Shy (Once Bitten, Twice Shy, #2)

by Marie, Noelle

  Her mother allowed her to slip her hands free from where she’d been continuing to clutch at them, but swallowed Katherine up into another hug before she had even managed to take a single step from the crowded entryway. Her father, too, wrapped his arms around her once more.

  "We're so glad you're home. We love you so much," Elaine whispered into her hair, choking on the words as she forced them out.

  Katherine tightened the grip she had on both of her parents and returned the sentiment with equal feeling. “I love you too.”

  A weight was lifted off her chest as she said the words – words she never thought she’d have another opportunity to say to her mom and dad – and when her parents finally released her from their dual embrace, Katherine hid the tears that had gathered in her eyes by hurriedly turning and dashing up the stairs.

  When she arrived at and opened her bedroom door – or at least what used to be her bedroom door – Katherine was hit with an overwhelming wave of déjà vu.

  Her parents had kept her room exactly the same.

  In fact, it looked as if it hadn’t been touched at all the entire half year that she’d been gone. Not a single one of her possessions had been moved. Nothing was out of place. Even the sleep shirt she could vaguely recall having worn the night before she'd been attacked by those hunters remained where she’d thrown it – a crumpled ball of fabric peeking out from under the bed.

  The fact that her parents had ensured that her room went untouched, regardless of the knowledge that she’d likely never return home to see it, caused a fresh onslaught of tears to wet her eyes.

  Unwilling to look at the beige walls or purple bedspread a moment longer, Katherine quickly grabbed the first clean outfit she could get her hands on – a faded pair of jeans and fitted red V-neck t-shirt – and rushed into the adjoining bathroom.

  Ignoring the chill that swept through her as she undressed and her bare feet touched cold tile, Katherine forced herself to think. What was she going to tell her parents?

  She allowed the hot water that jetted out of the ancient showerhead to drench her until it began to run cold. By the time she’d dried her hair and slipped on the clothes she’d haphazardly picked out, Katherine was fairly certain she'd thought of an idea that could work.

  Practicing the story in her head as exited her bedroom and hesitantly descended the stairs, she'd failed right away to notice the raised voices coming from the kitchen. As she got closer to the room, however, the loud arguing swiftly caught her attention.

  "What do you mean, are we sure?" It was her mother, and Katherine didn't know if she’d ever heard the woman sound so upset. Or incredulous. "Do you think we're really desperate enough to get Katherine back that we’d mistake someone else for our own daughter? For your sister?"

  Oh... Samantha. So her sister had arrived home with the pizza while she was in the shower.

  "Of course not, mom, that's not what I'm saying at all! I'm just concerned. You've been scammed before. I told you and dad how many times that offering that reward money was just asking for some scumbag to take advantage of you. How many calls have you gotten from lowlifes claiming to have information about her, or some girl or another claiming to actually be her? For God's sake, one such girl just called here yesterday."

  For a moment, tense silence reigned.

  It was her father who broke it, his voice deceptively calm. "Sam… why didn't you tell us this until now?"

  She heard her sister sigh, the exasperation in the loud huff all too obvious. "I'm sorry I didn't say anything, okay? I'm just sick of seeing you guys get your hopes up only to have them crushed over and over again. I can't just sit here and watch you two self-destruct anymore. Mom, dad, Katherine… she’s gone."

  "Sam, Katherine isn’t gone. She’s upstairs taking a shower. And it was probably her who called here yesterday." Her dad sounded heartbroken.

  Sam scoffed – actually scoffed. "What, that girl who just happened to show up while Chad and I were out? The one who you let roam around the house unsupervised? Sure, no one's actually had the audacity to appear at your doorstep before, but I wouldn't it past the right wackjob. Fifty thousand dollars is certainly enough initiative for that."

  Surprise finally caused Katherine to reveal herself, and she hesitantly stepped into the kitchen where her parents, Samantha, and her sister’s husband, Chad, were gathered around the center island.

  "Fifty thousand dollars?"

