Beneath the Skin (23 page)

“Just leaving I hope.” Murphy snorted from the bed. “Can’t you see I want to talk to my bond mate, doctor?”

“He’s going to be fine, as you can plainly tell.” The doctor gave me a smile as he walked briskly to the door and left. Allerton was already gone.

Murphy and I looked at each other.

“Are you gonna stand there staring, or will you come closer? You scared of me or

something?” Murphy gave me one of his boyish grins and I went to the bed, uncertain if my legs would hold me up much longer.

I sat on the edge of the mattress but didn’t touch him. I wanted to so much.

“You been crying, Newcastle?” Murphy’s voice was gruff and I nodded.

“You know I’m a crybaby. I cry over every damn thing,” I said and to prove it, I started to cry again.

Instead of hugging me, he patted my arm and something broke inside me.

I got up and went to the window. Seven stories below a freeway crowded with cars

flowed in a loop around the city. Houston was so faceless. I couldn’t wait to leave.

“Guess who called and offered us a place in his pack?” Murphy’s voice was jovial but strained.

As I’d sat in a puke-green hospital chair crying my eyes out, he’d been talking on the phone. He’d had time for Allerton to tell him the score and for phone calls from Irish bastards with different colored eyes. And when I’d needed him to touch me, he patted me on the arm like he would a child.

I nurtured the spurt of anger, because it helped stop the tears.

“Your friend, Paddy,” I said to the window.

“Your friend too, Constance, if you give him half a chance. What do you say? I get the hell out of this damn hospital bed and we’ll go to Dublin and join Mac Tíre.”

I didn’t say anything. I started to get pissed at myself. I’d thought he was dead and he wasn’t and I should be happy, two minutes ago I had been happy, but now I was absolutely miserable. The man had nearly died, he had IV lines running in and out of his veins and all I could think about was that I wanted him to hold me.

Oh, Constance, you’re pathetic
, I told myself.

“If you’re worried about shifting, I told you, it’ll be you and me until you feel

comfortable with others around you. Paddy won’t push anything, I swear, Constance.” His voice was gentle but starting to fray.

I still didn’t say anything. My reflection in the window was puffy. My eyes were red-rimmed, my hair a frigging mess and I saw the blatant lie of my pendant gleaming against the dark glass.

“Tell you what, I’ll find us a small pack and then you don’t have to worry at all. You can run and play all you like, Constance. That’s better, isn’t it? That’s what you want?”

“Murphy,” I said with an impatient, bitter sigh. “You’re lying in that damn hospital bed because of me. Because I bit you. I cannot continue to be what I am. I have to grow, if I’m going to shift, I have to be more than I am right now. So don’t tell me we’ll join a small pack and I’ll go around being the child anymore because I can’t.”

“I pushed you too hard, Constance. It’s why you bit me, because I pushed too hard, too soon. And I’ll never make that up to you, I know, but let me try at least.” Murphy’s gaze fixed upon me but I wouldn’t turn around.

“It’s not my birthday until August, but that’s just a formality. That’s when it will be official, so you’ll have to wait a few months but it’ll go fast.” I unclasped my pendant and held it in my palm. Murphy did not need the chaos that was me in his life. He’d done me a favor and saved me from Ducharme, but I’d paid him back. I’d figured everything out and now I should get the hell out if his life and not put him through the wringer every damn time I got insecure.

“You want to sever the bond.” His voice seemed to choke a little and I leaned my

forehead against the glass.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I don’t know how to fix this, but, please, Stanzie.

Don’t leave me. Give me a chance. Just one? That’s all I’m asking, and if you’re not happy by your birthday, then we’ll have this talk, but please not right now.”

I shook my head. A few months would make no difference.

He pounded a fist into the mattress. “What are you going to do, Constance? Run back to Boston with your tail between your legs? After your birthday and you’re free, are you going to go to Regionals to find another bond mate?” Reproach and anger scorched through in his tone and I continued to look out of the hospital window rather than at him.

“I’m not going to go to Regionals, but I am going to go back to Boston,” I admitted.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” exploded Murphy behind me. “You’re gonna turn your back on the Pack, is that it? Because you’re scared? I don’t understand you!”

