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“Jesus, you get intense,” Lissa had said at the time. “You just need a good mauling to help walk that off!”

I’d laughed so hard—working with the two of them had been a balm to my soul. As much as I was going to enjoy working with the regulars and becoming enmeshed in the
Wolf’s Landing
milieu, I was going to miss them.

“Yeah,” Lissa said now. “Just remember that sometimes you need to be hugged after doing the rough stuff, okay?” She winked. “We’ll try to have Noah standing by after you have to rip our throats out. He can help you out.”

I stared at her, my mouth opening and closing like a lizard’s. “Uh . . .”

She looked around and both of them moved their heads in close to mine. “What?” Brenda asked. “You didn’t want anybody to know you guys are a thing?”

“We’re . . . uh . . .” I paused. “We’re not sleeping together?” Because hell
o
.

Both of them put their hands to their chests and made that “Aw . . .” sound that girls can do with perfect sincerity.

“Isn’t that just the—”

“Oh my God, could he be any—”

“Sweetest—”

“Such a
doll
!”

I looked over at Noah, who had long since stopped pretending to play with his phone.

“Are you hearing this?” I asked, somewhat at a loss.

“Yes. Those nice girls think I should sleep with Connor Montgomery. I like this plan.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course you do.”

He raised his eyebrows, daring me, I think, to say “I’m not ga-ay!” or something else appropriately weenie for this moment.

Then I looked back at the girls, who had nothing on their faces but friendliness and curiosity. “He is pretty hot.” I felt a blush creep up my neck. “Let’s just say he’s on my list of one.”

They sobered, and Lissa patted my knee. “You don’t have to say it, Connor,” she told me softly. “We can sort of guess who your last boyfriend might have been.”

Brenda made an uncomfortable noise, and we all looked at her. “Lissa didn’t know this until after she hit on you, but you guys used to go to my favorite coffee shop . . .”

Lissa cleared her throat meaningfully, and Brenda rolled her eyes.

“Okay, I was the
barista
at
your
favorite coffee shop, right before you got
Warlock Tea
.”

I blinked, ashamed that I couldn’t remember her. “I’m so so—”

“No, don’t even. I lost sixty pounds, dyed my hair, got contacts—my own mother doesn’t recognize me. I’m just saying: you guys weren’t so careful back then. I saw you holding hands. Once I saw him kiss your cheek. You were . . . really in love.”

That blush washed over my face and faded, leaving my hands and cheeks cold. “We were.” I gave her a lying smile. “And apparently we were lucky that story didn’t break years ago.”

Vinnie, we weren’t fooling anyone.

That’s not true, Connor. I was obviously fooling myself.

At that moment we were called into makeup. Noah came too, to help me run lines like he always did. But my stomach was jittery and uncertain, just from that very matter-of-fact acknowledgment that me and Noah were a thing
before
we were a thing. My inner Vinnie voice was getting pretty bitchy about it too, which probably explained what happened on the set.

“You . . .” Slade’s (my) voice threatened to break. “You went to another pack? Both of you?”

Swift crouched by our campfire, her eyes wounded. “We were afraid. Slade, this world, it’s so different, and you were so lost—”

“You didn’t . . . you didn’t ask!” Slade (I) felt a knife in his vitals. Betrayal. All we’d ever asked for was loyalty. “I . . . I worked for you! I
fought
for you! I
killed
for you! And you couldn’t . . . you couldn’t talk to me? Even to ask? You’re just . . . just
leaving
me?”

“You couldn’t hack it!” Wind cried shrilly. “We got dumped in this stupid alternative dimension, and you fell apart!”

“I was keeping us together!” we snarled. Spittle flew from Slade’s (my) mouth, but we were too angry, too wounded, to care. “I . . . I sold my fucking
soul
to protect you two—”

“We didn’t know that!” Swift shouted. “We didn’t know! How could we know—”

“You could have asked.” I wanted to fall to my knees and rend my hair—but
I
, Connor, knew that I’d be out of the shot. “You could have . . .”

“Slade,” Wind whispered. “It’s too late. You have to cut us loose.”

Oh, I’d loved her. She’d been my mate, my playmate, my friend. She’d been my hope in this strange place and my memory of good times, stable times in the past.

“I could have forgiven you anything,” I said quietly. “
ANYTHING
!”

Slade (I) whirled and spread our claws and swiped with all the power in our body. Wind fell to the ground, and Swift looked at me . . .

And screamed.

“Cut!”

Nobody moved.

“Cut!”

Wind—Brenda—stood gingerly up from the pad she’d fallen on, and Slade (I) looked at her in horror. Had I hit her? I hadn’t . . . had I . . . I’d been so . . .

She smiled at me, eyes large and bemused. “God, Connor. That was . . . damn.”

My eyes cut to Swift . . . Lissa . . . oh God . . . and she was nodding excitedly.

I was suffused with a terrible sense of dislocation. I (Slade) had been betrayed. I (Slade) had screamed and lashed out and hurt the thing that hurt us. I (Slade) was still . . .

Bleeding.

I swallowed, and the pain didn’t go away.

I swallowed again.

“Connor?” Simon Conklin called from up in the chair. “You good man? That was a great take—we don’t need that again. In fact, that’s a wrap. You okay?”

I nodded and tried to deal with the fact that I was Connor—and I was still in pain.

“I, uh . . .”

“He needs to walk it off,” Noah said from off set, and his voice grounded me. “C’mon man.”

His footsteps sounded loud and portentous, but his hand, wrapping around my biceps, was another thing that brought me back to myself.

