by Elena Lawson
“You okay with pizza for dinner?” Jared asked, changing the subject.
“There were a few packets of ramen in my bag. I can just have that and some berries from the mountain.”
Jared snorted. “You can’t live on ramen and berries, Allie. Besides, I already ordered three large pizzas.”
My eyes widened as I watched him in the darkened vehicle. In the close quarters I could smell his cedar and birch scent—and that undertone of something else, the thing I couldn’t place before, but that now I knew was an animal smell. Like fresh air and loamy earth. “What the hell are you going to do with three large pizzas?” I asked in disbelief.
He shrugged. “I can eat one by myself usually. Clay can eat more than that. I figured you’d at least have a couple slices, so I got three. You aren’t going to let the extra slices go to waste, are you? I hate cold pizza.”
My brows raised. “Who hates cold pizza?” I asked suspiciously. “Cold pizza is the best.”
“Nah,” Jared said with the ghost of a smirk on his lips. “Shit’s nasty.”
“Well, I won’t let it be wasted,” I said, rising to his bait and knowing it. I couldn’t remember the last time my belly felt full. Probably the time I spent the night at Viv’s, when her dad was out of town visiting her uncle. We’d had lasagna, and I think I ate more than Viv and her mom, combined. The idea of having not one slice of pizza, but several made my mouth water and my stomach growl audibly in the cab.
Jared stifled a laugh and I chortled, pressing a hand to my abdomen to try to quell the loud noises, but that only made them louder.
By the time my stomach stopped yelling at me, we were parked at the end of the bumpy dirt road in the small lot at the foot of a hiking trail not often used. In fact, I didn’t even think it was on a map.
I gasped as I turned to get out of the Jeep, finding Jared there opening my door, his tan face popping up in the window shocked a short squeal from my lips. “Sorry,” he said, holding the door open and a hand out to help me step down from the jacked-up height. I took his hand, if only because I was afraid to twist my ankle more if I jumped to the ground without something to stabilize me. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
I reached back inside to grab my bag once my feet were on solid ground and turned to close the door, finding Jared watching me curiously.
“What?” I asked, squinting up at him in the growing dark, shivering against the autumn chill.
He shook his head. “It’s nothing. Here,” he said, holding out a hand for my bag. “Let me carry that. We should get moving before you freeze. I think your walking stick is still over by the trail.”
He was right, and after I grudgingly handed over my bag, I hopped over to the wide pine and snatched the walking stick he’d fetched for me when he’d been a beast on all fours. I squinted down at the length of wood, pursing my lips. Was that really just last night?
It felt like it’d been days since the mudslide, already.
My breath clouded around my face when I huffed, and I made a mental note to go to the storage unit my aunt and uncle had rented and grab my jacket and a couple sweaters. I didn’t have much in there, and the bus ride and hike to get to the unit was grueling, but it was better than having to buy new stuff—even if it was from the thrift shop. I’d left a bunch of stuff in there when I’d decided to move to the hunting blind in the woods. Not only did I not have the space for anything extra, but anyone who stumbled upon the tent in the woods would be able to steal from it what they wanted. Not worth the risk.
We went in the opposite direction of the trail, deeper into the wood to the east instead of the northwest—where my blind used to be. Once my ankle was healed, I planned to go and find it. Make sure there wasn’t anything else I could salvage. Make sure it really was beyond repair before I floundered to try to find some place else to stay.
“I’ll get you some ice for that when we get back,” Jared said, eyeing my swollen ankle. “It looks worse than it was this morning.”
I didn’t reply, my mind elsewhere. I couldn’t believe I’d agreed to come back here with him. Every step I took towards the hidden cabin in the woods felt like another nail being hammered into a coffin of my own making. What was I doing?
Jared was hot as hell. The most sought-after piece of man flesh at Forest Grove High School.
But he was also a goddamned wolf. And his friend, Clay was an even bigger wolf who wanted to eat me.
