by Kimber White
As the shower hit my skin, I threw my head back and let the water soak into my hair. I should have packed some product. The little motel shampoo and conditioner would be no match for my mass of hair. I had my mother’s hair, dark, thick, and stick straight. I had her fair, freckled skin, and her pale green eyes. She died when I was seven, and watching me grow into the perfect copy of her both comforted and tortured my father.
“My beautiful Neve,” he would say. “You’ve got the face of my Bonnie.”
My heart ached at the loss of them both now. Nobody left but me. I was supposed to carry on for the two of them, when half the time all I wanted to do was curl into a ball and hibernate until the grief went away. It’s what my father had done for a few years after ovarian cancer took Mom from us. And I was angry at him too. When he got his own diagnosis, I know a part of him saw it as a way to get back to her. Even though he had to leave me behind to do it.
I let out a hard breath as I fought to rinse the shampoo out of my tangled hair. I turned toward the water and let it hit my breasts. I swallowed a mouthful of water and tilted my head back. I did the one thing that drove the pain away. I took a deep breath and sang my go-to warm up piece.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena. Benedicta tu in mulieribus.”
I hadn’t done this in weeks. Months if I’m being honest. I sang this very song at my father’s funeral mass surrounded by all the men of his station house. I still don’t know how I got through it without breaking down. As I hit the sweeping high notes of Gounod’s Ave Maria, a part of me hoped my father could still hear it. My voice was clear and strong, the acoustics of the bathroom perfect as they always are. I sang the chorus twice then opened my throat for the final line.
“In hora mortis nostrae Amen!”
I felt good. I felt clean. The power of my voice drove away the gloom and sadness that had hung over me since I’d encountered the wolf, and I felt strong again. It would be okay. I’d done what I could for her, and I’d done what I could for my father, too. They were at peace, even though I was still left behind.
I sluiced off the last of the soap, and turned off the water. Blinded in the steam, I reached for the stack of towels and tucked one around my body, and twisted the other around my hair. When I opened the door and stepped out of the bathroom, I heard it again. The slow, mournful wail of a creature in pain. I padded across the room and pulled back the corner of the curtain. I looked toward the woods, expecting to see those yellow eyes staring back at me. There was nothing, though.
I was just jumpy. That had to be it. I put on a fresh, white tank top and pink and green flannel shorts. My stomach roiled. In all the excitement I’d completely forgotten about dinner. I checked my phone. It was almost nine o’clock. I thought about the Denny’s across the street, but didn’t want to sit in a restaurant all alone. I peered through the curtain. The rain was coming, the trees whipped into a frenzy. At the end of the sidewalk in front of the motel, I saw the glowing lights of two vending machines.
“Carbs and sugar,” I said. “Sounds perfect.”
I grabbed the key card and five ones out of my backpack, slid into a pair of flip flops and headed down the sidewalk.
“Damn.” I shivered as the air hit my skin. It had to have dropped to about forty degrees. “Pure Michigan, only here can it go from eighty to forty degrees in the space of four hours.”
My vending machine choices were limited. I opted for a Diet Coke, cheese and crackers, a granola bar, and a bag of plain M&Ms. When the rain finally came, it fell hard and fast. If the sidewalk weren’t under an awning, I would have gotten soaked again in a matter of seconds. The air was cool and clean. The scent of wet asphalt filled my nostrils as I turned back toward Room 124. I had that strange sensation of being watched again, and my focus went straight to the woods, but I saw nothing but the trees.
Three doors down from my room, I noticed a black Ford Pick-Up parked on a diagonal across the lot. I didn’t remember it there when Jake dropped me off, and the way it was angled...it seemed pointed straight at Room 124.
When my eyes met the driver’s, I froze. Though I’d just met him, I’d know those eyes anywhere. Even across the parking lot I knew that flash of flint and silver. I don’t know what made me do it. The wisest course would have been to go back to my room and lock the door behind me. But something drew me to him like a tractor beam.
