Linger (7 page)

He curled into a tiny ball — his feet, even through his socks, were freezing against my bare legs — and mumbled, “Me neither. B-but we have our whole —” His words piled up on top of one another; he had to stop and rub his hand over his lips to warm them before he went on. “Our whole lives ahead of us. To be together.”

“Our whole lives, starting now,” I said. Outside my bedroom door, I heard my dad's voice — he must've gotten home just as I came into the room — and listened to my parents' voices as they climbed up the stairs to their room, noisy and jostling against each other. For a brief moment, I envied their freedom to come and go as they pleased, no school, no parents, no rules. “I mean, you don't have to stay here, if it makes you uncomfortable. If you don't want to.” I paused. “I didn't mean for that to sound so clingy.”

Sam rolled over to face me. I couldn't see anything but the glint of his eyes in the darkness. “I'll never get tired of this. I just didn't want to get you in trouble. I just didn't want you to feel like you had to ask me to go. If it gets too difficult.”

I touched his cold cheek with my hand; it felt good against my skin. “You can be pretty stupid sometimes for such a smart guy.” I felt his smile curve against my palm as he pushed his body closer to mine.

“Either you're really hot,” Sam said, “or I'm really cold.”

“Duh, I'm hot,” I whispered. “Soooo hot.”

Sam laughed soundlessly — a little, shaky, exhaling sound.

I reached down to clutch his fingers in mine; we held them like that, smashed between our bodies in a knot, until his fingers stopped feeling so frigid.

“Tell me about the new wolf,” I said.

Sam went still beside me. “There's something wrong with him. He wasn't afraid of me.”

“That's weird.”

“It made me wonder what kind of person would choose to be a wolf. They must all be crazy, Grace, every one of Beck's new wolves. Who would choose that?”

Now it was my turn to go still. I wondered if Sam remembered lying beside me last year, just like this, and me confessing that I wished I changed, too, to go with him. No, not just to go with him. To feel what it was like, to be one of the wolves, so simple and magical and elemental. I thought about Olivia again, now a white wolf, darting between trees with the rest of the pack, and something inside me felt a little raw. “Maybe they just love wolves,” I said finally. “And their lives weren't so great.”

Sam's body was right beside me, but his hand in mine was slack and I saw that his eyes were closed. His thoughts were far, far away from me, untouchable. Finally, he said, “I don't trust him, Grace. I just feel like no good will come from these new wolves. I just … I wish Beck hadn't done it. I wish he'd known to wait.”

“Go to sleep,” I told him, though I knew he wouldn't. “Don't worry about what might happen.”

But I knew he wouldn't do that, either.

• GRACE •

“Back again, Grace?”

The nurse looked up as I walked into her office. The three chairs that sat opposite her desk were full — one student's head lolled back in a sleep posture too embarrassing to not be real, and the other two kids were reading. Mrs. Sanders was pretty famous for letting kids who were overwhelmed with life hang out in her office, which was fine until someone who had a pounding headache and just wanted to sit down walked in and found all the waiting chairs full.

I came around to the front of her desk and crossed my arms across my chest. I felt like humming along to the throb of the ache in my head. Rubbing my hand over my face — a gesture that suddenly and fiercely reminded me of Sam — I said, “I'm sorry to bother you for something so dumb again, but my head is just killing me.”

“Well, you do look pretty miserable,” Mrs. Sanders agreed. She got up and gestured to the wheeled chair behind her desk. “Why don't you sit down while I track down a thermometer? You're a little flushed, too.”

“Thanks,” I said gratefully, and took her place as she headed into the other room. It felt odd being here. Not just in her chair, with her solitaire game still up on the computer and the pictures of her kids looking back at me from the desk, but in the nurse's office at all. This was only the second time I'd been here, and it was only a few days since my last visit. I'd waited outside the door for Olivia a few times, but never actually been inside as a patient, blinking under the fluorescent lights and wondering if I was getting sick.

Without Mrs. Sanders there, I didn't feel like I needed to appear stoic, and I pinched the top of my nose, trying to put pressure on the center of the headache. It was the same as the other headaches I'd been getting recently, a dull, radiating pain that burned along my cheekbones. They were headaches that seemed to threaten more: I kept waiting to get a runny nose or a cough or
something
.

Mrs. Sanders reappeared with a thermometer, and I hurriedly dropped my hand from my face. “Open, dear,” she instructed me, which I would've found funny any other time, because Mrs. Sanders did not strike me as a “dear” sort. “I have a feeling you're coming down with something.”

