“Oh, it’s you…”
Then he had noticed the blood, and she had fainted dead away. There had been a lot of activity then. He was awake, but he felt terribly weak and sluggish, or he would’ve jumped out of bed and gone to her. But then the witch (he assumed she was a witch) who was Gwen’s companion had wrapped the bleeding arm up in a shirt, run to the bathroom to flush the contents of the cauldron down the toilet, and with great speed packed up all her witchy things into a duffel bag before giving him a quick goodbye and hauling a half-conscious Gwen to her feet, half carrying her out of the room.
“Is she going to be okay?” Sam had asked, croaking and not yet used to talking again.
“Yeah!” The woman called back. “She’ll visit later!”
He had been racked with concern and impatient to check on the woman who had been visiting him and telling him about her life and who had apparently just broken the curse. But only seconds later nurses and doctors had appeared to prod and dote and marvel at his suddenly cured coma.
It took Sam a while to get a visit from a nurse who knew Gwen and that was after Arthur came rushing down to see him. Sam had known Arthur for about eighteen years. If someone had asked Sam what Arthur was like, he would have said that Arthur was American but seemed British. He had no accent, but he had a way of stiffly carrying himself like one of those butlers on a show about Victorian rich people. He always stood ramrod straight, and he was very proper. He had a stiff upper lip and even Sam sometimes half expected to hear a “pip pip cheerio” or something similar coming from him, even though he was from Connecticut originally.
But Arthur’s stiff upper lip had crumbled upon seeing Sam awake, raising his eyebrows and waving a hand in greeting as he took a sip of ice water. Arthur had wept. Sam had never seen him cry before. He hadn’t known where to look.
“They say I’ll be out of here in a few days,” Sam had said, as Arthur sat next to him, beaming proudly. “I’ll need physical therapy for a little bit but they say I’m perfectly healthy now. Of course, they don’t know how to explain it but…”
“You’ll be glad to know the house is in perfect shape, sir,” Arthur had said. “I’ve kept it up just as usual. I’ll just need groceries. And uh...I’ll make sure all your linens are fresh and-”
“I’m sure you’ve got it well in hand,” Sam had said, chuckling. He found his own eyes shining hearing Arthur so happy. It had always saddened him to hear Arthur’s melancholy voice when he visited, especially the more he tried to cover for his true feelings. But now Arthur couldn’t seem to hold his joy back and clutched Sam’s hand, squeezing it.
“It really is so good to see you awake, sir!” He took a breath and sat back. “I only wish Miss Gwen had stumbled upon you sooner. I don’t know how she managed to cure you of this curse but I owe her a terrible debt of gratitude.”
“We both do,” Sam had said quietly, smiling to himself when he thought of Gwen.
Sam had been absolutely certain that the moment he saw Gwen again, they would be immediately comfortable with each other. It was only when Sam saw Gwen through the little window in the door with that nurse Annie, that he had become paralyzed by shyness.
He could take down dark wizards and he had been an alpha, a brave and strong lion who had led his pride to great feats of daring, saving the world multiple times. He didn’t consider himself afraid of much of anything. Except now as he saw that beautiful woman through the glass, he felt as if he were choking. It had been completely different when he was in the safe solitude of the void where she couldn’t hear him. It had been lonely and awful, yes, but he had been able to just listen to Gwen speak and be charming and lovely and he had replied into the air. She couldn’t hear him and couldn’t be disappointed by him. She couldn’t wonder why he was sometimes suddenly silent or sad. She had expected nothing of him. Now it was different. Now it was real.
He gripped his blankets tight when Gwen walked in the door. She had pretty olive skin and wore a shade of rose lipstick that made her already pretty plump lips look plumper and incredibly kissable.
If she were in trouble, if a vampire had been chasing her and she needed someone to protect her, he was sure he would have been fine. But she wanted to talk. To him. Potentially about feelings.
Sam locked up.
He reverted to his chivalrous if somewhat coldly polite self and said, “Hello. You must be Gwen.”
Gwen looked crushed suddenly. Sam’s head spun. “Yes, that’s me.”
She sat beside him and at her proximity, his heart pounded and he was distracted momentarily by the line on the EKG jumping suddenly just because Gwen was near. She looked at it, seeming worried.
“Your heart rate picked up a little,” she muttered. She squinted at the machine and said, “Not dangerously though.”
He didn’t understand how she couldn’t guess that his heart rate had picked up because of her but he only thanked the gods and swallowed, trying to think of something polite and neutral to say. A lot of things were on his tongue. He wanted to tell her that The Matrix was his favorite movie and that some of the things he’d written in his diary were true and some were silly and he had been glad, so glad, and so much happier every time she had visited him…
He opened his mouth and said, “I… You…”
He had written in his diary several times about being shy and now he saw her face soften.
“This was a lot easier for you when you were asleep,” she said softly. “Wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said, sighing in relief.
She laughed at that and the sound was throaty and sexy. She even threw back her head a little and strands of her curly black hair blew around. He wanted to kiss her throat. She nodded at him and smiled, but her smile was sad. No, no, he thought. She wasn’t supposed to be sad. She was never supposed to be sad.
