by Abby Tyson
Savi said nothing, but slowly her body relaxed again. Her heartbeat slowed and her breathing evened as she allowed herself to rest against him. He hadn't seen her in nearly a week, and the desire to kiss her neck and run his hands over her body was nearly irresistible, but he knew it wasn't the right time. So he contented himself with petting her hair and letting her scent mingle with his own.
"I'm sorry to show up like this," she said, talking into the pillow. "I couldn't think of anywhere else to go. I promise I won't always be this pathetic."
"Pathetic?" he said with a laugh.
She turned her head to face him but remained on her stomach. "You know, always having some sort of drama going on, needing a man to protect me. That's not who I am."
"It's my pleasure to protect you." Marley buried his hand deep in her curls. "And I'd hardly call last weekend drama. Being kidnapped, finding out about --"
"We don't have to rehash all that," she said, hiding her face again. "I was there, remember?"
Marley watched her hair as he let it slip from his hand, then lay back on the bed. "I'm glad you talked to your mom about it at least."
"What do you mean at least?"
"On Monday, when we were walking to the shed, you didn't want to talk about any of it, and I got that -- it was all too fresh and heavy. But I thought by now, since you've had a little distance from it all and time to think about it..." He waited for Savi to say something, but she remained stubbornly silent.
"Even I'm still kind of freaked out about some of it," he continued, "and I already knew that werewolves and coywolves existed -- and Ren was with me the whole time. But you had to deal with a lot of crazy stuff with no warning, and you were alone through most of it. I don't even know what you were doing half the time."
Again he waited, but when Savi stirred, it was only to get out of bed.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"The bathroom," she said, starting to walk away.
"Wait." Marley jumped up and blocked her way to the door. "I'm sorry," he said, taking her face in his hands. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, obviously. I'm just... if you're not talking to me, I'm glad you're talking to your mom, that's all."
The light was brighter here, and Marley's own heart started racing as he looked into Savi's lovely but solemn dark eyes. He couldn't believe that after all this time she was really here. He'd found her at last, and he was going to do everything in his power to keep her.
His hands moved on their own, one sliding around her neck and the other deeper into her hair, pulling her to meet his lips. Her hands on his bare chest sent tremors through his body that he never wanted to stop. He closed his fist around her hair and gently tilted her head back to kiss her chin, her throat, the side of her neck.
"Marley."
To another, her gasp would have been encouraging, but Marley's keen ears heard the strain in it. He also heard her heart beating erratically, which might have been mistaken for excitement if it hadn't been accompanied by the growing scent of her fear.
He stilled his body, forcing himself to simply hold her. Listening to her heartbeat slow to a steady, comforting rhythm, Marley's own drumming heart calmed to match. "Speak my name," he whispered into her ear, "and my cast crumbles. My clay is soft. Shape me. Speak my name."
"You and your fluffy love poems," she said with a smile as she stepped away. "We've got to get you reading the good stuff -- life and death stuff."
Marley had been tucking one of the many strands of wayward hair behind her ear, but he paused mid-movement at her words.
She noticed. "Who wrote that poem?"
Turning away and opening one of the two wooden trunks against the wall, he said, "I don't remember." He felt her watching him as he started pulling together a change of clothes, but she didn't say anything before leaving the room.
When she came back, he had turned the overhead light on and was standing by the back wall. While the other three walls of his bedroom were covered from floor to ceiling with handwritten quotes and poems, this one was filled by a mural that he had painted. A solar eclipse shone down on the dark figure of a woman hovering high over a cave surrounded by a field of flowers and mountainous landscape. Another figure stood near the mouth of the cave, arms extended up towards the woman.
Savi stood beside him. "I love this painting."
"Really?" he asked. She nodded, a warm smile on her lips. He leaned against the wall. "What do you love about it?"