I’d have been better off crashing in an alleyway.
“What’s wrong?” Jared asked, and I found myself wishing he was less intuitive. Wishing he would stop looking at me as though I was this foreign creature he wanted to study under the lens of a microscope. To pull me apart and find out what makes me tick.
There were things I didn’t want him to know.
I bowed my head. And some things no one knew…
I wanted to keep it that way.
“Do you think Clay is going to eat me?”
Jared laughed, and the sound lightened a weight that’d been pressing on my chest. “No,” he said between fits of laughter. “No, he’s all bark. No bite. Trust me.”
Trust him?
Could I?
I watched him under the cover of the darkening sky from beneath my lashes. He was smiling to himself as he walked.
“Jared?” I tried again, forcing myself to ask him the question I was afraid to find the answer to. Because I found myself wanting to trust Jared Stone, but depending on his answer to this one question, I wasn’t sure if I could.
“Hmm?”
“You never answered me before,” I whispered, grunting as the terrain began to slope upwards and it became more difficult to navigate with the walking stick. “About how long you’ve been watching me…” I swallowed, my hand tightening on the smooth wood in my hand. “…and why you were watching me.”
Jared’s posture changed, his spine growing rigid beneath his thin sweater. “I wasn’t watching you,” he began, his tone uncertain. “Well, I guess I was. Sort of.”
He ran a hand over his tousled dirt blond hair and sighed. “I picked up your scent in the woods about two months ago—maybe a little more than that. I followed it and found you walking alone with a backpack and bear mace clutched in your hand. I was curious, so I followed you. I thought you might be lost. Or, I don’t know, maybe you were running away from something—or someone,” he said pointedly, and my chest squeezed at the mental image of Devin.
“So, what? You were just making sure I was alright?”
For some reason, I seriously doubted that.
His adams apple bobbed. “At first, yes.”
“And then after?”
He looked uncomfortable as he shrugged. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, Allie. I’m not a creep. I wasn’t stalking you.”
Kind of sounds like it…
“But you were watching me?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted after a beat of silence. “Not watching, really. Just checking. It started to become habit when you kept coming back every day. I usually go for a run in the evening before bed. So, I started running near where that hunting blind was. I checked to make sure you were inside—that the hatch was closed. Sometimes, I followed you when you walked from the bus stop.”
I shuddered. The idea that someone had been following me made my skin crawl. I didn’t like this. Not one bit.
“But I only did it to make sure you got there safely. That’s all. Then I would leave. I swear.”
Jaw clenched tight, I nodded, wanting to believe him even though everything I’d known in this cruel world had trained me to always think the worst.
“And then when you came to school with the bruises on your neck—” he cut himself off, fuming. “I knew it had to be him that did it. I followed you to make sure he didn’t follow you, and to scare him off if he tried.”
My mouth went dry. What would he think if he’d seen the other bruises? The ones that were hidden beneath my clothes… those ones were worse.<
br />
“Why didn’t you go to the police, Allie?”
I flinched. “He was drunk. I don’t think he—”
“Don’t do that,” Jared all but snapped, turning on me with passionate fury in his eyes. They’d begun to glow around the edges, and I stumbled backward, almost falling. My reminder to myself from earlier played back in my mind. Stay back when they shift. “Don’t make excuses for him. There’s no excuse for that. Ever.”
I bit down, clenching my teeth to try to quell the urge to justify what I did, and the embarrassment because deep down, I know I should’ve told someone. If not the police, then Viv or Layla. Someone who could’ve helped me. Convinced me to do the right thing.
But I didn’t want to be convinced. I didn’t want to believe what happened was real. I just wanted Devin to leave me alone and to move on. Say fuck dating and resign myself to being single forever.
“Look, I’m grateful for your help. Really, I am. But can we not do this?”
