Mason sighs and he doesn’t look at me, his gaze drifting around the room. “Listen, I… I didn’t know they were going to restrain you like that. I swear, I didn’t. I wish I’d known that. It wasn’t right. I’m so sorry, Alice.”
He’s apologizing again. He apologized before, I remember. He said he was sorry he didn’t find me sooner. And all I could think was that I was so happy he found me at all.
Just breathe, the nurse said. So I focus on that, because I want to be able to think more clearly. Mason Tremblay came to see me just because I asked for him, I tell myself. I hold onto that. The least I can do is be able to speak to him. My throat feels scratchy and dry and I try to clear my throat just as the nurse reappears with ice chips and water. She helps me lift the head of my bed up a little and I take a sip. I feel like it’s taking me forever just to feel like I know what’s going on around me. Ice water, Mason, the hospital…
“Don’t be sorry,” I rasp. I sit up a little more and wipe my eyes. I must look just awful. I never got much of a chance to look very nice in Hardwidge and I can only guess what I look like now. It’s silly to worry about that kind of thing right now, I know. But it also means I’m thinking a lot more clearly. It doesn’t help that Mason Tremblay has a sweetly handsome face. He’s lean and tall. He has a long nose and big brown eyes and a few tiny moles on his cheek like some little constellation of stars. His hair is thick and dark and he folds his hands in his lap as he smiles softly at me while I talk. I clear my throat and he hands me my water again. I take a long drink and wipe my mouth. “You don’t have to be sorry for anything. You found me like you said you would.”
I hold the water in one hand and the rabbit’s foot in another and that helps. Cold and wet and soft and furry; the sensations remind me I’m in reality.
“I just wish it hadn’t taken me so long,” he says. “I wish you hadn’t been trapped there for so long. How are you feeling?”
“Uh…” I don’t know how to answer that. I just shrug a little. “I keep having nightmares when I fall asleep. I think I’m still in the cave. And that you coming for me was a dream. I know I’m all mixed up and crazy.” It’s so embarrassing. I feel my face flush red.
“Hey listen,” Mason says. “After what you went through, I mean everything, like the way you were treated back at Hardwidge I’m guessing, and after you were kept like that, tied up… Nobody just gets over that. It just doesn’t work that way. People just don’t work that way. Human or shifter.”
“I hope I’m not crazy forever,” I murmur.
“I doubt it,” he says. He seems so certain. I want to grab onto his confidence and not let go of it. “Just might take a while. You just need somewhere safe where you can have some time to yourself. And I want to help you any way I can. My brothers and I, that is. Whatever you need. It really doesn’t matter that you’re not in our pack or our clan, or anything like that. It doesn’t matter. My brother’s mate is from Hardwidge though.”
Yes, that’s right. That’s what started all this.
“Luna,” I say softly. Luna, the girl who got away.
“That’s right,” Mason says. “If you want to talk to her, I can arrange that too. I just mean, because she might understand a little better than anyone else.”
“She was strong enough to get out,” I whisper. My head is starting to ache. “I wasn’t.”
Mason frowns at that and I wonder if I’ve said something wrong. He shakes his head. “Alice, you were so brave. You told me where Dax was hiding my brother, Micah, and Luna. You could have been killed just for doing that. You’re brave and you’re strong. No less strong than Luna. And Luna had her mother helping her too.”
I guess that’s true. It does make me feel a little better and I squeeze my rabbit’s foot to make sure it’s real.
“I’m so tired,” I mutter. “But I...I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to go back there.”
“Would it help if somebody stayed here with you?” Mason asks.” I could get the nurse or… Or I could stay with you. If it helps at all? I don’t mind. My work can wait. It’s not important.”
I was raised to do everything myself even if it meant that failing might kill me. Getting the least bit of help was never in the cards. But I don’t think I have the strength to say no to Mason Tremblay as his soft brown eyes look at me. He must feel so sorry for me and it makes me burn with shame but I can’t turn down the help when it comes with those gentle eyes and hands.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, please stay.”
