by T. S. Joyce
But Angie was right about her never taking vacation days. She worked really hard to pay for her apartment so she didn’t have to live with roommates, and here Angie and Bryce were, offering her a free vacation to somewhere that had completely captured her imagination.
What if she just went and enjoyed the cabin and didn’t track down Clinton Fuller? That seemed less scary, and really, she would probably enjoy a vacation once she figured out the town. Feeling reckless, she whispered, “Okay.”
Bryce leaned forward and cupped his ear. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you.”
“I said okay.” She offered him and Angie a nervous smile. “I’ll do it.”
“And call us with updates every day,” Angie said.
“Yes.”
“And,” Bryce added, “tell me how big Clinton Fuller’s werebear dick is.”
“Oh my gosh, I won’t be seeing any”—gulp—“werebear dicks.”
Alyssa nodded at her friends like a bobble-head to hide the terror blooming in her chest. She was really going to do this. She was really going to leave her comfortable, small-town existence, where every day was just like the last, and do something new and completely insane.
And maybe, just maybe, she would catch a glimpse of Clinton Fuller.
Chapter Four
“Amaretta’s Manner Emporium?” Clinton muttered, reading off the pastel pink and white sign above the tiny shop. “Are you fuckin’ serious?”
Beck growled, terribly if you asked him. Owls were good for screeching and hooting, not snarling. “Clinton, you are a complete disaster in public, and the radio station has asked for interviews with all of the Boarlanders, the local news, too, and I can’t trust you to say one single thing that isn’t offensive.”
Clinton scoffed and jammed his finger behind him. “I just signed that kid’s autograph!”
“You signed it Barf McNuggets and drew a cartoon penis with a smiley face.”
Clinton shrugged. “So?”
“So that kid was seven.”
Clinton gave an actual growl and relaxed against the pink—friggin’ pink!—siding of the small Victorian building. “I’m not going in there so some lady old enough to fart dust can teach me which fork to eat a damn salad with.”
Beck was the publicist in charge of public relations for the shifters of Damon’s mountains, and yeah, he got that the shifter rights vote was coming up, but she was crazy if she thought he should be the face of her mission.
“You care more than you pretend you do,” she gritted out, her light green eyes fierce.
“False. I care even less.”
“Clinton, I’ve had this appointment booked for a week. Get inside.”
He cocked his head. “Make me, bird.”
Beck pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and let off a long groan. And when she looked back up at him, her eyes were the yellow-gold of her snowy owl. Good. She should be fired up. This was stupid. Manner lessons? Please.
“I’ll buy you whiskey. The good stuff.”
Okay then.
Clinton made to mosey on inside, but some instinct made him freeze, his hand on the doorknob. Slowly, he turned, listening for whatever it was that had drawn his animal up. Or perhaps it was a smell. He inhaled deeply, but the wind was whipping this way and that, confusing all the scents. Feeling watched, he stepped out of the shadow of the small porch and scanned the main drag of Saratoga.
And then he saw her. Shae.
Across the street stood the ghost from his past. His first ghost. The one who had turned him into…this.
He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
She stood frozen except for her hair, long and black as a shiny raven’s feather and curled into gentle waves. Big hazel eyes, a pert nose, full lips that had parted in shock. The last time he’d seen her, she’d worn glasses, but not today. Nothing blocked his view of her face. He knew every line, every curve.
God, she was just as beautiful as he remembered.
“Clinton?” Beck asked, concern thick in her voice.
Tight jeans with holes over her knees and black Converse sneakers, Shae held a book tight against her perky little tits. She wore a long-sleeved black sweater. Maybe she had scars to cover.
Cars passed between them, stealing her from his view.
“Clinton?”
He winced and ripped his gaze away from Shae for just a moment, and when he looked back, she was gone.
Clinton gripped his shirt over his stomach to keep his insides in place. Everything felt like it was falling apart. He let off a pained sound from his bear shredding his insides. From the hole in his heart ripping wide open again. It hadn’t ever healed, but he’d done a bang-up job of taping that shit together.
