by Penny Alley
“Gabe!” Colton barked as he hurried past them, his long-legged stride re-enforcing the urgency of his tone. “We may have a problem.”
Marcus and Gabe looked at one another, but Colton kept moving, his pace fast enough to border on jogging as he crossed the parking lot toward the road, heading uphill straight for the cabins Gabe and Colton both called home.
Where Neoma called home now too, and where she’d gone directly after running away from him.
Gabe barely felt the jack leave his hands. He abandoned his car and tools, aware that Marcus had fallen into step just behind him. ‘A problem’ could have meant so many things, but all Gabe could think of when it came to Neoma was Scullamy, Deacon, the buses, the likelihood that someone could have snuck back across Hollow Hills’s borders to finish what the giver of all those scars had begun so many years earlier. It wasn’t until he passed Colton that Gabe realized he was running, and when he crested the hill to find Karly’s car parked in the cul-de-sac in front of his cabin, it was with a cold twist of sick dread that all his previous fears as to the specifics of the ‘problem’ redefined themselves.
Gabe was almost to the porch when Karly stepped out onto it. Seeing her, safe and without the slightest evidence of volka mauling, did not relax him.
“Are you okay?” Karly asked, looking surprised to see him and even more surprised when her eyes shifted and saw Colton. “What on Earth…? What are you all doing here? Mama, did you call them? What the hell did you tell them?” She spun back to Gabe just as he hopped the three porch steps. “Gabe, wait…” she began, holding up her hands.
Ducking the flimsy barrier of her arms, Gabe was inside and sweeping the room for signs of…what, he wasn’t sure. Nothing obvious stood out. The room was neat, no signs of a struggle anywhere that he could see. The remotes rested side-by-side on the coffeetable, along with yesterday’s mail. The bedding was folded neatly at the head of the couch, where he’d left it after waking this morning.
Everything certainly seemed to be in order.
Confused, he turned to Mama Margo, seated with iron authority on the arm of the couch, arms folded across her chest. “That Scruffer was here,” she announced, pointing at the blanket behind her. “Right here. I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out for you to know what they were doing.”
Gabe stared at her, hot emotion blazing once before drawing into a tight ember low in his belly. In two long strides, he was at the couch, yanking up the blanket and pulling in a deep breath.
Wayman. Definitely Wayman. His scent clung to every cotton thread.
Rage flared, red as blood behind his eyes. He took another breath… and then another… and slowly raised his head, frowning.
Wayman’s scent was there, all right, but not Neoma’s. And now that he could be at least peripherally objective about it, his scent wasn’t exactly ground in, as if he’d been—God, he was going to spend the rest of his life getting that image out of his mind—rolling around naked or anything.
Snorting to clear both his mind and his nose, Gabe tossed the blanket back down. He looked at Margo. “All right, maybe you do need to spell it out. What was he doing here?”
“Ask your Bride.” Mama Margo lifted her chin, her pursed mouth a moue of distaste. “She was the one keeping him company. And she seemed awfully damned surprised when we found them together. Ran and locked herself in the bathroom.”
“I think that’s my fault,” Karly interjected, raising her hand like a child in school. “I make her, um, nervous. But she didn’t lock herself in the bathroom until after we let ourselves in.” She shot a glance—half-accusing and half-embarrassed—at Mama Margo, who shrugged it off. “She’s upset. I don’t understand what I’m still doing here, much less what all of you—wait, Colton!”
Climbing the porch, the Alpha of Hollow Hills pushed past his Bride, stalking into the living room just behind Gabe to take in the scene. His mouth was a hard frowning line and his eyes missed little. “What happened?” he demanded with all the cool levelheadedness that Gabe couldn’t for the life of him begin to summon. Circling the couch, he, too, picked up the blanket and took a sniff, then another and his frown deepened.
“Of course she’s upset,” Mama Margo sniffed. “She got caught.”
“Caught?” Karly laughed, appalled. “Doing what? Mama, you didn’t see anything more than I did and I didn’t see anything at all!”
