To distract herself, she looked at her other messages. There were lots. A smile came to her lips as she read about all of these super sexy guys who wanted to meet her. But she was too tired and overwhelmed to think about replying to them yet.
At last, the pale fingers of dawn began to reach across the sky. Her parents would be up now. They were farmers, and they’d be waking up to milk the cows. Her mom liked talking on the phone while she was working. Melissa dialed her number. She answered after three rings, her voice still full of sleep.
“Just let me get plugged in, ok?” she said. Melissa smiled to herself as her mum connected her hands-free microphone. She thought it was adorable that her parents were engaging with technology to help themselves stay in touch with her. “Right, I’m good. Are you ok, baby?” Melissa was silent for several beats, listening to the slow crunch of her mother’s footsteps in the snow. She shivered, glad that she was no longer around to get up early and help her parents with the animals. They’d never forced her to work on the farm, but she’d still felt morally obliged. They were lovely parents and she’d always wanted to help them out. She worried about them these days though. They were in their late fifties, and those cold mornings could only be getting harder.
“Mom,” Melissa said, and took a deep breath. Her mother had been almost as traumatized by the attack as she had. “I’m sorry to bring this up again, but I need to know more about what happened that time when I was attacked in high school.” Her mom was silent for an equally long period.
“But why, Melissa?” she said at last. “Why do you want to bring all of that up again? What’s happened?”
“Could you just answer my questions first, and then I’ll explain?” Melissa said. “And don’t stop working on my account,” she added with a chuckle, aware that she wasn’t hearing the familiar sounds of gates being opened and the milking machine being started up.
“It’s ok. I’m ten minutes ahead of your father, so I’ll just take a seat in the shed and give you my undivided attention. So what are the questions, honey?”
“I want to know what happened to the guy – the guy they say attacked me?”
“Nobody knows. After the attack, he just disappeared. The police couldn’t find him. It turned out that the school didn’t even have his correct address. He was in Ridgley for six months, and then he was gone.”
“Did you try to press charges?”
“Of course we did. I know Sheriff Don put a lot of manpower into apprehending him, but it was no use.”
“And what are Billy-Joe and Earl doing these days?”
“Earl is doing ok. I think. He got married young and has a few kids now. There are rumors that he beats on his wife, mind you. And Billy-Joe – honey, I’m sorry to tell you that he’s in federal jail for the rape of a minor.” Melissa sucked in air between her teeth.
“What? That’s terrible.”
“I know, none of us in the town can believe it.”
“It doesn’t sound much like the guy who saved me from being raped, does it, momma?”
“No, it doesn’t,” her mom said quietly.
“Mom, do you think James was really the one who attacked me? And Billy-Joe and Earl saved me?” Her mom sighed, and when she spoke again her voice quavered.
“Your father and I always had our suspicions, especially seeing as they were some of the kids who used to bully you. But everyone was saying that it was that other kid. He ran away after the incident, like a guilty man, and after that, the bullying stopped, didn’t it, baby? And we were so glad. It broke our hearts that you’d suffered over the years, and there was nothing we could do about it.”
“I think he was made a scapegoat,” Melissa said. “When I was snatched from the hallway, there was laughter, which suggests that there was more than one person taking me. Then I was made to drink corn liquor, which all the kids on the farms drink, you know? James was from God-knows-where, but he wasn’t a farmer’s kid, as far as I can tell. And, you’re right, Billy-Joe and Earl were some of the worst bullies. Billy-Joe especially, he had a real mean streak. Earl was just the loser who went along with him. I think if Billy-Joe saw me being mistreated, he’d be more likely to join in than help me out.”
“We thought the same thing, honey. We were so conflicted, but Billy-Joe’s family is pretty powerful in the county, and we just felt so helpless. Please don’t hate us for the decision we made. We don’t feel good about it at all. But in the end, we were just glad that our baby wasn’t coming home from school crying anymore.” Melissa bit down on her lip, holding back tears. She understood. She was aware of the power structures that existed in the community, and how toxic they could be if anyone stepped out of line. And she understood that her parents were simple people. They weren’t crusaders. What she had a harder time accepting was that they’d left her in the same school, vulnerable to further attacks from those animals.