“It seems to me the Pack turned its back on me long before I turned mine on it.” I put one palm flat against the glass. It was cold because of the air-conditioning and felt almost slimy beneath my skin. “I loved that old man, Grandfather Tobias. I used to visit him at least twice a week and have coffee in his little kitchen and listen to his tales of the old days when he was young and had a bond mate. I used to tell him things about my life and my bond mates and I loved him.”

Behind me, Murphy sat up straighter in bed and gave me his full attention. I saw his handsome face in the glass of the window, totally consumed with what I told him. I had no idea why all this stuff spewed out of me, but it was as if I were a bottle of champagne someone had shaken then uncorked. I spilled and fizzed everywhere, unable to contain any of my buried resentment and my betrayal and rage.

“He was the first person I wanted to show my new car. I actually drove that car to him and asked him to take a look at it, because I trusted him and I wanted his approval. And he pretended to be happy for me and joked around with me and went underneath the car to inspect it and he did something, Murphy. He set me up. He wanted to kill Elena, but didn’t care who he used to do it, and he used me, the one person in the whole pack who actually loved him and didn’t think he was a duty or a burden. He didn’t care if I died too, or that I would always bear the weight of knowing I was driving when my bond mates died. He cared more about the Pack than he did about me.”

In my mind’s eye I saw Grey and Elena as they had been that last, final night. Grey’s hair pulled back in a ponytail. Elena’s white dress. My fists clenched at the unfairness of it. I saw Grandfather Tobias and his crinkled, lopsided grin. I could taste the coffee he used to make for us to drink on Saturday mornings.

“He turned against me after the accident. He wouldn’t answer the door when I went to him, when I wanted him to comfort me. He was the only one I wanted near me and he wouldn’t answer the door. That’s when I gave up, Murphy. When I started to think I was guilty and I did kill them. I wanted Grandfather Tobias to tell me it was a freak accident and not my fault, and he wouldn’t answer the door. And the irony of the whole thing is he was the one who really killed them.”

“His concept of the Pack, Stanzie, was skewed.”

“Was it?” I whirled around. “We are a bunch of weak, posturing children. We don’t live by our wits, and our wolves are pastimes and playthings, nobody knows that better than me.

Somewhere along the line we’ve lost our pride, our honor. There are actually packs out there who don’t tell their children what they really are because they’re ashamed. They rationalize their decision and pretty it up so they don’t actually say what they mean, but they are. They are ashamed! Grandfather Tobias was ashamed of me and you are too. Just let me go, Murphy. Let me go live in Boston and not be Pack anymore. I don’t deserve it and I don’t want it.”

“I was never ashamed of you,” he told me.

“Bullshit!” I shouted. “You liar! I saw your face after the first time we shifted. I heard what you said about how a bigger pack would never have let me get away with what I am. I’m a disgrace and I thought I could change, but I don’t know if I can. What is the point? Everyone dies or goes away, and what is the point?”

“I didn’t die. I’m not going to go away, not if you don’t shut me out, Constance.”

Murphy’s eyes were very dark as he stared at me.

“You? You’re the worst one of all,” I snarled. “When we’re in bed together you won’t even look me in the eye, and when I try to touch you, you always shy away. I was right there with you, holding your hands, and you pushed me away and started talking to her. I’m not dead, but if I’m with you I’ll have to live in the shadow of a dead woman, and I thought I could do it but I can’t. I can’t. I am tired of the dead having more power over me than the living. I’m tired of living in their shadows. You can work with me and help me and I could become a better wolf, a better person, but I will never be her and that’s not how I want to live my life, Murphy.”

He stared at me. “What did I say?” It was my turn to stare.

I had my arms wrapped around myself, because I was cold and wanted to be sick and it felt as if I were falling apart.

“When?” I gaped at him.

“To Sorcha. When I pushed you away and talked to her, what did I say?”

“I don’t know. You were speaking Irish or Gaelic or whatever the hell language you

speak. How the hell do I know what you said?”

He shook his head.

“So I’m being condemned by my words when you can’t even tell me what I said, because you don’t understand the language? That’s harsh, Constance. You’re going to walk away from it all because of something I said that you didn’t even understand.”

