Thornhill (Hemlock) (25 page)

H
EMLOCK
’
S A TYPE OF POISON, YOU KNOW. THE PLANT, NOT
the town. Though I guess both are pretty toxic.
Amy’s words—uttered so long ago that I couldn’t remember why or when—drifted through my head as we passed the town limits.

It was strange: Amy had always seen Hemlock as something that was holding her back whereas I had always seen it as a safe harbor—at least until the attacks last year. It was the first and only place that had ever been home.

I glanced at Kyle’s profile in the dashboard light. He was a big part of that.

Him. Jason. Tess. Hemlock was home because it was where they were.

I shifted in the passenger seat and sucked in a sharp breath.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I just moved the wrong way.” I slipped a hand under the collar of my shirt and traced the edge of the heavy bandage on my shoulder. I’d been lucky. Way luckier, according to Eve, than I deserved. As soon as I had retained consciousness long enough for a lecture, she had wasted no time in reminding me that a werewolf had much better odds of surviving a gunshot wound than a reg.

I hadn’t argued. A few inches in any direction and Sinclair’s bullet could have left me with permanent loss of mobility in my arm—that was if it hadn’t just killed me outright. Miraculously, it had missed just about everything important. I had spent a few days in bed and would have to undergo some minor physical therapy.

That was it. I was lucky.

The same couldn’t be said of Sinclair.

Serena had lost the ability to shift completely—at least temporarily—but she was still able to change the shape and structure of her hands. Eve had hauled her off the warden but not before she had almost ripped the woman to shreds.

Sinclair would live, but she’d be disfigured for life. Not to mention infected. If there was any justice, she’d end up in one of the camps she had worked at, completely at the mercy of the wolves she had once overseen.

Kyle pulled up in front of my apartment building and killed the engine. The familiar street seemed so normal that it almost felt surreal.

He didn’t say anything. He’d been unnaturally quiet since we left Colorado, but every time I asked what was wrong, he insisted he was fine.

“Tess is going to kill me.”

“Probably,” he agreed.

“What are you going to tell your folks?”

“No idea. Not the truth. Maybe I’ll just tell them I joined a militant cult. It would at least explain the hair.”

“I think Jason’s already using that one.” Of the four of us, the only person whose family could handle the truth was Serena.

As quickly as that thought came, I blocked it out. The afternoon had been long and painful, full of blame and difficult questions—all of which I deserved, but none of which I felt up to thinking about at the moment.

Instead, I leaned toward Kyle—carefully because of the whole just-being-shot thing—and brushed my lips against his. “In case you get grounded,” I murmured, before moving in and kissing him again.

Kyle hesitated—in the days and hours since I’d been shot, he’d treated me as though I were made of glass, barely touching me and only giving me chaste pecks on my forehead or cheek—but then he kissed me back. Tentatively at first and then so hungrily that every nerve in my body sparked.

After a few minutes, I pulled back, breathless. Not because I wanted to, but because I was actually starting to get light-headed.

A light burned at the bottom of Kyle’s brown eyes. I half expected him to kiss me again, but he just ran his fingertips along my temple and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I never got the chance to tell you thanks.”

The words were soft and serious and seemed out of place with what we’d just been doing. “For what?”

“For coming after me. For risking everything to get me out.” He smiled, but there was something sad and almost uncertain about it. “For knowing what I am and what I’ve done and not acting like I’m less than human even when it scares you.”

I bit my lip. The werewolf thing did scare me. Sometimes. But Kyle was human—more human than most regs. I just didn’t know how to make him see that. How did you convince someone of something they didn’t want to believe?

“Kyle . . .” I struggled to find the right words.

He shook his head. “It’s okay, Mac. Sometimes there isn’t anything to say.”

. . . there’s something I have to tell you.

The words Kyle had said that night in the sanatorium came back to me as he opened his door and climbed out of the car. He pulled my knapsack from the backseat and waited for me before heading up the walkway.

I stopped when we were halfway to the building. “Kyle?”

He paused and turned, my bag held loosely in his hand. “Yeah?”

“Back in Thornhill, you said there was something you had to tell me—something I might not like—and I asked you to wait. . . .”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, and I felt my body tense of its own accord, as though bracing for an impact.