“Baby – ” her mother cut into her thoughts. “Right after the attack, Billy-Joe’s father came to see us and offer his sympathies. And he assured us that no one would lay a hand on you again, and we believed him.” Melissa closed her eyes. Of course. Billy-Joe’s father had made a bond with the community, and everyone had bought into it. “We still weren’t sure exactly what had happened, and we felt a little like we were doing a deal with the devil, but it was a deal, and we accepted it, to guarantee your safety. I understand if you judge us for our actions now, but please believe that we had your safety and happiness uppermost in our minds.” She burst into tears.
“It’s ok, momma,” Melissa said, making soothing noises. “I understand. I understand the community, and I understand that you were both doing what you thought was right. I got through it, and that’s the main thing. I didn’t get raped, thank goodness, and the person who rescued me actually did me a lot of good, by convincing me that there were guys out there who were on my side.”
“That’s so good to hear, Melissa,” her mom said, blowing her nose. “Now, tell me, why are you asking me all this?” Melissa paused.
“I’m sorry, mom, but I’m going to need some more time to think things over before I tell you that,” she said at last.
“Are you doing anything dangerous, baby?” her mom said.
“No. I’m not, mom,” she said firmly. “And I’ll tell you everything soon, I promise.”
“We love you so much, Melissa. Please be careful.”
“I will.” They said their goodbyes, and Melissa ended the call, relieved that her mom had her dad to talk to and comfort her. She lay back down on her pillow. Billy-Joe is in jail for raping a minor. She shuddered. That was so nearly her fate. And she wasn’t surprised. That whole family was rotten. And Billy-Joe was practically a psychopath. He’d made the meanest comments about her weight, ever since they were five years old. She felt disgusted at how accepting she’d been after the attack, how she’d stood next to him in the graduation photo. She’d been confused. That was the problem. Drugged with alcohol and confused. And she was just a little girl with low self-esteem from years of bullying. She’d believed what people had told her. But she wished she could remember more about James/Harley. He’d been so far outside of any frame of reference she’d had at school that he might as well have been from another universe. He hung around in his leather jacket, smoking roll-ups, being cool. He had a motorbike – a vintage easy rider. He used to lean on it, chatting to a couple of the other alternative kids. He’d been so different from her that she hadn’t paid him too much attention, had barely known what he’d looked like. A flash of memory hit her: he’d brushed past her in the corridor one day. She’d expected him to say something insulting, but he’d given her the most brilliant smile – glowing brown eyes in an unusual shade, and dazzling white teeth. She’d blushed, but then dismissed it, assuming he’d been making fun of her somehow.
She sighed. He’d grown up even more attractive than he’d been in his teens. His boyish cuteness had evolved into a deliciously sexy masculinity, all razor-sharp cheekbones,
with a lovely, angular set to his jaw. But now he had that scar. Apparently caused by her scratching him. She looked at her nails. In her twenties, she’d managed to cure her nail-biting habit, and now they looked like normal fingernails. But in her teens, they’d been short, bloody stubs, hardly capable of scratching anything.
She picked up her phone. All the evidence pointed to the likelihood that Harley was innocent of all wrongdoing. And, more than that, that he’d been the one who’d saved her. She tapped Shiftr and swiped to Harley’s message. She hit reply, and wrote:
I do want to give you the chance to explain. Everyone deserves that at least. Are you free this afternoon? We could meet for coffee in Gino’s – maybe midday?
As she hit send, she saw that he was online. There was a little green dot next to his profile. He’s awake early; it’s still only 7am. He replied immediately:
Yes I’m free. That’s perfect. Thank you so much for agreeing to meet me, Melissa. I hope that everything will make sense once we speak.
Forever yours,
Harley.