“I saw that Scruffer come out of this house,” said Mama Margo, hammering in each word like a nail. “The same Scruffer the Scullamy Alpha and your young Bride were so close and chatty with the day of the Hunt. We all knew they were up to something, and this proves it. If I were you, I’d keep an extra-close eye on her until you find out just what they were planning.”
“Marcus,” said Colton, dropping the blanket.
“On it.” The other man left, heavy footsteps receding as he scouted for Wayman’s scent and followed it away.
Eyes wide with disbelief, Karly laughed again. It came out like a puff of air, hard and without mirth. “You’re kidding, right? Just because she’s from Scullamy? What difference does that make?” Without a drop of volka in her blood, she had no Shift to blame for the way her voice dipped, turning husky and low and shaky with emotion. “She can’t help where she was born! Why do you insist on blaming her for it?”
“Her Alpha killed my husband,” Mama Margo snapped, fire lighting the backs of her angry eyes, at least until Gabe said, “You have a lot in common, then, because he killed Neoma’s husband as well.”
“Enough,” Colton said, stepping between them. “He was here. His scent can’t be more than a few minutes old.”
“That doesn’t mean they were plotting anything!” Karly protested.
Colton turned to her, his speculative glare plainly saying, What else would they be doing?
What else would they be doing here?
Gabe turned, the wolf’s pulse pounding in his veins, and walked down the short hall to the bathroom. He did not for one moment believe Neoma had been machinating assassination plots—she couldn’t even drive a stick shift!—but neither had she been exchanging cupcake recipes with Wayman, so what did that leave? There wasn’t a whiff of sex in the air…but maybe that was only because she’d fought him off.
If he’d hurt her, if he’d touched her…
It was shocking how fast the fog of fury enveloped him then. Gabe reached for the bathroom door, only just stopping himself from letting his instincts take over. Kicking the door down would only upset Neoma more. Banging on it wasn’t much better, and so he swallowed back both of those impulses. Taking hold of the knob, he gave it a gentle shake instead as he said her name. He meant only to let her know as unobtrusively as possible that he was there; to his surprise, the knob turned freely. Despite Mama Margo’s assurances, it wasn’t locked after all. Was that promising? That seemed like it might be promising.
He eased the door open. “Neoma?”
The light was off, but the shower was running. Though she didn’t answer, her scent was all over the steamy bathroom.
Tapping the light on, he came inside and closed the door behind him. This time, he made sure it was locked.
The shower curtain was completely drawn, but the overhead lights cast the shadow of her, sitting huddled and small in the bottom of the tub, across the plastic folds. The bumps of her knees were drawn to her chest, encircled by the wrap of her thin arms and crowned by her bowed head. A complete absence of shed clothing on the floor meant she was still wearing them, with that showering rain of water drumming down on top of her because, he realized as the shadow of her shoulders hitched and he heard that first small sniffle, it was the only way she could think of to hide her crying.
That was less promising.
Moving closer, Gabe hunkered down beside the tub. “Are you hurt?” he finally asked.
Another soft sniff was followed by an even softer, hiccupy, “I’m fine.”
“Did he touch you?”
“No.”
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Gabe studied her silhouette through the shower curtain, listening to the pattering fall of the water and feeling nothing except that twisting tightness inside him growing ever more so with each second that ticked relentless by. “In about two seconds,” he said, surprised at how falsely calm he sounded, “I’m going to pull back the curtain and look at you. So, let me ask again and it’s okay to answer honestly, sweetheart: Did he touch you?”
The silhouette turned its face away. Resting her cheek on her knees now instead of her forehead, she lied to him, “No.” That he knew it for a lie without ever touching that curtain brought that straining twist inside him right to the verge of snapping.
“Okay.” Nodding once, Gabe then shook his head. He didn’t need to look, but his hand was on the curtain before he could stop himself. He snapped it back, releasing a billow of heat and steam. Shoulders hunched, Neoma stared at the back tile wall and refused to meet his eyes, not even when he lifted her hair, searching all the parts of her that he could see for the bruises and scratches that simply weren’t there.