I set the pop and candy on the sidewalk, and ran across the parking lot toward the truck. I forgot about the rain, I forgot about the cold. I was soaked to the bone with my hair plastered against my skin by the time I got there. I pounded on the driver’s window with my palm.
“What are you doing?” he asked. He stared at me with those cruel, beautiful eyes. It was the same question I had for him.
“What do you want from me?” I said, wrapping my arms across my chest. I was fully drenched now and wearing nothing but my white tank top. He would be able to see my peaked nipples plainly if I moved my hands.
“Go back inside,” he said, as if I were the one intruding on his personal space.
“Mr. Tucker,” I said. “Is that your name? What the hell is going on?”
“Just Tucker,” he answered. He was cool and casual while I felt like the Earth had shifted beneath my feet.
I meant to stomp my foot in indignation, to make him give me a straight answer as to why he seemed so pissed at me back at the cabin, and why the hell was he here now. But he was no longer looking at me. There was movement through the trees and when I followed his line of sight, I saw three pairs of menacing golden eyes weaving low and drawing closer.
“Shit,” Tucker said. I stepped back as he climbed down from the truck and slammed the door behind him. “Walk fast, don’t run,” he cautioned in a tone not much more than a growl. He gripped my upper arm and started to pull me with him. My flesh burned hot under his touch and I had to almost run to keep up with his long, powerful strides. He was so big. He towered over my 5’ 3” height by more than a foot.
We got to the door of my room just as three wolves emerged from the tree line. Just as I’d known it when I saw Tucker’s truck, I knew these wolves were here for me.
Chapter Five
Tucker slammed the door behind him and engaged the dead bolt. He peered out of the curtains, while I stood in the middle of the floor, dripping with rainwater and just a little bit of rage.
“What do they want with me?” I asked. Somehow I knew he wouldn’t take the question as absurd.
“It’s the storm and the full moon,” he said. “Makes wild animals even wilder somehow. You should be safe enough in here.”
Safe enough from what? I wanted to ask. And who would keep me safe from him? Tucker turned, and his smoldering eyes made me ask the question in my head again. His face was broad and hard, with a sharp, square jaw. I wanted to reach out and run my fingers along it, and feel the course stubble under my skin.
I ran a hand over my own sopping wet hair, smoothing it back from my face. I turned and padded to the bathroom. I kicked off my soaked flip flops so they wouldn’t stick to my feet. I grabbed the last two clean towels, and tossed one to Tucker. He stood near the doorway, his t-shirt plastered to his skin so tightly I could see the rippled outlines of his chest, and imagined running my hands over that too. His pecs were hard and chiseled, his nipples pointed to peaks under the soaked fabric. I became conscious of my own appearance. If I could see his nipples, he could see mine.
Sure enough, his eyes flicked over me and I pulled the towel close to my chest.
“Why did you come here?” I asked.
“I just wanted to make sure you got here safe,” he answered.
“Why wouldn’t I? Jake works for you, doesn’t he? Did you think he wouldn’t be able to handle driving me two miles down the road?”
“You’ve been through a lot,” Tucker said. I didn’t know him well, and hadn’t known him long at all, but I was done with his half-truths and outright lies.
“What’s going on? Why were you
so pissed Jake brought me back to the park? Who’s Magda?”
Tucker’s eyes widened, then narrowed. He crossed his arms in front of his chest, and a slow smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “You’ve got good ears. That kind of thing can get you into trouble.”
“Why do I get the sense that the only trouble I’m in started the minute I met you?”
That stopped him cold. He tossed the towel across the chair by the door, and reached me in two strides. I had to crane my neck up to keep his gaze. Something in me knew it was important that I did. I had the sense he was testing me somehow. How far could he push me? Was I easily intimidated?