The fire in Jared’s eyes went out and he backed away a step, conscious that he’d frightened me. “I’m sorry. Sometimes when I’m angry—”
“Yeah, I figured that out already,” I said with a sad smile. “When you’re angry your eyes glow. And when your eyes glow it means your uh…wolf side? wants out. Is that right?”
I started walking again and Jared followed.
“Pretty much, yeah. You catch on quick.”
I wished I didn’t…
The orange glow of firelit windows could be seen through the trees now, and I sighed heavily as we stepped out of the tree line and onto the hard-packed dirt of the yard. The lights were on, which meant that Clay must be inside.
I paused before going up the steps and onto the deck, gathering some courage. A warm bed and a full belly were worth it, right? I could endure some glares and snide comments as long as Jared kept Clay’s wolf at bay, couldn’t I?
“It’s going to be fine,” Jared said, reaching out a hand for me as I rested the walking stick against the rail. I took his warm hand and hopped up the steps. “I talked to him earlier.”
But he hadn’t known I would be staying here earlier…
Or had cornering me at the shop and prodding me into his Jeep been the plan all along?
Bugger.
“He’s not happy, but he’s never happy, so don’t take it personally.”
Jared winked at me and opened the door.
“Honey, we’re home!” He called into the warm cabin, making me want to swat him.
“The fuck took so long?” Clay called from above and I craned my neck to see him at the top of the stairs, looking a tad less angry than the last time I’d seen him, but still menacing as fuck.
Jared set my bag down by the front door and turned to his friend. “Ran into a small…problem,” Jared said, his gaze flicking up to meet Clay’s as though telling him something he couldn’t say aloud. “So, I stayed at the shop until she finished her shift.”
Clay glared at Jared, his icy blue eyes flitting to me for the briefest second. “You deal with that problem?”
“For now.”
Clay rolled his shoulders back. “You let me know if anything else happens.”
Were they talking about Devin? What the hell were they going to do about it? And what did Clayton Armstrong care if some douchebag guy was bothering me? He’d made it very clear he didn’t want me here.
“You hungry?” Jared asked Clay, pulling off his boots. I noticed how they were completely undone. The laces loose and tongue flapping down. I cocked my head, remembering the tattered clothes on the lawn this morning. Did he wear them that way so he didn’t ruin them if he shifted? I bet it would hurt to get wolf-sized feet jammed up in size twelve shoes.
Clay rubbed the back of his neck, and I noticed he was pointedly not looking at me. In fact, he was kind of ignoring that I was here at all. It was…weird. Did he need to smell the back of my hand first to make himself more comfortable? I stifled a snort at the thought.
“Starving,” Clay said.
“Good,” Jared said with a devious grin. “Because it’s your turn to go pick up the pizza.”
7
We didn’t talk much last night. I’d wanted to. Watching Clay and Jared inhale entire large pizzas by themselves in the span of ten minutes only made my mind swirl with even more questions. But with a full belly and the promise of a clean bed—Jared had washed all the sheets and blankets, because of course he had, I was starting to think the guy had no flaws—I wandered upstairs and passed out fully clothed.
I bounded down the stairs, wearing yesterday’s jeans and a clean shirt and sweater from my pack. I’d need to go to the storage unit today if I was going to avoid wearing the same outfit to school two days in a row. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so rested, even though my dreams weren’t exactly filled with gumdrops and unicorns.
While we ate, the prospect of sleeping in a house with two literal wolves had made me think I may not sleep at all, and agreeing to come back with Jared at all was a very very bad idea. But I’d been wrong.
Other than Clay shooting me daggers while he ate, it wasn’t all that bad. And by the time I crawled into bed, I was too tired to care about much of anything. I whispered to myself that they were just overgrown dogs. Puppies. Yeah. They were massive puppies in super-hot human skin sacks. That’s not so scary, is it?
Lying to myself only helped so much, though. I dreamed of wolves. And not the kind that came to the rescue of homeless girls in the forest. No, I dreamed of wolves skinned and left for dead against the warm earth—like the ones Dad and I found deep in the mountain when I was only eight. Their massive carcasses left behind by the hunters who stole their furs.