  Her sister had her back towards her, but Katherine could still see the way her shoulders stiffened as she undoubtedly recognized her voice from the phone call they'd shared the night before. After a long, tension-filled moment, Sam turned to face her.

  Whatever barb she had readied to deliver, however, must have gotten lost on her tongue when their eyes connected. Sam’s gray orbs widened in recognition, her jaw slackening and yammering up and down in astonishment. But not a single word escaped her.

  "Hi, Sam."

  That was all it took to snap her out of her shocked stupor. Her sister shakily approached, hesitating for only a second before wrapping her arms around Katherine’s rigid shoulders. "Katherine, I… I'm so sorry. I didn't know."

  "It's okay." She didn't know if it really was, but was grateful, at least, that her sister seemed to have been looking out for their parents while she’d been gone.

  Sam pulled away, a glossy sheen of tears in her eyes as she took Katherine in. Judging by her own blurred vision, Katherine’s orbs were sporting the same revealing shine. "Your hair is longer than I remember," Sam said after a while. "It looks… nice."

  Katherine offered a watery smile. "Your hair is shorter." It was. Her sister, who'd worn her hair long for as long as Katherine could remember, had cut it into a short bob that curled attractively around her ears. "It looks great."

  Sam nodded. When she spoke again, her voice was softer and, well… nicer than Katherine could recall it being in a long time. "I've missed you."

  Katherine swallowed. "I've missed you too."

  It was true. She and Sam had a complicated relationship – too different in too many ways to always like each other. But they did without a doubt love each other, and that was all that really mattered.

  Katherine allowed her sister to pull her into another uncharacteristically warm embrace. When the blonde released her, however, she was slightly dismayed to find Chad waiting for a hug as well. She wasn’t particularly fond of her sister’s husband and since she wasn’t related to him by blood, felt no obligation to pretend to be.

  There wasn’t anything outwardly wrong with him. Chad was classically handsome, Katherine supposed, with light brown hair arranged in a purposeful mess and green eyes a few shades darker than her own emerald orbs. And while he wasn’t exactly tall, he wasn’t short either.

  Ultimately, he was pleasant-looking enough, but with an altogether forgettable appearance.

  But what Katherine didn’t find forgettable – or forgivable for that matter – was the way he’d cornered her in the hallway at his own wedding reception, drunkenly propositioning her for a kiss.

  “Don’t you want to properly welcome your new brother-in-law to the family?”

  She could still remembered word for word what he’d said to her as he’d leaned in with an all too eager grin.

  Of course, she’d blatantly refused him. And when she’d threatened to tell Sam what he’d said, Chad had insisted he was teasing and that Katherine would only make herself out to be a dippy little girl who couldn’t take a joke if she told anyone.

  In the end, she had kept quiet about the incident. Partially because she was afraid that he was right – that it was a joke and she was being silly – but mostly because she knew it wasn’t one, and that it’d hurt Sam if she ever found out about it.

  "Come here," Chad insisted, and Katherine didn’t have a chance to object before he was forcefully wrapping his own arms around her. Katherine endured the uncomfortable embrace for only a moment – painstakingly aware of how close his hands were to
her bottom – before jerking away from her brother-in-law and returning her attention to Sam and her parents, intent on forgetting that he was even in the room at all.

  "Mom, dad, is what Sam said true? You were offering a fifty thousand dollar reward for anyone with information about me?" She could scarcely believe it, having no idea where her parents had come up with that kind of money.

  "Katherine, we would have paid anyone anything if we’d thought it would help get you home safely." Her mother ran her fingers through Katherine’s damp hair, clearly still amazed that she was home.

  “It’s not that I didn’t want you home and safe, too,” Sam protested, “I just didn’t think that offering a reward for any information that led to your whereabouts was very practical. And I was right, too – all it did was bring homeless miscreants and drug addicts desperate for cash out of the woodwork.”

  Katherine internally cringed at the way Sam referred to those who were less fortunate that her.