“I told you I was fine,” she said when he finally leaned away.
“I thought—”
“We’re all liars in Scullamy.”
“We had that conversation once today already,” Gabe told her. “We don’t need to have it again.”
Her shoulders hitched on a silent hiccup. It was harder for her to hide her next sniff, but if there were tears, they were lost in the shower’s spray, dripping from her hair to roll down her face.
“Look at me,” he gently commanded, but she didn’t.
“If I told you nothing happened, would it make any difference?” Her voice cracked on the last word. “If I told you we were just talking, would it even occur to you to believe me for one second? Just one?”
He tried to take her chin, but she shut her eyes and turned even further away, facing into the tiles and shivering, shivering in the steam.
“Believe what you want. Whatever that old bitch says, that’s what happened. Because I’m Scullamy. Whatever. I don’t care.”
Breathing in the steam and the hot and her, Gabe hunkered beside the tub until the strain in his knees began to assert itself above the confusion still waging in his living room, and then he just had to stand. Her shoulders hunched against his touch, but he stroked her wet hair all the same, letting his hand rest on the crown of her head for many seconds longer than it needed to.
“I believe you,” he said, for both their sakes. Giving her one last pat, he drew the curtain closed again and left the bathroom. Hands on his hips, he stood in his living room, needing a minute just to breathe, filling his lungs with cooler air and his mind with cooler thoughts. Knowing what he had to do, he pasted on the biggest, falsest, most unconvincing smile he could muster under the circumstances. “Okay, let’s finish this shit.”
It was probably the wrong way to start any “clearing the air” conversation, but at the moment, the only feelings Gabe was interested in sparing belonged to the woman crying in the bottom of his shower.
“I made a mistake,” he announced, drawing everyone’s attention. “A week ago, I took a Bride. Colton, you had to order me to accept her. You never should have had to do that, and for that I’m sorry.”
Standing between Gabe and the two women, Colton turned to face him fully, a slightly puzzled look creeping over him. “It’s okay,” he started to say, but Gabe stopped him.
“You’re my alpha and my friend, and I love you like a brother,” he continued. “But this is my house, and if my Bride wants to entertain company—” He turned to Mama Margo and for her benefit alone, said, “—then she can invite in whoever the hell she wants to.”
The old matron mama’s steely eyes lit up with angry surprise. A flush stole across her weathered cheeks, and for the first time in who knew how long, gave her an oddly girlish appeal. There was nothing girlish, however, about the way she came up off the couch, stalking across the living room to stand toe-to-toe with Gabe. “That Scruffer was behind closed doors with your Scullamy trash and you have the nerve to scold at me?” she demanded. “Gabe Michaelson, I wiped your nose when you weren’t nothing but knee-high to a cricket. I wiped your butt—”
“And when the time comes,” Gabe interrupted, much calmer than he actually felt. “I’ll be happy to return the favor. Until then, I’ll thank you not to refer to my Bride as Scullamy trash ever again.”
That flush in Mama Margo’s wrinkled cheeks deepened.
“Okay, let’s all take a breath,” Colton said, holding up a staying hand, but she smacked it aside.
“He was in your house!” she spat, stabbing an accusing finger back at the couch. “His scent’s all over that!”
“So it yours,” Gabe reminded. “You sat down too. That doesn’t mean I rocked your socks on it.”
Marcus, unnoticed until now in the doorway of the porch, quietly spoke up, “Wayman’s gone.”
All of them—Gabe, Colton, Mama Margo and even Karly—looked at him.
“I just went and checked.” Marcus shrugged one shoulder and stepped inside. “His cot’s stripped. Took the blanket and the pillow. Took the doughnuts off the break table, too. Harley just saw him at the gas station, bike loaded down, filled the tank and lit out of town toward Grady.”
A beat of silence ended with another of Mama Margo’s best points and her gruff, “See? Why would he run if he wasn’t guilty of something?”
“Maybe because he couldn’t drop in and see a neighbor without someone else accusing him of being a Scruffer,” Gabe snapped, putting extra scorn in the last word, “in cahoots with Scullamy trash! I wouldn’t stay where I wasn’t wanted either.”
