Confessions of a Werewolf Supermodel (30 page)

I flip backward, but there he is again. The football team, grinning like the idiots they all were—jerseys off, posing to show off their tattoos. Wolverines. A flash goes off in my head. The man walking away at Freddie Z's. The only letters I could see.
INES.
WOLVERINES.

“Oh, my God,” I whisper. The pages flip through my fingers. On the inside page of the yearbook, where usually good wishes from classmates are written, I see Cindy's note to me … and one that was not there before.

You are not the only one. Tom was adopted, too. We don't know what happened. Why he is gone, and you are gone, but you were never like him. His parents were afraid of him. They told us he was always cruel. He tortured animals. He hid his dark nature behind a sweet smile. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing. We pray you have not become one of his victims. Know there are others like you, Sherry. Some can help you, some can hurt you. We pray you are safe. We pray you are still normal. If you have changed, you will have questions. Some things are better left alone. But we know you too well. Start in Nevada. And trust no one.

My hands shaking, I drop the yearbook and grab my cell. I have to warn Terry about Tom Dawson. When I flip my phone open, I get nothing. There's no signal. I crawl across the bed and grab the phone on the nightstand. After reading the instructions for an outside line and punching in the number, I hear Terry's phone ring. His answering machine picks up.

“Terry, if you're there pick up.” I wait for a few seconds. “Terry, the werewolf killer's name is Tom Dawson. I went to high school with him. Plug him into the system and see if you can pull anything up. Call me.”

After I hang up, I'm too nervous to sit still. I pace back and forth, glancing at the relics of my past. Cindy is right. I am not Sherry Billington anymore, nor will I ever be. If the past were even a nice place to visit, I would keep the items she brought me. It's time to let them go.

Cindy had crammed the items in a large envelope. I tear out the senior picture page with Tom leering back at me, then shove everything else in the envelope. I'm going to burn it. The fireplace in the room isn't lit. I imagine someone comes in and does that in the evening. There is a bar downstairs. I'm guessing they have matches.

I grab my coat and put it on, shove the envelope and my cell phone in my beauty bag, and go downstairs. Although smoking isn't allowed in bars these days, for some reason, they always have a heaping bowl of matches on the bar, I guess to rub it in for those who do smoke. I grab a handful of matches, turn around, and run into Stefan.

“Lou? I thought you went with the other girls.”

“Hi, ah, no, had some other stuff to do in my room.”

He slides his arm through mine. “Good. I hoped we could find time alone to talk. How about I buy you a drink?”

Stefan obviously thinks an answer isn't required. He steers me toward the same cozy two-top Cindy and I shared coffee at earlier. “I still have some stuff to do,” I say.

Running a hand over his bald head, he sighs. “Look, I know you're mad about the swimsuit thing. I didn't tell you because I knew you wouldn't come, and Lou, I want to talk to you. Ignoring me will not make me go away. I have feelings for you. I think you have feelings for me, too.”

Burying my past for good will have to wait. It's time I resolve this issue with Stefan. I'm no longer confused. I know what I must do. “All right,” I say, taking a seat.

“What do you want from the bar and I'll run and get it for us. Apple martini?”

“Shot of Wild Turkey.”

He takes a step back. “Since when do you drink rotgut?”

“Since I need it,” I answer.

Shrugging, Stefan leaves to get our drinks. My hands still shake and I shove them into my pockets. I get that prickly sensation at the back of my neck, like someone is watching me. The bar is deserted except for me and Stefan and the guy making drinks behind the bar. Why is Tom Dawson still alive? I was sure I killed him on prom night. I woke naked and shivering, blood beneath my nails and a mound of dirt beside me that assured me I had buried him.

“One shot of Wild Turkey.” Stefan sets my drink in front of me. He settles across from me. I down the shot quickly.

“Damn,” he says. “Let me at least catch up.” Stefan drinks Crown and Coke. He downs his drink then motions the bartender for two more.

“Surely what you have to say to me doesn't call for both of us being drunk,” he teases.

