Old Wounds: (A Havenwood Falls Novella)

by Susan Burdorf

  Sherry nodded at him, confused about what he was really telling her. What did he mean by “differences?”

  Before she could ask him for an explanation, they came to her car. It was covered in snow, but otherwise just as she’d left it. Could it only have been last night? So much had happened since that fateful decision to drive down a deserted road in a less-than-perfect car.

  “You stay in here where it’s warm, miss. I’ll get the car in gear. May I have your keys?”

  Sherry dug around in her purse, pulling out the keys and handing them to him. His gloved hand gripped hers for a second, forcing her to look at him.

  “It’ll all be okay, miss. If there’s one thing my Evelyn was always right about, it was that the moon takes care of her own.”

  Sherry looked at him in confusion. What in the world was he talking about?

  In a little over half an hour, they were back on the road and headed toward town. He’d first tried to start the car, but it was still not running, so he’d pulled her bag from the trunk before loading her car onto the truck’s bed, and the bag now rested at her feet.

  Joshua dropped Sherry off at the Whisper Falls Inn and told her he’d call her with the verdict on her car. “Don’t you worry, miss,” he said before closing the door, “we’ll have you back on the road and out of Havenwood Falls in no time. That is, if that’s what you truly want.”

  Nodding to her, he continued on down the road.

  “What an odd thing to say,” Sherry muttered as she watched him go, her car traveling away from her. She hoped the damage wouldn’t be too much, and at the same time, she hoped the repairs would take a few more days.

  “Hello, are you coming in?”

  Sherry turned at the sound and smiled at the young woman who stood on the porch. Glancing around the town, Sherry was struck by how much she liked its quaint shops and houses. This was the kind of town she’d always wanted to live in. It felt like it could be home.

  Pulling her suitcase behind her, she walked up the steps and into the inn.

  The smell inside the building was warm. The yeasty scents of freshly baked breads mixed with the smells of fresh wood and paint from the remodeling work in the lobby, and she felt instantly comfortable here. She wasn’t disappointed in the room, either. It was occupied by a bed, a dresser, a desk with a phone on it, and a comfortable chair with a lamp nearby. There was a large window at one end of the room that looked out over a small garden.

  She set her bag on the floor at the end of the bed and sat on the bed. In seconds, she had laid her head on the pillow, pulled up another beautifully quilted blanket, and let loose the tears she had been holding back all day.

  Wrapped in the warm quilt, she cried away all her hurts. Old wounds had a way of creeping up at the worst of times. This was one of them.

  Chapter 12

  Brad looked at the woman asleep in the bed next to him and sighed. It was time for her to go, but he wasn’t sure exactly how to get the bitch out of his house. She’d practically moved in once Sherry had left in such a tizzy. He knew she assumed she would take Sherry’s place, but he found that idea less appealing than he once might have.

  He’d met her in a strip club after another failed audition. At a low point, he’d invited her back to his house after they’d spent the night doing it in the back of his car. He’d taken her to breakfast, and then, knowing Sherry would be at work, brought her back to their house.

  Well, Sherry’s place actually, since she paid the rent on the small apartment they’d been living in together for the last six months.

  He assumed she’d drive around and come back like a dog with its tail between its legs. But she hadn’t, and now he was beginning to worry. It didn’t help that he was stuck with this chick—Stephanie? Doris? Amanda? He couldn’t remember her name, didn’t even try. These days he just called them all “baby,” and so far none had complained.

  He usually only dated women he knew wouldn’t want more than his body, which he was happy to donate to the cause of making women happy, but this one seemed to want the whole package. Not likely.

  He needed his space; he’d thought Sherry understood that. In his roles as a model and sometimes actor, he needed to be footloose and fancy free. He’d thought Sherry was just a fling, something to fill the time in between jobs. She was fun, and smart, and seemed to really care about him, but his need for a walk on the wild side had doomed them.

