Cold Feet (Empathy in the PPNW Book 3)

by Olivia R. Burton

  Then I considered that maybe they’d been the ones to defile the couch and I snickered.

  Before we’d gotten moving, Mel had grabbed his overnight pack, yanked out a plastic bag with a brush in it and taken a big whiff. I hadn’t asked any questions because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answers. None of the other rooms of sleeping couples had interested him, so we’d moved along quickly.

  As we headed downstairs, I watched Mel’s back as he leaned close to each doorway, paused, moved on. He’d been different this week than I’d ever seen him, and I wondered if it was the comment his brother had made when we’d first arrived. From the look of it, married werewolf life looked pretty spectacular: adorable kids, delicious food, and the fun of running through the woods without a care in the world. But Mel had reacted almost violently to the idea that I could be the mate that would bring him such bliss.

  I chose not to take it personally, as Mel made it pretty damn clear how much he enjoyed being a bachelor. I couldn’t be sure without taking his necklace off, but I had to concede that he was probably torn between the desire to get laid and the desire to prove his brother wrong.

  “Seems legit,” I mumbled to myself.

  “Hmm?” Mel asked, paused in front of a room at the end of the hall opposite the one leading to our sitting room.

  “The…organization,” I said, not wanting to explain my thought process.

  He glanced back at me, but didn’t act overly interested in what I had to say. “What?”

  “This place. We haven’t found anything weird yet, right? Just the doctor being creepy, but that’s not enough to really worry. I mean, the camera thing is weird. Why do you think they don’t record anything?”

  “Does it matter?” Mel asked, bitterness scalding his tone. “We’re not here to defend their billing practices. If they turn out to be on the level and couples are leaving doing better than before, who cares? Not that I think they are on the level, mind you. Once we expose them, forgetting to stick a blank DVD in will be the least of their troubles.”

  “What if it’s all digital and the kid was just messing with us?” I said, feeling like challenging him just because he was being such a jerk.

  Mel went still, obviously considering my genius observation and regretting ever questioning my vast intelligence.

  “We’ll double check when we get back to the room. We can steal a fridge magnet and ruin the hard drive if it comes to it.”

  “Well, aren’t you Mister Prepared?” I snarked, still intent on making him feel as dumb as he was making me feel. “But you’re still the one insisting you’re the only non-person here.”

  “Because I am.”

  “I still think something weird happened back there.”

  “Yeah,” he said, crouching down in front of the doorknob. “I tried to show you a good time and you got sick as a dog.”

  I rolled my eyes, crossing my arms over my chest as he pulled a slim case out of his pocket and pulled out a tiny pair of tools. I fought the urge to let out a squeal of interest, dropping down next to him in the hopes that I’d be able to better see what he was doing to the knob.

  “Are you picking the lock?” I asked, when he pulled a couple of tools out of what looked to be a well-worn case. I’d never seen such a thing done in real life. I’d long suspected only PIs in movies and noir novels did such things. “Why would you even need this skill? Can’t you just rip a door off its hinges and throw it through a wall?”

  “Of course. But that lacks a certain finesse and I’d probably get arrested for breaking and entering.

  “But picking and entering is okay?”

  “It is if no one finds out,” he growled, elbowing me out of the way when I leaned too close. The action nearly toppled me, but I caught myself on the wall, glowering at him. Time passed in silence and I shifted to sit on the ground, giving my bent knees a rest. Mel tried several other tools but was, in the end, unsuccessful. Abruptly, he pushed to his feet, glaring at the knob. His body tensed, jerked forward minutely, before he shook his head, looked down at me. I think he was considering moving on to breaking, but he resisted.

  “I’m not getting through here, but I want to.”

  “What’s back there?”

  “I have no idea. I can’t smell a thing beyond this door. It’s too heavy to break down, even if I could do so without drawing attention. There’s something behind here, and I’ll bet it’s bad news.”

  Hands on his hips, Mel stared down at me but I got the feeling he wasn’t really seeing my face. I pushed to my feet, feeling the strange urge to coddle away his disappointment.