“I'm not sure what to say to you,” I admit. I'm sure, just not sure how to say it without hurting his feelings.

He studies me over the rim of his empty glass. “It's not going to happen, is it? Me and you? You're hooked up with someone else. With that cop.”

“I'm not hooked up with him,” I correct him. “I have a relationship with him, but it's not serious. At least not at the moment.”

“Then why do you keep shutting me out? I never worried about the men in your past. You always left them before anything got started. But since I know you're spending time with someone now, it spurred me into action. I guess I'm afraid of losing you.”

I suppose jealousy tactics do work, if that was what I was trying to do with Terry. But it wasn't. I reach across the table and place my hand on top of his. “You're never going to lose me. At least not as a friend. Someday, things might be different for us. Right now, I like them the way they are.”

His big puppy-dog eyes actually turn misty for a minute. He blinks and sets his empty glass on the table. “You're the only woman I can't have, Lou.”

I squeeze his hand. “Maybe that's why you want me. Maybe you need to examine the reasons you suddenly want a relationship beyond what we've had all these years.”

He glances up at me. “I know the reason. I love you. I've loved you from the first moment I saw you.”

I choke on my own saliva. Thankfully the bartender puts my whiskey in front of me and I grab the glass and take a drink. Hearing Stefan say those words causes all kinds of emotions to explode inside of me. None of which I have the time to examine at the moment. We were immediately drawn to each other. I do know that.

After what I had experienced with Tom Dawson, it surprised me to feel that connection with Stefan the minute he walked into the café where I worked. And if we had that connection, why did we both refuse to act upon it? Why wasn't Stefan the first man I made love to? Instead I had chosen someone I hardly knew simply because I wanted to wipe away the memory of Tom's attack.

Who would have been better than Stefan to teach me about sex? And yet I put up a wall between us from the start. I'm still doing it, and I don't know why. No, I do know why. I've known why from the beginning. He's given me too much to deceive him the way I would have to deceive him if our relationship were more than what I've let it be. I do love him, but I have to learn to love and trust myself before I can ever fully give my heart to a man. I'm going to work on that. Just as soon as I bury my past.

He's waiting for a response, and it's not going to be the one he wants. “I love you, too, Stefan, but I'm not in love with you. I'm not ready for that type of commitment with a man. When I am, I hope you're still in my life, but if you're not, I'll always treasure the friendship we've shared these past six and a half years. When I fall in love, I want to fall all the way. I want to give it everything I have. I can't do that right now.”

Stefan pulls his hand from beneath mine. “Thank you for being honest. That's one thing I've always loved about you. Your honesty.”

Then he can't be in love with me. I've basically been lying to him since we met. Lying because I can't tell him the truth. Somehow, I think if I loved someone the way I should, I could be honest. About everything.

Stefan finishes his drink and rises. “I'm off now to drown my sorrows in the privacy of my room.”

I don't believe him for a moment. He's off to find a replacement … if only for the night. I still don't like that. Maybe because he's selling himself short. He always has. Deep down, I don't believe he's just a playboy out to sleep with every woman he meets. He's missing something, I don't know what, but this is the way he compensates. I watch him leave, grab my matches and my ugly past, and head outside.

*   *   *

I have never smelled air so crisp and cold and clean. The snow crunches beneath my boots as I make my way along a path cleared behind the inn. The path leads to a woodpile stacked high, and beyond that, to a thick forest of leafless aspens. The mountains make a beautiful backdrop, pristine white with a blue sky darkening as evening approaches.

Maybe I'm wrong to dislike snow. The only time I've really seen it is when it mucks up the city and makes getting around difficult. Out here, it looks as if it belongs. As if it's showing off, and with good reason. Glitter shimmers, catching the sinking sun. It takes my breath away. So does trudging around in it at high altitude in boots that are more for show than snow. I don't plan to go far, just far enough so that no one sees smoke from my burning past and comes to investigate.