Finally, the words so soft I had to strain to hear, he said, “I really never thought you’d come after me. If I had . . .” He set my knapsack down. When he spoke again, his voice was stronger, more certain. “I joined the pack, Mac. The night before I saw you at the club.”

I stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Hank’s pack?” I said, as though there were dozens of packs Kyle might have gone out and joined.

He nodded.

That’s what Hank was talking about
, I realized,
back in the trailer park when he said Kyle and I didn’t have a future
.
He knew. Both he and Eve did.

Hurt, confusion, and anger collided in my chest. Jason and I had risked everything to find him, and Kyle hadn’t waited as much as a week before completely turning his back on his old life. On us.

I fought to keep my voice steady. “So tell Hank you’ve changed your mind.”

“It’s not that simple.” Kyle ran a hand over his face. “Wolf packs are a bit like the mob. Once you’re in, it’s a lifetime gig. I can leave, but if I do, no other pack will take me once they find out. I’ll be blacklisted.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?” I stared at Kyle, desperately trying to understand. He was home. He had us. Me. Jason. His family. Why did he need anything else?

“Maybe.” He let out a shaky breath. “Those few days with the Eumon? For the first time since I became infected, I didn’t have to hide what I was or worry about losing control and hurting someone.”

“And that’s worth turning your back on your whole life? That’s really what you want?” My voice shook as pain spread through my chest. I wanted to ask him if it was worth turning his back on me, but I was too scared of the answer.

“No,” said Kyle. “It’s not what I want. What I want is for there to really be a cure—some pill or shot I could take so things could go back to the way they were. But there’s not. This is what I am—who I am—and that changes everything.” He shook his head. “Could you hide what you were? Every moment of every day, could you pretend to be something else? Someone else? Could you stand spending every day worried that you were going to hurt someone if you knew there was an alternative?”

I remembered the look on Kyle’s face the first time he told me he was a monster—how utterly convinced he had been that he needed to turn himself over to the LSRB. How pain and loathing had filled his eyes. Suddenly, I didn’t know what was right or what I wanted.

I loved Kyle and he hated himself. Or at least parts of himself. If being in a pack could change that, how could I really ask him to stay?

Tears gathered at the corners of my eyes and I hastily wiped them away with the heel of my hand. “So what happens now? You leave again?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Your father gave me a few weeks to make my decision and tie things up here. After that, if I don’t go back . . .”

“You forfeit the pack.”

He nodded.

I forced myself to pull in a deep breath, to be stronger than I felt. “Then I guess you have a lot to think about.”

He stepped forward and folded me in a hug. “Thank you.” He breathed the words against my hair before stepping back. “Do you want me to come up? Help you talk to Tess?”

“Kyle, if she thinks you’re the reason I ran away, she’ll chase you out of the apartment with a crowbar.”

“Good point. And I’ve got to deal with my own parents, anyway.” He hesitated, like he wasn’t sure whether he should kiss or hug me again. In the end, he didn’t do either. “I’ll call you tomorrow?”

Chest aching, I nodded. I watched him walk to the car and slide behind the wheel. And I fought the urge to call him back, to beg him to stay, as he slid his key into the ignition.

I loved Kyle. More than anything. Maybe enough to want what was best for him—even if what was best would end up hurting me.

And it did hurt. Watching the Honda’s taillights disappear into the night and not knowing where Kyle and I stood hurt every bit as badly as the wound in my shoulder.

There was nothing I could do but pick up my knapsack and head inside.

I reached the second-floor landing and tried—unsuccessfully—not to glance toward Ben’s old apartment. A few flattened cardboard boxes were leaning against the wall next to his door. It looked like someone had already moved in.

Like Ben had never existed.

If only.

I could hear the faint sounds of a television coming from our apartment when I reached the third floor. I thought about using my key, but I didn’t want to walk in as though nothing had happened. I’d run out on Tess when she needed me and left her worrying for weeks. No matter what my reasons, she had every right to be furious with me. Even hate me.

Trying to ignore the way my hand shook, I reached up and knocked on the door.

The TV went silent. The couch springs groaned and the floorboards creaked. There was a long pause and I pictured Tess on the other side of the door, staring through the peephole.