“Of course,” Mason says, and he smiles like he’s so pleased. He smiles like his favorite thing to do in the world is to sit in an uncomfortable looking chair just so the crazy girl he rescued from a bunch of lunatics isn’t scared. I think that would make him crazy too. But that’s okay, I think to myself, as he helps me lower the bed again. He scoots his chair a little closer and looks around like he’s not sure who he should look at.
“You’re so nice,” I whisper, as sleep catches up with me again. I wonder if I’ll ever get enough of it. “You’re such a nice wolf.”
Chapter Seven: Mason
The nurses tell me that Alice hasn’t slept much without having terrors and thrashing around in her bed, yet when she finally drops off as I’m sitting there, she seems so peaceful. I sit there for a long time just to be there because I said I would. My butt gets numb from sitting in that stupid chair for so long. My phone buzzes and I ignore it. It starts to rain outside and the beat of the raindrops on the window is peaceful as I sit there. Alice’s expression softens in sleep, her fingers lax around the rabbit’s foot at her side. She still seems so pale, almost gaunt. I feel an urge to be the one making sure she’s taken care of properly. She needs somewhere peaceful to stay for a while, and then I suppose she’ll be sent to a new pack although the thought bothers me somehow. Anyway, she’ll need to build herself a whole new life and she can’t be expected to do that any time soon after such a traumatic experience.
I feel wrong leaving the room, just in case she wakes up. But I do need to eat. I go to the coffee cart and get myself a latte and a ham and cheese croissant and watch the rain falling outside. It’s a quiet morning in the hospital. At least she’s in a nice place. It should be nice considering how much money The Tremblay Company has given to the hospital. I smile to myself, sipping my coffee as I make my way back to the room. I’ve never in my life (that I can remember) used my name to try to get special treatment anywhere. But I was just so angry to see Alice looking so scared as she strained against the awful restraints they had her under. We might as well have left her in the cave if she’s going to be treated like that when she’s meant to be safe. I suppose there was a kind of logic to it, but I’m finding myself in no mood to apply cold pragmatic logic to this girl. She needs warmth, I think to myself as I quietly make my way back into her room and take my seat again. She needs...gentleness. If I can’t be the one to look after her myself, I’ll make sure she at least gets the kind of gentle treatment she needs.
Alice dozes for a couple of hours and when she wakes just in time for lunch, she seems surprised that I’m still around but she doesn’t ask about it. We’re quiet. I don’t know what there is to talk about that might not be too hard right now or too scary. Attempts at banal chit chat doesn’t seem necessary. Instead she seems to suddenly notice the television in the room. I think she’s been too generally out of it since she got here to size up her surroundings.
“Can we watch that?” She says.
“Yeah,” I say, shrugging. “Of course we can.”
We flip around. She doesn’t seem set on watching anything in particular. I get the sense that there wasn’t much TV watching happening at Hardwidge. It seems to be a bit of a novelty. There’s not much on that seems terribly interesting but the hospital has basic cable in the rooms. She asks me to stop on a channel playing Law and Order. She says she’s seen that show before and I can’t help but chuckle at that.
“Did I say something wrong?” She says.
“Oh, not at all,” I say. “It just makes sense really, if you haven’t seen much TV at all, that you’d still know Law and Order. It’s been on forever, I guess.”
“It’s about cops catching bad guys, right?” Alice says, tipping her head, her eyebrows arching slightly in curiosity.
It’s the most normal conversational exchange I think we’ve had so far and I nod, smiling. “Yeah. That’s right. And the lawyers. When the cases go to the trial and all that.”
Alice narrows her eyes, looking at me hard like she wants to fully understand even this unimportant thing. She nods firmly. “I see.”
We’ve come in on the middle of the episode, but she still seems fascinated. She asks me questions as if I must have seen the episode before (I haven’t) and between the two of us we manage to cobble together what must have happened so far.
At the commercial break, she squints. I see her trying to make heads or tails out of what’s being sold although she’s definitely familiar with commercials. Suddenly she says, “Oh, my backpack!” She whips around, looking for it, as if it might have disappeared.
