by Holley Trent
“I’d offer to buy you a new one,” Lanie said, “but I imagine it wouldn’t be the same.”
“You’re right. It wouldn’t, but…” She stole a glance at Lanie and took a bolstering breath before continuing.
Courage, Coyote. Find some.
“Thank you for the offer. I know you mean it sincerely.” Because Lanie was perfect and always fixed things.
Lanie gave a curt nod.
Diana let out the breath, grateful Lanie wasn’t going to dwell on the topic. She was also grateful that Lanie wasn’t going to state the obvious: “If I’d been there, I could have helped you.”
Diana opened the fridge and scanned the beverage options. She needed something stronger than water but weaker than vodka.
She settled on beer.
She held up a bottle in offer to Lanie.
Lanie shook her head. “Just water, please.”
“Flat or sparkling?”
“You have sparkling water?”
“No. I’ve just always wanted to ask someone that. As you know, I’m not much of a hostess.” Diana lifted the filtration pitcher from the bottom shelf and set it on the counter. She quickly found Lanie a glass and left her to her devices in the kitchen.
Tossing the beer’s twist-off cap into the trash as she went, she headed to the chests. She wanted to take a good look at those locks.
“Are you settling in well here?” Lanie asked from the counter. She’d poured her water and was nursing the glass with both hands.
“Surprisingly, I think I am. I never expected to stay, you know?”
“Tell me the story. I’ve only caught bits and pieces.”
“Oh.” Diana set her beer atop a coaster on the coffee table and settled onto her shins and knees in front of the first of the chests. She lifted its lock and studied the underside. No brand insignia. No markings. What she knew about locks could probably be printed on a piece of paper small enough to discard in a thimble, but she got the feeling that those locks weren’t modern. They looked about as old as the chests, and those were verifiable antiques. Snipping the locks off with a bolt cutter didn’t seem right.
She ferreted her phone out of the pocket of her romper and did a quick search for local locksmiths.
“Well,” she said to Lanie as she worked, “pretty much what happened was back in April, I think, my father called me and told me that he was sending me to New Mexico to see what Blue was doing with the pack down here.” Talking to Lanie about Coyote shit felt strange and forbidden, but Lanie had been right. Blue would have told Lanie everything she wanted to know if she asked. At least if Diana relayed the story, she could tell it her way. “I was supposed to be very present, you know? I was supposed to make sure Blue knew I was here and why I was here. My duty was to report back about the situation.”
“And what exactly was the situation?”
Diana wasn’t certain how well she could explain everything without doing a deep dive into Coyote politics. She’d always tried to shield Lanie from those. She wanted to keep Lanie out of that part of her life completely because all too often, lovers became pawns. Diana was the daughter of one controversial alpha and the sister of another. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that any territory she went into, she was going to encounter Coyotes with strong opinions about her—good or bad.
She fired off a quick text message to the first locksmith that turned up in the search, asking about her availability.
“Let’s see how I can make this digestible for an outsider.” Diana reached back for her beer. “The Coyote pack here in Maria had been without an alpha for a while. The demigoddess attached to the pack—”
“Willa.”
“Right. Willa. Well, she’d put out some feelers for a new alpha. She couldn’t manage the pack. She doesn’t have the constitution for bossing people around, and she isn’t a shifter. She needed someone with actual Coyote magic.”
“Go on.” Lanie’s face gave nothing away, beyond her exceptional focus.
She’d never made Diana beg for her attention. If Diana had things to say, Lanie listened intently, even if she fully intended to declare Diana’s statements “bullshit” when she was done. “She’d sometimes say, “I’m not going to let you get away with that, Diana. You can do better.”
Idly, Diana twirled a tendril of her hair between thumb and index finger, remembering those conversations. If anyone else had called Diana out the way Lanie had, Diana would have gone on the defensive. She would have dismissed them. Lanie had always made Diana feel like she said those things because no one else would and because she loved her.
Loving Diana must have been very hard work.
The wilder part of Diana writhed with frustration inside her consciousness. The dog was sick of being pitiful, but Diana couldn’t think of an immediate cure for that, especially not when the cause of her longing was less than fifteen feet away.
Stay on topic, woman. Don’t dwell on the heartbreak.
“Right, so,” Diana said with forced enthusiasm, “Blue found out about the gig. I think he was supposed to ask around and make a list of who he knew could do the job, but he ended up deciding to step into the role in an interim capacity. That was what he told our father. He presented it as a good opportunity to learn about the muscle down here, and whether or not there was potential for the pack to become an affiliate of the one in Sparks.”
“Obviously, your father didn’t completely trust that.” Lanie’s voice was closer.
Diana’s body was tense.
Farther away was better. The compulsion to sidle up beside her so Lanie could wrap her arm around Diana’s waist the way she always did was easier to ignore from half a room away. A glance over Diana’s shoulder revealed that Lanie had moved back to the sofa. She sat on the cushion nearest the window, water glass in hand, legs crossed primly at the ankles.
She was always so well mannered, but of course she was.
