“And I uninvited you! Two months ago! Get out of my apartment!” I pulled out my phone and dialed 9-1-1.
“Grace. Don’t do this.”
“Just leave. Get out now.” I shrunk away from his outstretched arms and he dropped them to his sides, that perpetually confused frown on his face.
“This isn’t how it works. You can’t leave me. You’re mine.”
“9-1-1, what’s the address of your emergency?”
I looked at him, begging him with my eyes as I recited my address to the emergency operator. Still looking utterly shocked, Alex stepped around me and finally left.
When the police arrived, he was long gone. They said there was nothing they could do, but they advised me to file a restraining order, so I did. I hadn’t seen him in person since then, but little clues to his continued presence kept appearing. Flowers left anonymously at my apartment. My car brushed perfectly clean when every other vehicle in the school parking lot was covered in three inches of snow. A coaster from the bar where we’d met, tucked into my mailbox. A box of my favorite chocolates left on the hood of my car in a parking garage. Worst of all was the disappearance of my memento box. It had been filled with personal, sentimental objects I’d collected over the years. After Alex left, it was gone from my closet, and I never saw it again.
I did everything I was supposed to. I documented every incident and contacted the police. But with no concrete proof that the gifts were from him, they said there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t track him down. He had no forwarding address. The job he’d told me he had didn’t actually exist. The few friends of his that I’d met couldn’t be tracked down, either.
That’s when I’d decided to leave. The city felt claustrophobic—I wanted somewhere wide open, with few people. There were too many places and faces to hide behind in a big city. I’d hoped getting far away from Alex—and away from the monotony of my life—would help wake me back up, bring back the old Grace, who cared about things and wasn’t just drifting through each day on autopilot. So I’d looked for jobs in Alaska and Hawaii and the Rockies and the Appalachians, and the Cascades. I’d even looked at a few international opportunities—teaching English in Japan, in Costa Rica, in Ukraine.
Margaret Huditiltik and the Teekkonlit Valley school district were the first to offer me a position, and that’s what made the decision for me.
But now, here I was, all the way in Alaska, and nothing had changed. I was still hollow and frozen inside. I was still existing purely out of the habit of being alive. And Caleb, with his sneering mockery, had been a little bit right. I’d come to Alaska partly in search of change. Just like every other naive outsider.
Chapter Eight
The flight back to Longtooth was a quiet one. I could feel Caleb ruminating over what I’d told him. I vacillated between humiliation and anger. How had I read him so wrong—to think he was going to kiss me when he actually loathed me? But what right did he have to assume the worst of me, when I’d done nothing to deserve it? By the time the Teekkonlit Valley came back into view, I wasn’t humiliated or angry anymore. I was just tired.
The sun had risen and fallen during the time we’d spent in Anchorage, and we returned to Longtooth the same way we’d left it—in total darkness. When we landed on the rough little airstrip and Caleb killed the engine, I turned to face him.
“Please don’t tell anybody what I told you. About my ex.”
He considered me for a moment, not speaking.
“Please.” I didn’t want everyone pitying me. I didn’t want them to think of me as a doormat with terrible taste in men who ran away from trouble instead of facing it.
Finally, he said, “I won’t say anything.” He regarded me for a moment longer, looking as though there were something more he wanted to say.
“What?” I prompted.
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Frowned.
“What, Caleb?”
Finally, he shook his head. “Nothing.” He dug in his jacket pocket, fishing out his keys. “Go start the truck. I’ll bring your books out.”
We drove back to The Spruce in yet more silence. Without a word, he helped me carry all the books to my truck and load them in the backseat. In the distance, we heard the haunting song of a wolf’s howl. Caleb turned his head towards the sound, listening.
“They sound close,” I said, shivering.
His gaze was distant, pinned somewhere above the tree line. “They’re not.”
We walked into The Spruce together. It was dinner time, but I wasn’t hungry, and I didn’t want to socialize. I was physically and emotionally exhausted.
“Hey there, Gracie,” Arthur greeted me as I walked into the dining room. “Caleb.”
