by Emma Roman
“I don’t understand… You let me in here, and… You could have just said no, Sylvie.” He closed his eyes. “I would have stopped.”
“I didn’t want you to stop.” Her voice was pained and quiet, and it called him forward.
Paul stood and tried to cross the room, but she pulled back.
“This has to be goodbye,” she said, tears falling in earnest. “I need you to go.”
Confused feelings whirled inside him, but he couldn’t be that guy. The one who wouldn’t abide by her wishes. He’d been fucking abiding for two years. He fisted his hands and walked toward the door.
“I only came here for answers,” he said, resting his hand on the door knob.
“I know.”
“I didn’t come here to have sex with you.”
“I know. But we can’t…” Her tone got so quiet, he couldn’t tell if she finished the sentence or not. We can’t do this anymore.
Except all he wanted to do was this. He wanted to take her back to the bedroom and make her come on his tongue, and then he would be inside her again, and they would fall asleep in each other’s arms, like they used to.
Like they should.
Sylvie hung back, still plastered against the refrigerator, her arms wrapped around her body. She couldn’t be saying no any more clearly. Everything about her was saying no. He had to respect her wishes.
Whatever was keeping her from him… He would find out, and he would destroy the reasons. They had to be together. There was no reason he could see that should keep them apart.
He pushed off from the door, and walked across her porch. The snow was falling hard, and the little reprieve of her overhang made the space feel like it was an island in an untameable sea. Isolated, with the world rushing around it, but contained. And safe. He used to think of her as a safe place.
But now… she wouldn’t even give him the dignity of closure.
And somehow, it made him want her even more.
***
Sylvie leaned on the refrigerator, tears streaming down her face. Her insides felt like they would burn through her skin. She’d sent Paul away. For the last time. Emotion choked her and she sagged to the floor, crying.
She heard Paul’s footsteps, his truck starting…when he’d been inside her, she’s heard his heart beating. And felt the magick swelling around them. Thankfully, Paul couldn’t see the magick, or there would have been no way to get him to leave.
If he knew what it meant. If he had any idea. If anyone did…
Sylvie pounded the floor and let the scream she’d been holding back tear out of her chest. She screamed until her throat was hoarse, until her air was gone. The rumble of Paul’s engine covered up her anger.
She stood, pulling back from the memory of his touch. The magick was still too real. There was no doubt in her mind, after Paul came to her house, that the understanding they’d had was over. He wasn’t going to stop.
Uncle Caleb was right. She needed to leave.
She walked to the counter and picked up her cell phone, powering it on. It was time to call her uncle and make arrangements to—
A sick screech of tires and crash of metal froze all her muscles. Her heart dropped to the bottom of her stomach, and kept dropping. Sylvie tried to run to her door, but her body wouldn’t move. She swallowed and pushed at her breath.
Sylvie put one foot in front of another until she was through the door and out into the cold night. The snow continued to fall, and a pair of headlights cut through the shimmering flakes at an unnatural angle.
She ran through the snow, her slippers wet, her feet cold, and came to the edge of the road. At the end of a long pair of skid marks was a long, silver semi truck, and the strange-angle of headlights shone out from the deep ditch on the other side of the road.
Speed came to her, fuelled by her thrumming blood, loud in her ears, and she sprinted to the edge of the semi, her feet bitten with the cold. Her wolf circulation would only help so much in these extreme temperatures, but she had to see the vehicle in the…
The familiar snub-nosed black truck was on its side, with the crumpled driver’s door facing up. Her heart seemed to stop beating. She couldn’t breathe. Paul.
Sylvie looked up at the semi to see the driver climbing out, shaking his head, and she slid down into the deeper snow, the cold numbing the skin of her calves, then her thighs, her fingers, arms, elbows. She clawed through the drifts and climbed up the vehicle, all of her limbs throbbing in the cold.
The metal was ragged and scarred on the driver’s door, the window shattered from the impact. The front of the pickup had crumpled in so violently, the hood had popped open and the insides were pushed at odd angles, like intestines spilling out of a wound. She pulled herself over the opening and her breath froze in her lungs.
Paul hung in the seatbelt, limp. She reached for his face and her hand slicked across skin. Sylvie’s breath wouldn’t come. She couldn’t call out for him. She could only grab and grapple and tug. Even with her wolf strength, she couldn’t lift him free. The belt was the only thing keeping him upright. He was dead weight.
If I could just get warm. She tried to steady herself, but her hands were wet with Paul’s blood. No. No. No. No. This can’t be happening.
A million thoughts raced through her head at once. His heartbeat was so faint, even her supernatural hearing could barely place it.
He’s going to die.
She saw a flash of Maggie Gallagher’s face, telling the story of her return from Mexico, of the moment on that island when she’d known she was losing her mate, that it was possible to save him. Sylvie had been taught the words to say. Maggie had done it, with Luther. Turned him.
I have no choice.
Sylvie gripped his limp shoulder and whispered the words to the wolf spell, twice. Energy slid from her body and into Paul’s and she collapsed against the ragged truck.
Please, she prayed to Fate. Please. Let this save him.
