by Wilde, Kati
Today, the entertainment is at the pool. Aside from the parents in with their toddlers, Samantha and Brandon are the only adults swimming. It’s so weird, what’s going on with them. I’m not sure if it’s a competition or friendship or both. And I don’t know how Brandon got past her defenses. Because she’s got guy friends, especially in the sheriff’s department, but I haven’t seen her this unguardedly happy with someone in…forever. Maybe with me. But I can’t pick her up and toss her halfway across a pool, so that she comes up sputtering and laughing.
Or I couldn’t pick her up. I suppose now I could. But won’t. It’s just odd that she’s letting Brandon do it.
I exchange small talk with some of the parents watching their young ones, and respond to a few “Hey, Miss Simmons!” from students—then oof, I totally blow option two. Because Sam sees me and swims over to the edge of the pool, stealing my water bottle and draining it before giving me a quick, concerned look. “Everything okay?”
“Yep. Just making my circuit.”
She laughs at me, because she knows exactly what I’m doing. “Do you need a buddy?”
“No.” I don’t want her to abandon the fun she’s having to baby me. “I intend to grab a plate of food and practice listening in on all the gossip.”
Her eyes light up. “Oh my god. This is going to be the best day ever. You should especially listen in on Robin and Erin, because I’d love to hear how they’re gnashing their teeth about you snagging Ranger.”
Oooh, me too. I grin, then hold up the bottle she emptied. “Another?”
“That’d be great, yeah.”
Great for me, too. Now I can meander purposefully to get her a drink, then meander purposefully back, and kill a little more time. Though I should have remembered the adage about eavesdroppers never hearing good about themselves, because Robin and Erin aren’t gnashing their teeth but running through a critical assessment of my appearance and wondering how an ugly freckled fish like me snagged a guy like Ranger—and predicting that he’ll leave me soon.
Okay. So listening to them wasn’t the best plan.
After delivering the water, it’s on to option three: grab a plate of food and find shade under a tree, away from the tables and chairs where everyone else is seated. And if someone notices me sitting alone and says that I should come and join them, I’ll look at the bright sun and gesture to my red hair and say, “I will! I’m just going to finish my lunch and then I have to reapply my sunscreen, or I’ll burn to a crisp in fifteen minutes.”
Which used to be true. I don’t get sunburns anymore—which is so far the single greatest thing about becoming a werewolf. But no one else knows that. So food, shade, and ginger lamentations.
I idly practice listening again as I head to the buffet table—with my lesson learned, so I’m not actively listening for gossip and also trying to ignore any mention of my name. Which is hard. A name always seems to cut straight through any background noise.
“Hey there, Alicia.”
Ugh. This one isn’t background noise, but right here. I look up from the stack of ribs I’m piling onto my plate. Joy Pritchard is across the table from me, her husband Mike at her side—a husband I’ve just heard is cheating on her with Robin, though Joy doesn’t know yet.
“Joy.” A few years of teaching have allowed me to perfect a bland smile that I usually offer to overbearing parents. “Mike. How’s your summer been?”
“Oh, you know,” she laughs and flips her blonde hair back over her shoulder, a move she’s done since high school. “We don’t have a summer vacation at our jobs. Most people don’t.”
Oh Lord, save me from assholes who don’t think teaching is a real job. My bland smile widens. “That’s why I asked about your summer, and not your summer vacation. Because unless your jobs exempt you from the changing of seasons, you are smack dab in the middle of one.”
Her eyes narrow and anxiety knots my stomach. The only thing worse for me than parties is confrontation. I’m not good at it. Oh, but Joy’s ready for a fight. I can almost smell it on her. As if she was simmering in sour resentment, rarin’ to go even before she saw me.
And I’m such an easy target. Especially without Sam beside me. They’re afraid of her. They’ve never been afraid of me.
“Joy! Mike!” Maria comes up, carrying a tub of sliced watermelon—and completely oblivious to the tension, but that’s okay. Her presence makes ignoring the assholes easier, and I go back to loading my plate.
