by Selena Scott
Quill turned his back to the room so that his face was just an inch or two from the back of the couch. All those years ago, he’d been homesick lying in a stranger’s living room. And tonight, he wasn’t much happier.
CHAPTER THREE
“So, time to tell the truth.” Sasha flopped down on the bed beside Dawn, comfortable in his own skin as always. “What the hell is going on?”
Dawn rolled over and looked at her old friend. She’d never been able to lie to him. He was just too open. Not innocent, exactly, but he always believed the best in people. If she were to lie to him, he’d believe her unequivocally, and that would make it all the more despicable. Instead of answering his question, she changed the subject.
“Orion was very surprised to hear that I was with you.”
Sasha took the bait and laughed. “I’m sure he would be. He was never exactly my biggest fan.”
“Oh,” Dawn said, nudging him with her foot. “He liked you just fine. It was just hard for him to be around you after Mom and Dad died. I think your family reminded him and Phoenix of better times. Times we could never have again.”
Sasha’s eyes went sad and liquid. He nudged Dawn back with his own foot. “So how come you still wanted to be around me?”
She lowered her chin and rolled her eyes at him. “Because you were, like, totally gorgeous.” She thought for a second. “And, well, you were the only boy my age that I’d ever met. Thus the attraction.”
They both burst out laughing and Sasha fell to his back on the bed. “Come on, we had more chemistry than that.”
“Maybe a bit,” she conceded. She’d loved Sasha once. And she still loved him now, in a different way. She’d had a crush on him all those years ago, and when they’d finally gotten around to losing their virginities together, it had been exhilarating and sweet and extremely illuminating for her. After all, she’d grown up in the woods, mostly in her wolf form, and thus had not had a very comprehensive sex education. Sasha and his family lived in civilization. He went to public school. He’d explained everything to her very thoroughly and then performed everything even more thoroughly.
But growing close to him in that way had become painful for Dawn. Her summers with Sasha made the winters seem even longer and lonelier. She’d broken things off with him when they were seventeen and he and his family had never come back.
Sasha reached over and tugged at her hair in a familiar gesture. “You’d tell me if you were in trouble, right?”
She considered her words carefully. “I’d tell you if I needed help.”
Sasha sighed. “You know if anything happens to you, your brothers are going to come after me, right?”
She pursed her lips. “Actually, in this case, I think they’d come after Quill.”
“What’s the deal with that guy?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on, Dawny. He’s all—” Sasha cut off his words and instead screwed up his face into a tight expression, brooding off into the distance like a male model.
She burst out laughing, because now that he mentioned it, that was exactly what Quill looked like most of the time. “Quill…” she gathered her thoughts, “has his own set of issues.”
That was pretty much the most generous way she could think to put it.
“Okay,” Sasha said, peering over at her in the dim lamplight. “Let me get this straight. You and your tricky little self are dancing around the truth, avoiding telling me where the heck you two are going. And you’re also avoiding telling me anything that’s up with Quill?”
She shrugged. “I guess?”
“Are you two together?”
“No.” That was an easy one to answer. She didn’t have to dance around it at all. “Definitely not.”
Sasha frowned. “Well, are you aware that he’s totally in love with you?”
Dawn choked on air. “Um. No. I’m not aware of that, because it is completely untrue.”
Sasha gave her an amused glance and helpfully leaned over to pat her on the back as she kept coughing. “It is true. Trust me. I know what a man looks like when he’s hopelessly in love with you, Dawn. I saw it in the mirror for most of my teens.”
She dropped her eyes, her frazzled confusion over his statement about Quill fizzing away with the genuine melancholy she saw in his eyes. Hurting Sasha was like stepping on a dog’s feet. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out with us, Sasha. It was all so complicated. I didn’t think that me and my brothers would ever come out of hiding. We’d never lived anywhere but the mountains. I’d barely even met another soul, besides you and your family.”
His hand lifted from her back to her hair. “I know. It was a lot.”
“You didn’t want some mountain wolf girl for a girlfriend, Sash. We couldn’t even communicate for ten months out of the year. It was better to set you free.”
Sasha didn’t argue with her.
“Well, I guess I won’t pump you for any more information. I can see that you’ve got your reasons to keep quiet.” He flopped back on the bed. “Just tell me this: when you come back this way, are you going to stop in Salt Lake again?”
She thought of any possible way that she could answer that question. She couldn’t very well say, Sasha, I won’t ever be in Salt Lake City again, if I have my way. Because I’m headed off to surrender myself to a government program that is going to keep me in a cage and study me until I die.
“I… I’m not sure.”
“Well, if and when you do, maybe you stay for a little while.” His brown eyes bore into hers. “Maybe we give this thing another shot, now that you’re not a mountain wolf girl anymore.”
Unwillingly, a memory shocked through her brain like a lightning bolt. It had been maybe seven or so months ago. She and Quill had started to become good friends. She’d begun to look forward to seeing him instead of dreading it. Even though books had become her all-time favorite way to pass the time, he’d decided that she needed to get out and get some fresh air. So, the two of them headed to some hiking trails about thirty minutes outside of town. He’d taught her how to use a compass, how to read a map. He’d let her pick their route.