I wanted to glower back at him. I wanted to tell him to get the hell out of my room, and ask him who the hell he thought he was. I could do none of it. The instant Tucker got within an inch of me, my whole body seemed to go numb, and then spark to life all at once. He was heat and fire, and I wanted nothing more than to feel his skin on mine. I trembled, but it wasn’t from the cold anymore.
Then, he did touch me.
He ran his hands over my shoulders and gripped my upper arms. He was gentle, but his fingers left a searing trail over my skin and awakened something deep inside me. He cocked his head to the side. He closed his eyes and inhaled my scent. His eyes snapped open and I saw fire behind them. He let me go and took a staggering step backward.
“I need to go,” he said. His cocksure demeanor had left him. Touching me seemed to have unsettled him as much as it had me. “Promise me you won’t go outside again. Not until tomorrow morning.”
I nodded. “I won’t.”
“Good. You’ve got a ride?”
I nodded again. “My insurance company is sending a rental car in the morning. Then I’ll be on my way.”
“Good,” he said again. “Neve? Am I saying it right?”
He pronounced it just right, rhyming with Bev.
“You are.”
“It’s unusual.”
“So is Tucker,” I said, smiling, trying to break whatever tension had risen between us. “Do you have just the one last name?”
He let out a snort through his nostrils. “McGraw. It’s Tucker McGraw.”
“Ah. So it is two last names, then. Well, it was nice to meet you, Mr. McGraw. I promise to stay the hell away from any wolves I see between here and Ann Arbor.”
He froze again as he reached for the door and looked back at me. Something shifted in that moment, and I had the urge to go to him, to take back the last thing I said. God. What the hell was with this guy? Or more to the point, what the hell was with me when I was around him?
“You’ll be okay,” he said. It was such an odd statement, as if he could read my mind or my emotions. How did he know that’s exactly what I needed to hear?
“Thanks,” I said. “And thanks for checking up on me, I think.” I stopped there. The truth was, it had been a very long time since anyone had.
Tucker smiled again, and this time it reached his eyes and damn near melted me. I didn’t want him to go. I didn’t want him to stay. He was about to walk out the door, and I would leave in the morning and probably never see him again in my life. I felt an ache at that thought that rocked me to my core.
“Goodbye,” I said, before I could put a name to the feelings inside me.
Tucker nodded, turned, and walked out of my life. I watched from the window as he climbed into his truck. The rain had let up again. He flashed his headlights once and I waved as he drove away.
I looked back toward the tree line. Those pairs of golden eyes were still there. But when Tucker’s tires squealed out of the parking lot, they receded until they finally disappeared.
Chapter Six
The rental car was there by eight. I wolfed down bacon and eggs at the breakfast buffet, and was ready to hit the road. The sky was clear and blue, the temperature already in the eighties by nine o’clock. Last night’s storm kicked up a thick blanket of humidity. I tied my hair into a loose bun, and turned my key card into the day desk manager. He was kind enough to warn me about a patch of construction on I-94 and the quickest way to divert around it if I wanted to make good time to Ann Arbor.
“Thanks,” I said, waving my road map at him. Yes, I still liked to use the things. My phone’s GPS was garbage when it came to pointing me to side roads. My father instilled in me well that nothing could take the place of a good map spread out on a car’s hood if you’re really lost.
If I was lucky, and so far I’d been anything but, I’d make Ann Arbor well before my appointment with my advisor. There was still enough time for early check-in at the dorms. I’d asked for a single room and wondered now if that was a bad choice.
Maybe I’d spent way too much time alone in the last nine months. So much of who I was had changed in the last year. The girl I was two years ago bore no resemblance to who I was today. To anyone who knew me from before, I still looked the same. But they knew the captain of the Cheer Squad, the president of the Glee Club, the girl voted Most Likely to Make it in Hollywood. But while all of my friends went off to college, I stayed behind to care for my Dad. They’d moved on, and I felt stuck in some kind of limbo. They were still carefree, still filled with hope and light. For me, I just felt gray space and heartache.