“Hi, Maria.” Instantly Joy is all bright smiles again, but that sour smell of resentment is still there. “Thank you so much for inviting us. This is amazing.”
“I’m just glad you could come! Help yourselves to anything.”
“We will. I brought a salad, made some room for it on the table with the others.”
“Fantastic. Thank you.”
“I suppose you’re the one who brought the fish, Alicia?”
The knot in my stomach tightens, begins spilling acid that burns and churns through my gut. Why are people like this? Why?
“Fish?” In confusion, Maria scans the dishes. Because of course no one brought fish to a barbecue like this. “Didn’t you bring the chocolate cake?”
I did. Oh god. Now Ranger’s heading this way, jaw clenched and eyes sparking, as if he can sense the painful lump in my throat, the horrible pressure in my chest.
“Oh, it’s just a little joke from way back when,” Joy titters. “Alicia gets it.”
Yeah, I do. I really do. She’s hurting about something—probably her prick of a cheating husband—so she’s lashing out at me. Oh, and I could hurt her back right now. Not with fangs and claws, but simply by spilling everything I’ve heard. I could get Robin, too. I could humiliate and expose all of them, like they’ve so gleefully humiliated me for years.
But that would make me the monster I don’t want to become. And the beast isn’t raging. My claws aren’t out, my teeth aren’t sharp. Instead everything within me is cringing and hurting. For no damn reason, except that people can be cruel and horrible.
“I do get it,” I tell her—my heart thundering, my stomach a pool of acid, but my voice strong. “Your life right now is pure shit, and you’re reaching all the way back to high school to find something to feel superior about. So you go ahead, just keep on doing that. Wallow in your petty little jokes if that’s what makes you feel better. Me, I’m going to eat some ribs and chocolate cake, then go home and let my giant, gorgeous fiancé—who’s crazy in love with me—give me three or four orgasms.”
“I think we can do better than that,” Ranger says gruffly from behind me, his strong arms circling my waist, nuzzling his face into the side of my neck. “Usually we hit about six or seven.”
“Hush,” I tell him, leaning back into the warmth of his broad chest. “I don’t want Mike to start feeling bad about himself, too.”
“You only need one to outdo him,” Joy snaps, glaring at her husband before stalking away.
A flush climbing his neck, Mike plods after her.
Maria stares after them both. “What in the hell…?”
“It’s nothing,” I tell her—though I’m trembling, and I know Ranger can feel it. Trembling, but also feeling amazing. Maybe I’m not such an easy target now. “They’re assholes who deserve each other.”
“Ah.” She turns her gaze toward us, arching an eyebrow. “Also…fiancé?”
I did say that. “It’s not exactly official—”
“Yes,” Ranger says firmly.
Maria fistpumps, then heads toward another table, pointing back at me to say, “You, me. Trenches.”
A laugh shakes through me. “So I guess I’m well and truly caught.”
“You are,” he rumbles against my ear, holding me closer. “You want to go?”
“Not yet. I am hungry. Want to share a plate of ribs?”
“I’ll share everything with you, baby. Do you want to share with me?”
He’s not talking about the ribs. With a sigh, I tell
him, “Maybe tonight.”
“No rush.” He kisses the side of my neck. “Whenever you’re ready. Until then, maybe keep a good hold on me so I don’t fucking rip apart anyone who even looks at you sideways.”
Oh, I’ll keep a hold on him. So tight. But not to save the jerks in this town. Fuck them.
I’m holding tight for me.
9
Ranger
Alicia finds me on the front porch of her farmhouse, sitting on the steps and watching a bunch of assholes light up the distant night sky with fireworks. With a sigh, she sits beside me, wearing nothing but one of my shirts—the T-shirt I had on at the barbecue today, stripped off the second we got home and I got her into bed. The jeans, I put back on before coming out here.