He’d just imagined her. It happened all the time.
His imaginings were just a way for his cursed bear to pretend she was attainable.
****
The air was unbreathable. Alyssa forced oxygen into her lungs and clutched the book tighter to her middle in the shade of the alley. That was him. Clinton Fuller. He wasn’t just some grainy photograph anymore. He’d been real. His eyes had locked on hers, the spark of recognition so identifiable. He looked different from the boy in her dreams. Older. Her age, perhaps. He had short dirty-blond hair and the same dove-gray eyes, but his face wasn’t as familiar as his photograph had been. He wore facial scruff a couple shades darker than his hair, and his body was definitely different. It was October, and chilly, but his massive shoulders had pressed against his thin, navy T-shirt, and his waist had created a strong V-shape. A tattoo stretched down one arm and peeked out of the V-neck at his chest. And in dark wash jeans, his legs looked long, lean, and powerful. Holy shit. The Clinton of her dreams wasn’t a boy anymore. He was a well-formed man.
“You can’t be here. You should leave.”
Alyssa jumped and screamed as the giant slunk into the alley. Smoothly, slowly, like a predator stalking his prey, Clinton Fuller walked around her, his eyes studying her in ways that set fire to her cheeks. He picked up a strand of her hair and sniffed it with a long inhale, then settled it back on her shoulder gently. She couldn’t move with him this close. There was something wrong with him. On some chemical level, her body knew to run. It’s all she wanted to do. Trapped! I’m trapped!
Clinton’s nostrils flared, and he clenched his jaw so hard a muscle twitched under his whiskers. A soft, menacing rumble emanated from his chest, but he backed up, step by slow step, his eyes sparking with something she could only describe as hunger.
“I want to hurt you,” he said. “You should leave.”
“You already said that,” she whispered. “Do you know me?”
Clinton’s eyes narrowed to vicious slits. “Should I?”
“I…I don’t know. I saw you, and I had such a strange feeling come over me. Like I’ve seen you before.”
“Clinton!” a pretty woman called from across the street.
Alyssa jerked her gaze to the woman. “Is she your…” Alyssa swallowed hard. “Are you taken?”
“That’s none of your business.” Clinton’s voice was deep, gravelly.
She wished she could say something to soften the fire in his eyes. “I saw you give that boy an autograph.”
Clinton’s eyes blazed lighter as he huffed a dark laugh. “You want an autograph?”
“No?”
Clinton was to her in three strides. He yanked the book out of her hand, pulled a pen from his back pocket, and then wrote the words GO HOME in handwriting so angry it ripped the page. With one last furious glare, he chucked the pen against the opposite wall of the alley and left without a second look back.
Her vision of the protective boy wavered…and then disappeared.
Clinton Fuller was no one’s dream guy.
Chapter Five
Breathe.
Clinton sucked air into his lungs again as he blasted through town. At least his pickup was fast. Shit! Shae was here. Here! Here where he could see her,
feel her, and smell her hair. Here where he was. Here to tempt him into ruining her fucking life again.
Clinton yanked his ride over onto Lake Ranch Road, pulled into the fourth house on the left, and parked around back under an old, rusted-out carport. And then he slammed his palm against the steering wheel over and over until he felt something other than the spinning sensation that was crippling him.
He’d left Beck back there, palms up and eyes disappointed as he’d sped past her. She probably thought he was a jerk for abandoning her like that, but she didn’t know. Clinton was protecting her and the baby she carried from the monster inside of him because, right now, he had so little control over that part of him. The Boarlanders were all hippy dippy in love with their animals. Idiots. The animal side wasn’t some blessing in a furry disguise. It was a curse. It attracted attention that was dangerous. It made their lives complicated and sad. It put the people they cared about—the humans they cared about—in danger.
The Boarlanders loved the animals inside of them, but Clinton…he hated his.
His bear scratched and clawed, sickening Clinton by the second in his need to escape, so Clinton pulled his cell phone from the cup holder and rang someone he knew would get Beck home safe.