  Now he regretted it. The idea that the grass wasn’t always greener on the other side was true. He needed to get her back.

  Looking at the woman in the bed next to him in the cold, harsh light of day, he realized her boob job was sagging, her legs had been subjected to lipo so many times the cellulite had pock marks, and her wrinkles were not as appealing as they were in the darkness.

  He slapped her hip harder than he intended and shoved her to wake her up.

  “What’s wrong, baby?” she asked him with what she probably thought was an adorable sexy pout, but which disgusted him now.

  “Nothing’s wrong. You need to get up. Get out of here. I got stuff to do. Come on, move it.”

  She sat up, calling him every name in the book in words of four letters and more. He ignored her. He walked like a cat stalking its prey toward the living room where he kept a pack of cigarettes hidden in a vase. Finding them, he lit up, even though he knew Sherry hated the smell of cigarettes in the house.

  He’d told her he quit, but it was a lie.

  Like so many other lies he’d told her. They all blended together into a jumble in his mind.

  “Bitch,” he whispered in the empty room.

  “Hey, baby, when can I see you again?” the bimbo stood in the bedroom door, her blond hair disheveled from sleep, her lips pouty and full. He thought about taking her there, on the floor, before she left, but quickly dismissed the idea.

  No sense giving her the idea she had a chance of getting back with him.

  Instead he pointed to the door and silently sent her on her way.

  She turned angry eyes in his direction, giving him the finger before the door closed on her.

  She was already a memory to him, though.

  Watching through the window as she left, his thoughts turned to Sherry. Where was she? Why hadn’t she come crawling back yet? How was he going to find her?

  Then he had a flash of brilliance. At his last audition, he’d sat next to a private investigator, someone with the ability to trace vehicles. What if he reported Sherry’s car as stolen and had him trace it? Now, where did he put that guy’s card?

  A short while later he’d found the card and was chortling with glee to think of the surprise on her face when he showed up to surprise her. He imagined the reunion, which would involve a lot of time under the sheets, because the insult he’d thrown at her about being a bad lay was a complete lie. She was definitely nota bad lay. She was probably the best lover he’d ever had, and it had taken her running away to prove that to him.

  In twenty minutes, he was connected to the private investigator and detailed his problem.

  “It’ll take a little time,” the PI told him. “I’ll get back to you when I know something. That’ll be $200 for a motor vehicle trace. Fifty up front, and the rest when the information is found. Agreed?”

  Brad hesitated—he had exactly $350 in the bank—but he was certain Sherry would be happy to repay him once he’d won her back. He could tell her it was “research” for his next role.

  “Yep, that would be great.”

  A little while later, dressed in a pair of running shorts and a shirt in his signature black, Brad stretched before heading out for a jog. Keeping his body in great shape was important, and no matter what else was going on, he was not going to miss out on his run.

  As he was undressing for his shower, his phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Got that information for you,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “Car is at a place called Havenwood Falls. It’s in Colorado. There
seems to be no address for the garage, just some vague directions to it. I think they have a bus that you pick up at a place nearby. Here’s where you can pick up the shuttle.”

  Brad wrote down the address. “Got it, thanks.”

  Per the agreement, Brad paid the bill, wincing at the depletion of his bank account.

  “Well, well,” said Brad with a huge grin, “gotcha. See you soon, Sherry, my girl.”

  Time for a road trip.

  Chapter 13

  Rusty felt the emptiness in the cabin as soon as the door closed behind Sherry. He stripped the bed, but as he stood in front of the washer, he couldn’t bring himself to put the blankets into the machine.

  Instead, he pulled them closer to his face and breathed in the deep rich smell of their lovemaking, reliving it all over again like a movie.

  The feel of her skin, soft and fragrant with their friction, was almost more than he could bear to relive, but he needed to, wanted to. Wanting her was an ache in his soul so deep that it struck him in his bones. It was both pain and pleasure, joy and agony.