I accepted the thermometer and put it under my tongue; the plastic sleeve on it felt sharp edged and slimy in my mouth. I was going to observe that I rarely got sick, but I couldn't open my mouth. Mrs. Sanders chatted about classes with the two awake students on the chairs while three minutes dragged by, and then she returned and slid the thermometer out.

“I thought they made high-speed thermometers now,” I said.

“For pediatrics. They figure you high school hellions have
enough patience to use the cheap ones.” She read the thermometer. “You have a bit of a temperature. Teeny. You probably have a virus. There's a lot of it going around with the temperature going up and down. You want me to call someone to pick you up?”

I momentarily thought about the joy of escaping school and snuggling in Sam's arms for the rest of the afternoon. But he was working and I had a test in Chemistry, so I sighed and admitted the truth: I was not really sick enough to justify leaving. “There's not that much of the school day left. And I have a test.”

She made a face. “A stoic. I approve. Well, here. I'm really not supposed to do this without getting ahold of your parents, but —” She stood beside me and opened one of her desk drawers. There was a bunch of loose change, her car keys, and a bottle of acetaminophen in there. Shaking two of the pills into my palm, she said, “That'll kick that temperature in the butt and probably take care of your headache, too.”

“Thanks,” I said, relinquishing her chair to her. “No offense, but hopefully I won't be back in here this week.”

“This office is a cultural and social hot spot!” Mrs. Sanders said, feigning shock. “Take care.”

I swallowed the acetaminophen and chased it with some water from the cooler by the door, then headed back to class. I could barely feel my headache. By the end of last period, the acetaminophen had done the trick. Mrs. Sanders was probably right. This nagging sensation of something
more
was just a virus.

I tried to tell myself that was all it was.

• COLE •

I didn't think I was supposed to be human right now.

Sleet cut into my bare skin, so cold that it felt hot. My fingertips were like clubs; I couldn't feel anything in them. I didn't know how long I'd been lying on the frozen ground, but it was long enough for sleet to have melted in the small of my back.

I was shaking almost too badly to stand, unsteady on my legs as I tried to figure out why I had changed back from a wolf. Before now, my stints as a human had been during warmer days and had been mercifully brief. This was a frigid evening — maybe six or seven o'clock, judging from the sun glowing orange through the leafless tree line.

I didn't have time to wonder at the instability of my condition. I was trembling from the cold, but I didn't feel even a hint of nausea in my stomach, or the twist of my skin that meant I was about to change into a wolf. I knew, with sinking certainty, that I was stuck in this body, at least for the moment. Which meant I needed to find shelter — I was stark naked, and I wasn't about to wait for frostbite to set in. Too many extremities that I preferred not to lose.

Wrapping my arms around myself, I took stock of my surroundings. Behind me, the lake reflected brilliant specks of light. I squinted into the dim forest ahead of me and could see the statue that overlooked the lake, and beyond the statue, the concrete benches. That meant I was within walking distance of the huge house I'd seen earlier.

So now I had a destination. Hopefully nobody was home.

I didn't see any cars in the driveway, so luck was with me so far.

“Damn, damn, damn,” I muttered under my breath as I winced my way across the gravel to the back door. There were just enough nerves working in my bare feet for me to feel the stones cutting into the cold flesh. I healed quicker now than I had before, back when I was still just Cole, but it didn't make the initial bite of the stone any less painful.

I tried the back door — unlocked. Truly the Man Upstairs was smiling down on me. I made a note to send a card. Pushing open the door, I stepped into a cluttered mudroom that smelled like barbecue sauce. For a moment, I just stood there, shivering, briefly paralyzed by the memory of barbecue. My stomach — a lot flatter and harder than it had been the last time I'd been human — growled at me, and for a brief, brief moment, I thought about finding the kitchen and stealing food.

The idea of wanting something that bad made my lips curve into a smile. And then my painfully cold feet reminded me why I was here. Clothing first. Then food. I headed out of the mudroom and into a dim hallway.

The house was every bit as gargantuan as it had seemed from the outside and looked like some kind of spread in
Better
Homes and Gardens
. Everything was hung on the walls just so, in perfect threes and fives, perfectly aligned or charmingly asymmetrical. A spotlessly clean rug in a color that was probably called “mauve” led me silently down the wood-floored hallway. Glancing behind me to make sure the coast was still clear, I narrowly avoided tripping over a pricey-looking vase that held a bunch of artfully arranged dead branches. I wondered if real people actually lived here.

More pressingly, I wondered if anyone who wore my size lived here.