“Yeah?” Kong answered on the second ring.
“Are you at the sawmill?” Clinton forced the words out, but they sounded feral. Just like the monster he was. He shook his head and hated everything.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“Beck…I left Beck by that manner emporium. Can’t take her home. Can you get her back to the trailer park?”
“Clinton, are you kidding me? I’m not your chauffeur. You brought Beck down here, and now you can man-up and take her back.”
“Can’t.”
A soft, annoyed rumble rattled through the phone, but so what if the Lowlander Silverback was pissed? Clinton didn’t ask for favors unless it was life or death, and he wouldn’t hurt Beck. One uncontrolled Change in here, and he’d break every fine bird-bone in her body.
“Clinton, I don’t know what it is that has made you like this, but man, you can’t go your whole life letting everyone down.” Kong sighed. “I’ll take care of her.”
The line went dead, and Clinton debated chucking his stupid phone into the thick woods behind the house he’d bought years ago. Kong was mistaken. Clinton could absolutely go his whole life letting everyone down. That’s what he did. That’s who he was.
Stupid phone. He glared at the fifty missed calls. Most of them were unknown numbers from horny women who tracked down his digits on bangaboarlander.com, but there was a dozen missed calls and voicemails in there from Willa. Freakin’ Willa. She’d put his number on the website to make his life miserable, and now she’d grown a fondness for prank calling him several times a day. He didn’t miss the Gray Backs.
Liar.
With a snarl, he punched the number in his phone that he’d labeled home. What a joke. Home was for people who could settle, and that had been ripped away from him at age sixteen.
Gritting his teeth, he lifted the cell to his ear and stared at the overgrown brush behind the house.
“Hello?” God, just the sound of Dana Dunleavy’s voice brought back his entire childhood.
“It’s me. Clinton.”
Three heartbeats of silence passed. “What do you want?”
“Shae’s here.”
“What? No, she’s in North Carolina.”
“No, I just saw her, and she is definitely here. What the fuck, Dana? I gave you simple instructions, and you swore you could follow through.”
“If this is anyone’s fault, it’s yours. I know you came to town in April. I know you were watching her.”
Clinton snarled up his lip and barely resisted cursing her out. He wasn’t even mad at Shae’s mom. He was mad at himself for being weak and getting caught at it. He lowered his voice in shame. “I just wanted to see her. Just for a few minutes.”
“Well, she must’ve seen you or something. She didn’t even mention taking time off work, and now she’s across the entire country. Shoot. Her dad and I have called her a few times this week, but it sent us straight to voicemail. She probably figured we would talk her out of going.”
“Probably, since that was your job.”
“Oh, quit it, Clinton. I know you went through something awful, boy. I know you did. But none of that was Alyssa’s fault.”
Alyssa. Right. He had forgotten about her fake name because, to him, she would always be Shae.
“What do you want me to do?” Dana sounded sad. Helpless. “She’s a grown woman now, Clinton, and she isn’t happy with the answers we’ve given her. And if she’s there, it’s for a reason. Maybe she remembers you.”
“She can’t! There is nothing left in her brain to remember! I’m nothing. I’m a ghost. I’m a figment of her imagination. I’m invisible. That was the deal. Everything was erased so she could be happy.”
“Yeah, and you were supposed to come for her when you got out!” Dana gasped as if she wished she could swallow those words down, but it was too late. They were out there, tightening around Clinton’s throat like a hangman’s noose. You can’t go your whole life letting everyone down.
“Dana. I’m not the kid you knew. Trust me when I say this—you don’t want me for your daughter.” Clinton gripped the phone tighter and wished everything hadn’t gotten so screwed up. “You don’t want me anywhere near her.”
He ended the call, slammed his head back onto the seat, and closed his eyes against the pain building at the back of his skull. It was always like this right after he resisted a Change. His bear hated him as much as he hated it.