"It's ambiguous. That's my favorite kind of art because it tells more about the viewer than the artist." Savi gazed thoughtfully at the mural. "The way the woman's face is obscured, you can't tell if she's staring down at the man by the cave, or looking up at the sky. And is the man calling out to her in reverence? Or is he crying out in fear?"
Marley watched Savi as she touched on a few other aspects of the painting that she liked, finding symbolism and layers of subtlety that he had never known were present. She was more relaxed than he'd ever seen her -- no self-consciousness, no frightened heart, no pain lurking in her eyes. He wanted her to always look like this. He wanted her to look at him like this.
"Is it done?"
He didn't realize she'd asked a question until she turned and caught him staring. The light in her eyes dimmed, and she ran a hand over her hair. "What?" she asked.
Marley's heart ached for the lost moment. He cleared his throat and moved to stand beside her and study the painting.
"I don't know if it's done," he said. At her confusion, he gestured to the painting. "I don't dream often, but when I do, this is how they usually end, although it always seems like I wake up before it's really over. I guess I can't take full credit for all of the artistry you uncovered in it, then, huh?"
"It's your brain doing the creating. Its origin doesn't detract from its power."
Waving the painting off, he took Savi's hand. “Anyway, it’s not as beautiful as the piece of art standing beside me."
She eyed his shirtless body and said, "I think you have me confused with yourself, Mister Muscles."
He pulled her closer, but then jumped back with a cry as her hand unexpectedly grazed his side.
"What's the matter?" she asked, her hands recoiling as if she'd touched a hot stove.
"Nothing, nothing," he said quickly, trying to shed his grin. "You surprised me, that's all."
A mischievous smile spread across Savi's face. "Are you ticklish?"
"No," he said, mocking the question but still unable to hide his smile. Walking across the room, he picked up the clothes he'd chosen for after his shower. He heard her sneaking toward him, but kept his back to her, giving her the illusion of surprise.
Instead of the playful tickling he was bracing for, Savi's hands slid smoothly over his shoulders and down his arms. He couldn't help but flex his muscles as she felt them, showing off a little, even though she'd caught glimpses of his supernatural strength in action before. She hugged him from behind, wrapping her arms around his chest and pressing her cheek against his back.
He was usually the one reaching for her, so feeling Savi press her body against his was almost too much. It took all of his self-control not to turn around, tear that threadbare shirt off of her, and toss her onto the nearest bed. Instead, he stood motionless, hardly daring to breathe, covering her hands with his.
"I actually didn't mind that poem from before," she said. "It was more open to interpretation than most, and I like the imagery. Who wrote it?"
"You don't have to say that just because you think I wrote it."
"I'm not just saying it. I liked it. Did you write it?"
Marley waited for the skip of her heart, for the scent that was almost but not quite fear -- the scent of a lie; when he didn't sense either, he smiled. "Yeah."
Pulling away but keeping her hands on him, Savi nudged him to turn around. "That's amazing," she said. When he didn't look at her, she leaned in, forcing him to meet her eyes. "That's amazing," she repeated.
&nbs
p; "You're amazing," he said, kissing her. He pressed his forehead to hers. "Can I read you some more?"
"More of your poems?"
"Yeah," he whispered.
She smiled brightly. “I’d love to hear more!”
He started digging through his trunk when his dad called to him from across the hall.
"Coming!" Marley yelled back, and started toward the door. "I'll be right back," he said to Savi, who was looking very confused.
"Who are you talking to?" she asked.
"My dad," he said, pointing toward the door. "Didn't you...?" Understanding dawned upon him. "Oh, right." He pointed at his ear. "Super hearing. My dad knows he only has to talk a little louder than normal and I'll hear him through the doors."
He took a step toward the door, then turned back to her, whispering, "You should know, we didn't tell my dad who Nissa really is."
"He doesn't know she's the wolf that altered him?"
Marley shushed her. "We didn't think he would take it very well."
"So what did you tell him?"