I hesitated as the hall opened up. To my left, more dim hallway. To my right, a massive, dark staircase that looked like a murder scene out of a gothic horror movie. I wrestled briefly with logic and decided to go upstairs. If I were a rich guy in Minnesota, I'd have my bedroom upstairs. Because heat rises.

The stairs led me to a hallway that was open on one side to the stairs below. My toes burned against the plush green carpet as feeling slowly returned to them. The pain was a good thing. It meant they still had blood flow.

“Don't move.”

A female voice halted me. It didn't sound afraid, despite the fact that a naked guy was standing in the middle of her house, so I figured I would probably turn to find a rifle pointed at me. I was acutely aware of my heart beating normally in my chest; God, I missed adrenaline.

I turned around.

It was a girl. She was pretty much drop-dead gorgeous in an eat-your-heart kind of way, all huge blue eyes partially hidden behind a jagged fringe of blond hair. And a tilt to her shoulders
like she knew it. When she swept her eyes up and down my body, I felt as if I'd been judged and found wanting.

I tried a smile. “Hi. Sorry. I'm naked.”

“Nice to meet you. I'm Isabel,” she said. “What are you doing in my house?”

There wasn't really a right answer to that question.

Below us, there was the sound of a door shutting, and Isabel and I both jerked to look down toward the noise. For a brief moment, my heart yammered in my chest and I was surprised to feel terror — to feel
something
after such a long stretch of nothing.

I couldn't move.

“Oh my
God
!” A woman appeared at the bottom of the stairs, staring straight up at me through the railing of the balcony. Her eyes swiveled to Isabel. “Oh my God. What in —”

I was going to be killed by two generations of beautiful women. While naked.

“Mom,”
Isabel snapped, interrupting. “Do you mind not staring? It's totally perv.”

Both her mother and I blinked at her.

Isabel moved closer to me and leaned across the railing at her mother. “A little privacy, maybe?” she shouted down.

This brought her mother back to life. She shouted back, with a voice growing ever higher, “Isabel Rosemary Culpeper, are you even going to tell me what a
naked
boy is doing in this house?”

“What do you
think
?” Isabel replied. “What do you think I'm doing with a naked boy in this house? Didn't Dr. Carrotnose warn you that I might act out if you kept ignoring
me? Well, here it is, Mom! Here's me acting out! That's right, keep staring! I hope you're liking it! I don't know why you make us go to therapy if you aren't even going to listen to what he has to say. Go on, punish me for your mistakes!”

“Baby,” her mother said, in a much quieter voice. “But
this
—”

“At least I'm not standing on some street corner selling myself!” Isabel screamed. She turned to me, and her face instantly softened. In a voice a million times lighter, she said, “Kitten, I don't want you to see me like this. Why don't you go back to the room?”

I was an actor in my own life.

Down below, her mother rubbed a hand over her forehead and tried not to look in my direction. “Please, please just tell him to get some clothing on before your father gets home. In the meantime, I'm going to go have a drink. I don't want to see him again.”

As her mother turned around, Isabel grabbed my arm — somehow it shocked me to feel her hands on my skin — and tugged me down the hall and through one of the doors. It turned out to be a bathroom, all tiled in black and white, with a giant claw-footed bathtub taking up most of the space.

Isabel shoved me into the room so hard that I nearly fell into the bathtub, and then she shut the door behind us.

“What the hell are you doing human so early?” she demanded.

“You know what I am?” I asked. Stupid question.

“Please,” she said, and her voice oozed contempt in a way that threatened to turn me on. No one —
no one
— talked to
me like that. “Either you're one of Sam's, or you're a random naked pervert who smells like dog.”

“Sam? Beck,” I said.

“Not Beck. Sam, now,” Isabel corrected. “It doesn't matter. What matters is that you're naked, in my house, and you really ought to be a wolf right now. Why the crap aren't you a wolf right now? What's your name?”

For a single, crazy moment, I almost told her.

• ISABEL •

For a moment, his face flickered to someplace else, someplace uncertain, the first real expression he'd had on his face since I found him pretty much posing next to the balcony. And then the almost-smirk was back on his face, and he said, “Cole.”

Like it was a gift.

I tossed it back at him. “Well, why aren't you a wolf right now,
Cole
?”

“Because I wouldn't have met you otherwise?” he suggested.

“Nice try,” I said, but I felt a hard smile twist my face. I knew enough about flirting, out of habit, to recognize it in action. And he was a cocky bastard, too; rather than getting more self-conscious as we spoke, he reached up and held the shower rod behind him with both hands, stretching himself out rather beautifully as he studied me.

