by T. S. Joyce
A tiny smile curved the human’s mouth and disappeared as she pulled another stitch. “We saved each other.”
“We proved the oracle wrong, huh?” Corin’s voice shook more and more as she fought the uncomfortable effects of the medicine.
“Shhh, you silly bear,” Hannah cooed. “Enough talking now and let us work.”
Corin’s vision grew dimmer and something cold pressed into the palm of her hand. Brooks closed her fingers over the necklace she’d given him and leaned over her.
And right as darkness crept across his face, he whispered, “I remember.”
****
The meadow looked otherworldly under the midday sun. Brooks stood stunned, looking out over what he had almost done. Bears had died here today, but the toll was in the tens, not the hundreds. Mace stood silently beside him, along with eight other high ranking members of the Long Claws. They’d been verbally shredding him for his efforts at ending the battle early.
It was hard for him to care about their disappointment when his hands and arms were covered in Corin’s blood.
She had looked so pale when her people hauled her away in one of Bear Valley’s jeeps. Every instinct inside of him screamed to go with her, but he couldn’t. Not with the shit storm he had to deal with here.
Riker approached, his hands clasped behind his back, his face somber.
“Leave us,” Brooks said.
Grumbling, his men walked away toward the Long Claw camp.
“How many did you lose?” he asked Bear Valley’s alpha.
“Twelve and our healer. You?”
“Ten.”
“It could have been more.”
“Many more,” Brooks agreed. “One of your bears changed my mind on the necessity of snuffing your people out.”
“Are you going to see her again?”
He looked away so Riker wouldn’t see the weak longing in his eyes. “Probably best I don’t. I’m not the best match for her.”
“No, you’re not.” Riker’s icy blue gaze found his, daring him to look away first. “But you could be.”
Chapter Eleven
One month had passed. Three weeks and five days to be exact since the battle at the haunted meadow. Corin had healed, on the outside at least, and the scars she bore didn’t even bother her that much. Everyone had them now, and at least she’d made it away from that day with her life. That was more than she could say for some of the Bear Valley shifters they had buried in the old graveyard in the base of the Bighorn Mountains.
She wiped down a table top in the diner where she worked until it gleamed and moved to the next. Today was slow, and probably the dark storm clouds that swirled over the sleepy town of Sheridan were to blame for that. Water drummed against the roof and a wave of rain pattered against the large picture window. The reflection there made her pause, wet rag still against the red Formica tabletop.
The diner looked cheery with its sixties themed crimsons and chromes. But in the middle was her, and she looked like a ghost of her former self. Make-up hid the faint injuries Merit had given her, but it was her inner scars that seemed so much more obvious. Dark circles outlined her eyes, and the hazel color there looked hollow now.
She had found him, then lost him again.
Inhaling deeply, she focused on an old Chevy pickup truck that cruised Main Street out front. It was one of those classic ones with a light green paint job. The driver passed the parking lot of the diner and continued up toward the police station.
“Honey?” Marta asked. She was the sturdy, motherly type who spent much of her time in the diner kitchen making those pies this place was famous for.
Corin straightened her posture. “Yes?”
“I think that table is clean. You’ve been scrubbing the same spot for ten minutes.”
Ten minutes. Where had her mind gone for so long?
Marta pushed her horn rimmed glasses up and into her hair and gave her a kind, if sympathetic, smile. “You’ve been through a lot, what with the bear attack and all. Are you sure you’re ready to come back to work?”
“Oh, I am. I need the money and besides, it helps to keep busy.”
“Are you hurting? I have some Advil in the back that might take the edge off a little.”
It wasn’t the injuries to her face that were the problem. Corin’s back was crisscrossed in claw marks. She tried to walk without stiffness to appear strong, but apparently she hadn’t been doing a good enough job in front of Marta. Another couple of weeks of shifter healing and she wouldn’t even feel them anymore. She hoped.
“Thank you, but no. I’m fine.” That and her bear would eat her from the inside out if she tried pain medicine again. The first week after the battle had been traumatizing to her animal side. Now she only used a balm Anya had given her before she slipped into bed each night.
“Okay.” Marta’s frown deepened. “Phone call in the back for you, hon.”
“For me?”
“Yep.” She winged up her eyebrows as if she were just as shocked as Corin, then began to refill a row of empty napkin holders on the counter.
Crap. Riker was the only one who had ever called this place, and that was to tell her to get her ass back to Bear Valley when Brooks had declared war. This was bad.
Wiping her hands on the frilly white apron over her red checkered server dress, she padded down the back hallway, past the pictures of past employee awards and drawings the owners daughter had colored of the restaurant when she was a child. Past the small, one-stall bathroom and to the door of the office.
The phone sat on the desk, its old cord coiled like an earthworm after a downpour.
“Hello?” she breathed into the mouthpiece as she sank into the rickety old office chair.
No one answered and she frowned and tried again. “Is anyone there?”
Silence.
Biting her lip, she pulled it away from her ear to slide it back into the cradle.
“Don’t hang up,” a deep voice said from the other end.
