Where Winter Finds You

by J. R. Ward

  “And then you came to Caldwell.”

  “As soon as I left the house, I realized I had nowhere to go. Who could I stay with? My cousins? They were not my cousins.” She shook her head. “My people were not my people. My own brother knew, and I didn’t—so how far did the secret go? Who else knew? Who had known all along? It was like being stripped naked and everyone seeing it but yourself. Lies that are fundamental hurt fundamentally. Imagine if between one second and the next… all of the people in your life were replaced with actors. Or maybe it’s more… the parents I assumed were real were being played by actors.” She shrugged. “Maybe someone else would have felt differently—”

  Trez cut in. “It doesn’t matter what someone else would have felt. It’s you.”

  “That’s what I tried to tell my brother. He was too busy protecting them to hear it. And you know, losing him was just as hard as losing… well, what I thought of as my parents.” She shook her head. “I mean, families tell the truth, right? They’re the only people in our lives who can really do that even when we don’t want to hear it. Because blood makes us stuck with them.”

  He thought of iAm and felt uneasy. “Yes, but they can also be wrong.”

  Trez had to say that. For himself. He had to believe that… Fates, he didn’t even know what to believe anymore. He was so damned wrung out, his thoughts totally disjointed, his body weak, his head starting to ache.

  Meanwhile, she wasn’t having such a great night, either. With a curse, she put her own head in her hands and shuddered. “I hurt her. That’s the fucked-up thing. My ma—that female—looked ruined as I walked out that door. And as I dematerialized to my apartment and packed up some stuff, I blamed myself. Like it was my choice, though? I got the fallout of her decision to stay silent. Not the other way around.”

  When there was a long pause, he felt like he had to say something. Do something. But he couldn’t seem to form anything coherent for his mouth to speak.

  Grasping at straws, he mumbled, “Why did you choose Caldwell?”

  She frowned. And then looked at him once more. “You know, it’s funny… I don’t have a good answer for that. I remember so many things about all of it with unbearable precision. But as for what brought me here? That… I don’t know. I guess I was just called to Caldwell.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Therese tried to flex her tired brain and access the piece of information about exactly why she’d ended up where she did. But there was nothing. No context for Caldwell. No contacts here. No reason to head east instead of south or west.

  ’Cuz God knew it was harder to get more north, unless she wanted to land in Canada. Which, granted, was a very nice place, but a change of currency and partially of language? She’d had enough to deal with.

  But why this particular town? And why with such unquestionable determination? It was as if Caldwell had popped into her mind as a destination like it had been implanted there by another source—and hey, at the point she’d left home, having some direction, any direction, was better than none at all.

  “So yeah,” she concluded. “That’s why I understand where you are. Even if I don’t know the details.”

  During the period of silence that followed, it was Trez’s opportunity to jump in the Share Pool. But he remained quiet as he sat on the floor. And it was interesting, in another era in her life, before she’d had her own awful reshuffle of things, she might have felt shut out. It was hard, though, when your emotions were strong, to plug into even yourself, much less someone else.

  With a sad exhale, she reflected that the evening in this house had not started out as she’d expected. And it wasn’t ending that way, either.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  When he nodded, she wanted to ask again. And again. Until she could peek into his mind and know his truth—and not just the details of the female who had come between them. She wanted to know the rest of his past, too, all of the good and the bad. She was not going to get that, however. And it was likely even he didn’t know the answer to the question of whether he was all right.

  One thing she was certain of was that it was a female. She knew that as surely as she could see him sitting before her, on the floor by the foot of that bed, that towel around his waist, his bare feet planted stock straight forward as if he were still considering a bolt down the stairs. Hell, he’d probably considered that bathroom window she’d used while he’d been in there. She was glad he’d decided to stay, however, even though she had been the one doing the telling, and he the listening. When she’d intended it to be the other way around.

  Therese cleared her throat. “I think I’d better go—”

  “Do you think we could get in bed—”

  They both spoke up at the same time, and they both stopped at the same time. And then they did it again.

  “Yes, I’d like that—”

  “I totally understand if you want to go—”

  She put her hand up. “I would like to stay.”

  Getting to her feet, she felt a little weird with a rug wrapped around her, the tough matting showing, the soft faux fur against her skin. But she didn’t feel comfortable being naked, either. She didn’t regret the sex they’d had—at all. She just didn’t want him to think she was taking things in a sexual direction. He looked spent. And frankly, so was she.

  “I’ll be right back,” she murmured.

  In the bathroom, she was tempted by the shower. She didn’t want him to think she was washing him off of her, though—

  Stopping that train of thinking, she knew she couldn’t worry about him like that. She wanted to take a shower because she had worked a shift at the restaurant, and she had just shared the most personal thing in her life with him. She needed a minute to gather herself.

  And there was no better place to do it than under some hot water.

  Back at the door, she ducked out. “I’m going to grab—”

  He was gone.

