and leaves a euphoric feeling afterward. Even as an animal, I'm not a gulper. I ate slowly and thoughtfully, chewing my food as properly as a canine can manage.
After polishing off the last of it, I drank from the aluminum water bowl until the fur around my face was soaked. No self-respecting wereanimal would drink water out of plastic. It's one of the most repulsive tastes on the planet, though in human form, I never could tell the difference. Rob could, but then werewolves have heightened senses when compared to mice.
The side of me that follows Ali into random adventures wanted to go jump on the bed and curl up with Rob. The other half, who sits at Gran's dinners and tries to live a normal life decided that caution was a better choice. Caution won out, and I ended up asleep on the wolf bed in the corner.
That's how I heard someone rattling the door in the early hours of the morning. Silently, I snuck to the door, lifting my bulk to look through the peep hole, which was just that little bit too tall for me to see through. My sense of smell came to the rescue where my eyes failed me. I could smell something, and it smelled rotten, not like rotten eggs, but more like the smell of burger that has been in the refrigerator a day too long. Just that faintest whiff of something wrong.
A faint whiff is enough.
I growled. It was low and menacing and really something to be proud of.
The rattling stopped. We waited. Me on one side and the strange smelling fellow on the other. I heard footsteps and a car start, and the smell was g
one.
Rob had stacked a pile of alphabet letters in the living room. Originally the plan was to have a sit down, man to wolf, if we couldn't find Tyler. Obviously, our encounter in the park changed all that. I pawed at the letters. At least all of the lights were still on. Rob tended to turn all of the lights off at bedtime, except for a small light over the stove.
Nosing through letters isn't the easiest thing to do, and a wolf's sight isn't made for reading; however, once I managed to get my teeth on a letter, I could carry it to just the right spot to relay my message. There were a few misspellings. It's not because I don't know how to spell. I'm actually really good with that sort of thing. But I ran out of d's. The message was simple. I just said. “Intruder at door. Smelled bad.”
It would have been tempting to sneak out the wolf door and chase after the car, but I was too realistic to think I would actually catch the person, and I didn't want Rob to worry when he woke up, which he probably would the minute the door hit my tail.
Wide awake and bored, I waited. It occurs to me that I've never been bored as a mouse. It might be all the terror. It's really hard to be filled with apathy when something as small as a cat is dangerous. But as a wolf? Boredom. I slept for a few hours waiting for Rob.
Watching him wake up was fun. First, his hair really sticks up. When my brother sleeps, his hair sometimes looks matted or messy, but nothing like Rob's. I must have had a silly smile on my face, because he quirked an eyebrow at me with his own cheeky grin. And then there's the bleary-eyed scrubbing of the hair, which sort of explains why it's all sticking up in the first place. Perhaps I've never mentioned how exquisitely fine Rob looks in a white t-shirt and boxers. I ended up drooling all over myself.
“Mornin'” A bit of a mumble, but then Rob's not a morning person. I don't know a werewolf that is.
“Arooo” I'm getting the vocals down at least.
He read my message first. Unlocking the door and pulling it open, the first thing he did was sniff the air, frown, then sniff again. He stepped outside and stalked around the house, which is a strange word for a man alone, but the way he walked around the house reminded me of someone on the hunt, which he was. But whoever came for a midnight visit was long gone.
“Please wake me up next time.”
I nodded once. There probably wouldn't be a next time anyway.
That satisfied Rob. Having checked all he could in the meantime, he switched gears, heading into the kitchen. Uh-oh. “I've got a surprise for you,” Rob said as he opened the refrigerator door. He stopped, jaw dropping just that tiniest millimeter and then he swiveled his head to look at me.
And I have a surprise for you. No steak for breakfast. Sorry. My eyes might have reflected a slight bit of guilt, perhaps conveyed the message that steak was really too good of a thing for a wolf like me to pass up. He pulled the empty dinner plate out of the fridge. “I was going to make steak and eggs.”
That was the moment when I was supposed to feel sorry. Did I? No. This was one of the few times I had the upper hand. Everyone knows, even human and vampires, that werewolves like to eat, always meat, preferably raw. I never asked if werewolves liked to chase their food first, mostly because I was small enough to fear being the appetizer.
That was another topic of conversation that never came up in the family. The only time I asked my mom about being eaten, she started crying. I guess the concept had been weighing on her mind as well.
All that aside, I was acting within my nature. And he had been asleep. What else was I supposed to have for dinner? Okay, so maybe I was feeling more than slightly guilty.
Rummaging through the refrigerator, Rob pulled out eggs and a package of bacon. “We'll still have a good breakfast.”
Watching Rob deal with problems from infinitesimal to gargantuan made me realize that my heart was a smart organ, as organs went. I didn't plan on falling in love with him. From a logical perspective, the whole idea was ridiculous. And totally wrong.
But I liked spending time with him. I liked the way he teased me when I leaned against the window after a long drive from a house-showing. Long being relative. In my world, over ten minutes is reason enough to start using the window as a head-rest, especially now that I was in permanent animal mode. He always spoke with gentleness and kindness, and sometimes when he thought I wasn't paying attention, he'd watch me with this affectionate smile.
I loved that smile. And here he was making breakfast for me, with hair sticking out on one side.
I added one more positive trait to the list. Rob didn't yell at me for eating the steak. Men seem to have a thing for meat. It's inherent I guess. Never get between a man and his meat. But here Rob was pulling pans out of the cupboard and turning on the burners as if I hadn't committed the ultimate sacrilege. Maybe there was hope for me. I decided I'd have to go on the moon date with him, even if he broke my heart afterward.
Moon Struck: When Were & Howl Book 1 Page 19