With a growl, he shoved open his door and stumbled out of his Raptor. The earth swayed sideways. So dizzy. He squinted against the sun, too bright, and made his way through the overgrown weeds of the yard to the dilapidated house. His house, if the deed on it meant anything, but to Clinton, it would always be hers. He flinched away from the stones that lined the landscaping where he and Shae used to sit and eat popsicles when they were kids. The faint echo of their laughter bounced around his muddled mind as he stepped over a toppled garden gnome Dana had put near the sidewalk for good luck. The walkway was cracked into a spiderweb of dried grass. Clinton stepped up the sagging, creaking steps to a small porch and ripped off a couple of warnings the city taped there to piss him off. Mow the lawn. Unlivable conditions. No shit. No one lived here anymore except the ghost of what could have been.
He'd grown up three lots down in a trailer his parents bought so he and his dad and brothers could Change in the woods behind the house. That trailer had been hauled off long ago, but he didn’t care about holding onto that. Clinton’s boots echoed off the hollow wooden floors, covered in a layer of dirt and dust, as he made his way to Shae’s old bedroom. He cared about this.
It was tradition to hesitate in the doorway, but not from superstition or fear of actual ghosts. It was more like being stunned by the wave of memories that always bombarded him when he took that first step into the room. He’d had his first kiss here. Felt his first tit. Fingered her…
Clinton scrubbed his hands down his face and ambled to the center of the room. Dana and Craig had cleaned this place out when they moved to North Carolina, but they hadn’t known Shae as well as he had.
The loose board whined as he pulled it up. Inside the floor was nestled a half-empty bottle of whiskey and something Clinton treasured more than anything in the world. Shae’s journal.
It was one of those gaudy, glittery, girly books with cartoon kittens and butterflies. Clinton sat down, took a long, deep swig of whiskey, then opened her journal to the first page, just like he always did.
Shalene Dawn Dunleavy – age ten
A pained smile stretched his face as Clinton laid back and read the short entry about how she’d found a kitten, and her mom had helped her nurse it back to health. He remembered that cat. It didn’t have a tail, and it hated everyone on the planet but Shae. Sh
e should’ve named it Clinton.
He couldn’t do the full dance down memory lane today without losing it, so Clinton flipped the pages to the back. This was his part. This was what he used to remind himself of why he was doing this.
He unclipped the black-ink pen from the spine and scribbled today’s date under his last entry, dated two weeks ago.
Broken, brawling bear. You only feel okay when you bleed someone. Something. You can’t stand touch, and that would break a warm woman like her. Shae deserves better. Today, you saw her, and all you wanted to do was bite her. To Turn her so she would be able to protect herself. So you would never have to die for her again. Selfish monster. Leave her alone.
With a slow, steadying exhale, Clinton closed the journal and looked up at the cobwebs floating this way and that from the ceiling rafters.
“It’s good that she’s leaving.” And just to remind himself why he couldn’t have soft, pretty things, Clinton whispered, “I have to let this one live.”
Chapter Six
Alyssa skidded to a stop in the gravel parking lot of Moosey’s Bait and Barbecue. It had taken longer than she expected to get here, but when she checked her phone, she knew she wasn’t too late. Emerson Kane was active on her social media pages and had posted a picture holding a chocolate cupcake with a sparkler sticking out of it and her finger over her lips in a shushing motion. Under the picture, the caption read, we’re going to surprise Miss Kitty at work for her birthday #partylikeaboarlander
And since Audrey was the only “kitty” in the form of a white tiger shifter, Alyssa figured they were going to Moosey’s, just like the logo on Audrey’s shirts in her picture posts.
And when she spotted the white Ford Raptor Clinton had sped off in the other day, Alyssa knew her detective skills were on point. His shiny, jacked-up truck was two parking spots down and a direct contrast from her thirteen-year-old, two-door, hideously purple and rust-colored Pontiac Sunfire. She turned off the engine to stifle the screeching sound her belt and brakes made, and then she checked herself in the mirror. God, she looked terrified and pale as a ghost, but she couldn’t go another night with all these questions rattling around her brain. She pinched her cheeks like she saw once on an old movie, but all it did was hurt and didn’t make them look rosy at all.