It was a long and exhilarating day. She’d gotten them lost a few times, but he’d patiently let her figure their way back to the car. By the time they got back to the parking lot, she was hungry and sunburned and thirsty and happy.
There’d been a few other hikers arriving at that point, grabbing water bottles out of the trunk of the car and lacing up their hiking boots. A blond woman had stood up, stretched her arms high over her head, and then spotted them across the lot.
“Quill!” she’d yelled and then jogged over to meet up with them.
Call it women’s intuition, but Dawn had known immediately that the woman was a former lover of Quill’s. Something in the way the woman leaned in for the hug. Something in the way Quill’s palm spread over her back, like he had no doubt that it was welcome there.
Later, she’d identify the swooping in her stomach as a mild jealousy. She hadn’t even realized that she’d had a crush on him yet. But in the moment, she just considered it to be curiosity. She was still so new to the human world. She’d had Sasha in her life, but she doubted that was what could be considered a normal relationship. She was curious to see how two exes who happened to run into one another might interact.
“Jen! How are you?”
“I’m good!” the blond said, dropping back to her toes. “I’m, uh, back in town. I would’ve called but…”
“No need to explain,” Quill said quickly, his eyes zipping over to Dawn. “Dawn, this is Jen.”
“I’m an ex-girlfriend,” Jen explained, looking back and forth between Dawn and Quill.
“Dawn is a client of mine,” Quill said.
Jen’s eyes lit with interest as she leaned in for a handshake. “Always cool to meet a shifter.”
Dawn quirked her brow in confusion. She’d gotten that reaction from other shifters who were looking for the camarade
rie, but from normal humans, she usually got a reaction of fear or unease when they found out she was a shifter.
“Right,” Quill cut in, taking Jen by the shoulders and leading her away back to her group.
As he walked away, Dawn studied him. She wondered, for a moment, what it had been like for Jen to have been a girlfriend of Quill’s. Up until then, she hadn’t really thought much about his romantic life. He wasn’t really a romantic sort of person. In fact, she hadn’t considered much about his private life at all. She tried to picture Quill eating a bowl of cereal in his gym shorts, the way Phoenix did most mornings. She tried to picture him chatting on his phone to a friend or family member. Come to think of it, she hadn’t even known if he’d had family at that point.
What kind of boyfriend would he be? Attentive? Affectionate? …Sexual?
“Ready to go?” Quill had asked as he’d come back to the car. “Hey, are you all right? You’re bright red.”
And sure enough, she’d been blushing. She hadn’t figured out why for a long time.
And now, sitting on the bed with Sasha, Dawn realized that she was blushing all over again. Because she’d been asked to consider being Sasha’s girlfriend again, and she’d immediately thought of Quill.
***
They left early the next morning. Early enough that Quill had thought for sure they’d get out of there without having to endure some extended goodbye scene between Dawn and Lover Boy. But alas. There was Sasha, hugging her for way too long, leaning into her car window to kiss her cheek, waving goodbye in his driveway.
And then there were the damn delicious bagel sandwiches he’d packed for them. Quill loved a breakfast sandwich as much as the next guy, but he resented this one. Fifty miles outside of Salt Lake City and it still felt like Sasha was in the car with them.
“Mmm. Sasha is the greatest,” Dawn mumbled around a mouthful of the delicious sandwich. “He packed us lunch too.”
“Yup. Lover Boy is a peach.”
“Lover Boy?”
Sometime during Quill’s largely sleepless, fairly miserable night, he’d started referring to Sasha as Lover Boy in his head. “It seemed apt.”
“Why?”
“Well, for starters, the guy slept in your room with you last night. And second, he’s obviously completely in love with you.”
Dawn made a noise that could only be described as a squawk. She dropped her face into the palm that wasn’t holding the breakfast sandwich and shook her head. She mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like the word “men”.
“What?” he asked, prodding at her reaction.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
He shifted in his seat and tried to keep his trap shut. It was none of his business. None of his business at all. Besides, this whole thing was going to go a lot more smoothly if they just didn’t talk. He didn’t need this to be any more complicated than it already was. And yet…
“So, it must have been nice to see your old boyfriend. Seems like you two just fell right back into it.” Smooth, Quill. Real smooth. Might as well just come right out and ask if they hooked up last night.
She looked at him like he was insane and he didn’t blame her. He never asked her questions like that. Well. To be fair, it had never occurred to him to ask her a question like that considering he’d never known that Sasha existed before yesterday.
“Oh my god,” Dawn said, setting her sandwich down and turning to face him. “Do you have some kind of problem you want to talk to me about or something? Because there seems to be an awful lot that you want to say over there.”
He shrugged his shoulders and kept his eyes on the road.
“I don’t know what your problem is, Quill, but Sasha was nothing but nice to you. Even when you frowned all over the place and barely said thank you to him for putting us up for the night. I get that you’re mad at me, but the thing is, I happen to think that’s bullshit. I needed a way to let my brothers know I’m okay without them coming after me, and Sasha provided the perfect opportunity for that. It’s not my fault you have a bug up your butt that I have one friend that you didn’t know about, okay? And you know another thing that’s not my fault? That I wanted to see that one friend one more time before I go and get locked up and studied and probably tortured for the rest of my life. Which is the reason for this lovely little road trip in the first place, okay? God!”