I started counting down the seconds to ease my nerves, tapping them out against my leg as I waited.

One. Two. Three. Three and a half. Four. Five.

The door was flung open.

Tess stared at me. Her hair was the same wild rainbow of pinks and purples it had been when I left, and she was wearing the tatty terrycloth robe that she’d had for as long as I had known her.

I never thought I’d be so glad to see that ugly bathrobe.

“Tess?”

She shook her head, and I had no idea what to say or do. I hadn’t even called to tell her I was coming home. Given everything that had happened, I didn’t want to get her hopes up until I actually reached Hemlock in one piece.

The longer she went without speaking, the worse I felt, until I wondered if coming back had been a mistake, if maybe, somehow, she didn’t want me here anymore.

“Tess, please say something.”

She opened her mouth, and I steeled myself for yelling and cursing. Possibly some shaking.

Instead, she pulled me into a hug, squeezing me so tightly that pain blossomed across my shoulder. But I didn’t let go. I didn’t let go or ask her to ease up.

“Thank God,” she said, voice thick. I realized she was crying. “
Thank God
. Don’t EVER do that to me again.”

And suddenly I was crying, too. Crying and burying my face in the shoulder of her robe. I’d seen so many horrible things over the past few weeks, but I’d survived. I’d survived and I was home.

For three years, I had hated my father for leaving me, but when he gave me up, he’d given me Tess and my friends.

He had left me in a place where I found people worth caring about. People worth fighting for.

Hank was certain there would be a nationwide backlash against wolves. When it came—if it came—I would be ready.

I would fight for my friends. All of my friends.

They were my family. My home. Maybe I couldn’t hold on to them as tightly as I wanted, and maybe I had to let them go when they were ready to leave, but I wouldn’t let anyone try to take them from me.

No matter what happened, I would stand by the people I cared about.

S
O MANY PEOPLE DESERVE THANKS, BUT ESPECIALLY
:

My agent, Emmanuelle Morgen. Without her, Mac and her story would have ended up in a drawer years ago. I can’t imagine taking this journey with anyone else and am so grateful to have her in my corner.

Claudia Gabel and Melissa Miller, my amazing editors, whose patience, guidance, and support made book two possible and who didn’t run for the hills when I said things like “werewolf rave” or “zip lines” or “check out this lobotomy documentary.”

Katherine Tegen for her continued support and for giving the Hemlock series a home with such an incredible imprint.

Thanks, also, to Editor-in-Chief Kate Jackson and Publisher Susan Katz.

Barbara Fitzsimmons, Amy Ryan, and Tom Forget for making
Thornhill
look every bit as gorgeous as
Hemlock
. Lauren Flower in marketing and the publicity team. Katie Bignell (who should have been thanked in the acknowledgments for book one—so sorry!) and Alexandra Arnold.

And a huge thanks to everyone else at KTB and HCCB who had a hand in getting
Thornhill
into the world and in the hands of readers.

Special thanks, also, to Shannon Parsons, Vikki Vansickle, and the HCC team. And to Whitney Lee for working so hard to get Hemlock published in other countries.

Thanks to Kimberly Derting, Sarah Beth Durst, Sophie Jordan, and Sophie Littlefield for reading the first book and saying such nice things about it.

I often think that I’ve never been more fortunate than I have been in my friends. Thanks to all of you, but especially: Debra Driza, Jodi Meadows, and Kate Hart for reading chapters and snippets of
Thornhill
and for keeping me from panic attacks once
Hemlock
hit the shelves; Nancy and Chris for supportive late-night phone calls and patiently listening as I tried to work out plot points; Teresa for not kicking me out of her bookstore when I needed to get away from my desk; Peter and Krista for making sure I periodically came out of hiding; and Rob for helping me celebrate my release day in style even though he was halfway across the country.

As always, nothing would be possible without the love and support of my family. Eternal thanks to my parents, whose support, guidance, and love of books set me on the road to writing. And thanks to Sarah, Justin, and Krystle for being far better people than I’ll ever be.

Finally, thanks so much to everyone who read book one—especially to all of the wonderful bloggers who reviewed it, posted about it, or even just mentioned it on Twitter. You guys make all of the late nights worthwhile.