"That the silver wolf was killed, that Nissa was a prisoner of the Alters, and that she's staying here until we leave tomorrow to find her family. Nissa's on board, although she's been pretty hostile toward my dad since she got here."
"No! Nissa?" she said with heavy sarcasm.
"She's been at Ren's for the past couple days anyway, but in case it comes up."
"Marley!"
"Even I heard that," she said, with a smile that Marley couldn't resist kissing before he went across the hall.
Savi watched Marley close the door, then started searching for the notebook in his trunk, excited about reading his original poetry. His clothes were surprisingly tidy, all uniformly folded and organized in precise rows, and when she caught the corner of a spiral-bound notebook, she dragged it up carefully. Bouncing onto the bed, she flipped it open to a page at random. But instead of words, she saw pictures. One side held a single large sketch of a girl's face. The other side was filled with floating noses, eyes, and mouths of different types, many of them scribbled out. Thinking that perhaps the poetry was at the beginning of the notebook, Savi went to the first page, and gasped.
Taped to the inside of the notebook cover was a photograph of her. She was around six years old, leaning against the back of her mom's old station wagon, holding her backpack out in front of her. The back seat was loaded up with boxes -- which in itself wasn't enough to place the picture, since she and her mom had moved around a lot back then -- but the car was parked in front of a rainbow fence. The photo didn't show what was on the other side of that fence, but Savi knew it was a playground -- the same playground that was across the parking lot from the very apartment building she was currently sitting in.
This photograph had been taken the day she and her mom moved out of the apartment complex that Marley had lived in all his life. Judging from the angle, it had been taken from behind the dumpster, near the path that led to the woods -- Marley's second home.
Opposite the picture, on the first page of the notebook, were more drawings. The top half of the page was a pencil rendering of Savi's face from the photograph. The quality of the artwork was almost as childish as the subject, with many erased but still visible lines, and the outcome far from matched the original, but the intent was unmistakable. On the bottom half was a slimmer, more mature version of the same face, keeping the long curls and dimples, but losing the baby fat. Although it didn't look much like Savi, due both to the poor skill and the guesswork that was required, there was once again no question of the artist's intent. The top was Savi as a child; the bottom was her as an adult.
Savi flipped back through the notebook, the quality of the sketches increasing as she progressed. What she had thought were simply drawings of assorted girls were now clearly different versions of her own face. Some of the images were eerily close to what Savi actually looked like, until she found herself staring into eyes that were almost exactly what she saw in the mirror.
Between the sketches were several pages with drafts of poems, but Savi barely saw them. The walls around her felt like they were closing in. With a glance at the door, she clawed back the clothes and buried the notebook where she'd found it. Jumping back, she stared warily at the trunk, as if it were a gaping mouth about to snap shut on its own.
She only remembered meeting Marley once when they were kids, even though they had lived in the same apartment complex for almost a year. He had comforted her after her mom's boyfriend's kids desecrated her beloved stuffed animal. And while she had remembered Marley's comforting words for years after, she hadn't thought much of him specifically until they reconnected at Marcia’s barn. Seeing this photograph was evidence that Marley had definitely thought about her since then. A lot. Too much.
The thought of being alone with him suddenly filled her with panic. What if he'd been lying all along? What if everything that happened was somehow orchestrated to bring them together?
Savi told herself she was being paranoid, but after last weekend she couldn't be certain of anything anymore. Knowing that Marley would be back in seconds, and that he'd sense her fear, Savi picked her purse up off the floor and pulled out her phone. Keeping an eye on the door, she went to her settings and played her ringtone.
"Hi Brenda," she said, praying that Marley didn't come in and catch her talking to herself. "What? But -- okay, fine."
Marley stepped into the room as she closed her phone. "Who was that?" he asked.
"Work," said Savi, walking to the far side of the room and putting on her sweatshirt. "I was only supposed to be there one to five, but now they need me to cover a shift!" Hoping Marley would interpret her racing heart as fury instead of fear, Savi acted far angrier than she normally would have been.
