by Helena Shaw
Let’s hope this time he doesn’t need to take off in the middle of it, she thought as she pulled herself out of bed.
From the floor, she grabbed and old t-shirt and pulled it on to cover her nakedness, and then from the top drawer of her dresser, she found a pair of cotton panties. The morning was too chilly for so little clothing, but she hoped that Jase would have it in him to warm her up again.
“Morning,” she yawned as she left her bedroom, but when she opened her eyes, she found herself alone. The coffee maker was off, the door was closed, and there was no sign of Jase Byrnes to be found.
“What the hell?” she said to herself as she shivered. It really was much too cold to go without pants, and before she went searching for a note he had to have surely left, she went back into her bedroom and pulled on an old pair of sweatpants and a hoodie. The ancient furnace in her house was terrible at best, and she made a mental note to stock up on some firewood for the woodstove before she returned to the living room.
The note she was expecting was nowhere to be found. There wasn’t a single speck of evidence to prove Jase had even been there the night before. The only thing keeping Dawn from thinking she’d dreamed the whole thing was the delicate soreness between her legs.
“Asshole,” she mumbled to herself. And then, “Idiot.”
She’d been a fool for taking him into her bed so quickly. Her fear, her adrenaline, and the whiskey had played a big part in all of what had gone on between them, and she’d been naïve to let him get so close to her.
A deep sense of regret pooled in the pit of her stomach as she moved to turn on her coffee maker. Her disappointment and unease were doing wonders to kill her appetite, but she was moving out of habit as she pulled the bag of bagels out of the fridge and popped one in the toaster.
At least he isn’t really FBI, she thought as she poured the coffee grinds into the filter. Despite him lying to her about who he was, she couldn’t bring herself to be mad about that. If anything, she was relieved. Jase had his own secrets, and if he really was hunting werewolves of monsters or whatever he’d claimed, at least he wasn’t there to hunt her.
The memory of what she’d seen the night before made her shudder hard enough to reawaken the ache in her muscles. Her body hurt worse where she’d broken her fall, but she could only focus on the ache she enjoyed, even if she was regretting it.
“It can’t really be real, can it?” she asked aloud as she watched the coffee begin to drip. Werewolves, monsters, and all the other things she’d heard about in stories and watched in movies, they couldn’t exist.
Yet she’d seen it with her own eyes. Even when she tried to explain it away with reason and rationality, there was no mistaking what she’d seen. In front of her very eyes, she’d seen a man become a wolf.
Even then, with fear crippling her, she was able to tell it wasn’t just an ordinary wolf. She’d gone to the zoo enough as a kid to know what wolves looked like, what they ran like. Even dogs moved nearly the same, but this creature hadn’t. There was something bulkier about the wolf that had chased her down and almost killed her. It ran almost like a gorilla, with its muscular forearms pumping as it moved. And it was bigger than a wolf. So much bigger.
Jase wasn’t lying. The creature was a werewolf, and it had tried to kill her.
Another memory came back to her as her bagel popped out of the toaster. I should have told him about the scratches by the dumpster, she realized as she began to butter her breakfast.
It was too late now. Sure, she had his card and could call him, but she wasn’t exactly sure she should. He’d left for a reason, and if she called him, it might only make things worse.
But she wanted to talk to him. Despite the fear, the regret, and her uncertainty, she wanted to see him, to have him hold her again. She hadn’t felt so safe since before her dad died, and she never wanted to let that go.
Just as she moved to take a bite of her bagel, the rotary phone rang and startled her so hard she dropped the first half of her bagel on the counter.
Her lost breakfast was of no concern. She leapt for the phone and answered it. “Jase?”
“Sorry?” Jim’s voice answered back. “Dawnie, is that you?”
“Jim,” she sighed. “Sorry, what’s up?”
“I know it was a late night,” he said, his voice tired and ragged. “But we’re slammed here. Those hunters are back for an early lunch, and I need you. Now.”