  His clothes were still where they’d been left on the floor, though. And downstairs… yes, she heard him moving around. A moment later, a scent drifted up the stairwell.

  Toast. He was making himself some toast.

  Looked like both of them were resetting in their own ways.

  Reclosing the door, she cranked the shower on and yeah, wow, talk about water pressure. As she put her hand into the spray, the stuff coming out of that head was like a sandblaster. Perfect. Just… perfect.

  As she put her rug robe aside, she stepped under the spray and exhaled more than just oxygen. The stress funneled out of her, particularly as she tilted her head back and felt the water dive into her hair. There was shampoo in a stone cut out in the wall, as well as conditioner and bodywash.

  Jeez, this was like being in a hotel.

  She used it all. Everything. She even shampooed twice just because she liked the smell of the Biolage whatever it was. After she was done with the cleaning thing, she backed into the spray and closed her eyes, letting the water hit her head, and flow down her hair, and fall over her shoulders, her back, her legs, and her feet.

  Before she ran the hot water heater out—in case he wanted to take a shower, too—she turned things off and stepped onto the bath mat. The towels hanging on the rod across from her were fluffy and white, and as she took one off and put it to her nose, she breathed in and smelled a delicate scent of meadow flowers.

  Big difference from the rough, pilled-up stuff she had at the rooming house. That one bath towel she’d bought at HomeGoods was on its last legs already. Then again, for $1.99 on clearance? What could she expect.

  Once she was dried off, she took a gamble and opened a couple of drawers under the pair of sinks. Yup. Brand-new toothbrushes in every size and brush configuration Oral-B had ever thought up. As well as seven or eight different brands and kinds of toothpaste. Unbelievable. Whoever managed this house was worth every penny.

  Plus they brought groceries. Even when you didn’t ask them to.

  As Therese brushe
d her teeth, she wanted to stay. She really did—and not just as in tonight. She wanted to live in a nice place like this, with clean, sweetly scented towels, and cupboards that were stocked by a thoughtful doggen, and rugs that were vacuumed by someone else. She wanted internet that she didn’t pay for, and shelves she didn’t have to dust herself, and dishes that cleaned themselves.

  More than anything, though, she wanted to wake up next to Trez every night. And take coffee across from him down at that little table. And ride into work with him to her job at the restaurant. She wanted text messages from him throughout her shift, just little nothings, a meme, a stupid gif, a quick story about a crazy happening at his club. Then she wanted him to pick her up and drive her back here, the two of them chatting about what work had been like.

  When they got home, she wanted to split meal prep with him. She wanted to chop vegetables on a wooden cutting board while he broiled steaks in the oven. She wanted fresh bread that smelled good, and a meal set out family-style on plates on the little table. She wanted more traded stories, from the human news or the vampire social media groups or something he’d overheard at the club from one of the bouncers.

  Then cleanup. Then making love up here.

  Then again, and again, until the years became decades and the decades centuries.

  ’Til death—in a long, long, incalculably long time off—did they part.

  After which… the Fade. For eternity. Side by side.

  “God, what am I thinking,” she muttered to herself.

  But yes, fine, if she were honest, she wanted the mortal version of forever on the earth with him and then the mystical one on the Other Side. And if there were young? Great. And if there were not, great.

  That they were together was all that mattered.

  As these wild fantasies went through her mind, she stared at herself in the mirror over the sinks, a strange awareness rippling through her consciousness and going deeper. Much, much deeper.

  It was as if she had thought these things before, and not because she was in a relationship with someone else.

  It was him. For some reason… it had always been him.

  Trez seemed, tonight at least, to be her ghost lover and her destiny, all wrapped up in one.

  “And I know that’s crazy,” she said as she pulled a towel around herself.

  Turning the lights off with her mind, she meant to turn away from her reflection. She did not. She could not.

  That strange sense of connection with Trez, of bonding with him, of being fated to be with him, refused to go away—and she didn’t want to go back out there until she placed it in a more reasonable context. She had learned long ago that romantic feelings were powerful—but that didn’t mean they were permanent. And considering the sex they’d had? Followed by his emotional breakdown and her SuperSoul Sunday sharing stuff?

  To paraphrase Oprah.

  It was best to remember that anything her brain coughed up right now was the result of all the endorphins that had been released—

  Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of something down in the snow-covered backyard.

  Frowning, she went over and looked through the double-paned glass she’d leaped free of.

  Right next to her messy landing spot, there was a glow out there, and not as in a security-camera kind of thing. It was more like a residual phosphorescence, a lingering, rainbow-colored shadow, as if something—

  “What. The. Fu… dgeknuckles.”

  In her mind, she went all the way to “fuck.” In this nice bathroom, however, with the fluffy scented towel around her and the shampoo and conditioner someone else had paid for perfuming her damp hair, she wanted to keep the cursing to a minimum even if she was alone.

  And even if it was warranted.

  And even though she wasn’t sure that “fudgeknuckles” was a word or what it would mean if it was.