  Knowing she was his mate, and knowing he could never force her to be with him, was driving him insane. He paced the cabin like one possessed, and when he had time to think about it rationally, he kicked himself for his hesitance in telling her the truth.

  She was human, he rationalized. She wouldn’t understand; she would have thought he was a freak. She wouldn’t have wanted him, not the way he needed her to. He wouldn’t take her pity. He wanted her wholly, body and soul.

  Why had the town brought her here?

  He wanted to talk to someone about it, and when Joshua had arrived, it had seemed the perfect chance to let down his guard. He’d known Joshua for a long time. Joshua had been married to Evelyn, a shifter like Rusty, even though Joshua was a human. Until the cancer had taken her, the two had been inseparable upon meeting. Joshua had been able to accept Evelyn’s uniqueness without question, his love for her deep and forgiving.

  The two had never kept secrets from each other, their love in the open for all to see. Their union had, while producing no children, been a very satisfying one, the kind of relationship Rusty hoped to have one day with his own mate.

  But Sherry was special. She was a human who had no experience with supernatural or shifter beings. She was probably not even aware supernaturals existed, and had he revealed his true nature, it would have been a great shock. They’d only just met. He couldn’t dump that on her.

  Rusty knew this was true, but it still didn’t take the pain away. He needed to shift, to run in the woods, to become the wolf. He could feel the need driving him mad with desire to race, to rend something apart. His emotions were so raw, so on edge, that he feared what might happen if he did change.

  “Don’t give in to it, Rusty,” Joshua had cautioned him. “If you do, you’ll regret it. You cannot let it control you. You must control it. You are too dangerous right now. Raw emotion leads to poor decisions.”

  Rusty had nodded, realizing his friend was trying to help him, but still hating the need for caution when his heart and body wanted him to do the most irrational thing he could think of, convince Sherry to stay with him…forever. But was love ever rational? Add to that the urgency of a mating denied, and you have the recipe for a disaster.

  “I want to tell her how I feel,” Rusty confessed. “But I sense she is raw from something emotional in her own life, and I’m afraid it will destroy her if I tell her what I am.”

  Joshua paused before speaking again. “When Evelyn and I talked about her change, the way she had to separate her two lives to be with me, the one thing we agreed on was that we would always be truthful. Secrets cause pain. Truth, while it may cause pain, too, is much kinder in the end.”

  “But my truth is the kind that people—those who are not supernaturals—don’t understand. Their view of us is warped by television, movies, and books that depict us as killers with no control over our emotions and needs.”

  “That’s true,” Joshua had agreed. “In the end, I guess it all comes down to trust. Do you trust her to keep your secret? To understand who you are? Not what you are?”

  “How did you and Evelyn reconcile this?”

  Joshua smiled crookedly, the pain of Evelyn’s death still written in his friend’s face, and Rusty regretted mentioning her name.

  “I loved her. That’s all I needed to know. The rest was just window dressing. I wanted to be with her, and who she was inside mattered more to me than anything else. Give Sherry that chance, that choice, to make the decision. You won’t regret it.”

  Rusty was still thinking about that as night fell and he prepared to go out on his nightly prowl.

  Going to the end of the drive, he set off into the woods with thoughts of Sherry on his mind. The moon was high and bright tonight. Reflecting off the snow, the moonlight lit his way on his rounds.

  He found himself on the edge of town, not a normal part of his route, and he knew why. Unable to stop himself, he crept along until he was at the back of the Whisper Falls Inn. Standing in the shadows, he looked up at the large, Victorian manor, wondering which window was the one to Sherry’s room.

  He saw one room at the far end overlooking the garden with its light on. Was that where she was? Was she unable to sleep, too? Was she thinking of him? He sent a silent message to her, hoping she was comfortable and would soon be asleep. And then, as if thinking about her had conjured her up, she was standing at the window.