His words delivered a shot of adrenaline to her veins. She wanted to be able to trust him, so badly. She knew, without a doubt, that if she didn’t have that uncertainty, she’d be head over heels at the prospect of meeting him for coffee. Her emotions were in such a tangle.
The next few hours passed slowly. Finally, at 10:30am, Melissa stood in front of her closet, sifting through her clothes. She wore an A-line mini-skirt more often than not, as it hid the bits she didn’t like and stopped her from looking too dumpy, but she didn’t want to give Harley the wrong signals. She hated wearing pants though; they didn’t flatter her shape at all. In the end, she picked black leggings and a sweater dress with a rolled neck. The dress was cut loose on her curves and finished half way down her thigh, while the high neck drew attention to her face. She felt a flicker of annoyance that her shape always necessitated such complicated clothing decisions. She picked out a new pair of knee-high brown leather boots and, before she left the apartment, she enveloped herself in a giant down coat. She thought she looked like caterpillar in it, but she didn’t care. Being warm outdoors was the most important thing. Then, she put on a dark brown knitted hat, which sat prettily on her curls, and she headed out to her car.
4
Harley was already in the café. She could see him through the glass panel in the door. There was an open fire, and he was sitting in a nook right beside it. He looked great. A striped scarf was slung loosely around his neck, and his brown hair was tousled, as if he’d been running his hands through it repeatedly. Melissa had a fleeting urge to run her own hands through it. He smiled at her as she walked over to him.
“Thank you so much, again, for coming, Melissa,” he said. His voice was warm, but she detected an undercurrent of unease.
“I think I need to know the truth as much as you want me to hear it,” she replied, taking off her coat and hat. “I’ve tried so hard to forget about what happened, but I guess it was always going to come out someday.”
She ordered a mochaccino from the waitress. They were silent for a moment, neither of them sure how to begin. Melissa glanced around the café distractedly. It was a cozy place, with cherry-colored walls, and dark wood furnishings. It would be the perfect place for a winter date. If the circumstances were different, she reminded herself.
The waitress brought the coffee over.
“Tell me what happened, from the beginning,” Melissa said, once she’d gone. Harley cleared his throat.
“I was in math class, when I heard someone screaming from far away. I knew it was a sound of someone in pain and fear,” Harley said.
“But how could you tell from so far away?”
“Because I’m a wolf, Melissa,” he said, and the amber in his eyes became so bright that they were dazzling, and she had to look away. Fleetingly, she saw something of his wolf nature, and began to grasp that he wasn’t divided in two – half-human and half-animal – but his wolf was actually present all the time. It was unsettling and intriguing in equal measure.
“So I rushed out of the lesson and ran after the sound,” he continued. “I traced it to a door in the hallway that I’d never noticed before. And I picked up your scent immediately.”
“But how did you know my scent? You didn’t know me,” she said. He gazed deep into her eyes.
“I knew your smell because I liked you, Melissa,” he said. Her mouth fell open.
“But, why? No-one liked me. I was this chubby kid who everyone laughed at.” Harley broke into a smile.
“You were absolutely gorgeous. That curly blonde hair, those huge, innocent blue eyes. And those cute outfits you used to wear. You were every teenage werewolf’s fantasy.”
“But – ” Melissa faltered. This was too much to process. She’d think about it later, but first, she needed to hear the full story. “Anyway, so then what happened?”
“The door was locked, so I broke it down. I was horrified by what I saw. One of those kids was standing behind you, holding you down, while the other one was ripping your clothes off. They were laughing in a horrible, loserish way, like the nasty rednecks they were. You were barely conscious. Your head was lolling to the side. They must’ve drugged you or something. The room stank of alcohol. Well, I got them off you. I knocked one of them out, but, before I could get to the other one, he sliced my cheek open. I never even saw the knife. Then some kids came past, and it was all over. By the time they’d taken you to medical, it became obvious that the blame for the attack was going to be laid on me, and that those two dirtbags were going to get away with it. So, I ran, away from the town, and never came back again,” he finished. Melissa stared at his cheek openly.