Her heart thumped erratically in her chest, and she hesitated before she pulled it back to her ear.
“I just…I just needed to hear your voice,” Brooks said.
“H-how did you get this number?”
“Riker.” His voice was a low rumble and she imagined his eyes were bright silver. “You don’t have a cell phone.”
“I don’t have money for one,” she admitted.
“I should’ve called before now.” There was an edge to his voice. Something dark, like pain.
“Are you hurt?”
“Things have been hard here. Chaotic. I wanted to call you, but I didn’t know what to say.”
He hadn’t answered her question.
He was in Wyoming, with his people, and the distance seemed even greater somehow, hearing his voice surrounded by the static of the old phone.
“What do you want from me?” she asked.
“I want to talk. To be friends.”
“Friends.” The word sounded harsher than she’d intended. “I called you.”
“I know.”
“I called you ten times and your people said you didn’t want to talk to me.” She lowered her voice. “A friend wouldn’t sleep with me, then save my life, then ignore me until I felt like nothing to them.” All of the anger and resentment from feeling abandoned crashed over her like ocean waves, and her throat closed with the tide of emotion that was overwhelming her. “I love you but you can’t return that, so where does that leave us?”
“It leaves us at the beginning.” He hissed like he’d moved too fast and something had wounded him. “I can’t be what you want or need, Corin. I’m not right for you, but I can’t stop thinking about you. About kissing you.”
“Oh, the one where you bit my lip? Or is it the one where you pretended to be a gentle man when we slept together the first time?”
“No. I keep thinking about the first one.”
Her breath caught and she stopped rocking back and forth in the spi
nning office chair.
His voice sounded careful when he said, “The one in the woods outside of your parents’ house. The one ten years ago, when the Long Claws attacked our people.”
Our people. “Do you remember everything?”
“No. Just bits and pieces. I remember I had been working up to kissing you for weeks and you beat me to it.”
Her voice dipped to a ragged whisper. “You declared war on my people. Innocent shifters died because you were too stubborn to stop it. Riker said the Long Claws killed off most of the surviving Kodiaks, just to take their land. That you fought them. Our people fell at your hand. What happened to you to make you forsake your humanity?”
Brooks was quiet for so long, she began to consider that he’d set the phone down and left. She licked her lips, wetting them to repeat her question. The answer mattered. “Daniel—”
“Don’t call me that.” His voice sounded strained, like he’d said it through gritted teeth. “I’ll call you again.” The line went dead and a dial tone blasted against her sensitive ear drum.
Okay, he wanted to talk to her again, but when? She stared at the shift schedule on eye-scorching yellow construction paper, drawn in red permanent marker, and pinned to the office bulletin board. He couldn’t know when she worked next to call her here. Maybe he was just saying that to take the sting off of him preparing to ignore her again.
The phone was old and didn’t have caller ID. Setting it back into the sling, she frowned at a mug of mismatched pens and gritted her teeth. She couldn’t read him. Maybe hurt, maybe just angry. Definitely conflicted on whether she was worth his time or not. Bitter, confused…cold. Still cold.
Whatever change she’d seen in him when he stitched her up hadn’t held.
His time with the Long Claws only made him dark again.
****
“Fuck!” Brooks chucked the cell phone into the wall, and it shattered into a rain of jagged plastic pieces.
He hadn’t been ready to call her yet. His head was too messed up, and he was right in the middle of the biggest overthrow in the history of the Long Claws. The war hadn’t ended in the meadow. It had migrated to Wyoming and his people were bleeding each other, bleeding him, for the changes he was trying to enforce.
Changing hundreds of years of murderous tradition was only won in blood. Corin would hate him if she knew what was really happening here. She didn’t want him to kill? He’d killed five of his own people in the last week. Five fucking souls as dark marks against his newly sensitive soul, and he wanted to bury himself in a cave and never come out again. If he stopped though, the Long Claws would go after Bear Valley again and his new and utterly inconvenient set of morals wouldn’t allow him to live with himself if he didn’t die trying to save them.
His people weren’t requesting a war on a neutral field where Riker and his fighters would stand a chance. They were rioting to attack Bear Valley while it thought it was at peace, like they had done to the lesser clans. Like they had done to his people, the Kodiaks.
He didn’t have time to allow thoughts of Corin to mess with his head. He needed to be fully in this war with his people, not immersed in flashbacks from his past.
But he’d been slipping and forgetting why he was doing this. She made him want to be good, and he was so damned tired. Her voice was all he needed to remember himself. That was what he had told himself. But now the burning desire for more of her battered the walls he’d had to erect to survive the past month.
Corin had no idea how dangerous she was.
Blood trickled down his stomach in a warm stream and he pressed an already soaked towel onto it to staunch the flow.
Riker had said he could be good enough for her.
And dammit, Brooks was probably going to die trying.
****
Corin narrowed her eyes at the broken necklace that sat in a pile of crumpled gold links on her dresser. She’d considered sending it in to have the chain repaired, but it didn’t feel right wearing Daniel’s necklace anymore. Her feelings were so jumbled about him now.
He was alive and dead all at once.
