Laura's Wolf (Werewolf Marines) (18 page)

Inside the cabin, they changed out of their wet clothes, Laura in the bedroom and Roy in the bathroom.

I’ll never get to watch her undress,
he thought.
I’ll never get to watch her get dressed.

He’d always enjoyed the casual intimacy of changing clothes in front of a girlfriend and getting asked his opinion on various outfits. Now he’d never know if Laura was the sort of woman who liked him to put on a suit and escort her to a fancy restaurant, or the sort who would always vote for him wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, no matter where they went. He’d never know if she would strike a playful or sexy pose in her bra and panties, or if she’d strip down as offhandedly as if she was in a locker room.

Stop obsessing over everything you’ll never do with her,
he ordered his masochistic imagination.
Breaking it off was
your
choice, and it was the right thing to do. Suck. It. Up.

He found Laura in the kitchen, making venison steak sandwiches for the next day’s trip. Roy leaned on the counter, opening jars upon request and watching her work. She took excessive care with them, selecting and layering each ingredient exactly right. Finally, when the last sandwich was completed to her satisfaction, her honey-brown eyes met his.

“I hate to bring this up, but if you have that much trouble with electric lights, how are you going to do in a car?” She was eyeing him like she had when he’d been on knocked out on the kitchen floor, as if he was some fragile thing that would break if she handled him roughly. No, worse: as if he was already broken.

He tried not to visibly bristle. “I’ll be fine.”

“I can’t even imagine how hard this must be for you, but—”

“I’ll be fine,” he repeated. “You can hardly hear the engine when you’re inside. The street lights won’t be on in the day. Don’t turn on the radio, and I won’t look at the instrument panel, and—”

“—you’ll be fine?”

“Yeah.”

Laura gave a short, frustrated sigh. “Look, Roy, I didn’t bring it up to get on your case. I was going to ask if you wanted to do a test drive later today, if the ice has all melted by then.”

“Oh.” He thought about it, then shook his head. “No, that’s okay. It doesn’t make a difference.”

Laura’s eyebrows pulled together, making him feel as if she could see right through him. “No matter how bad it is for you, you’re going to tough it out?”

“That’s right.”

“For seven hours.”

“For as long as it takes.”

Laura gave him another searching look, then shrugged. “Okay. Your call.”

***

After lunch, Laura put on her red parka and they went on a hike. When he walked and talked with her as a man, they didn’t touch, but when he paced beside her as a wolf, she rested one hand on his back. As a wolf, he simply enjoyed the touch of her fingers on his fur. As a man, the memory of it was bittersweet.

Roy broke the silence after they finished dinner that night. “I’ll sleep on the bedroom floor.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Laura. “It’ll be cold and uncomfortable.”

“I don’t mind.”

“You’re still recovering. You’ll get sick.”

A burning wave of anger and bitterness surged up in him. He shoved back his chair and stood, palms flat on the table. “Don’t treat me like I’m weak!”

“Don’t be so fucking macho!” Laura yelled back, jumping up to face him.

They stood glaring at each other across the table. Roy loomed over Laura, but she didn’t give an inch. Her scowl could kill at twenty paces.

She’s a match for me
, he realized.
She can stand up to me. If I push her, she pushes back. I didn’t know that was what I was looking for, until now.

Though neither of them spoke, the anger between them dissipated, replaced by a different kind of energy. The air between them seemed to crackle with sexual tension. It took all his self-control not to reach across the table and pull her in for a kiss. If he did, he knew, she’d kiss him back and three minutes later, they’d be having sex on the floor or up against the wall or—

Laura started to reach up to him. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done, but he forced himself to put up his hand to stop her.

“If we sleep in the same bed, you know we won’t be able to keep our hands off each other,” he said.

“And that would be terrible, because…?” Laura fired the question at him like a punch to the face.

“Because I’m leaving you!”

She froze where she stood, and all the sweetness drained out of her scent.

Roy sank down into his chair, as worn out and empty as if he’d fighting all day. “I don’t want to make this harder than it already is.”