“Hi, Arthur.” I bypassed the counter, heading for the stairs. “Can you let Natasha know I’m not going to have dinner tonight?”
“Everything okay?” It might have been my imagination, but I thought his gaze landed accusingly on Caleb.
“She’s fine,” Caleb said.
Arthur ignored him. “Should I have Tasha send something up for you?”
“I’m alright, thanks. I have some stuff in my fridge.” I had nothing in my fridge. But I needed to get away from everybody and everything. I’d survive until morning on an empty stomach. I made my way upstairs, listening for the sound of Caleb’s footsteps. To my great relief, he didn’t follow me.
It was only five in the evening, but I changed into an old t-shirt, turned off all the lights, and fell asleep.
“Grace…”
The voice called me out of the peace of sleep.
“Wake up.” The voice was familiar, but I struggled to place it. “Get up, Grace.”
The covers slid away from me as I sat up. Moonlight slanted through the window, limning the edges of everything in my room. And there, on the Juliet balcony, the silhouette of a man. A scream rose up in my throat, but couldn’t escape.
“Hello, Grace. I’ve been looking for you.”
I recognized the voice finally—Alex. He shifted closer and the moonlight slid over his pale, angular face. He looked so severely handsome, he could’ve been carved from ice. His eyes glinted like silver shards. A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.
“Let me in, Grace. It’s cold out here.”
I tried to scream, tried to leap out of the bed, but my body didn’t cooperate. Instead, I crawled towards the window. Alex's smile grew as I approached.
What are you doing? I screamed inside my head.
“There you go, honey. Open the window. Let me in.”
My throat ached from trying to force out a scream. I remained silent as my hands rose to the window sash.
Alex watched me, his expression fond, expectant. “Keep going. Let me in.”
I gripped the window latch with a trembling hand. I fought against the impulse to open it, tried to recoil. I was locked in place, my entire body clenched, fingers aching from the leeching cold of the glass.
Alex sighed. “Come on, Grace. I worked so hard to find you. Just let me in.”
My hand clenched spasmodically on the latch. “No,” I whispered.
Alex's face smoothed to blank shock. It was the same way he’d looked whenever I’d suggested we see friends or leave the apartment. “What?”
I drew in a haggard breath, filling my lungs to the brim. “NO!” I screamed for all I was worth. “LEAVE ME ALONE!” I threw myself away from the window. My body tangled into something heavy and large. I screamed again as I fought against it, bucking and thrashing. I hurtled off the bed and landed on the floor with a thump.
My own scream was still echoing in my ears when I woke up—for real this time—laying on the floor beside the bed, tangled in the heavy weight of the quilt. My eyes flew to the window—empty. The snow on the balcony rail was pristine, undisturbed.
A dream. It had just been a bad dream.
Through the wall between my room and Caleb’s, I heard a crash. A split-second later, I heard his door bang against the
wall, and then he was pounding on my door, making it rattle and shudder in the frame.
“Grace!”
I scrambled to my feet, pulling the door open before he busted it down. Caleb surged over the threshold, nothing more than a hulking silhouette in the darkness. He caught me by the shoulders and pinned me against the wall, angling his body over mine like a shield as he looked frantically around the room. The heat of his body rolled through me like an explosion.
“I’m fine!” I said quickly. “I just had a nightmare. I’m sorry for waking you up, I didn’t—”
“Quiet.” He scanned the room intently. His big body was still positioned over mine, and when I put a hand on his shoulder to push him away, I realized he was shirtless. I jerked my hand back at the same time he flinched away from my touch, as if we’d burned each other. Finally, there was space between us. Enough for me to see that he was barely dressed at all—only a pair of gray sweatpants, hanging low on his hips, not tied at the waist. He’d clearly dressed in a hurry. Probably no underwear.
Shut up, brain.
“Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?” I demanded, trying to hide a spike of adrenaline behind a show of dismay. The moonlight poured over his skin, leeching warm bronze into silver, and highlighting the swells and valleys of his broad, tautly muscled body. A thick, white scar curved over his left shoulder and swooped across the broad plane of his chest. Black hair furred his chest, arrowing down his flat, hard stomach, disappearing beneath his low-slung waistband. I forced my gaze back up to his face and found him staring down at my body. It was then that I realized that I was in similar dishabille—wearing only a baggy t-shirt and thin cotton panties. His dark eyes shone golden-amber in the moonlight, and a predatory smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. I could only stare back, struck dumb by a bolt of pure sexual attraction.
His golden gaze lifted from my bare legs to my face. “Why aren’t you wearing any pants?” he demanded, something playful and rough in his voice.
Embarrassment overcame attraction, bringing me back to my senses. “Shut up,” I huffed, resisting the urge to tug my t-shirt lower.
The smile faded from his face, and he turned away from me, stepping deeper into my room. He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply—just as he had at the mall in Anchorage.
“What are you doing?” I picked up the quilt while his back was turned and slung it over my shoulders, allowing it to fall around my legs like the folds of a cloak.
“You screamed,” Caleb explained.
“I was having a nightmare.”
“You screamed at someone to leave you alone.”
“Because I was having a nightmare.”
He went still for a moment, regarding me thoughtfully. “Was it because of what you told me about your ex?”
My first impulse was to lie. I hated being seen as weak. And Caleb was clearly not an emotional safe harbor. But I was still angry at him for everything—the wrong assumptions he’d made about me, the way he’d treated me because of those assumptions, and most of all, because he’d somehow gotten me to tell him about Alex when I hadn’t wanted anybody to know about that whole mess.
So, instead, I lifted my chin and met his gaze. “Yes. I dreamt that Alex found me. Now, could you leave? I’ve had enough of uninvited men forcing their way into my space.”
Even in the dark, I could see Caleb’s warm skin blanch. He recoiled as if I’d hit him and turned immediately to leave. But as he passed by my bed, he suddenly halted, staring at the window with predatory alertness.
“Hey!” I objected as he got onto the bed. He was only crawling across to reach for the window, but there was still something uncomfortably intimate about seeing him on my mattress, his legs tangled in my rumpled sheets. “I asked you to leave.” I clutched the quilt tightly around my shoulders.
“Quiet,” he said.
“Stop barking orders at me!”
He ignored me, unlatching my window and lifting the sash. Bitter cold poured immediately into the room, chilling me into silence. I shivered and watched as Caleb stuck his head out the window and did that deep inhalation thing again, like a dog scenting the wind.
I stared at him, brow furrowed. “What in the actual hell are you doing, Caleb? This is really weird.”
He pulled his head back in and locked my window. “Just checking the window lock. Sorry for bursting in.” He got off the bed. “I’ll leave you alone.” He gave me a wide berth as he left my room, closing the door quietly behind him. I followed and locked it, standing with my hand on the latch long after I heard his own door close and lock.
The window was at my back, and I was terrified to face it. What had drawn Caleb there? He couldn’t have possibly known that Alex had been there in my dream. So why had he gone to it?
Through the wall, I heard the groan of bedsprings as Caleb returned to his bed. Unwanted heat flushed through me, and I turned abruptly away from the door.
Beside my bed, the window and the Juliet balcony were empty.
Just a dream, I told myself.
Chapter Nine
When I came down for breakfast on Monday, the only available stool was next to Caleb. I’d managed to avoid him all of Sunday, and I’d almost put Saturday’s nightmare out of my mind. But the sight of his broad shoulders covered in faded blue flannel brought to mind the sight of those same shoulders clothed only in moonlight. A shiver chased over my skin and I froze at the bottom of the stairs, nervous. Of all the valley’s inhabitants, the one who liked me the least was the one who knew my greatest vulnerability. Sitting beside him, speaking to him, felt like exposing my jugular to a knife.
Refusing to be cowed, I blew out a harsh breath and forced myself across the dining room. Prepared for Caleb’s stony silence, I dropped into the seat next to him with emphatic carelessness.