  But some kind of f-something or another was warranted… because right under the odd, dissipating glow was a mark in the snowpack. A large mark with two triangles on either side.

  Like someone had lain down next to where she had flopped and made an angel by moving their arms and legs up and back.

  To send her a message.

  Abruptly, the hairs at her nape tingled and goose bumps rose on her arms. Shaking her head, she twisted the venetian blinds down so that she couldn’t see out—and whoever had done that couldn’t see in.

  Although given that glow? She was willing to bet normal rules didn’t apply. Assuming this wasn’t all a figment of her unreliable mind.

  Determined to put this, and so much else, behind her, she walked out of the bathroom.

  Trez was in the bed on his back, his bare shoulders emerging out of the duvet that had been pulled up almost to his collarbones. His eyes were closed and his breathing was uneven, the hand he’d left out of the covers twitching, his lids fluttering as if he were dreaming.

  And not of pleasant things.

  Staying where she was, she watched him for a while. If he hadn’t explicitly asked her to stay, she would have left him. She had a feeling he hadn’t slept in a while, and surely a good day’s repose could offer him more than she could when it came to help. But she didn’t want to go, and not just because she didn’t want him to be alone.

  Approaching the bed, she lifted the duvet and slid in between the sheets, ditching the damp towel onto the floor. Turning to face him, she was about to close her eyes when he rolled toward her. With a groan, his arms reached out and drew her into his warm, vital body, and as the contact was made, the ragged sigh he released in his sleep both broke her heart… and made her whole at the same time.

  He needed her.

  And somehow, she sensed she needed him just as much.

  When Therese did close her eyes, she felt a peace come over her. And it was something she did not question.

  This stranger seemed like destiny in so many ways.

  Especially as she thought about her random choice to come to Caldwell when she’d left her family.

  It was almost as if meeting him had been the reason.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Trez woke up at the whisper-quiet whirring of the illusion shutters as they came down over all the glass in the little house. For a split second, he knew exactly where he was. He was with his Selena, and they were in their mated bed, and the whole nightmare of her death and the pyre and the aftermath?

  Nothing worth worrying about. Just ether coughed out by his subconscious, a nightmare generated by his deepest fears, a burp of terror in his brain.

  Releasing his breath, he reclosed his gritty eyes and brought his shellan even closer. In her sleep, her head found the place it always did on his pec, and her arm encircled him, and her hand found the dent in the side of his hip. Finally, her fingertips soothed that contour of his pelvis, just as they always did—

  His lids flipped open again.

  Oddly enough, the low-level irritation of his eyes was what brought it all back. They were swollen and rough because he had wept in front of her. After he had lost it while they had been having sex. And then not explained his outburst.

  Shit, he mouthed into the darkness.

  As the recalibration occurred, reality raising its ugly head once again, anxiety churned the two pieces of toast he’d eaten while she’d taken a shower, and he had to sit up so he didn’t get sick. Carefully disentangling himself from her, he pushed his torso higher on the pillows and was glad when she rearranged herself in his lap.

  The fact that she slept on reassured him.

  So many things between them were complicated, but the way she sought him in her rest was simple.

  Looking over at the hearth, there was nothing glowing there now, no hint of warmth or illumination left—

  Light pierced through the illusion shutters, emanating from the house next door.

  “What the—”

  As he spoke up, his female stirred and lifted her head. “What’s wrong?”

  Just as he was abou
t to throw himself on her to protect her from the sunlight, the sound of a garage door lifting and of a car not backing out to leave but driving in to stay, made him totally confused.

  “Oh, shi—shoot,” she said as she sat all the way up. “We slept through.”

  “What?” Except then he glanced at the digital clock on the bed stand. “Oh… it’s six o’clock. At night.”

  Or a little before, as was the case.

  With this being upstate New York, and daylight savings time having ended back in November, things got dark enough for vampire purposes by six. By even earlier. Hell, a lot of the time in December, you could be outdoors as early as five p.m.

  Throwing the covers off, she jumped out of bed. “I’m going to be late again—I’m going to lose this frickin’ job—”

  “It’s Monday. The restaurant’s closed.”

  As she swung around to him, he did his best not to notice the way her perfect breasts settled from the movement. Or how her hair covered her shoulders and a lot of her back. Or the length of her lovely legs.

  He stuck to her eyes. Meeting them, he refused to get aroused.

  Okay, fine. His mind refused to go there. His erection on the other hand? Oops.

  Glancing down, he made sure he was covered.

  “Monday?” she said.

  “Yes, Monday. I swear.” Hey, she’d gotten it right on the time of night, and he was nailing the whole day-of-the-week thing. Even steven. “The snowstorm was Saturday and that’s our busiest night at the club. Last night, Sunday, I didn’t have to worry about a big crowd, which was why I had time to fight with my brother.”

  “Fight with him?”

  Trez shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Her face registered the hint of a frown. But then she looked down at herself in surprise. “Oh. Hello. Sorry, I’m in my birthday suit.”