“Why did you lie to your mom?” Cole asked. “Would you have done that if I'd been a paunchy real estate broker turned werewolf?”

“I doubt it. Kindness isn't generally my thing.” What was my thing was the way that stretching his arms above his head bunched his shoulder muscles and tightened his chest. I tried to keep my eyes on the arrogant curl of his lips. “That said, we ought to get you some clothing.”

His lips curved more. “Eventually?”

I smiled nastily at him. “Yeah, let's get that freak show covered up.”

He made a little
whoo
shape with his lips. “Harsh.”

I shrugged. “Stay here and don't hurt yourself. I'll be right back.”

Shutting the bathroom door, I headed down the hallway to my brother's old bedroom. I hesitated outside the door for just a moment, and then pushed it open.

It had been long enough since he'd died that being in his room no longer felt intrusive. Plus, it didn't really look like his room anymore. My mother had packed up a lot of his stuff in boxes on the advice of her last therapist, then had left the boxes in his room on the advice of her current one. All of his sports crap had been packed, as well as his big, homemade speaker system. Once you took those two things away, there wasn't anything left to say
Jack
.

Moving into the dark room, I knocked my shin on the corner of one of the therapy boxes on my way to the floor lamp. I swore softly, clicked on the light, and for the first time contemplated what I was doing: digging through my dead brother's stuff to find clothing for a totally swoonworthy but jerkish werewolf standing in my bathroom, after telling my mom that I'd been sleeping with him.

Maybe she was right and I did need therapy.

I twisted my way through the boxes and threw open the closet. A rush of Jack-smell came out — pretty gross, really. Partially washed jerseys and man-shampoo and old shoes. But for a second, just for a second, it made me stand still, staring at the dark shapes of the hanging clothing. Then I heard my mother, far away downstairs, drop something, and remembered that I needed to get Cole out of here before my father came home. Mom wouldn't tell him. She was good like that. She didn't like to see crap get broken any more than I did.

I found a ratty sweatshirt, a T-shirt, and a decent pair of jeans. Satisfied, I turned around — right into Cole.

I bit off another swearword, my heart thumping. I had to crane my head back a bit to see his face this close; he was pretty tall. The dim floor lamp cast his face in sharp relief, like a Rembrandt portrait.

“You were taking a long time,” Cole said, taking a step back for politeness' sake. “I came to see if you'd gone to get a gun.”

I shoved the clothing at him. “You'll have to go commando.”

“Is there any other way?” He tossed the shirt and sweater onto the bed and half turned to pull on the jeans. They hung a little loosely on him; I could see the lines of his hip bones casting shadows as they disappeared into the waist.

I looked away quickly as he turned back around, but I knew he had seen me watching. I wanted to scratch the cocky lift of his eyebrows from his face. He reached for the T-shirt, and as it unfolded in his hands, I saw that it was Jack's favorite Vikings T-shirt, the bottom right edge of it smeared with a bit of white from when he'd painted the garage last year. He used to wear
the shirt for days at a time, until eventually even he admitted it smelled. I'd hated it.

Cole stretched his arm above his head to put it on, and suddenly all I could think was that I couldn't stand to see anyone but my brother wear that T-shirt. Unthinking, I grabbed a handful of the fabric and Cole froze, looking down at me, expression blank. Maybe a little puzzled.

I tugged, indicating what I wanted, and still with a vaguely curious expression, he released his fist, letting me pull the shirt from his hands. Once I had the shirt, I didn't want to explain why I had taken it back, so I kissed him instead. It was easier kissing him, pressing him back up against the wall, trying out the shape of his smirk on my lips, than it was to sort out why Jack's shirt in someone else's hands made me feel so sharp and exposed inside.

And he was a good kisser. I felt his flat stomach and ribs slide up against mine, even though his hands didn't lift to touch me. This close, he smelled like Sam had on the first night that I met him, all musky wolf and pine. There was a certain earnest hungriness to the way Cole pressed his mouth against mine that made me think there was more truth in him here, kissing me, than there was when he spoke.

When I pulled back, Cole stayed where he was, leaned back against the wall, fingers hooked in the pockets of his still-unzipped jeans, his head cocked to one side, just studying me. My heart was thumping in my chest, and my hands were trembling with the effort of not kissing him again, but he didn't seem fazed. I could see how slow and soft his pulse was beating through the skin of his abdomen.

The fact that he wasn't as revved up as I was instantly infuriated me, and I took a step back, throwing Jack's sweatshirt at him. He reached up to catch it a second after it bounced off his chest.

“That bad?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, crossing my arms to keep them still. “It was like you were trying to eat an apple.”