“I’ll be right there,” she said before she hung up.
There was no time for her coffee, and there certainly was no time for a shower. She couldn’t leave Jim hanging any longer than absolutely necessary. She went to her room to get changed.
Laundry had been low on her priority list lately, and she pulled on the same pair of jeans she’d worn the last three days. They were a little scraped on the knees, but no one at Jim’s would notice.
The scrapes running down her left arm, however, were definitely noticeable. She knew it would be hot racing around Jim’s in long sleeves, but she had no choice. She grabbed a plaid shirt she’d found at Goodwill and buttoned it over a plain white tank top before she threw her hair into a ponytail and grabbed the surviving half of her bagel to eat on the walk to Jim’s.
Her old plaid jacket was barely enough to block out the cold as she walked toward the bar, but it would be enough for today. As she walked and ate, she found herself relieved to see people on the streets of Goosemont again. The hunters coming into town seemed to have worked some magic, because even though they hadn’t killed a thing yet, people seemed to feel safer with them there.
Do they even know what they’re up against? she wondered. Jase knew. Jase had almost killed it. If it weren’t for her stopping him from chasing after it, he might have actually done finished the job. Instead, the monster was still on the loose, but at least it was wounded.
The bar really was packed when she walked in. Jim’s eyes were red enough to match his cheeks, and he looked about ready to crash, but Dawn was glad for the insanity. Her mind was so cluttered that being too busy to think was the one thing she really needed, and she dove headfirst into the fray.
Even the FBI agents, the real ones, were there for lunch. Maybe with so many armed men flooding the town they’d decided to keep an eye on things, but Dawn wasn’t in the mood to ask. Just thinking about Jase made her heart ache, so she avoided their table as much as possible.
“They’re already hammered,” Jim sighed as Dawn took refuge behind the bar with him. “Do they really expect to shoot anything but each other while they’re drunk?”
“Hopefully not,” Dawn said as she watched the crowd. “I’m sure they’ll sober up enough before they go looking for the bear though. I mean, won’t they be better off hunting at night?”
“Probably,” Jim nodded. “Last thing this town needs is more bodies.”
With their beers and lunches finished, the hunters began to pack up. Dawn hoped she was right in that they would sober up enough before they went out into the woods with their guns cocked, but she couldn’t be too sure. For once, though, she was glad for the FBI agents.
As the hunters started to leave, so did the feds. They were keeping an eye on the drunks. They had to be.
It was when the bar started to really empty out that the door opened and a new patron entered. A familiar face sat down at one of the yet-to-be-cleaned tables, and Dawn took a deep breath before she went to go serve him.
“Afternoon, Mr. Mosley,” she said as she began to wipe down the table.
“Please,” he said with a warm smile, “call me Gavin.”
Dawn still couldn’t bring herself to trust him, but the troubled look on his face gave her reason to pause as she brought him a menu. Between that and the white bandage poking out of the bottom of his t-shirt, she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” he said, but then he ran his hand through his dark hair and changed his answer. “No, not really.”
“Hurt
you shoulder?” she asked. She remembered reading that a torn shoulder muscle had ended his major league career, and if he’d hurt it even more, it would explain his gloomy appearance.
“This?” he said as he pulled up the sleeve of his t-shirt to show off the white wrapping that went all the way from his bicep to the top of his arm. “Yeah, I was chopping some wood to blow off steam. Aggravated the old injury. Wrapped it up, but it’s still tender.”
“Is it going to be okay?” Dawn asked, surprised by her own concern.
“Probably not,” he said with a weak smile. “But not from the wood cutting. Even with surgery, my docs couldn’t guarantee full healing, so I’m kind of stuck with a bum shoulder for the long haul, but...”
“But what?” Dawn asked as she sat down at his table.
“An injury, well, that I can deal with,” Gavin said. “It’s in the cards for a guy like me. That’s fine. It’s just… an FBI agent came sniffing around my place again this morning, asking me all sorts of questions, poking around my yard. Why can’t they just believe I had nothing to do with this?”