“Holy shit,” cursed a male voice from behind her. Sylvie turned her head to see a man in jeans and a heavy jacket standing up the ditch, at the edge of her footprints. “Are you okay down there?” he called out.
“I’m fine,” she said, clearing her throat. She concentrated on listening to Paul’s heartbeat, and it began to get a little stronger. “I’m coming up.”
Sylvie wanted to touch Paul, to climb through the window and hold him, to cut him out of that seatbelt and carry him up to the road and into her house, and never let him go. But she couldn’t. She’d call her uncle, and he would handle it.
Her heart ached to stay.
But she’d saved his life. As the wolf claimed him, it would heal him. His heart would get stronger, his blood would pump, he would be warm, and safe, and healed. And she would have to leave him.
She rested her hand on his shoulder one last time. “I love you, Paul Banfield.” The words brought tears sliding down onto her face, and she slipped her other hand to the back of his neck. “I love you. I’m so sorry.”
Sylvie pulled herself out of the cab of his pickup and slid back into the snow. She scrambled up the ditch and pulled her wet robe around her. The trucker pulled off his jacket and put it around her body.
“What are you doing down there? You’re going to die of frostbite.”
“I’m fine. That’s my—” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Everything in her wanted to say, that’s my mate, but she pointed across the road instead. “I live right there. Just let me go in and get dressed and I’ll come right back out.”
“You stay inside. I called 911.” He gestured down into the ditch. “What about the people in the truck?”
“There’s only a driver. He was wearing a seatbelt, so he looks fine, but I can’t pull him out on my own.”
“Is he bleeding?”
“His pulse is strong,” she said, wiping her hands on her robe. Most of the blood had come off in the snow, but she was so cold. “We shouldn’t move him until the ambulance gets here, in case he
has a neck injury.” But she didn’t mean that, either. When the medics arrived, they wouldn’t understand why he wasn’t more seriously injured. And they wouldn’t know why his cuts healed.
But there was no way to get around the fact that the medics were on their way.
She needed to call her uncle.
“Can I borrow your phone?” she asked, moving her numb feet. “He’s my… he’s my cousin. He was coming from my house. I need to call my uncle.”
“Sure.” He reached into his pants pocket and produced an old flip phone.
Sylvie dialed the number at the Blue Moon. It was so late, but on Valentine’s Day, they would be open until well past midnight. She wasn’t sure who would be there. But someone had to come and be with Paul.
Aunt Gretchen’s voice was cheerful when she answered, “Happy Valentine’s Day, this is the Blue Moon Café. How can I help you?”
“It’s Sylvie. There’s been an accident.” She sniffed. “It’s Paul Banfield.”
A muffled rumble and voices she couldn’t quite make out. The breath that came next was undoubtedly Uncle Caleb. She’d recognize that disappointment anywhere.
“Where are you?” he said, a note of urgency in his voice.
“I’m on Highway 16. Just across from…from my house.”
Another disappointed sigh. “What happened?”
“Paul was turning out of my house, and he… I think he got hit by a truck.” She grimaced at the way the news must sound, but there was no other way to say it with the driver standing beside her.
Another muffled rumble, and more voices, while they undoubtedly covered the phone’s mouthpiece. Sylvie turned back to the trucker with a strained smile and wished she had gone back into her house so she could tell her uncle what she’d done. But he’d know soon enough.
“Is he alive?” Caleb asked, his words tumbling fast. “Can you get to him? Can you touch him?”
“Yes.”
“Can you hear his heart? Is he dying?”
“He’s…” She hesitated. She couldn’t just say out loud, I turned him, he’ll live. But there had to be a way to communicate that he wasn’t in any danger.
“I want you to turn him,” her uncle said, his tone such a low whisper, it was undoubtedly meant for her ears alone. “If he’s dying, you turn him, Sylvie. Do you know the words to the spell?”
“I do.”
A long pause, a relieved breath. “Leave him be, then. I’m on my way.”
Sylvie closed the phone and stuffed it in the pocket of the coat. “My uncle is coming. He will handle everything.”
“You need to get inside and get into some warmer clothes.” He hurried her off. “You can bring my coat back after you get your own.”
Sylvie ran through the snow, the cold cutting at her, but she was awash in emotions that kept her from feeling much else in her physical body. Paul was going to live. He would be a wolf, but he would live.
Her door was still open, and she pulled it closed behind her. The fire had kicked on in the electric fireplace and she stood beside its warmth, holding her cold body tight. The tears came up so suddenly, and she sagged against the gray stone mantle.
At least I got to say, I love you.
She would never see him again, now, for certain. He would become part of the Gallagher pack, and they would bond him to Caleb, and they would send Sylvie away.
But at least he was alive.
Everything stung inside. It had been hard enough to say goodbye the first time, with the confusion etched so clearly in his rugged features. But to have to climb out of his wrecked truck and leave him… She would never forget that moment for the rest of her life.
And she would never love again.
5
Paul opened his eyes to a blurry, throbbing mess. Every part of his body hurt, and the cold had seeped into his truck, through… He turned his head.
The window was gone. Why is the window open? No. Not open. Gone. There were shards of glass everywhere.
Accident.