Diana had met her mother. The woman was prim and immaculate. She’d been polite enough, but she’d looked at Diana like she was the trash the dog had dragged in. Apparently, she could see right through the pretty floral dress Diana had bought especially for the meeting and peg her for the mess she truly was. Lanie never had told her what her mother thought of Diana.
Diana hadn’t asked, either. Her self-esteem was already fragile enough.
She looked down at the flashing screen on her phone. There was a message from the locksmith:
Gotta go service a car lockout, but I can look at your problem in about an hour. Address?
At the welcome distraction, Diana’s breath fell out in a whoosh of relief. She thanked the woman and sent her the address. She needed to walk the tightrope with Lanie for just a little while longer.
To Lanie, she said, “No, my father didn’t trust Blue. That was to be expected, though. Whenever an alpha has a son who’s also got the right mix of strength and magic to be an alpha himself, he’s going to worry about being usurped. At least, he is if he hasn’t treated that son particularly well.”
“I could see where that’d be an issue.”
“Yeah. So, Blue knew why I was here. I did the bare minimum to keep our father off my back, and his.”
“And to not get your funds cut off.” There was laughter in Lanie’s voice.
She joked, but she’d gotten the gist.
Diana grimaced, but nodded. She continued, “When it’d become very clear to me that Blue was going to stay here, I found myself becoming invested in the idea, too. He was managing a different sort of pack here and there was a lot of work to do in that regard, but it was…nice to be somewhere where no one looked at me and knew that I was just a mobster’s enforcer. I hated that shit.”
Lanie’s brows snapped together. “You never told me about that.”
Diana didn’t tell anyone about it. She didn’t want to think she was capable of carrying out such cruelty, and she’d told herself that it was expected of her, so it was fine.
But it wasn’t.
The fact that she’d always given the pack women warnings before she turned up didn’t make what she’d done okay. She’d evicted families from pack-owned properties, coordinated repossessions, had assets frozen.
She’d be making amends for some of those sins for the rest of her life. It was a wonder that any of those people still spoke to her.
It was a wonder that any of them had fled to Maria to join Blue’s pack, even knowing that she was there.
Diana took another bracing breath and fidgeted with one of the locks again. “Long story short, I guess. There was a lot going on that I couldn’t tell you about last year. My father had already arranged a marriage for Blue that Blue was looking for a way to get out of, and I knew I was going to be next. I knew my father was eying an alpha’s son up in Cascadia to match me with. I tried to circumvent that. I sent the guy a message directly asking if he’d heard that I was a lesbian.”
“What’d he say?”
Diana snorted and pushed herself to her feet. “He said it didn’t matter. I knew from that point, pretty much, that I was screwed. No one was going to save me. I was going to have to find my own way out.”
“You were going to vanish, weren’t you?”
Shaking out her trembling hand, Diana looked out the window and down Main Street. From her corner apartment, she could just barely make out the activity in the town square. Her mother was probably still out there stringing up lights and hanging wreaths with the other mature shifter broads.
Before Lanie, no one had ever asked her directly what she’d planned on doing.
No one had ever asked if she’d ever thought of running.
She’d thought of running every damn day back then, but didn’t know if she could successfully get away.
“I…was going to try,” she said thickly, clutching her beer bottle for security. “I was going to go someplace where no one knew me and try to start a new life. South America. Australia.” She exhaled a dry laugh. “Poland.”
“You should have come to me.”
“And then what?”
“I would have taken care of you.”
Diana gave her head a hard shake and let out another one of those strained laughs. “You would have become his very next target.”
“I can take care of myself, Diana. I think you forget that I spent thirteen years of my life being trained to solve problems and eliminate threats.”
“And you think you would have still wanted me, knowing all the shit I did? Knowing how many people I humiliated and terrorized?”
“You didn’t want to do it.”
“That doesn’t matter. I still did it. I wasn’t strong enough to say no. I was too weak to push back. Too afraid to—”
“Diana, stop.”
“But—”
“No.” Lanie eased to the edge of the sofa and, saying nothing for a long while, twined her fingers together and peered down at them. When she spoke again, her voice was soft. Lulling. “I’m sure you’ve done the postmortem of every order you took, every act you carried out, numerous times since you’ve left Sparks. Does anything ever change? Hmm? Do you ever tell yourself anything beyond the fact that if you had it all to do over again, you wouldn’t have done it?”
Slowly, Diana shook her head. The chastisements she slapped herself with were always the same. She never thought, I should have been kinder. I shouldn’t have said that thing. She only thought, I should have left sooner. That way, I wouldn’t have had to do it at all.
The past was never, ever going to change, because time machines weren’t real.
“I do that sometimes,” Lanie admitted. “I think back on the things I can’t change and waste too many minutes, too many thoughts. Trust me, I’ve dissected probably every minute I spent in the Army in every possible way. I learned lessons. Now, I’m moving ahead with the knowledge.”
Their gazes met again.
Lanie’s was tender, but forthright. Always so forthright.
“If you want to tell me all your dirt, Diana—I’m here to hear it. But what I’m telling you now is that you don’t have to. I don’t need the nitty-gritty. I don’t need the shameful details. What I need is for you to tell me is where you stand.”