Jase, Dawn realized as she listened to Gavin. The other two FBI agents, well, the only two real FBI agents, had spent most of their day so far at Jim’s. The only one left was Jase.
“I hate myself enough for what happened,” Gavin said. “But they keep hounding me. What if they give up finding out what happened and plant something on my property?”
“They wouldn’t do that,” Dawn said, trying to be reassuring.
“Why not?” Gavin asked.
What she wanted to tell him was that the FBI agents didn’t suspect him and that Jase wouldn’t do something like that, but could she actually promise him that? Just because he’d told her his name and spent the night in her bed didn’t mean she really knew the man, and she had to remember that.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just can’t imagine they’d do something and risk being wrong, you know?”
“What if someone else turns up missing?” Gavin said. “Am I going to be a suspect all over again? With all these hunters in town, you’d think they’d get it through their heads that it was an animal, not a person.”
Dawn almost opened her mouth to tell him what she’d seen the night before, but she stopped herself. She barely believed what she’d seen with her own eyes, and part of her still thought it was just a flight of fancy. Going around telling people she’d seen a werewolf was a recipe for not only being seen as a crazy person, but it’d goad the FBI agents into having a serious talk with her. It was best to keep her lips sealed.
“They’ll kill it,” she said. “I’m sure someone will bring it down. There are enough of them out there looking for it.”
“God, I’m being so selfish,” Gavin said as his fingers fiddled with the corners of the menu. “How are you holding up? I don’t want to assume, but… well, you know.”
“Yeah,” Dawn murmured. She didn’t know what it was. Only a day ago, she had hated the man, but talking to him now and seeing the anguish on his face was making her start to warm up to him. He seemed so beat up by everything that happened that she was starting to realize he was just as much a victim as anyone else in town. It was bad timing and poor judgement that led him there, not murder. Yet a voice inside her, one that was growing smaller and smaller, begged her not to trust him.
“It’s rough,” she said. “I’m doing what I can to keep myself busy. I haven’t taken a day off in over a week, and thankfully now that it’s busy, I have enough to do so that my mind doesn’t have time to think. Every time I slow down, it all comes flooding back.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, his chin resting on his hand.
“No,” Dawn said. “I want to shut my brain off.”
“I can understand that,” he said. “Anything I can do to help?”
“I don’t know...” Dawn thought on it. “Maybe if you told me about baseball, or anything else, really. Just to drown out my own thoughts.”
Gavin’s eyes lit up when she mentioned the word “baseball.” Even retired, he must have still loved the game, and Dawn was surprised at how interested she actually was in hearing about Gavin’s experiences playing in the major leagues.
“Well, there’s nothing like playing at the home stadium,” he said as his brown eyes met hers. “The crowd is electric when you’re playing well, and the last thing you want is to let them down.”
“Sorry,” she said, stopping him. “Who did you play for?”
“I’m hurt!” Gavin said with a soft laugh. “Kidding. I played for the Marlins. I was actually in some trade talks when I had my injury. The Yankees had been sniffing around, and any player who denies dreaming of being a Yankee is lying through their teeth.”
Dawn could believe that much. Her stepfather had season tickets right above the Yankee’s dugout, and on a few rare occasions, he’d bring her with him to a game. It was one of the few good memories she had of the man, though they had been tainted by the rest of her time with him.
“You ever been to Yankee stadium?” Gavin asked.
“No,” she lied. “But I’ve heard about it.”
“Yeah, well, that was the dream,” Gavin said. “Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a Yankee. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade my time with the Marlins for anything else in the world. How about Miami? You been to Miami?”
Dawn shook her head. It was another lie. Richard had brought her and her mother there for Christmas when Dawn was sixteen. Despite the beaches, despite the shopping, she didn’t have good memories of the city.