“Thank you,” he said firmly. He took a sip of water before going on. “You and your friend-”
“Olive,” Gwen supplied.
“I don’t know how you did it,” Sam quietly. “But thank you for waking me up. I owe you my life.” He meant it with more feeling than he put to the words and Gwen looked as if she might start crying at any second, which only made him freeze up more. He frowned at his hands.
“Of course,” she said, her voice shaking a little.
They were friends, he thought. She had called him her friend so many times and he felt that it was true and also that there was something more to it but he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. His hands felt clammy and she had a big, thick bandage around her arm. She had clearly seriously hurt herself just to help him and he had done the same for others a hundred times, but it felt different, what she had done for him, and she was staring at him with big, soulful brown eyes…
“I-I should go,” Gwen said quickly. Her eyes were shining with tears and he couldn’t even think of what to say to make her feel better. “I’ll visit again.”
“Good,” he said. “Yes, um… Yes, that would be good.”
She looked at him funny like she couldn’t figure him out at all and he was keenly embarrassed, his cheeks burning. He stared back down at his hands even though he wanted to be looking at her pretty face as much as possible and memorizing the little slant of her nose and the curve of her lips, but then all at once she was gone and he was alone again.
“Good job, Sam,” he muttered to herself once she had left. “Real good job.”
“Are you sure you should be doing such arduous work so soon, sir?” Arthur asked.
Days later, Sam was back home. It had felt surreal to come back to his big mid-century modern mansion in the hills over Hollywood after an entire year asleep. He was walking - albeit with the help of a cane - which was already more advanced than the doctors had predicted. But the doctors didn’t know he was a shifter and what that entailed. Of course, they still didn’t know about the curse either.
His legs were being stubborn but he strongly felt he’d be back to running his ten miles a day soon
. Still, he was prescribed six sessions of physical therapy and he already knew who had been assigned to his case. He was quite looking forward to that, even if Gwen had visited him two more times before he’d left the hospital and things had been no less awkward.
Now he sat on his lifting bench in his home gym and worked on his arms because he’d tried to work out his legs and they had given him too much grief.
“No rest for the wicked, Arthur,” Sam said easily, grimacing as he went into another set.
What he didn’t say was that somewhere out there, the dark wizard who had cursed him was still plotting and who knew what he had planned next for the city? Sam was just glad nothing too bad had happened while he had been asleep. Although Arthur had reported the events he’d heard about and taken note of during the long year. There were at least a hundred people dead who wouldn’t have been, Sam was sure, if he had been awake and doing his job.
“You haven’t eaten since…” Arthur checked his watch. “Eight o’clock.” It was now nearly one in the afternoon. Arthur wore a black suit. That was his butler’s uniform. Sam had never seen the use of it but Arthur seemed to have strong feelings about wearing it. Now he stood, ramrod straight as usual, in the middle of Sam’s gym, glaring at him as if willing him to agree to eat.
Sam sighed and finally caved, setting the weight aside and getting slowly to his feet while grabbing for his cane. Arthur knew better than to help since the last time he’d tried it.
“Alright,” Sam said. “Let’s eat.”
Arthur smiled and clearly pleased, followed him to the stairs which Sam knew would take him about ten times longer than usual to climb. But the exercise, he knew, would be helpful.
“You’ve got your physical therapy appointment tomorrow morning,” Arthur said.
Sam stopped on the stairs and turned around to fix Arthur with a stern look. “Do you know that that is about the fifth time you’ve mentioned that today?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Arthur said loftily. “I just wouldn’t want you to forget.”
“I don’t think I could if I tried with you around,” Sam muttered before going back to climbing the stairs to the ground floor.
“Good,” Arthur said.
“I don’t really need physical therapy,” Sam said. “I’ll be back to one-hundred percent in a few days most likely.”
“Yes, sir,” Arthur agreed. They reached the top of the stairs and Sam hobbled in the direction of the kitchen. He had missed his lunches at the counter with Arthur.
Sam looked around his house with its occasional side table and art print on the wall. There was a house plant here and there, all of which Arthur had picked out and which he looked after himself. The house was horribly devoid of personality. He had realized how strange this was when he’d manifested the place in his void.
“I think you could use the company,” Arthur said, sounding almost playful.
Sam sighed and sat on a stool at the kitchen counter. he was wearing sweats and a hoodie and he pushed up his sleeves. The place where the IV needle had been stuck for an entire year was already healed.
“If you like Gwen so much,” Sam said, “why don’t you ask her out?”
“Very amusing, sir,” Arthur said dryly. “She liked you, you know. She cares for you very much. That’s why she helped you.”
“And I’m grateful,” Sam mumbled. He could feel himself blushing again. “I don’t know how to handle that kind of thing. I’m a fighter, not a lover.”
Arthur gave him an appraising look. Upon waking, Sam had been pleased to find he hadn’t lost much muscle mass in his year of being asleep. Another advantage of being a shifter, he supposed. He looked healthy and fit and no older than before.
“I believe a large number of women who I have seen looking in your direction would very much like you to think of yourself as a lover,” Arthur retorted.
“Arthur!” Sam laughed breathily. “Is that your way of saying I’m a catch?”