I dreamed that the rest of that pack found us. My dad and I standing over the carcasses. The gun slung over my Dad’s shoulder—the one he only used for partridge and wild turkey because I cried if he killed anything else—making him look mighty guilty. The wolves circling. Snarling. Snapping their great teeth.
I woke up just as the pack alpha lunged for Dad’s throat.
Despite the bad dream, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept through the night without waking and that was a damn good night in my books.
I wandered into the living room, admiring the massive stone hearth that reached floor to second story ceiling in front of the long brown leather sofa, matching armchairs, and low coffee table where we all ate last night.
“Jared,” Clay called, coming around the corner from the kitchen with a steaming coffee mug in his hand. He paused when he saw me. “Oh,” he grumbled, his face darkening. “Thought you were Jared.”
“I think he’s still in the shower,” I said, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end as I bent to retrieve my cell phone from the coffee table. I’d forgotten it downstairs when I did my zombie-walk up to the guest room after gorging on half a large pizza.
Clay sipped his coffee. “That thing went off about a million times last night,” he said accusingly, glaring at my cell phone.
My face heated. “Shit. I’m sorry if it woke you—”
“Maybe just remember to shut the ringer off if you’re going to stay here,” he said, glaring down the bridge of his nose at me as though I were two inches tall. “I’m a light sleeper.”
Noted. “Yeah. I mean, I will. Sorry.”
He rolled his eyes and turned back into the kitchen.
“Hey,” I called to stop him, going out on a limb. “Is there any more of that coffee?”
He eyed me, his lips pressing firmly together.
I held my breath.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “But you can get it yourself.”
I didn’t tell him I wasn’t going to ask—that I wasn’t the sort of girl who needed to be fucking waited on hand and foot. He could just figure that out on his own. Steeling myself, I pressed forward, following him into the kitchen to grab a mug from the cupboard where I saw Jared grab a couple yesterday morning.
Clay
went over to the table and grabbed a carbon vented front disk protector off the surface. For the first time, I noticed how his hands were dark with the stain of engine grease. How the stains collected around his calloused fingers and in the cracks of his chapped skin.
“What are you working on?” I attempted conversation, pouring myself a cup of coffee and taking a sip. The question was more to start a conversation than anything. I already knew what the part was and what it was for. Though, he didn’t have the bike specific mount kit with it, so I didn’t know what kind of dirt bike he planned to put it on. He looked like a Honda guy to me, though.
I’d installed a similar part on my Yamaha a couple years back. But I stopped riding after Dad died. And my aunt and uncle didn’t think dirt biking was a normal activity for a then sixteen-year-old girl, so they sold it, along with all Dad’s shop tools. I didn’t let them sell his bike, though. It was in the storage unit along with all the rest of my things and their furniture.
It was a Maico 620 and I intended to ride it someday. Whenever I could stomach the idea of riding without Dad.
Clay eyed me up and down as though measuring my worth. I refrained from balking at his stare. “It’s for a Honda CRF 450 R.”
Big fucking bike. But then, I supposed with his size, he’d need something that big. “Nice. Looks like you’re missing the mount kit, though.”
His gaze only narrowed further.
“Hey,” Jared said, entering the kitchen with his hair still damp from the shower. He glanced between Clay and I, his brow raising.
Clay shot me one last curious glare before he shouldered past Jared and out into the yard. I saw him pass by a window across the cabin in the living room as he went around to the back of the cabin. I wondered if he had a shop somewhere back there. I’d only ever seen the front of the cabin. There hadn’t really been time to explore.
Jared poured himself a coffee and filled the toaster on the counter with four slices of whole wheat. “Hope he wasn’t being too much of a dick,” he said, the words more a statement than a question.
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t want some homeless person living in my house, either. I get it.”