  “Anyway, my objections notwithstanding, Chad decided to borrow them the money, which I can admit that despite my very valid reservations, was actually really generous of him.” She glanced at her husband, the slightest hint of approval in the smile on her lips.

  Katherine tried not to retch.

  Chad worked for his father’s accounting firm – she didn’t think she could remember the pretentious name of it if her life depended on it – but from what Katherine understood, he was a manager of some sort – at least in name. She wasn’t sure if he actually did anything.

  "Anything for you sweetheart," Chad said, pressing a kiss into Samantha's hair and throwing Katherine a wink at the same time.

  Creep.

  Elaine practically pushed Katherine into one of the chairs surrounding the kitchen island. Grabbing a plate from the cupboard, she loaded it with pizza covered in what used to be her favorite toppings – green olives and pepperoni – and set it down in front of her. "Eat, honey," she ordered firmly.

  Katherine tried not to gag at the smell of the olives and forced down a bite to appease her mother – even if it did remind her of the cheap slice of cardboard she’d bought at that run down gas station just the other day. Her mom cleared her throat after Katherine had somehow managed to cram down an entire slice, not even pretending to eat the one she'd dished up for herself. "Honey, please, will you tell us what happened? Where have you been all this time?"

  Katherine glanced around the tiny table at the imploring faces that demanded answers, and for a second the story she'd concocted deserted her.

  "The last time anyone had seen you," her father interjected, "the last time I saw you," he corrected himself, closing his eyes, "was when our home was being invaded by those depraved burglars. One of them was discovered dead near the stairway by paramedics, but the other man was never found by the police. We hoped, God knows how we’ve hoped, but Katherine, we were almost certain that he’d taken you, and that… and that we'd lost you forever." He pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes in a valiant effort to hold back tears.

  Katherine's bottom lip trembled as she watched her dad fight to control his emotions. "He didn't get me. I'm fine, dad, I promise. I'm right here and I'm fine."

  "But if you weren't with that man, then where were you?" her mother asked.

  About this, she’d decided she could tell the truth. "In Canada."

  Her parents were utterly bewildered. "Canada? What? Katherine, how did you end up there?"

  Katherine took a deep breath, preparing herself for the lie that was about to come tumbling out of her mouth. "I don't know."

  "What do you mean you don't know? How can that be?"

  "I'm so sorry mom, dad, Sam," she said, taking the time to look them each in the face, "but I haven't come home all this time because until yesterday, I'd completely forgotten that I had one."

  "What are you saying, Katherine?"

  "Amnesia, mom. I've had amnesia."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  She was so full of crap.

  But in many ways, it was the perfect excuse.

  By claiming to have had amnesia, Katherine was allowing herself to tell her family at least pieces of the truth.

  She began spinning her tale, mixing truth and fiction to the best of her ability, blurring them together in what she hoped was a believable story. She stuck to the truth as much as possible. It was true that she'd been living in Canada. That she'd been found by a man named Bastian and his group of friends who'd collectively decided to take her in. That she'd been taken care of and treated very well by them.

  She simply omitted the fact that Bastian, Sophie, Markus, Zane, and Caleb were all werewolves – that she was a werewolf now, too. And, of course, she didn't mention that it was Bastian who'd bitten her and turned her into one the first place – that, really, he was the one ultimately responsible for her disappearance.

  Her father already hadn't taken too kindly to the fact that a man – a mere eighteen-year-old at the time, even, as she'd explained to her captive audience – had had the audacity to take in a young girl he'd founding wandering the streets of Fort Saskatchewan.

  It'd been an outright lie, of course.

  But what was she supposed to tell them? That Bastian had, in actuality, kidnapped her because he'd turned her into what they undoubtedly believed to be an imaginary creature?

  No, thank you.

  "What in the hell was this guy thinking?" her dad asked incredulously as she finished her story. "He finds a teenage girl stumbling around, clearly lost and confused, and instead of taking her straight to the nearest police station, he brings her home with him?" Splotchy patches of red exploded across his face. "He didn't," he paused, looking pained for a moment, "he didn't coerce you into doing anything you didn't want to do, did he? Anything that made you uncomfortable?"