  “Maybe we can pull the fire alarm, get everyone out and then you can have at it with an axe.”

  “Now whose idea is brilliant?”

  “Still mine,” I argued just to argue. Mel didn’t comment, so I pressed on. “You’re the detective who can’t detect what’s beyond a simple door. I’m just a trophy wife.”

  Mel sighed. After a second, he relaxed his shoulders, tucked the case back into the pocket of his sleep pants.

  “We’ll have to figure out another way to get in there later.”

  “What makes you think it’s important?”

  “I can smell the Bishops all around here. I know they spent a lot of time over here, in that room, and in that exam room. Their scent is all over this place, faded but there. I’ve found nothing in the woods, nothing on the grounds to indicate they spent nearly as much time out there as they did here. They weren’t out in one of the bungalows, they were housed here, in the main building.” He knocked a knuckle against the door, harder than necessary. “They may be behind here and I want to know why.”

  “Why would they be behind there?”

  “Why wouldn’t they? They have to be somewhere and we haven’t found them anywhere else,” he snapped, frustration lashing out in his tone strong enough that I worried for a moment it would break through the necklace’s magical barrier. I wondered why he was being so difficult and then bit my lip, considering that I was probably to blame. Not only was he unable to get through a door that vexed him, I’d gotten us both all worked up back in the room and then run off without finishing what I’d started.

  “Look,” I said gently. “It’s well past midnight. We’ll go back up to bed.” I waggled my brows at him, failing to get a laugh. “And see what we find in the morning. Hell, if nothing else, we probably have a very bland breakfast to look forward to. Does that sound good, big guy? You want my unbuttered toast? My low sodium sausage?”

  Mel was silent for a moment and I smiled up at him in the dark, hoping he’d make some crack about offering me a sausage of his own. He didn’t.

  “Let’s go,” he said quietly, making me think he was still frustrated and irritated. After a pause, I heard the smile in his voice as he said, “Chipmunk.” All was forgiven, I thought. Thank god.

  Chapter Eleven

  I woke up with Mel at my back, his arms wrapped around my waist, his lips against the back of my neck. I didn’t think much of it at first. It was pleasant, if a little too warm. He wasn’t snoring or hogging the covers and his hands were nowhere near my bathing suit areas.

  Opening my eyes as I inhaled deeply, fully breathing in consciousness, I felt my body tense. I was in bed, being spooned by Mel. The last time we’d been this close things had gotten heated and then he’d gotten mad at me. I didn’t need him throwing any more tantrums. No matter how nice it was to feel warm and small and safe, I knew having Mel turn into a child over a heavy petting session could only hurt our chances of exposing what was really going on at Tough Love.

  “Hey,” I said, elbowing backward. Mel grunted in response but didn’t move. “Hey!”

  “What?” he managed through a yawn. I twisted, rolling in the circle of his arms onto my back. After a second of aiming a threatening glare directly at his mostly slack face, I watched his left eye open a slit. Another moment passed as his brain seemed to process my dirty look and he opened both eyes. I could feel ten
sion run through his body.

  “What?” he asked again, alert but confused..

  “What are you doing?” I asked, shoving at his arms. He let me move his left hand away from my body, but didn’t pull his right arm out from under me.

  “You sleep like a jackhammer,” he fumbled, clearly still trying to grasp at consciousness and make it stick. “It was self defense.”

  “Self defense?” I scoffed. Mel only huffed, abruptly yanked his arm out from under me, and pressed both hands to his eyes.

  “I had to find a way to stop you from moving. You spent most of the night kicking me. It was the only way to get you to stop. I had to cage you in to keep you from assaulting me or I wasn’t going to get any sleep at all.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” I claimed, though it wasn’t the first time I’d slept with someone who’d complained of waking up sore and bruised. When he just continued to rub his face and yawn, I sighed, looked to the ceiling as if it would have answers. “Well. Just don’t do it again.”