“I’ve always tried to be decent. Maybe I’ll never be decent enough. Maybe I’ll never be forgiven for the things I’ve done.”
“Whose forgiveness are you seeking?”
Diana opened her mouth to tell her everyone’s, but the word caught in her throat. It wasn’t an honest word. It was an impossible word, and so she’d never achieve it.
Forgiveness may have been impossible, but perhaps people could at least understand her. They could know why she’d done what she had and know she was sorry for it. It’d be up to them to forgive her or not, and she had to get past the dread of fearing that they wouldn’t.
The forgiveness she needed most to concern herself with was her own.
There was a knock on the door downstairs before Diana could figure out a way to properly articulate that, and she was relieved.
She hurried down to street level and found the sub shop delivery guy at the door. “That was quick,” she said.
“We’re right around the corner,” he said with a laugh, accepting the twenty-dollar-bill she held out. “Didn’t have any orders ahead of yours. Call us anytime.” He gave her a mock salute and jogged over to his bike.
Back upstairs, she set the food bag on the table.
Lanie hadn’t moved. She was still on the sofa, peering sideward at Diana in that curious way she always did when she had something profound to say.
Diana didn’t know if she had enough mojo left for Lanie’s profoundness. She needed silliness or her mood was going to be too dark for anyone to bear. That wouldn’t be fair for those sweet Girl Scouts she was supposed to chaperone later.
“They always bring me way too many mayo packets,” Diana said as she unloaded the bag. “I haven’t had to buy a single condiment since I’ve moved in.”
Lanie stood. She made her way to the table with a leisurely amble, hands behind her back, shoulders squared.
She looked like she was about to dress Diana down for being such a useless shit, but she didn’t say anything. She pulled the sandwiches closer and read the hastily scrawled labels on the wrappers.
Perhaps Diana had been presumptuous. She’d ordered what Lanie always ate—or had eaten. She should have asked, but she hadn’t been thinking clearly. Still wasn’t.
But Lanie sat, picked up the pastrami on rye, and bird-dogged the sole mustard in the mountain of mayo packets.
Diana was able to breathe deeply for the first time since Lanie’s arrival.
It seemed ridiculous to feel relieved over such a small thing, especially when her intent was to make the woman leave. Diana would have been doing everything in her power to make the woman uncomfortable, so that she could be comfortable.
But instead, Diana was searching the cabinets for the good napkins and pinching open the premium bag of pita chips she’d hidden from Blue the last time he’d visited.
She sat across from Lanie, fidgeting with the wrapper of her sandwich and hoping Lanie couldn’t hear the pounding of Diana’s heart.
She’d walked away from scuffles with Coyotes, Cougars, Bears, and Wolves without breaking a nail or a sweat and without ever getting her blood pressure up.
That woman, however, defeated her just by sitting there.
CHAPTER FIVE
Diana had barely touched her sandwich, and she kept looking at the clock. She looked at it so much that Lanie felt a rare surge of irritation rise. “I’m certain there are numerous other things you’d like to be doing right now,” she said flatly.
“Huh?” Diana faced forward, blue eyes wide with confusion.
“You seem preoccupied with the clock.”
“Oh. Well, I’m just wondering if
the locksmith might finish before I’m due to do a thing.”
“A thing?”
“With the kids. The paranormal weirdoes in Maria established a Scout troop for the girls. Shifters and witches, mostly, and few stray humans who don’t know any better.”
Lanie arched a brow. She hadn’t expected that. Perhaps she should have. Diana had never been the predictable sort, but fortunately, she was predictable in her unpredictability. She’d never done anything that truly shocked Lanie, except dumping her.
“How did you get lassoed into that?” Lanie asked.
“I have no idea. Sometimes, I think I’m just in the right place at the right time. Someone will express a need, and I’ll find myself volunteering.” Diana shrugged and picked up her sandwich. “The spirit of volunteerism is a pesky little demon, and I’m apparently unable to exorcize it.”
Lanie laughed. She couldn’t deny that she, herself, had been swindled out of free labor more times than she could count. “What time are you supposed to meet them?”
“Five.”
“I think you’ll make it.” Lanie certainly wasn’t going to hold her up. She wasn’t about that. She’d never tried to hold Diana back, but Diana seemed to forget that at times.
“What time are you expected in Albuquerque?” Diana asked.
“Morning. Early afternoon. Sometime in there.”
“Oh,” Diana mouthed. She took a bite of sandwich, gaze tracking toward the ceiling.
Naturally, Lanie’s went there, too. There was no Wild West mural on it, fortunately, only exposed beams and boring black light fixtures. “Do you see something up there I don’t?”
“No.”
“Is making eye contact with me so difficult? It didn’t used to be hard for you.”
Diana sighed and set down her sandwich.
“In fact,” Lanie continued, “I have explicit memories of your gaze being exceedingly focused, even when I put you in some very overwhelming situations.”
Diana tugged at the collar of her romper-robe and breathed out a dry chuckle.
“You’re the only one who was ever able to do that, you know,” Lanie said.