Laura too sat back down. “Fine. I’ll take the bed. You take the sofa. You said you’re a light sleeper. Anything happens, you’ll be in the bedroom in seconds, right?”

Roy ran a mental check on himself. He felt more than strong enough to take on any intruders, as a man or as a wolf—assuming they didn’t turn on the lights. “Yeah.”

I’m doing the honorable thing,
he told himself.
Leading her on would be cruel to her.

Since he was the only one who could hear, he allowed himself to add,
And it would rip my heart out.

Roy felt like his heart had been ripped out already. He pushed back his chair and ran to the bathroom, where he splashed cold water over his face, his chest heaving.

None of this was like him. He didn’t get ambushed by impulses, he controlled them. He didn’t leave people, they left him.

Then be yourself,
he ordered.
You’re strong. You’re hard. You master your emotions. They don’t master you.

It didn’t help. Loneliness tore at him like a physical pain, followed by an overwhelming rush of grief for everything he’d lost.

His career. His home. His identity as a Marine.

His health. His confidence in his own strength and endurance.

His mother. The father he’d never had. His ex-girlfriends. His hometown friends, with whom he’d had nothing in common by the time he returned from his first tour of duty.

The boy he’d been, who’d never done more harm to another human being than break someone’s jaw in a fist fight.

His buddies, whom he’d left behind.

Everyone who’d been wounded so badly that they could never come back. Everyone who had gone home and killed themselves. Everyone who had gone home and lost themselves in bottles or drugs or rage or despair.

Everyone who’d died on his watch. Everyone who’d died in his unit. Everyone who was still fighting without him.

Laura.

Roy could almost feel the air molecules striking his skin, as if he’d been burned until all his nerve endings were exposed. Everything hurt, inside and out.

He stumbled away from the sink, fetched up against the wall, and slid down until he was sitting with his forehead pressed against his knees. There he wrapped his arms tight around himself and controlled his breathing so he didn’t make a sound.

Roy had no idea how long he sat like that, shaking and silent. Eventually he grabbed the edge of the sink and hauled himself to his feet. The mirror reflected a haunted man, pale and disheveled, staring blankly into the distance. He couldn’t let Laura see him like that.

He took a shower, turning the heat off so he could run it as long as he liked and still leave hot water for Laura. Lifting his face into the icy spray, he imagined the water washing away everything, his feelings and his thoughts and his pain, his very self, leaving him clean and stripped to the bone. He was a warrior, a wolf, a weapon. It hurt too damn much to be Roy.

When he finally extracted himself from the shower, he put on his pajamas and went back to the living room. To his relief, Laura was gone and the bedroom door was closed. She’d pulled out the sofa and made it up as a bed. It was probably still early, but he was worn out. He lay down and buried his face in a pillow that smelled like her.

For a long time, he lay exhausted and aching, too tired to rest. He could hear Laura breathing in the other room. From the rustles of tossing and turning, she too found it difficult to sleep.

When he finally drifted off, he dreamed of walking through his hometown. It was deserted. Restaurants had half-eaten plates of food on the tables and crashed cars burned in the streets, but there were no people anywhere.

Roy knew that the town had been hit by a weapon that vaporized living things, leaving inanimate objects intact. He ran through the streets, racing toward the border, desperate to get to the next town over and hear human voices again.

When he finally saw the sign for the next town, his heart leapt. But when he ran into it, he found it silent and lifeless. A child’s bicycle lay by the side of the road, its wheels spinning, beside a dog’s empty collar.

Every town had been hit. Roy was the last living being left in the world.

He awoke drenched in sweat, his heart hammering, his muscles tensed until they cramped, his jaw clenched. His chest hurt. He couldn’t breathe.

Roy yanked at his pajama shirt. He only meant to loosen it, but all the buttons popped off the front. There was nothing around his throat or compressing his chest, but he still felt like he was suffocating.

He longed to call out for Laura. If she’d come and put her arms around him, even sit near him and let her scent surround him, he’d be all right. He imagined her stroking his hair, rubbing his shoulders, making him believe deep down to his bones that he wasn’t alone. But instead of comforting him, his fantasy only reminded him that she would never touch him again.