  “I don’t anticipate us sleeping together any time in the future. Don’t worry,” he spat. I peered over at him, wondering if he was serious or playing the part of the beleaguered husband. When he dropped his arms onto the bed, eyes still closed, I popped up, grabbing my overnight bag on the way to the bathroom.

  Half an hour later, both of us mum on the events of the night before, we stepped out of the room, carefully avoiding each other as we moved toward the stairs. The monitoring room was empty, all of the screens dead. Mel paused to scan for the computer we’d forgotten to search for the night before but didn’t hold me up as I headed past to the landing.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Mel jerked to a halt, swinging his head around to face the back door near the small kitchen.

  “What?” I asked. Mel put a hand to my arm, twisting to tuck me behind him as if danger was going to burst in with cymbols crashing and thundering threats on my life. The back door slammed open and Jeff stopped just inside, his wide eyes searching the room. When he saw Mel, he let out a sound of relief and stumbled closer, reaching up as he approached the staircase.

  “Someone’s dead. You have to help?” he made it a question, his voice too calm for the words he’d spoken.

  “Dead?” I demanded, peeking around Mel’s shoulder. Jeff didn’t notice me and I realized, standing so close to him, that he was probably in shock. His eyes were glassy and his skin was pale. His emotions were a white noise hum, an uncomfortable vibration against my skin that I really, really didn’t like. It was nothing as bad as Mel on his worst, necklace-free day, but it rubbed me the wrong way and made me worry for his state of mind.

  “One—one of the others. We—he’s just dead. Just dead. Can you help?”

  “Jeff, Mel? Gwen? What’s the matter?” Doctor Howard said, stepping out of the hallway behind me. I twisted toward her, gestured to Jeff.

  “Apparently we’re full-on CSI in here,” I said before I could control myself.

  “Gwen,” Mel chastised, turning to glare at me. I frowned, feeling myself shrink back at his reprimand.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, guilt swamping in. Jeff wasn’t lying so there really could have been a corpse nearby. It didn’t seem real, though, not in the tacky, health-conscious Tough Love Center. Mel had said couples were missing, not dead. Surely we’d step outside and find Jeff was mistaken. Right?

  Reaching over the edge of the staircase, Mel put a hand on Jeff’s shoulder, stepped down the last two steps, and led him toward the doctor. I remained standing on the stairs, keeping my empathy open for anything that might be helpful. I didn’t have any cop shades or punny one-liners handy, but I would know if anyone was feeling the emotional equivalent of steepling fingers and hissing, “excellent.”

  Like watching Mel change into a wolf, I was feeling a little too surreal to take the situation completely seriously.

  Jeff led everyone back out the door, his psyche still humming. I followed as well, noting that we were gaining curious onlookers as we moved through the gardens. Other couples out on walks or snacking on croissants and toast from the seating area just outside the cafeteria noticed that something was up, and decided to trail behind. I wanted to get lost in the crowd, to pull as far away from Jeff and from Howard’s concern as I could manage.

  The body lay at the edge of the gardens, pale and whole. The only sign he wasn’t alive was the butter knife sticking out of his throat and the flat white hue to his skin. He looked out of place, not just because he was dead in a small mob of the living, but just in general. His face wasn’t familiar and his clothes didn’t fit, like he’d borrowed someone else’s before stretching out in the sun for a dirt nap.

  A series of gasps blew through the crowd as we approached the dead man. Doctor Howard pressed forward, shock blooming in her like a mushroom cloud. Two giant steps away from the body, Mel grabbed her arm, pulled her back.

  “He’s dead. You have to call the police; don’t go any closer.”

  “I should—”

  “He’s dead,” Mel repeated, his voice calm. Jeff let out a shaky breath behind them, turning slightly to face his partner across the body. I felt the shock start to wear off, replaced by despair. I took a half step back as I realized that this was not a place I wanted to be standing. A sea of sadness was exactly the reason I’d skipped every funeral that had come up as I’d grown. I could block some of it out, but with everyone in the facility making his or her way over to check out what had drawn a crowd, I knew I was in trouble. If I stuck around and bathed in the worry, shock, and sadness of those around me I would end up on the floor trying to carve my own throat up with a blade of grass.