Just before my exit that would lead me to my short cut, I saw the first orange barrels marking the rough spot the desk clerk had mentioned. I got off the exit and headed east along the back roads, just like he’d told me.
The roads were still wet with last night’s rain, and the crisp, white paint of my shiny rented Jeep Cherokee got splattered with mud in no time. Each mile that took me further from Evanston, Illinois, and closer to Ann Arbor was bittersweet. But, I felt my father with me this morning, and it comforted me knowing exactly what he’d say.
You got this, Neve. Keep moving forward.
It’s all I could do.
I flipped down my visor against the high sun. The sky blazed blue, and all traces of last night’s gloom and storm were gone, except for the mud in the roads. I wished I’d asked for a convertible. I wanted to sail down the freeway with the top down, and feel my age again. I was just twenty. For my father, for myself, I would make myself start acting like it again. I did the next best thing, and rolled all my windows down, letting the fresh, August air whip through my hair. It flew around my face and I piled it back on top of my head.
The desk clerk’s side route took me along the Paw Paw River and I was once again surrounded by woods. This time though, the road was clear and the smell of pine and birch was heaven. A chorus of cicadas rose up in all directions—thousands of them must have been hidden in the sun-dappled trees. God. My father would have loved this. He would have driven along behind me with a big U-Haul, like fathers are supposed to when their daughters go off to college. But dammit, I had to be done wallowing in the what-would-have-beens. Had to.
It might have been the cicadas that kept me from hearing what should have warned me. Or, rather, I should have noticed when they abruptly stopped. But where the world had been the sound of those bugs and the trees shimmying in the wind, all of a sudden there was silence. I had only a split second to process the change in the air and then two great yellow eyes stared me down from the crest of the next hill.
I slammed on the breaks hard, the car swerving. I kept control of it this time. No careening into a nearby ditch. But, the road beneath me was mostly dirt and gravel, and my tires spun just like it was a sheet of ice. I came to a stop just a few inches from the massive, growling head of a red wolf. Its dagger-like teeth were bared and dripping from saliva. For a moment, I sat transfixed, unable to move, unable to breathe. He snapped his jaw twice, making his dangerous intentions clear. If it weren’t for my windshield and two tons of steel, he likely would have snapped my head off.
I laid on my horn, but the wolf only snapped its jaws again. God, he was huge. Other than the one in the road yesterday, I’d only seen them this close in the zoo. But this creature seemed so much bigger than the zoo wolves,
with thick, curled paws that he stomped against the road with, reminding me of a bull ready to charge.
I put the car in reverse, and turned my head to back away. From either side of the road, loping through the trees, were three more monstrous gray wolves. They circled and surrounded my car. I said a silent prayer of thanks now that I hadn’t insisted on a convertible. I didn’t want to run them over. Though their menacing threat was clear, they wanted to do me harm. I wanted to get out of here without making road kill out of another of their kind.
But, soon I wouldn’t have a choice. The four wolves edged closer and closer. Each one snarled and chomped a few inches from my bumpers. The leader in the front rose up on his hind legs and raked his deadly claws across the hood of the car. Then he hopped up all the way and the aluminum frame of the car shook, threatening to cave in from the weight of the beast.
Shaking, I reached for the wiper blade and sprayed fluid, hoping to get the creature in the eye, maybe distract him for the few seconds I needed to slam on the gas and get the hell out of here. But, the car wouldn’t budge. My rear tires spun and stalled, stuck in the mud. I put the car in gear and slammed down the accelerator. The car lurched, but then stuck again. I saw great chunks of mud fly up from my rearview mirror.
A moment ago, this had been a strange, frightening encounter. Now, I knew it was about to turn deadly. The wolf on my hood narrowed his gleaming yellow eyes and lowered his head, giving me an even closer view of his sharp fangs. He meant to use them on me. I sensed his desire to rip the flesh from my bones, if he could just get through the windshield. I had the presence of mind to roll up the windows just before one of the wolves flanking my vehicle lunged.