“Well, like anywhere, you stay in the nice parts of town and it’s gorgeous,” Gavin said. “I don’t miss the heat, though. Man, that city will make a man sweat.”
She didn’t know why, but Dawn laughed easily at that. Her laughter seemed to fuel him, and Gavin continued as a smile grew on his lips.
“Playing out there, damn, it was gorgeous, but I prayed for games against the Mariners or the Mets or anywhere a little colder. Trips to Canada were the best. The Jays have this dome that opens and closes, and it’s a marvel to be seen.”
“A dome?” Dawn asked, unsure what he meant. “But why?”
“I’ve played up there during a blizzard,” Gavin said. “No joke—a full-on blizzard. Without the dome to cover the field, they’d lose part of their season.”
“I’ve heard it’s pretty friendly up there,” Dawn said as she let herself relax.
“It can be,” Gavin said with a smile. “But a fan is a fan, no matter where you go. They’ll still boo you, you get jeered, just like anywhere else. What about you, though? You traveled much?”
“Not really,” Dawn said with a casual shrug. It was a lie, but it was safer than the truth. “I spent some time in Ohio, grew up on the east coast.”
“So why did you settle in Goosemont?” Gavin asked her.
“I could ask you the same thing,” she replied, deflecting the question.
“No real reason,” he said. “I told my real estate agent I was looking for a nice cottage or cabin in a small town. Close to hiking trails, wooded areas. You know, good country living. We saw a few places, but when I visited this town… I don’t know, it just seemed right.”
“Yeah,” Dawn agreed. She’d found the place herself by a happy accident. Hitchhiking her way south, the trucker she was driving with pulled off the highway one night specifically to go to Jim’s bar for a little dinner. A “help wanted” sign in the window led to an on-the-spot interview, and before she knew it, she was working for Jim.
The cabin had come a day later. With nowhere to stay, Jim introduced Dawn to a woman named Patricia who owned a few places that she rented out, mostly to loggers. One was open, and suddenly, Dawn had a place to stay.
“So, what about you?” Gavin pressed.
“Needed a job,” Dawn said. “I thought the logging camps might be something I could try my hand at. I never went to college, and didn’t really have any skills, so I wound up at Jim’
s.”
“And how do you like it here?” he asked, his stare intense.
“It’s good,” Dawn said, the first truth she’d told. “Really good, actually. Jim seems like a mean old grizzly bear, but really, he’s a teddy. The town is friendly, the money is enough to get by on. I really do like it here.”
“See,” Gavin said with a smile. “This place just feels right, you know?”
“I do,” Dawn sighed. “With everything that’s happened, though…”
“You’ll get through it,” Gavin said as he rested his hand on hers. “You’re strong. You’ll be okay.”
Dawn was seriously starting to wonder how she could have ever suspected a guy like Gavin was anything more but an innocent bystander. Now that she’d actually given him a chance, she was starting to realize that.
Maybe Jim was right, she thought to herself. He really does seem like a good guy.
He was the kind of guy she should be focusing on: nice, stable, and a good listener. His attempts at humor weren’t perfect, but they made her smile all the same. He was strong, attractive, attentive, and she could see why Courtney had clamored all over the guy the first chance she’d gotten.
Yet Dawn couldn’t stop from thinking about Jase. He was everything that she should avoid, but that only seemed to make her want him more. He was secretive, dangerous, and way too sexy. Every time she tried to force herself to see Gavin in that light, her mind only went back to Jase.
Even though he’d walked out on her in the middle of the night with no note, no word, nothing, she still wanted him. She just had to decide if what she wanted and what she needed were the same thing.
Chapter Eleven
Three days of hunters scouring the woods around town and drinking their time away at the bar had produced little more than a few bar fights, some nice tips, and a lot of spilled beer. Beyond the occasional rabbit, not a single one of them had actually shot anything, and for that, Dawn couldn’t help but be glad.
It isn’t a wolf, she thought to herself as she leaned on the bar. Not the kind they might be looking for, anyway.