His head throbbed and he turned the other direction. He was hanging in the seatbelt. Where the hell am I?
He heard an echo of Sylvie’s voice, still, like a memory, but she was nowhere to be found. Was she in the truck with me? But there was no evidence of a passenger. The other seatbelt hung, unused, where it always was.
Paul touched his pounding head and his hand came away wet with blood. The left side of his face hurt and he couldn’t bring himself to touch it. It had to be cut up something bad.
He pulled at the steering wheel, but he couldn’t balance himself. He wasn’t quite sitting in his seat, and he really was hanging in the seatbelt. I must be in the ditch.
“Don’t move, son,” came a male voice from outside the truck. “I need to check your injuries first.”
Paul straightened his back and moved his limbs. No sharp pains. He’d broken bones before. He knew that feeling. There were no broken bones that he could feel. And no numbness, either.
He felt strangely alive. And oddly warm.
Hands came through the window and slipped something around his neck. It was big and white and it stabilized his head.
“I think I’m fine,” he said. “Nothing is broken.”
“Close your eyes,” another voice said, and he did. Something crunched in front of him, and it sounded like they were peeling things off the truck. “Okay,” the voice continued, “Just keep them closed for a minute.”
Paul tried to keep his breathing steady. He concentrated on his body. There was an energy surging through him—must be adrenaline—that urged him to move, even though he shouldn’t.
“I think I’m fine,” he said.
The man to his left choked out a laugh. “You got hit by a truck, buddy. You’re not fine. Just don’t move.”
“No, really.” Paul moved his legs, then his arms. “I mean, there’s pain, but, I think I can move fine.”
“Just keep your eyes closed,” said the man in front of him. “Think of something that will calm you down, and just focus on breathing for me for a second.”
A pang of frustration settled in his chest and he tried to focus on his breath. An image of Sylvie’s face came to mind, and he concentrated on her. The contours of her face, the slight lean of her head when she was deep in thought, the way her shoulders set just off-kilter when she was chopping vegetables at the kitchen counter, like she needed leverage.
The feel of her skin, the taste of her kiss, the sound of her ecstasy. All of it was etched in his memory like Michaelangelo had carved it there himself. She couldn’t say goodbye to him.
His heartbeat seemed to pulse in his ears. Loud. Like he’d never heard it before. He focused in on listening to the world around him. There was still a crunch of glass, and a buzz of voices, but the sounds were so clear and crisp.
“I was just coming around that little bit of a turn back there,” a man’s voice was saying, “and I’d slowed to probably fifty, because of the conditions.”
“It’s a good thing,” said another man—a familiar voice, but he couldn’t quite place it. “If you’d been going the speed limit, you might have killed him.”
“It wasn’t my fault, officer,” said the first man. “I swear, he pulled out in front of me without—”
“There, now.” A louder, closer voice cut off the noise of the first man, although he was still talking somewhere. “You can open your eyes now,” said the person in front of him.
But when Paul opened his eyes, there was no one in the cab. He glanced from side to side, as much as the neck brace would allow, looking for the source of the voices that had been so much louder with his eyes closed.
“Don’t move your head like that,” said the man to his left, who Paul could now see. A burly, mustached guy in a yellow coat. “There, now. What’s your name?”
“Paul Banfield.”
“Tell me what you can feel right now, Paul,” said the man in front of him. A long-faced, middle-aged man in a matching coat, kneel
ing at a weird angle, through the windshield. Like he knelt vertically, where the passenger’s side should be.
Shit. I must be on my side.
He looked out, around the truck, but there was only darkness, and the glow of his headlights still cutting into the snow.
“What happened?” he asked, trying to shake himself out of this.
“You got hit by a semi,” said the horse-faced guy in front of him. “You’re in the ditch right now and we’re not able to right your vehicle, so we’re probably going to have to cut you out.”
“We’ll take you to the hospital,” said Mr. Mustache, turning his head. “We’ve got the ambulance up on the road.”
“No, I’m fine.” Paul shook his head. “I can move everything and feel everything. I’m just sore.”
“Your face is pretty cut-up,” said Horse Face. “You’re going to need stitches.”
“I promise you, I’m fine.” Paul stretched his limbs and turned his head. “I must not have braced for the impact, because I don’t think anything is broken.”
“You might have internal injuries, or lacerations somewhere we can’t see.” Mr. Mustache touched his shoulder. “Just sit still and we’ll cut you out.”
“No.” Paul reached around with his right hand, to find the buckle. “I’m fine. Just let me get this seatbelt off.”
“Don’t move, Paul.” Horse Face reached into the cab to stop him, but Paul pushed the button and the seatbelt detached with a thwack. He fell across the cab and into the broken glass where the window should have been. The snow was cool on his skin, and the glass cut into him. But he didn’t care.
“Dammit.” Mr. Mustache reached for him. “Just don’t move. Let us do—”
“Let me climb out of here myself.” Paul pushed at Horse Face with a little more force than he had planned, and the man flew back against the snow drift.
He crawled through the open windshield, a strange, urgent energy coursing through him. Horse Face pulled at him and Mr. Mustache had come around to restrain him, as well, but Paul was too strong.