  Mel turned to catch my eye but, before he could ask anything of me, I pointed to my head, turned, and bolted.

  ##

  “So you just ran?” Chloe asked.

  I sighed into the phone, watched as a sheriff’s car and an ambulance drove up the road past me. I stepped away from the tree line, watched them drive into the roundabout. Chloe was patient with me but I heard a humming and thumping on her end.

  “Yeah,” I said finally, turning back to stroll through the trees. “I wasn’t about to just stand there in a depression buffet and let my empathy chow down. I’d be a crying, snotty mess, by now.”

  “Right,” Chloe said, drawing it out as if she’d forgotten for a moment I was an empath. “How are things going, anyway? Other than the dead body.”

  “They’re…” I trailed off, trying to decide what the right answer was. Finally, I settled on, “okay.”

  “Just okay? Not good, not bad? You and Mel haven’t killed each other or given in to your baser instincts, yet?”

  “Uh,” I said, pausing as I thought of the last two nights. Chloe pounced.

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Not nothing! You tell me the truth, young lady.”

  I gave a breathy laugh, shook my head. Inhaling deeply as if preparing myself for a dive, I forced myself to admit what had happened. “We came out here to snoop the other day and he woke me up by wrapping himself around me like a backpack.”

  “Aww,” Chloe cooed.

  “Yeah, yeah, real cute. I was mostly annoyed—”

  “Uh huh, sure,” Chloe said, knowing me better than I wanted to admit. I spoke over her.

  “And then he threatened to take the necklace off, which is not cute. That got me up real quick because I would rather risk being awake and cold than have to murder Mel for emotional assault. But you know, before that…there was snuggling for a good five or ten minutes there.”

  “Awww!” Chloe repeated, her voice going up an octave. I rolled my eyes, almost wishing I hadn’t told her. She’d be teasing me about this for ages.

  “We went, we snooped—oh, wait, no. I got to see him become a wolf. That was…surreal. Then he bit my ass and then we snooped. When we came back, though, he did what he usually does.”

  “He shamelessly described how satisfying i
t would be if you two had sex and you could no longer resist the call of his sexy bod?”

  “No, no. I mean, he did, but I didn’t.”

  “You kept your pants on, didn’t you? Gwen, honey, we’ve had the birds and bees talk. You can’t have sex through a pair of pants.” There was a murmur in the background, almost like a voice. Chloe chuckled. “Not a nice pair, anyway.”

  “No!” I argued through a laugh. “It wasn’t that—my pants are perfectly nice.” Chloe hummed and I could sense even from so far away that she disagreed. I stopped pacing and leaned against a tree trunk, deciding I’d exercised enough for the day. This was supposed to be a vacation, dammit.

  “There was a moment in my room,” I said after a second. Chloe let me think about it, not demanding I explain every syllable of what I’d meant by “moment.” “We—it was dark and we were giving each other shit and it… It got sort of, you know.” I felt my cheeks go red just mentioning it. “I thought something might happen but he was very deliberate in making sure it didn’t.”

  “Oh?” Chloe asked, her voice stuffed chock full of shock and confusion. “He made sure it didn’t? Not you? He? He as in Mel, not some other guy you’d just met?”

  “I didn’t try to start anything, but he literally pushed me back and ran away. Just—he just dashed out like I’d threatened to stab him.”

  “Wow.”

  “Then, last night, we were in bed—”

  “Together?”

  “Well. Yes. We came to snoop and Mel suggested we sleep here—at the center—so we would have easier access. So, we’re all warm and snuggled together again, and he starts making out with me.”

  “Bit of a turn around.”

  “Exactly. While I am somewhat ashamed to say I was into it, he wasn’t.”

  “Did you check?” Chloe asked, her tone indicating her brain had taken up residence in the gutter.

  “I tried. I swear to you, I tried. He wouldn’t let me.”

  “Are you drunk?” she asked. “Were you drunk last night? Are you sure this wasn’t some puppy-emotion-induced nightmare?”