The woodpile is stacked so high I use it as a barrier between me and whoever might be glancing out a back window at the inn. Smoky Bear would not be happy about me doing this. I move a little farther from the woodpile. Bending, I scoop snow so that I have a pit of sorts. My hands are freezing and I blow on them to thaw my fingers. I lay the envelope in the pit and dig in my beauty bag for the matches.

It takes several attempts to set the envelope on fire. I finally have to douse it with a little hairspray to get it going. Sitting back on my haunches, I watch it burn. Once my past is nothing but ashes, I'll cover it with snow to make sure I don't cause a fire. I hold my hands over it, letting the warmth spread to my fingers.

“What's this obsession you have with setting things on fire?”

The voice startles me. I glance up. A man leans against an aspen. The sinking sun casts him in shadow. It doesn't matter that I can't see his face. I know who he is.

“You're supposed to be dead, Tom.”

He shrugs away from the tree and approaches me. “Sometimes your past just won't stay buried. Sooner or later, it always catches up to you.”

I rise from my crouched position next to the burning envelope. “Why are you stalking me?”

Tom laughs and it has that garbled sound to it. “You know why. You took away my life. I had scholarships. I had a future, and one skinny, ugly little girl, a nobody, took that away from me. You made me a monster.”

He doesn't know, I realize. He's unaware that he was already a monster. I suppose when he triggered me, I triggered him. The small flame from the burning envelope casts light across his face. It isn't a face I expect to see. The wolf in him is hidden. Tom was a good-looking boy in high school; now, he's short of magnificent. No wonder he so easily lured women to their deaths.

“You're surprised,” he says, as if reading my response. “And you were so bright in high school. Look at yourself, Sherry. If changing can do that for you, you should have imagined what it would do for someone good-looking to begin with.”

I never considered it because for all those years, Tom was dead in my mind. Why does the change include a transformation to beauty? To lure, I realize. To attract. Something built in to assure survival of the species?

“It took me a while to find you,” he says. “I knew you'd be better looking than you were in high school, but I didn't expect you to be a fucking supermodel. Of course as you know, I did eventually figure it out. Something in your eyes as you stared back from all those photos plastered everywhere. The haunted look you had even when you were ugly. You can't hide that.”

And so I am living a false sense of security to believe no one will ever associate me with Sherry Billington. Tom just proved that to me. “All those women you've killed. Did you kill them because you thought they were me?”

He laughs. That horrible soft laugh that sends shivers up my spine. “No. I killed them because it felt good. They were nobodies, too, wanting to be somebody. So grateful that a man who looks like me would be interested in girls who weren't the prettiest, or the brightest, or anything at all. I've tracked you from Texas to New York, but I was in no hurry. I had my fun along the way.”

Rage churns bile in my stomach. All those poor women. Women who, like me at one time, could never see past the outer surface of a person. If ever there was a perfect example of beauty being only skin deep, Tom is it.

“I didn't make you a werewolf,” I tell him. “You were already one, just like me. We triggered each other on prom night when you attacked me.”

He cocks his head to one side, very much like a dog does at times, as if trying to understand human words. “That's a load of shit. You made me a monster. It's your fault!”

Like most murderers, Tom needs someone to blame for his psychosis. I doubt that I can convince him of the truth. I'm not even sure what the truth is. He steps closer and I back up. My little fire still burns, the photos holding up the process.

“I figure killing you might end this for me,” he says. “But first, I wanted to show you how it feels to see your life slipping away. I knew something about me made you change. Predator sensing predator. I wanted you to suffer what I've suffered before I kill you.”

I wonder why the changes haven't already started for me. Tom must be standing downwind. I can't smell him. I'll have to get closer. That could be deadly. He hasn't started the changing process, either. Why?

“What triggers you?”

He smiles. “Rage, fear, sex. My rage, a woman's fear, sex of any kind.”

This man, this THING, has terrified me in dreams for seven years. He'd like for me to be afraid now. “You don't scare me,” I let him know. “I'm not helpless. I can fight you.”