  It was Katherine's turn to grow as red as a freshly ripe tomato. Her dad had basically just asked if Bastian had molested her, after all. "What? No! No, dad, I swear, nothing like that happened. Bastian is actually really nice." To her at least. Or she'd thought he had been before she'd found out what an unconscionable liar he was.

  "As nice as you claim this Bastian character to be," Elaine couldn't have made her doubt of that any more obvious, "why didn't he take you to the police station when he found you?"

  Katherine chewed nervously on the soft flesh of her bottom lip. "That was my fault. I begged him not to. At the time I had no idea who I was or what had happened to me. All I could remember was my name."

  That answer, blatant lie as it was, resulted in more questions.

  "What do you mean what had happened to you?" Benjamin immediately demanded.

  "Katherine, I thought you said you hadn't been hurt!" Elaine exclaimed at the same time.

  Crap.

  "I had a head wound," she quickly explained.

  Katherine actually believed that to be true. On the night she'd fled from the house, she could vividly recall that the hunter who’d given chase had smashed her head into her car before she’d evaded his clutches. She'd felt dizzy and nauseous afterwards and had ended up vomiting and passing out at the gas station that Bastian had later met up with her at. She probably had been concussed. The concussion just hadn't resulted in any memory loss.

  "I'm not sure how I got it," she lied, "but it was probably what caused the temporary amnesia. Anyway, it had crossed my mind that I was a runaway or in some sort of trouble with the law, so I convinced Bastian to take me home with him instead of contacting the police." So very, very untrue. Bastian had dragged her protesting, mopey behind all the way to Haven Falls.

  Her parents continued to fire questions at her.

  "And how exactly did an eighteen year old come to own a house?" her mother asked, clearly having been perturbed by that part of her story. "And why was he sharing it with these friends of his?"

  Katherine licked her bottom lip, tracing the tiny, sensitive injury her nervous chewing had left there. "His parents died a few years ago and left it to him and
his sister, along with a pretty hefty bank account." True. "They share it with their friends because it's close to the college that they all attend." Complete bullshit.

  Her mom seemed accepting of the answer though. Before the woman could ask anything else, however, her sister finally shot out an inquiry of her own. "How'd you get that scar on your face?"

  It was the only question anyone had asked that had truly taken her by surprise thus far. Katherine had almost completely forgotten about the pink scar that ran the length of the left side of her face, from temple to chin. Its appearance had very much faded since she'd first acquired it months ago, but she supposed it was pretty noticeable to her family who had never seen it fresh.

  "A freak animal attack," she finally managed to force out when Sam raised her eyebrows expectantly. "It happened in the woods outside Bastian's house." At her family's aghast expressions, she quickly added, "Don't worry, he killed the animal responsible."

  That was a version of the truth, Katherine supposed.

  As her parents continued to question her, Katherine quickly realized she'd have to revert to the go-to answer she'd readily supplied herself with when she'd claimed to have had amnesia. She just hoped that her supposed ignorance was believable.

  "Do you have any idea at all how you ended up in Canada?"

  "I'm sorry, but I really don't know. There are still a lot of blank spots in my memory. The last thing I clearly remember before waking up in Fort Saskatchewan is you, dad." Looking down and refusing to meet his beckoning gaze, Katherine began playing with a loose thread on the fringe of her shirt. "You were bleeding out on the floor, telling me to run."

  She was pulled into the reassuring arms of her father for a third time that night, and Katherine reveled in simplicity of being able to bury her face into his shirt and seek comfort in his strong embrace – it was a sensation that just two days ago she never thought she’d get to experience again.

  "Do you remember anything about what happened at the house? The men who attacked us?" he questioned gently. She could hear him hesitate for a moment before adding, "They were asking after you – demanding to know where you were. Do you know why?"