“Morning,” Caleb said quietly.
I blinked and swiveled to stare at him. “What was that?”
“Good,” he enunciated crisply. “Morning.”
An itchy flush spread over my skin, a combination of anger and embarrassment. “No you don’t,” I told him in a low voice. “Don’t suddenly start treating me like a decent human being. If I wasn’t worth your time before, don’t put yourself out just because you know about my crazy ex now.”
“What’s this?” Natasha appeared with a coffee pot, glancing worriedly between us. “Caleb, be polite to Gracie.”
“I am!”
“Well, you can go ahead and knock it right off,” I snapped, grabbing my mug so viciously that piping hot coffee sloshed over my hand. I hissed and snatched my hand back.
“Are you—” At my look, Caleb fell silent, though his brows were raised so high they’d disappeared into his shaggy hair.
I scowled at him. “Don’t be nice to me because you think I’m a victim.”
“For fuck’s sake,” he groused, turning away from me.
After that, breakfast was a quiet affair.
At school, I went to the administrative office first thing to turn in the expense request for the books.
“Oh yeah,” Joanne said, flipping through the receipts stapled to the form. “Margaret told me about this. It’s all good. The cost will be reimbursed on your next paycheck.”
“Thanks, Joanne.”
“Is that you, Grace?” Margaret called from her office.
I leaned in. “Hey, Margaret.”
Margaret was at her desk, reading glasses on, staring at her computer screen. She gestured vaguely for me to have a seat, her attention mostly arrested on the screen. “How’d everything go in Anchorage?” she asked.
“Fine. I got the books.”
Margaret glanced up, something knowing in her eyes. “And Caleb?”
My jaw clenched. Forcing myself to relax, I said, “He was fine.”
“Hmmm.”
“Really. He carried books and held doors like an old fashioned gentleman.”
“Hmmm.”
Giving up, I sighed. “He clearly hates me, but I don’t c
are. Not everybody is going to like me in this life.”
“Honey, Caleb doesn’t hate you.”
I gave her a skeptical look. “Come on, Margaret.”
“I know of at least two reasons why Caleb’s acting the way he is, and unfortunately I can’t share either of them with you.”
“Why not?”
“It’s Valley business.”
That stung, the implication that I wasn’t privy to Valley business. “So you think of me as an outsider, too?”
Margaret’s face fell. “Oh, no, Gracie. It’s not like that. It’s just—it’s not something I can discuss.”
“I get it,” I said, ignoring the little hurt that still lingered. I started to rise, but Margaret gestured for me to stay.
“You look good, Grace,” she told me, pulling her reading glasses off so she could survey me. “You look healthier than when you first arrived.”
In the month since I’d come to Longtooth, I’d gained ten desperately needed pounds thanks to Natasha’s hearty meals. Over the last couple of weeks, I’d been thinking that my reflection didn’t look so haggard anymore, but I wasn’t sure if that was just wishful thinking. Hearing it confirmed by Margaret let me believe it was true. The shadows beneath my eyes were fading. My skin no longer looked so fragile and dull, wasn’t laying so close to the bone. When I caught sight of my naked reflection after taking a shower, I no longer looked like a bleached-out scarecrow. My hips and breasts had filled back out and my skin, though always pale, had a healthy olive tone again.
I could stand to gain another ten pounds, but either way, I was happy to see my body looking vital again. I was happy to feel vital again. I wasn’t a hundred percent, though. I was still having nightmares about Alex. Crowds of strangers still made me panicky—I lived in dread of the next party Natasha might invite me to, and a team of huskies couldn’t drag me back into the Blue Moose. But life wasn’t the exhausting slog it used to be. Socializing with the other regulars in The Spruce’s dining room was something I was starting to look forward to. Even generally negative emotions, like the irritation I felt for Caleb Kinoyit, were a welcome change from the numbness I’d been living with for so long. The perpetual coldness was still inside me, but it seemed to be receding, at least a little.
Cold Hearted: An Alaskan Werewolf Romance Page 8