Arthur ignored the question and said, “And Miss Gwen Felici is certainly one of those women.”
“She won’t be for long,” Sam said darkly. “Because I have no game.”
“Game?” Arthur asked, seeming confused. He went about taking the ingredients for a chicken salad sandwich out of the fridge and chopped and spread and put things together while they talked.
“I don’t know how to talk to women,” Sam said, rolling his eyes.
“I know that isn’t true,” Arthur said. “You’ve bought plenty of rather scantily clad ladies through here before. You seemed to pick them up as easily the mail.”
“Yes,” Sam said, chuckling. He rubbed the back of his neck. It was true, but he had never had to talk much to get women to come with him. All he really had to do was, well, look at a woman in a bar and he had a companion for the night who would warm his bed and then leave. He’d never seen a single one of them more than once. “But I didn’t need to try with them. Gwen is different. I...I…”
“You like her,” Arthur said quietly.
“Very much.”
“I think you ought to tell her that,” Arthur said. He was a servant, yes. But he’d always told Sam what he thought and he never lied. Sam had always been grateful for those qualities. “I don’t think she knows it.” He set a plate bearing a giant chicken salad sandwich in front of Sam whose mouth watered. He’d forgotten how good food was.
“Alright-”
Arthur took the plate away again and scowled at him. “Do you promise, sir?”
“Are you serious?”
“Quite.”
“Alright,” Sam grumbled. “I’ll tell her. Please give me my food.”
“Fine.”
10
Delilah
Delilah crouched beneath the slightly open window of Sam’s kitchen and squinted, trying to make out what he was saying to his butler.
Things were supposed to have swung right into the direction of true love since Sam had woken up and that’s not how this mission had turned out at all. Delilah felt she had done the hard work already and things should have fallen into place. She had snuck into Sam’s mind to ask him about the curse, her consciousness hanging out with his while her physical body lay conked out on a gurney in an empty hospital room. Luckily, nobody had found her.
Now Sam was back and Gwen seemed very interested. But somehow it wasn’t enough. It was all Sam’s fault. Delilah had trouble understanding how a totally hot badass like Sam had trouble talking to women but now as she peeked inside the big house that looked as if monks with contemporary tastes lived there, she understood perfectly. Sam had lived and breathed his life’s mission as well as his grief for his friends for so long that he didn’t know much else. He was all locked up inside.
He just needed the right woman to open him up.
And that woman was Gwen.
Delilah had arranged the assignment of Gwen as Sam’s physical therapist. He had originally been assigned someone else and after swiping some nurse’s scrubs and finagling the chart and the computer, he was now assigned to Gwen. That should help, Delilah thought.
But there had to be something else she could do.
Now she watched, smirking, as Sam’s own butler withheld food until his master agreed to tell the girl he liked her.
“Thank you, Arthur,” Delilah muttered to herself.
This all seemed like progress. Perhaps things weren’t dire after all.
Delilah jumped down off the electrical meter she was crouching on top of and started hiking back down the hill, intending to try out a supposedly trendy restaurant near Sam’s house where movie stars were said to hang out (assuming she managed to recognize any of them).
11
Gwen
Gwen felt like an idiot and no amount of rum and Cokes was making her feel less like an idiot. She was sprawled on Annie’s couch, sipping the last of her cocktail which at this point was mostly ice as Annie and Emily played Monopoly while Star Trek: The Next Generation played softly on the televisi
on in the background.
She had always liked to think of herself as autonomous. She dated, sure. She’d had a heartbreak or two, and some really good sex, and some mediocre sex, and a little terrible sex. But she liked to think of herself of just fine on her own. She didn’t need a man to live, which was also different from wanting someone to share a life with… Sometimes the tangle of that was confusing and now things seemed so muddled and downright embarrassing that only her best friend could possibly make her feel better.
“Don’t look sad,” Annie’s girlfriend Emily said sternly. “You’re winning. You have Park Place and all the railroads. The railroads are so sneaky. I feel like whoever gets the railroads usually wins. It’s like the snitch.”
“It’s not like the snitch,” Annie said, smirking.
“Not exactly. Just kind of.”
“It’s not even kind of like the snitch,” Annie insisted. Now she looked up and saw Delilah sulking and clucked her tongue. “Gwen! Sweetie. Don’t be sad.”
“I’m so stupid,” Gwen mumbled.
“You’re not stupid!” Emily said, looking genuinely alarmed. “You’re a physical therapist! And you know a lot about physics! Remember when we watched Nova?”
Gwen snorted and took the straw from her cocktail, fidgeting as she set her glass down on the coffee table. “I’m serious, guys. It’s mortifying. I put so much time and energy into Sam, like...I feel like I know him and not even just because I read his diary. It’s more like I feel like we have this weird connection…” She wanted to say she felt like maybe Sam was her mate. But Emily didn’t know about her shifter nature. But Annie did and even now she looked understanding as if she knew what Gwen was really trying to say. “I felt like he heard me when I was talking to him when he was asleep, you know? I was sure of it. But every time I’ve seen him when he’s awake… Obviously, I was just making myself think that. I must be crazy.”
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