“Yeah, do you need it?” I pop up and look around, finding the backpack under a chair in the corner.
“There are some books in there,” she says shyly. “Can I have them?”
“Of course. I’ll just um…” Somehow it feels like an intimate thing to unzip Alice’s backpack and look inside. It’s mostly books; just some paperbacks. But the thing is stuffed tight. I don’t know how she got it to zip. There are a few shirts and a lot of random things; postcards, key chains, candies, a movie theatre ticket, a few action figures, rubber bands, a kid’s puzzle game, a Rubik cube, bottle caps, a notebook and pens… It seems like just the sort of collection of possessions somebody would have if they rarely got a chance to own a single thing. Everything in the bag is precious, I realize. Everything to Alice has meaning. Somehow the thought puts a lump in my throat and my eyes water a little. I dig out all the books. There are about a dozen small paperbacks, most of them sci-fi or fantasy. A couple of them are run of the mill romance novels featuring a windswept woman in a frilly gown swooning under the gaze of a man in a barely-there shirt. When I lay the books down beside Alice, careful to show respect for her things, she smiles.
Alice actually smiles. It’s a soft little smile. It comes and goes in the space of a moment. But it’s the first time I’ve actually seen her smile and my heart swells a little at the sight.
“We learned basic kinds of things at Hardwidge,” Alice says. “There was a kind of little school for the kids. It probably wasn’t much. Learning to read was the best thing that ever happened to me, except I couldn’t often get my hands on books. People had them, sure. There was an old man named Donny who loved to read. Dax always said it was a waste of time, a human pursuit. There wasn’t a rule against it but I know there would’ve been eventually. He was always throwing out books when he found them. You had to keep them secret.” Alice picks up one of the fantasy novels with a dragon on the cover. It’s beaten up, its spine broken. But Alice holds it like it’s a Gutenberg Bible. “I’ve read these so many times. I don’t know how many times.”
I have to try to swallow that lump in my throat again and it isn’t easy. “Hey listen,” I say softly. I’m always afraid to speak too abruptly around this person. I feel like she’ll be startled easily if I make any sudden movements. “Listen, if you like books, I can get you books.” I laugh softly. I feel like I’d do just about anything to bring that little smile back as often as possible and providing Alice with some books wouldn’t exactly be a hardship. “Any kind of books you like. Fantasy, science fiction, romance. Anything you want, Alice. I’ll bring you books.”
“Oh. Oh, you don’t have to-”
“No, please,” I say, practically begging her to accept my help. “Please let me help, if I can. Unless you have a very good reason. Not wanting to bother me is not a good reason. I would really like to help you, Alice. Please let me.”
Alice seems a little overwhelmed, but she nods now. “Okay. Okay, that would be nice. I don’t know what I like best. I love these books but they’re like friends. I’ve just always had them. But I think I’d read just about anything or I’d try to.”
“Maybe someday I can take you to a bookstore,” I say wistfully. “Let you pick out just what you want. For now, I’ll do my best to find things you’ll like. How about that?”
“That would be nice,” Alice says, in that shy way of hers.
I feel like the real question is as much on the tip of my tongue as it on hers.
Where does she go next?
The answer is also on the tip of my tongue but it feels like too much.
I want her to come with me. I want to give her a big, comfy room in my house with all its luxuries, just until she can decide what she would like to do and where she would like to go. She certainly deserves it. I have a couple extra bedrooms in my house but I know which I’d give her. I’d give her the one with the balcony and the big windows that look out on the woods opposite the mountains; the woods that go all the way out to the estate, where I played as a kid. It’s the same view from my bedroom down the hall. It’s already made up. It’s a nice, calming kind of room painted in soft blue. It has a big, comfy chair with a bamboo frame by the window where she could sit and read her books. Or she could go sit on the balcony and feel like she’s hovering right over the trees beyond the cliffside if she wanted.
But that seems like so much. I want her to be able to make her own choices without feeling like she has to agree to whatever I or somebody else proposes. I just have to make sure she knows I’m more than willing to help.