Tugging her closer to my side, I wrap my arm around her waist. “Did the noise wake you up?”
“Missing you woke me up.” She lays her head back against my shoulder, all that red hair in a pretty tangle over my arm. “Are you going to go hunt down whoever it is and scare the shit out of them?”
After no rain for three months, and strong winds kicking in? “Thinking about it. You want to come?”
“I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet.”
“You wouldn’t have to transform.” Which still terrifies her. With good reason. I wake up sweating some nights, remembering Alicia screaming and her bones cracking. “You’re fast enough to keep up.”
She turns her head to look up at me with narrowed eyes. “Are you really going to turn into a werewolf and scare them?”
Shaking my head, I drop a kiss to her furrowed brow. “I called it in to your sister. And it’s better I’m here with my phone, in case one of the spotters sees something flare up.”
Though given what I heard at the barbecue after I started paying closer attention to what people were saying, a part of me wouldn’t care if half the fucking town burned. I don’t understand that kind of petty cruelty. I never will. And although Samantha mentioned it that first weekend Alicia and I were together, I figured the vicious shit was in her past and it was the emotional fallout she was still dealing with. But it’s not. Alicia must have been putting up with that bullshit ever since she came to live with Samantha and their mother.
Though she didn’t put up with it today. I was on my way to terrify the weeping Jesus out of the blonde and her husband, but Alicia took care of it herself. And I still don’t know what it was all about.
She tilts her head, listening. “Is Brandon out again?”
“Yep.”
Just like he has been every night that Samantha is on duty. The schedule’s worked out well for all of us, so we don’t keep tripping all over each other at the farmhouse. Samantha’s got a night shift, and usually heads out a few hours after I get off work at the station. My brother says he goes out into the hills behind their property and wanders around as a bear. Claims he’s giving Alicia and me privacy. But I suspect he’s keeping an eye on Sam while she’s on patrol, because his scent’s all over the town and highway…and not in the hills out back.
At some point, we’ll move into the district ranger’s residence. But I figure if Alicia was ready to go, she’d already have packed a few things. She hasn’t yet, though—and I’m not rushing her. I know she likes the house. I know she loves me. What’s likely holding her back is hanging up in the sky, growing fuller every night.
She looks up at the moon now, her gaze shifting away from another burst of fireworks. The silvery light glints in her green eyes, the moonglow falling gently on a face that dictates every emotion in my heart. When she smiles, my whole fucking world shines. And if a shadow of unhappiness appears, I’m desperate to fix whatever’s hurting her.
“You’re so damn beautiful, baby.”
She smiles now and darts a glance up at me, a blush rising beneath her pale skin. “You make me feel beautiful.”
“You’re so smart and sweet and sexy, you ought to always be feeling that way.”
A laugh shakes her against my side. “You really do love me.”
Because I think she’s beautiful? “Did you doubt it?”
“No.” Her laughter eases into a soft sigh. A faint smile still curves her full lips when she pillows her head on my shoulder again. “I don’t.”
But she must doubt something, because her gold chain still isn’t around my neck. “Are you worried about the full moon coming?”
“Yes,” she says. “But not like I used to be.”
“Just afraid of it hurting?”
She nods.
And it’s the one thing I’m helpless to stop. Which rips me apart, knowing that she wouldn’t have to hurt if her beast was tamed. If I could fix whatever it is that’s holding her back.
My voice is thick as I ask her, “Is there anything you need that I’m not giving you, baby?”
“What? No.” Something in her voice says that she can’t believe that I could think so. She pulls back to look up at me, her gaze searching my face. “You’re giving me everything I need. More than everything.”
But there’s something. Maybe she just doesn’t know what it is any better than I do.
Biting her bottom lip, she continues watching me—then moves up to swing her leg over mine, straddling my lap so we’re face-to-face. With her forefinger, she gently draws a line across my throat where her chain would go.
“Is this about me not taming my beast yet?”