The broken links seemed fitting now.
Foregoing any jewelry, she sat on her cushy mattress and pulled her hiking boots on over her wool socks. Her cottage was small, basically just an open room. Kitchen, living room, and bedroom all in one. Efficient and cozy.
And lonely.
Damn Brooks for making her feel like she wanted more.
She had painted the place in lavenders and creams, and the whitewashed furniture matched her usually happy demeanor, but lately it didn’t seem to fit her. Lifting her shoulders to her ears, she studied her home. Nothing seemed to fit anymore.
Even the yellow wildflowers that sat in the vase on her two chair dining table seemed irritatingly happy.
With a dark glance over her shoulder, she opened the door and tripped over a box on her small front stoop.
Barely catching herself on the edge of the doorframe, she stared at the little box in shock. A pink Post-it square clung to the cardboard. Crouching down, she plucked the note off and read it.
This was delivered to the front gates for you.
Be patient with him.
-Benson
Eyes wide, she studied the woods but she was alone. When had Riker brought this? It was the crack of dawn.
“Be patient with him?” she murmured as she pulled at the tape.
Inside was a brand new cell phone, still in the box. But when she opened it up, the battery was charged and the home screen had an icon that said Brooks in the upper left corner. What the hell? She poked it and brought the phone to her ear.
Brooks picked up on the first ring. “You got my gift.”
“Yes.” A smile took her lips. He’d sent her a gift. This was about as unpredictable as he could get. “I was trying to figure out how you were going to call me again when you didn’t know my work schedule.”
“I know your work schedule, too.”
“How?” she asked.
“Marta told me.”
“Oh. Wait, when did you talk to Marta?”
A growl echoed through the other end. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“That’s what you do when you talk to someone on the phone. Regretting sending me this gift yet?”
“No. I never regret my actions.” His voice was quiet and confused, like he couldn’t tell she was teasing.
“I’m joking,” she said.
“What are you doing right now? And what are you wearing?”
“Whoa, kinky, okay. Hot pink negligee—”
“Corin,” he growled. “Not like that. I really wanted to know…forget it. This is stupid.”
“Be prepared to be very attracted to me.” She sank into the worn hammock overlooking the side yard. Juan was going to maim her for being late to work preparing the wheat fields for winter, but so what? “An oversized Domino’s Pizza T-shirt, jeans with holes in the knees, and, are you ready to be really turned on? Hiking boots,” she purred seductively.
A deep chuckle reverberated through the speaker, and the sound warmed her despite the early autumn chill on the breeze.
“Were you hurt the other day, when you called me?” she blurted out. Not knowing had been keeping her up at nights.
“Yes.”
“Are you still hurt?”
“Yes,” he said in an emotionless voice.
“Who did that to you?”
“Corin,” he said, warning in his voice.
“Why can’t you just answer my questions?”
Another frustrated growl rippled through the phone, and she imagined him running his hands through his dark hair and scowling. “Because I don’t do this, and I don’t have to answer to anyone.”
“Why did you give me the phone then, Brooks? If you don’t want to talk, why did you tease me with this? What do you remember from before? What happened to you when you were taken by the Long Claws? Who hurts you? What do you do all day in your alpha tower?
If you can’t answer basic questions—”
“Stop it. I told you I can’t be what you need. This is it. This is all I have to give.”
“Shallow conversation about the weather, and never anything real about your actual life? That’s not letting me in. You’ll hurt me with this.” Her voice dipped to a whisper and her lip trembled under the weight of her frustration. “If you can’t have a simple conversation with me, then why did you give me this direct line to you?”
“Because I…” His voice was snarly and inhuman as it tapered off.
“Say it, Brooks. Because what.”
The line went silent and she shook her head at the brick wall they’d slammed into. He was on one side and she was on the other, and he wasn’t capable of battering it down to allow her in.
“When you figure it out, call me back.” She ended the call and stared at the screen, hurt and hopeful and frustrated all at once.
A half an hour later, he still hadn’t called back and guilt curdled in her stomach. He was trying, sort of. Maybe she was pushing too hard, too fast. No, if he couldn’t learn to talk to her, what chance did they have at friendship? What chance did she have to feel whole again?
Defeated, she shoved the phone into her back pocket and trudged to the wheat fields, where she took an epic verbal lashing about responsibility and punctuality from Juan, who seemed in an especially grumpy mood. Then she worked all day without so much as a chirp from the new phone.
Dead on her feet exhausted, and a little crushed as she had spent the entire day overthinking everything Brooks had said and all the ways she should have saved the conversation, she left straight for home from the field. She was supposed to meet Anya tonight to get a refill of the balm she’d been using on her injuries, but that would have to wait until after she’d had a hot bath and cleared her mind.
The breeze was picking up, gusty remnants from the storms of the past few days, and the trees along the trail creaked and groaned.
Beep. Looking around startled, she fumbled the phone out of her back pocket and turned it on.
Because I need you, read the text.
Her heartbeat took off at a gallop as she smiled in disbelief. I don’t text, she typed and hit send. Hearing his voice seemed essential.