“You had stitches.”
“Yes, 12. That thug cut me so badly that the bone was showing through. I was lucky I wasn’t blinded. Melissa looked at her nails again in disgust.
“My God. They said that I’d scratched you. Everyone colluded in it.” He shrugged.
“What can I say? The herd instinct can be lethal. And, unfortunately it tends to be a feature of small communities. Not Hope Valley, of course. There are good small towns and bad small towns.”
“And there are towns that are practically owned by Billy-Joe’s father. Do you know that Billy-Joe is in jail right now, for rape?” Melissa said. Harley’s eyes burned with anger.
“Maybe if everyone hadn’t been so gutless, he could have been stopped before that happened,” he said.
“I know. I feel so sorry for that girl, whoever she is.”
“I never forgot you, Melissa,” Harley said. “I put you to the back of my mind though. I didn’t expect to ever see you again. I also assumed that you had been indoctrinated into believing that it was I who attacked you. That was such a sickening thought to me, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had to stay away from you. I had no idea you’d moved to Hope Valley, of course, so when I saw you at Connor and Lauren’s place, I was stunned.” Melissa laughed.
“You didn’t give any sign of it,” she said.
“I was desperately hoping that you wouldn’t recognize me. And you didn’t. But when I discovered that you were on Shiftr too, and that you were open to dating shape shifters, I started to wonder if there was a possibility that I’d be able to speak to you and explain that I was trying to help you that day, and that I’d never hurt you.”
“What did you do after you left the school?” Melisa asked gently.
“I’d joined the school because I wanted to get a formal education, much to my parents’ horror. Werewolves don’t usually mix and study with humans. We live in our packs and learn about pack politics, and that’s it. But I had a real thirst for knowledge, especially science. After I left the school, I spent two years teaching myself and managed to get myself a scholarship at Duke. I quickly figured out that I wanted to train as a doctor. The flip side of that is that my parents have banished me from the pack. I’m the son of the pack’s alpha – that means the leader – and
my father said that no son of his is going to slave away like a human. So they kicked me out. I hope that may change in the future, but that’s the situation for now.”
“I’m so sorry,” Melissa said. “That must be really hard.”
“It is sometimes.” He shrugged. “But luckily other shifters have been really accepting of me, and I’ve made some great friends in Hope Valley. I’m the doctor for pretty much all the shifters here too.”
They stared at each other for a long moment.
“Melissa, I know there’s a lot to think about,” he said. “I feel that you’re beginning to trust me, but I want you to be 100% assured of my part in what happened. If there’s anything else I can do to help prove my innocence, can you please let me know?”
Melissa stared into her mochaccino while she gathered her thoughts.
“What you’ve said to me just now has reassured me a lot,” she said slowly. “Nothing in your account has jarred with my experience of what happened to me. What I can remember of it anyway. There’s just one more thing I need to do though, to set my mind at rest.”
“Of course. Please take all the time you need. I’m not going anywhere. And when you’re sure about me, I’ll be waiting.” His eyes sparkled with emotion. “My feelings haven’t changed. You’re the girl I’ve always wanted to be with, ever since I was a kid. I’ve spent years thinking about you, hating the fact that you’ve probably been thinking about me too, but for entirely different reasons. I’ve felt so privileged to be able to get to know you over the past few days, and to discover that you have a personality every bit as lovely as I imagined. When I saw that Shiftr had identified us as a perfect match, I was so, so happy, and it gave me a glimmer of hope that one day, you’d be mine.” Melissa was stuck for words. No-one had said anything like that to her before. She’d never thought of herself as the kind of girl who aroused passionate feeling in men. Even when her husband had proposed to her, he’d used phrases like ‘we work well together’, ‘I think you’d be a great mother to my children’. Harley had been thinking about her ever since high school. Even though rescuing her had left him scarred for life.
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