And to that terrible, terrible pain in my chest, that emotional evisceration that I’d been trying so hard to keep from feeling.

I followed him blindly, off the soundstage, around the corner, to the space between my trailer and the girls’.

“I . . .” I wanted to say I was okay, but my vision wasn’t solid yet. I couldn’t see the girls anymore. I couldn’t see Noah. I couldn’t see this cold and shady spot with the trees arching overhead.

All I could see was . . .

Vinnie, looking at the box of condoms, guilty. Vinnie, stoned and tearful, tackling me for the Percocet I was flushing down the toilet. Vinnie, begging me to stay, not to go back to the shoot, begging me to give up my job when I’d worked so hard to get it. Vinnie, telling Jillian that it was okay, we’d hide ourselves, hide our lives, hide our love, because he was afraid to tell his parents and she didn’t think we could make it. Vinnie, that second time at rehab, apologetic and resolute, and he’d done it, hadn’t he? He’d gone clean and sober for three years and Vinnie . . .
oh God no.
Vinnie . . .
Don’t make me remember.
Vinnie . . .
NO NO NO NO—

Vinnie, blue face reconstructed, body covered by a sheet, cold and dead in the morgue, where I’d come to identify him, because I was the one in his wallet, in his license, in his life . . .

Vinnie, in a box I wasn’t allowed to carry, being buried when he’d told me he wanted cremation, at a ceremony I’d had nothing to do with, because his parents didn’t know.

“I . . .” I tried again, but Noah wasn’t there. The trailers weren’t there. It was just Vinnie, all the times he’d let me down, all the times I hadn’t gotten angry because . . .

“I’d forgive you!” I told him. “I’d forgive you. I’d forgive you anything. I would have forgiven you anything, I swear, I swear—”

“Except dying.”

God help me, I’m not sure whose voice it was.

“
Vinnie, you bastard, how could you
!” I screamed it, probably scared the fucking birds, but I didn’t care.

Because Noah—
Noah—
put his arms around me and rocked me as I sobbed, gibbered against his shoulder, and ranted at the ghost of the guy who’d betrayed me in the worst way of all.

Eventually Noah took me into the trailer and took my makeup off gently, giving all the prosthetics to Viv to give to Junior. He had Viv block for us, telling Conklin and the girls—crap, I don’t know what she told them. For all I know, she said I had virulent explosive diarrhea or something, but whatever it was, it worked.

Noah hustled me into the back of the car and drove me home.

It was late June—the sky wouldn’t darken until almost ten o’clock—but Noah didn’t give a shit. He took me upstairs, literally undressed me, and thrust me into the shower.

Then he hauled me out and wrapped me in a bathrobe and put me on the bed. I don’t know if I’d said a word since the meltdown at the trailer, but it didn’t matter. He was there—hard chest, dark eyes, capable hands—and that solid presence just seemed to fill in all the spaces that I usually filled with talk, or even the talking in my own head.

I finally spoke when he thrust a bowl of soup into my hands and turned on the television. He was seated in a chair next to the bed, leaning on his elbows, pretending great interest in the movie on TNT.

“Noah?”

“Yeah?”

“If I eat my soup, will you sit next to me in the bed?”

His hand was warm and reassuring on my thigh.

“Yeah. But eat the soup or it’ll spill.”

“Yeah, okay.”

I did as ordered and then set the bowl on the nightstand and scooted over. Noah stood up and stripped off his shorts and sweatshirt, pulled down the covers, and crawled into bed next to me.

“It’s only seven o’clock,” I said, laughing hollowly. “I mean, me, I can see, I’m obviously a basket case, but shouldn’t you be out dancing or some—”

“Shut up, Connor.”

“Why?”

“I think it’s perfectly obvious the only place—and I do mean the
only
place—that I want to be is right here with you.”

He held out his arm, and I scooted back to him, my head on his chest, his arm over my shoulders. I shuddered a couple of times, like you do when you’ve been so, so cold, and you’re getting used to being warm again.

I probed the empty cavern in my chest. “I . . .”

“What?” he asked, kissing my forehead.

“I am so . . .
so . . . angry
at him,” I finished, feeling shock and wonder for even being able to say it.

“I don’t blame you,” he said with a little snort. “I’d be pissed too.”

“But he . . . I wasn’t angry with him when he was alive!” I protested. “That stuff—the cheating, the career, the rehab—”

“Rehab?”

Well shit. “That’s why I left
Warlock Tea
,” I confessed, because why not? Noah knew the worst of it—of
me—
now. “It was also why I didn’t sign on to do Marvel Cinematic Universe—”

“Seriously? Who were you going to be?”

I grunted. “Bucky.”

“Now that’s a real shame.”

“The guy they got is better,” I said, meaning it. “He’s got this intensity I don’t have.”

“Didn’t. Didn’t have. Whatever you thought you didn’t have five years ago, you’ve got it now. But, rehab?”

“Yeah. I . . . I mean, it’s what you do, right? You see people in Hollywood crumble all the time. You see their relationships detonate. Because human beings are human. You’re surrounded by what’s fake and what’s beautiful, and you can’t tell which is which. But real—real goes to bat for you. Real . . . real leaves
Warlock Tea
to do movies because Vinnie needed me. Real forgives because . . .” I shook my head. “But
see
—I’m not even mad at all that. I could have lived my entire life and forgiven him for all of that—”

“But he had to be there with you.”

I closed my eyes, too spent to deny it. “Yeah. It was the one thing I asked really. That no matter what else happened, it would be the two of us.”

“I’m sorry, Connor.” And he meant it. Here he was, holding me, but he was sincere.