Instead of saying all that though, I nod at her books. “You must have one favorite,” I say. “You must like one of those friends’ best?”
Alice smiles again and bites her lip. She looks like a little kid trying to decide between ice creams but finally she holds up one of the fantasy books that’s got a knight on the cover, holding a sword, and standing in front of a snowy mountain.
“This one has a knight and a unicorn,” she says. “And a love story. The poor maiden from a lonely village saves the knight and he falls in love with her. And then she becomes queen. I always imagined that.” Her smile fades a little and she frowns at the book. “I couldn’t save myself though. I wish I had.”
“You did though,” I say quietly. “I keep trying to tell you. You saved my brother and Luna. That was you saving yourself and them. You had to turn against everything you were taught and everything you were told. You had to fear to do that. It was brave. Just as brave as fighting dragons with a sword or anything else.”
“You really think so?”
I lean forward and cover her hands with mine so that hopefully she’ll know how serious I am. I’m careful. Approach with caution, I figure. But she doesn’t wince. In fact, when I touch her, she seems to relax a little.
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” I tell her. “I think it was very brave of you. I’ll keep reminding you, if I have to. As long as I’m around anyway. You saved my brother and for that my whole family owes you everything. We won’t forget that, Alice. Not ever.”
She swallows and manages another one of those little smiles. “Thank you.”
I spend most of the day in the hospital and then I wait until she’s able to fall asleep again before I finally leave. The day’s been nice. She didn’t have any freak-outs like it seems she had before. She was calm the entire time I was there. I’m hoping she can sleep through the night but I’m a little nervous about it when I leave.
All in all, it was a pretty good day.
So it’s strange that when I leave, I’m enraged. I feel a kind of anger I didn’t know I was capable of before. When I was around Alice, it was put away. Making her feel safe and okay was much more important than my stupid anger. But now my wolf is pacing, restless. I want to tear up her awful brother and his friend who hurt her. They’re far away and there would be no point. I’ve alw
ays found revenge rather meaningless. That wouldn’t help Alice anyway. They just need to be kept away from her forever. I’m angry at Dax too and he’s dead. I’m angry at that entire awful pack, except for the innocents. I’m angry at the nurses who restrained her and the doctors who let it happen. I’m still angry at myself, maybe more than anything, for not finding her sooner. I’m angry at my brothers for not insisting on helping me sooner.
I’m pretty angry.
When I go home, I stomp around and slam doors, and feel like I’m going a little crazy. I feel like Xander calls me at exactly the right time.
“How was the hospital?” He asks.
I’m gripping the phone so hard, my hand hurts as I stare out the window at Quinton and its woods, and the mountain that look smaller from here but maybe not small enough.
“It was fine,” I mutter into the phone. “It was good.”
“Yeesh. You don’t sound like it.”
“I’m pissed.”
“What for?”
“It doesn’t matter. You want to go on a run with me? My wolf needs out. Are you busy?”
“I can come,” Xanders says quickly. “Tell you the truth… I think the rest of us are feeling pretty shitty for not doing more to help you find Alice. Honestly, we were sure she was dead. I wish we’d listened to you. I’m sorry, man.”
I take a deep breath. I must be in quite a mood because even that admission and apology is pissing me off and I rarely get pissed off to begin with. It just seems so useless now. What good does it do? Yet on the other hand, I’ve never been great with grudges.
“You’re right,” I say. “You guys should have been there. But it’s over now. You came through in the end anyway. Listen, I’ll be in the woods. Sniff me out.”
Like my parents’ huge estate, my house’s backyard is really the forest. I can walk outside, cross my driveway and the road that’s often deserted and then I’m pretty much in the woods. It’s still drizzling and I peel off my shirt and toss it on a chair before heading outside. The cool rain feels good on my skin and I walk out into the forest, heading in deep and not yet shifting. I want to feel the cool rain and wind on me. It’s calming after the surreal day I’ve had with this girl and how riled up I am now about everything.
Mason's Mate Page 5