"Can't you say no? What about the poetry reading?" His handsome face looked boyish in his disappointment.
Keeping her voice raised while she searched the room for her shoes, she said, "With Glenn -- well, George, to them -- missing since Friday, everyone's been working extra to help cover the shortage. I wouldn't want to put more stress on everyone by saying no, would I? Of course, they'd really be in a tizzy if I told them that the last time I saw Glenn he was unconscious in a laboratory and cuffed to a bed by his crazy mother. Where the hell are my flip-flops?!?"
She got on her knees to look beneath the bed and groaned. "I guess I kicked them off a little too vigorously last night."
"I'll help."
"That's okay," said Savi, sticking her head under to reach her sandal. "I've almost --"
The bed creaked and cracked around her, and she scrambled back. But instead of collapsing, the bed was floating away. Marley was clutching the foot of the bed, lifting it up until the headboard scratched the ceiling. Savi had seen him carry some heavy things before, but nothing like this. The metal frame was far from ornate, but it still looked way heavier than the lightweight aluminum her own bed at home had. Add the boxspring and the mattress, and he had to be holding at least a few hundred pounds -- with less effort than it took Savi to carry groceries.
He grinned at her, and the awe she was feeling reverted back to panic. She grabbed her shoe and made a beeline for the door.
"Hey, wait," he said, dropping the bed with a noisy clang. He ran over and grabbed her shoulders to stop her from opening the door.
"I have to go," she said, then let out a frustrated sigh. "This totally sucks!"
Marley stared at her with his bright green eyes, seemingly trying to reconcile the involuntary messages her body was sending him with what she was saying. But he stepped aside, and as he opened the door for her, Warren opened the door to his bedroom across the hall.
The last time Savi had encountered Marley's dad in this hallway, he'd thrown her against the wall, mistaking her for the werewolf that had altered him. Today, he grinned and wrapped her in his bony arms.
"Savi!" he said in his hoarse voice. He stepped back but kept her hands in his. "Have you two returned to the blis
sful state of young love? I told Marley he'll find no woman on Earth more perfect than you, and to do whatever it takes to keep hold of you."
After what she had just seen, Warren's words rang like an alarm. Recovering quickly, she gave him a forced smile and said, "Thanks for letting me in last night. Unfortunately I got called into work at the last minute. It was nice seeing you."
Warren held her hands tightly, keeping her in place. "I hope I didn't keep you up. I'm so used to having the place to myself at night, I realized a few times that I had the TV volume too high, or I was reading too loudly at obscene hours."
"Nope. It was fine." She tried once again to politely step away, but his face went grave as he continued.
"With death so close, I don't like to sleep much in a single stretch. I get up every few hours. Although I have to admit I have been feeling wearier of late."
"Hopefully that's a good sign."
"Savi's got a long drive to work, Dad," Marley said.
"You holed yourself up so quickly in my boy's room after you arrived," Warren went on, ignoring his son, "that I didn't get a chance to thank you properly for what you did for me." His eyes were darker than her own, but surrounded by bright red veins, permanently bloodshot from the trauma of years of torturous werewolf shifts. "Letting a wild wolf bite you takes an iron resolve that I envy."
"We don't even know if it worked," she said.
"Even if it doesn't, you've given me hope -- something my sons have failed to give me for many years now."
Savi glanced at Marley, and even though she wanted nothing more than to get away from them both, she couldn't leave without ridding his face of the shame creeping into it.
"I couldn't have done it without Marley," she said. "He kept us both safe."
Marley looked at her, his eyes clearing, and for a split-second she forgot why she had been so afraid of him.
Warren waved away her comment, his voice turning harsh. "They've had their whole lives to find the silver wolf, and failed." Smiling at her, he added, "But they made up for it by finding you. Thank you."
Hoping her smile appeared natural, she said, "I've really got to go. Thanks again."