Ah, fuck. I know she’s already feeling uncertain and worried about that. As if she’s not doing something right. I don’t want her to believe that’s what I’m thinking, too.
There’s only one reason I care if she tames her beast. “I just don’t want you to go through the pain of transforming again.”
When her beast is tamed, it should be painless.
She gives me a wry smile. “I’m not looking forward to it, either. And I don’t know much about this curse…but I know that whatever is wrong, it’s nothing you’ve done. Or haven’t done. It’s something about me.”
“There’s not a damn thing wrong with you, Alicia.”
“Well, maybe not wrong. Just…afraid.”
“Of what?”
She shrugs, then wraps her arms around my neck, burying her face in my throat. Shy or hiding, I’m not sure which.
Heart aching, I hold her close, fingers tangled in her hair. Silently I wait—letting her work through whatever it is she’s working through.
After a minute, she says quietly, “You know what’s weird?”
“A whole lot of shit.”
I feel her smile against my skin before she pulls back, fingers still linked behind my neck. “That’s true. But more specifically—I didn’t do the fangs and claws thing with Joy today. Even though I was so…”
Angry. And hurt. She was hurt so bad that I smelled her pain from across the yard, heard it in every word she said. A growl rumbles from me, just remembering.
“That,” Alicia says. “I was so… Grrr. Just so sickened and pissed off. And so disgusted that she was attacking me for no damn reason. But my beast didn’t even try to pop out. She was so afraid. She just wanted to hide. Which is the exact opposite of what I thought would ever happen in that situation.”
Opposite of what I would have guessed, too. Though maybe because I never thought on it too hard. I’ve only seen Alicia’s beast come out twice—once that first night, and once to protect herself when my transformation scared her. It sounds as if what Alicia expected today was more like what happened when she was scared.
But I’ve seen the beast differently. “She was so shy with me, baby—as if afraid of showing me her true self. So vulnerable, even with those teeth and claws. And so hurt when I wouldn’t fuck her without you being fully awake.”
Sudden tears fill Alicia’s green eyes, though she laughs a little through them. “She really is me, isn’t she?”
So sweet and beautiful. “Yeah. She is.”
Nodding, she closes her eyes, teardrops sliding over her cheeks. “It’s so stupid,
you know.”
“What is?”
“The fish thing. I know you’re thinking it’s that joke about how girls smell—”
“Told by boys who’ve never been near a pussy in their lives.”
“And the girls are probably better off for it.”
“Probably.” A dickhead like that wouldn’t know what to do with a pussy, anyway.
“But this is even dumber. And I think Samantha already told you… Well, let’s just say I was awkward when I was younger. Even more awkward than I am now. Like a million times more.”
She doesn’t seem a bit awkward to me. Just like she isn’t with her sister or any of her close friends. But maybe that’s how she feels with people outside her circle.
And I remember how Samantha described her. Wild red hair, big teeth and braces, thick glasses. “Smart, too?”
“Pure nerd,” she confirms. “I moved here my freshman year in high school. My dad and Sam’s mom had gotten together, but Sam and I didn’t get along right away. She wasn’t ever mean, it was just that we had absolutely nothing in common. And she’d lived here all her life, had her friends, was a year ahead of me. So I was the little sister that she never asked for. But when her mom and my dad broke up, and he didn’t want me…she was so supportive and protective of my feelings, and made a point to hang out with me more. And that helped. Because I didn’t make any other friends that year.”
“Ah, baby.”
“No, that was okay.” She shrugs a little. “I’m never going to be the girl with loads of friends. And I prefer it that way. Most of the time, I’d rather just read or do my own thing.”
“I’ve seen that.” Whether on her phone or in paper, she’s always got a book ready to whip out and fill the time. “And considering that I was living alone in the middle of nowhere when you met me, you’ve probably figured out that I do all right on my own, too.”
“I did.” Her gaze is soft and warm. “I like that about you. And because people who do well on their own usually aren’t the type to fuck around with other people just to stave off boredom.”