  He stared, willing her to see him, and fearing that if she did see him, she would guess his secret. He stepped from the shadows for just a brief second and then slipped back into darkness, heading toward the woods.

  The night was uneventful, for which he was grateful. After the recent library fire, which was suspected to be arson, and the body he’ddiscovered in the woods near Wylie’s Gulch a few weeks ago, he was glad to have found nothing out of the ordinary tonight. He turned back toward home, feeling better just being out in his beloved woods. As he loped along the side of the road, he heard the sound of a motor. Leaping quickly from the road, he crouched down as the shuttle passed and behind it, a car.

  He saw a man, hunched over the wheel, his blond hair spiked in a style that was fashionable in movie stars and other celebrities. He was driving slowly, weaving slightly as if tired, and Rusty paused, something about the guy setting off warning bells in his mind.

  Following him a short distance to make sure he didn’t have trouble on the road, Rusty watched as the man rounded another corner and disappeared into the lights at the edge of town.

  What was this fellow doing in Havenwood Falls?

  Chapter 14

  Sherry tossed and turned in bed, unable to get comfortable. Nothing she did made her sleepy. She tried reading one of the books Michaela had loaned her, but she couldn’t concentrate. She tried a warm shower, but that just made her think of Rusty and his cabin.

  She tried warm milk and a chocolate chip cookie, which Michaela had brought to her room, but that just made her less tired, not more.

  Finally she stood up, her restlessness a surprise to her. She was exhausted. She should have been asleep hours ago, but here she was, pacing her room. She finally felt herself drawn to the window.

  Looking down, she saw the garden, still and silent in the night. Her eyes were caught by movement at the edge of her vision. A large dog, or possibly a wolf, sat on its haunches watching the inn. She felt a shiver, but not of fear. Rather, she felt a familiarity with the wolf.

  Raising a hand to her forehead, she touched the small bandage she’d replaced earlier that night and then watched as the animal slipped back into the shadows and she lost sight of it.

  Was it a dog? Or was it something else?

  She continued to stare out the window for several minutes, but the creature never returned.

  Finally, exhausted, she fell into bed and slept the night through, her dreams populated by a wolf that became at various times and an angel and a man.

 
; Chapter 15

  Driving into town so late, Brad’s options for lodging were limited. The lights of the Whisper Falls Inn were dark, indicating they were not welcoming guests at this hour, so Brad drove to the nearest motel where he got a room for the night.

  The clerk grumbled and made pointed remarks to the time, but Brad ignored him. Paying with a credit card, he had to think if he still had any room left on it. Sighing in relief when the card went through, he took the key and went to his room.

  Throwing his bag on the bed, he lay down, careful to stay on top of the covers. He didn’t need to catch anything while here, and who knew who had been in this room—and doing what—before he’d arrived. He hoped Sherry would appreciate the effort he made to get them back together.

  Falling asleep, he dreamed of the reunion the two would share when they met again. He was sure she was staying someplace better than the rathole his limited funds provided him.

  Chapter 16

  The next morning, Sherry woke up and headed downstairs. The first thing she needed to do was buy some new clothes. She couldn’t wear half of what she’d grabbed when she had run from her fiancé’s indiscretion. She definitely needed some new shoes.

  She liked Michaela, the young woman who managed the inn. If she were to stay around, Sherry had a feeling the two women would become great friends. Michaela was always busy running the inn, and with all its remodeling needs, it made her time to visit pretty limited. Sherry felt guilty keeping Michaela from what she needed to do, so she curtailed her interruptions as best she could.

  Pointed in the right direction by Michaela, she found herself at Backwoods Sport & Ski, the local outdoor shop where she picked up some jeans, sweaters, and a new sweatshirt with “Havenwood Falls” emblazoned across the front and a ski jump and ski slope in the background. Complete with thick socks and hiking boots, she felt like a new woman in her new clothes. She had also picked up some mittens, a hat, and a scarf in her favorite shade of blue. She almost felt like dancing down the street.