Finally, he remembered Marco’s technique. Roy rubbed the blanket between his fingers and told himself that it was warm and heavy and scratchy, then laid his hand on the sofa and told himself that it firm and smooth and had a penny wedged between two cushions. He found three things that were white, then three things that were black. But even when he could breathe again and he’d managed to unlock his jaw, he was afraid to go back to sleep.

He padded outside and sat on the porch, looking at the night sky. The stars were brilliant overhead without the dulling effect of electric lights, and he could clearly see the dusty veil of the Milky Way. A shooting star streaked across the blackness. Then a meteor, tumbling down in a trail of flame.

Roy thought of artillery lighting up the sky in Afghanistan, and trading books around his platoon, and how he might rescue DJ. He thought of his favorite movies, and Mom’s funniest stories about stupid criminals, and the half-philosophical, half-absurd monologues DJ would spin out when he was trying to keep himself awake at the wheel.

He thought of everything he could possibly think about, except his losses and his future and Laura, until the darkness paled to pearly gray, and he went back into the cabin to make her coffee and wake her up.

Chapter Twelve: Laura

Road Trip

Laura hadn’t been this nervous about getting in a car since she’d taken her driver’s test when she was sixteen.

She glanced at Roy, who sat with the passenger seat shoved back as far as it would go to accommodate his long legs, arms folded, looking through the windshield with an expression that went beyond calm and into ice-cold sniper concentration. In fact, the last time she’d seen him look like that, he’d been lying in bloody snow, aiming a gun into the woods.

On second thought, Laura had never been this nervous about getting in a car.

She got in the driver’s seat and once again made sure that the CD player and the lights were off. She put the key in the ignition.

The engine turned over with what seemed like a tremendous grating noise, though it wasn’t actually any louder than normal. Both Laura and Roy flinched.

The car idled, gently vibrating, the engine humming.

“How is it?” Laura asked.

She immediately felt stupid for asking; any fool could see that it hurt. Roy had already gone pale.

“Just drive,” he said.

Laura let up on the brake. The wheels spun in the mud. She pushed down on the gas pedal, but gently. She wasn’t sure if Roy was having trouble with the movement or the noise or even the car’s electrical system, but whatever it was, a bumpy ride probably wouldn’t help.

The wheels kept spinning, throwing up spatters of mud on to the windows. Laura stepped harder on the gas. The car jerked forward, freeing itself, and bounced over a rut, banging Laura’s teeth together.

“Sorry!” she said.

Roy didn’t answer. He fumbled for the window controls, his fingers clumsy.

“You want the window down?” Laura asked.

He nodded.

Laura hit the button to roll down the windows. Roy leaned into the breeze, his face sheened with sweat. She hadn’t even gotten to the end of the long driveway. This ride was going to be brutal.

She eased the car on to the dirt road, which had gotten even bumpier since it had been snowed on and then washed out when the snow had melted. It was nothing but potholes and ruts and fallen branches.

Roy closed his eyes. A few seconds later, he opened them. “Stop the car.”

Laura knew that tone. She braked as fast yet smoothly as she could. Roy flung himself out, leaving the door open, and rushed behind the nearest boulder.

She got a bottle of water from the back seat and waited, certain that the last thing he wanted was her watching him throw up. Her own stomach was tied in knots from sympathy and unhappiness and anxiety and exhaustion and pretty much everything that
could
tie a stomach in knots, other than motion sickness.

She’d barely slept the night before, lying in the big cold bed and missing Roy. Roy, who had protected her almost at the cost of his own life. Roy, who made her want to tell the truth and accepted the truth she told. Roy, who made her laugh and held her when she cried. Roy, with his strong hands and broad shoulders and eyes the color of a coming storm. Roy, who had shaken up her life and shown her magic, cooked for her and made love to her and believed in her like no one else ever had.

Roy, who was falling apart before her eyes.

Roy, who didn’t love her.