She slammed her head back on the headrest and Quill immediately realized that he deserved a swift kick in the nuts for his behavior. Because she was exactly right. He couldn’t begrudge her any of the time she spent with Sasha. Especially because she was truly under the impression that she was going to the Director to offer herself up to him. She didn’t know that there was absolutely no way in hell that Quill was going to let that happen. She didn’t know that he’d devised a completely alternate plan that wouldn’t involve any of the Wolf siblings being harmed. Of course she’d want to say goodbye to a man who’d been important to her. And he was being a selfish little twat about the whole thing.
“You’re right.” His voice was low enough that he wondered if she could even hear him over the rumble of the road underneath the tires. But her head snapped around and she stared at him for a long minute, so he figured she’d heard. He cleared his throat. “Of course you’re right. I’m being an asshole. But what’s new, right? I just…”
He tried to gather his thoughts, wondering the whole time why he was even bothering with an explanation. What was the point in explaining himself? She already hated him. She already knew he was the worst guy on earth. He’d tried to hand her and her brothers over to the Director. She knew the worst thing he’d ever done. Explaining why he’d been rude to her friend, seeking her forgiveness for that minor sin, was like putting lipstick on a pig. There was no little thing he could ever do to make up for his sins where Dawn was concerned.
And yet… he couldn’t let it go. “I’m sorry. I was surprised, is all. I didn’t know you’d had anybody in your past, you know? You never mentioned it in your entrance interview with the center. You never once told me about him. Your brothers had each talked to me about how you were, like, so inexperienced and innocent and how you’d never even met other humans before and, yeah. That’s just how I thought of you. It was surprising to learn otherwise.”
Her arms crossed over her chest, Dawn stared out her own window, a frown on her face. Twenty or so miles passed before she picked up her sandwich and chomped down on it, turning to glare at him as she chewed. “My brothers didn’t know about my relationship with him. Not really. They knew we were friends. And they knew that I still went to see him even after they didn’t want to anymore. After my parents died, it was too painful for my brothers to be around Sasha’s family. So I was the only one who would go see him. I don’t think it ever even occurred to them that it was romantic. They definitely never asked.”
Another five or so miles passed while he absorbed that information. He couldn’t help but wonder what else the people in her life had never asked Dawn. Everyone kind of assumed that the pages of her book weren’t very full with experience. It was assumed that her life could be summed up in a few lines. Born a wolf in the wilderness. Parents died. Came to the human world last year. Bada boom.
But it was painfully obvious now to Quill how stupid it was to assume that was all there was to her. She was a thoughtful, interesting, determined person. Of course her life had a deeper story.
“Was it serious between you two?” Quill asked eventually.
“I don’t know. I’ve never had anything to compare it to. I’m sure it was weird in comparison to other people’s relationships. How could it not have been? I was a wolf shifter who spent 99% of my life in my wolf form. Even my English was rusty back then. We only saw one another for maybe a month out of the year.” She sighed and took a long drink of the coffee that Sasha had packed in two thermoses for them. “He was very patient with me. But yeah, I’m sure it wasn’t normal.”
“Did you sleep toget
her?” The question flew out of Quill’s mouth and he snapped his jaws closed to keep from taking it back. He desperately wanted to know the answer. But also? He absolutely did not want to know the answer at all. The answer to this question was sure to be crazy-making for him, regardless of what it was.
“Yeah.”
Something tumbled in his gut. He was pretty surprised that she’d even answered him. But he wasn’t surprised by the answer itself. He’d suspected as much after he’d seen the two of them together. There was something in the way Sasha spoke to Dawn, watched her while she talked, hugged her goodbye, that spoke to a greater intimacy.
“Is he older than you are?” Quill asked quietly.
“No. He’s a year younger, actually. I was seventeen. He was sixteen.”
“Hmm.” Quill grumbled low in his throat. He didn’t want to know any more. Well, technically he really wanted to know if they’d knocked boots last night. One for the road. But luckily his self-preservation instincts kicked in and he didn’t put himself through the misery of asking.
A few more miles passed until Dawn spoke again. “Jeez. I didn’t even know there was this much sky in the first place.” She leaned forward to peer out the front windshield.
“Yeah. I know. This part of the country has a lot of sky.” They were in Wyoming now, the burnt, red rocks of Utah in their rearview mirror. Now the hills were flattened and green in the distance, but a scrubby brown up close. And the sky was gigantic, taking up more than half of their vision, seeming to stretch farther than even the earth itself.
“I didn’t think the sky would look different in different parts of the country.”
“Yeah. I’ve got family in Michigan. In the winter there, it’s just a flat gray lid. It looks like it’s about two feet away from you at all times. But Louisiana, for example? There the sky is freaking tall. I can’t explain it, but the clouds just go up and up forever.”
“And here it goes on and on forever. Jeez. It makes this road look endless.”