“I didn’t have to understand. You’re always talking to her. You say her name before you come, Murphy. You think my eyes are closed, but they’re not. “

He bit his lip. “She was the only one I ever slept with until you. I’ll admit the first time we went to bed I felt overwhelmed and guilty. I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry for that.”

My lungs could not seem to suck down a decent amount of air.

“Tell you the truth, Constance, I don’t think I could have actually gone through with it with Sharon or Karen or whoever the hell she was at the Great Hunt. I just wanted to be alive again, that’s all. I came to that Gathering and I realized how I’d been hiding and refusing to live without Sorcha. You think you were betrayed by your Grandfather Tobias, well, who the hell do you think got Grandfather Mick that job as a janitor? So he could watch over Sorcha, because the woman would work late nights, even when I pleaded with her not to.” He shook his head, eyes dark with futile memory.

“She was so into her test tubes and experiments. She was going to save the planet, cure cancer, give something back to the world she took such delight in. And I couldn’t be there so I asked Grandfather Mick, and now I find out he’s the one who rigged the lights and that damned box. And maybe he even heard her fall and let her lie there dying and he did that for the Pack.

For his Pack. But I don’t want to creep back to Belfast and grow vegetables, Constance. I want to fight back. For my Pack, for the Pack that exists now, because we can’t go back in time to a past that doesn’t exist anymore. I wish you’d come with me and help me. I don’t want to be alone anymore. And I know I pull away sometimes, but if I promise to work on that, won’t you please try? Until your birthday?”

My mouth twisted but I didn’t move.

“You want to know what I said to her? Because she stood there in that room, plain as day.

She wore that green dress I loved so much and her hair was red as fire. She held her arms out to me and told me to come with her, that she had things to show me and somewhere warm and beautiful to bring me and all I had to do was take her hands. You know what I said?” Murphy’s face was far off and dreamy. A small, bittersweet smile curled his lips. He laughed a little under his breath and then looked at me, all dreaminess vanishing.

My voice was a croak. “What did you say?”

“I said no, Constance. I said I wasn’t ready, I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay. Then she was gone and you were there, crying, and I wanted to tell you to stop, but I couldn’t make the words come. I don’t remember much after that.”

Taking a deep breath, I buried my face in my hands.

“It’s all going so fast, Murphy. Two weeks ago, I didn’t even know you and now you’re my bond mate.”

His smile was sympathetic. “I know. That damned Allerton loves arranging other

people’s lives, doesn’t he?”

I laughed weakly. “He’s a Councilor. They think they’re elite or something. Powerful.”

He laughed too but his eyes were suspiciously shiny. “Please put your pendant back on.

At least until August.”

With trembling fingers, I fastened the clasp around my throat, and for some absurd

reason, felt immediately better.

Murphy grinned at me. There were dark circles under his eyes and he looked so very

tired.

I was appalled at myself. “My timing has always sucked. I’m sorry, Murphy.”

“I like your timing.” He patted the bed beside him and I walked over and sat. I started to cry again like a complete idiot, and he handed me a wad of tissues from the box on the nightstand.

Blowing my nose helped me compose myself a little bit.

“What did you tell O’Reilly? Did you tell him we’d join the pack?” I asked and he rolled his eyes.

“I told him to go fuck himself, is what I told him.” He laughed, and a small giggle escaped me despite myself. “But he said he’d call me back. Do you really think I’d have given him the satisfaction of accepting his offer without making him beg? Not to mention I don’t make the decisions unilaterally for us. I’ll not be rejoining that pack unless you want to as well.”

He watched me toss the tissues into the wastebasket. “Do you?”

I shrugged, because I didn’t know. I couldn’t think of a pack without thinking of shifting, and that brought on a host of clamorous emotions I had trouble sorting out. I thought of my wolf, the way she loved to run, and my face twisted.

“Oh, Jaysus, I really did fuck everything up, didn’t I? Stanzie, I’m so sorry.” He sounded so disgusted with himself, and I wished he would touch me but he didn’t. Of course he didn’t.

Then it occurred to me that he was waiting for me to touch him, and I envisioned this huge stalemate where the both of us would walk around for eternity wishing the other one would reach out first and neither of us having the pride or guts to do it.