More silence, forcing him uneasily into confrontation with the echoes of his own words.
“I wouldn’t stay where I knew I wasn’t wanted,” he said, hating the words even as they left his mouth. He looked back in the direction of the bathroom.
This time, it was Colton who broke the uneasy quiet. “All right, that’s enough for one day. Marcus, go back to the office and see if anything else is missing. Margo, take Karly home. We’ll talk about this later. Go on.”
That flush on Mama Margo’s face deepened and for just a moment, a watery sheen filled her eyes. “They killed my husband,” she repeated, refusing to let that sheen gather into tears and sure as hell refusing to let them fall.
“Yes, he did,” Gabe softly agreed, and not without sympathy. Then he also repeated, “Deacon killed hers, too.”
Mama Margo glared up at him, unmoved, unmoving, until Karly touched her arm. “Come on, Mama. I’ll drive you home.”
Turning stiffly, Mama Margo walked out of the cabin, her head held high, unrepentant. Seeming not to see them, she bumped into one of the boxes on the porch and very nearly tripped over a discarded bed slat. She stumbled and stopped when Karly caught her arm. Rubbing her hands against her thighs, she gruffly said, “I’m fine. I’m just fine.”
“I know,” Karly said, glancing back over her shoulder to Colton, and then to Gabe. The worry in her chevolak eyes softened. She offered a slight smile, and then she left, leading Mama Margo back to the car.
Catching a nod from Colton, Marcus followed them and once everyone was gone, the rumble of two car engines receded down the road toward town, Gabe let out a pent in sigh. Scrubbing his fingers through his hair, he paced as far as the closed bathroom door—the continued rain of the shower doing little to disguise the sniffles that pricked at both his ears and his conscience—and back again, all the way out onto the porch where Colton had wandered and now waited, leaning quietly up against a post.
They stood together, pretending to watch the scenery, but the peaceful view and gently rolling clouds did not quiet Gabe’s thoughts.
Had she hid in the bathroom because she expected Gabe to storm in with accusations? Scullamy treachery—lies, plots, infidelity? A week ago, he might have. A week ago, he’d have heard Mama Margo’s side of it and, if he’d bothered to talk to Neoma at all
, he’d have taken her cowering in the tub, her aversion to meet his eyes as guilt and he’d have judged her for it. Just like he’d judged her for that split-second decision when she, in her franticness to escape Scullamy, Wayman and her father, had thrown herself under Gabe. He’d been too angry then to smell how frightened she had been, but he could smell it now. His whole living room reeked of it, filling up his nose and tainting every hard breath he took.
It shamed him.
“Did he hurt her?” Colton finally asked, breaking a long, insufferable silence filled only with the whisper of a breeze and the cantankerous caws of a few argumentative crows.
“No. But it’s funny, isn’t it?” said Gabe, smiling through his teeth in the least laughing mood he’d ever in his life been in. “That’s right where my mind went, too. Look around. Nothing out of place, no sign of trouble, and so of course, he had to have hurt her. I never would have thought this before, Colt, but…are we bad people?”
Colton took a long time to think that over. “No,” was what he decided on. “We’re just people. We do the best we can.”
The sun sent a few tentative feelers through the clouds and retreated. The pines waved their arms, dropping more needles on the lawn. In the distance, a sudden volley of barks rose up and died away in a howl. Sounded like the Olsen pups.
“Are you going after him?” Gabe asked, picking at the splintering surface of the rails.
“Wayman?” Colton’s voice held only amusement. “Do you know how much paperwork I’d have to do on a Grand Theft Doughnut? I think I’ll let it slide this time.”
“And if he comes back?”
“If he comes back,” he thought about it. “Well then, I’ll kick his ass. I was saving that maple bar. But I’d like to think I might also offer him a job. That may or may not be true, but I like to believe people can change.” Colton rolled one shoulder. “Change isn’t something that happens just because it would be nice if it did. You have to want it. You have to work at it. I’m not sure I could do that…for Wayman. Could you?”