“If you go chimp, I’m not cleaning your room,” Mom warned. “And you can’t go outside. You were just in the hospital two nights ago.”
“For a fever that is now gone,” I pointed out. Just beyond her, I could see the sky, deep blue and warm-looking, and, beneath it, the somehow pregnant-looking branches of the trees reaching into the blue. Everything in me itched to be outside, smelling the oncoming spring. The living room felt gray and muted in comparison. “Plus, vitamin D is great for sick people like myself. I won’t stay out long.”
When she didn’t say anything, I found my clogs where I’d left them in the hall and slid them on. As I did, silence hung between us, speaking more strongly to what had happened that night than our few exchanged words had.
Mom looked profoundly uncomfortable. “Grace, I think we should talk. About”—she paused—“you and Sam.”
“Oh, let’s not.” My voice conveyed exactly how much enthusiasm I had for the suggestion.
“I don’t want to do it, either,” she said, closing the book without checking the page number, which reminded me again of Sam, who always checked his page number, or folded the book temporarily closed around one of his fingers, before looking up to speak. Mom continued, “But I have to talk to you about it, and if you talk to me, then I’ll tell your father you did, and you won’t have to talk to him.”
I didn’t see why I had to talk to either of them. Until now, they hadn’t cared what I did with myself or where I was when they were gone, and in a year, I’d be in college or at the very least out from under their roof. I thought about bolting but instead crossed my arms and faced her, waiting.
Mom got right to it. She asked, “Are you using protection?”
My cheeks burned. “Mom.”
But she didn’t back down. “Are you?”
“Yes. But that’s not how it is.”
Mom raised an eyebrow. “Oh, it isn’t? How is it, then?”
“I mean that’s not just how it is. It’s—” I struggled to find words to explain, to convey just why her questions and her tone made me instantly bristle. “I mean, he’s not just a boy, Mom. We’re—”
But I didn’t know how to finish the thought with her looking at me, her eyebrow already lifted in disbelief. I didn’t know how I was supposed to tell her things like love and forever, and it struck me just then that I didn’t want to. That sort of truth was something that you had to earn.
“You’re what? In love?” The way Mom said it cheapened it. “You’re seventeen, Grace. How old is he? Eighteen? How long have you known him? Months. Look—you’ve never had a boyfriend before. You’re in lust as much as anything else. Sleeping together doesn’t mean you’re in love. It means you’re in lust.”
“You sleep with Dad. Aren’t you two in love?”
Mom rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “We’re married.”
Why was I even bothering? “This entire conversation will sound pretty stupid when Sam and I are visiting you at the old folks’ home,” I said, coldly.
“Well, I sincerely hope it does,” Mom replied. And then she smiled, lightly, like the conversation was just casual chatter. Like we’d just made arrangements to go to a mother-daughter dance. “But I doubt we’ll even remember it. Sam will probably be nothing more than a prom picture. I remember what I was like at seventeen and, believe me, it was not love that was in the air. Luckily for me, I had some common sense. Otherwise you might’ve had more siblings. I remember, when I was your age—”
“Mom!” I snapped, my entire face hot. “I am not you. I am nothing like you. You have no idea what goes on in my head, or how my brain works, or whether or not I’m in love with Sam or vice versa. So don’t even try to have this conversation with me. Don’t even—ugh. You know what? I’m done.”
I snatched my forbidden phone from where it sat on the kitchen counter, got my coat, and stomped out. I slid the back door shut behind me and walked off the deck without looking back. Snapping at Mom should have made me feel guilty, but I couldn’t feel one ounce of contrition.
I missed Sam so badly that it hurt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
• SAM •
By the time I got done at the store, the day was freakishly warm, even warmer than the day before. The sun was warm on my cheeks when I got back to Beck’s house and opened the car door. I stepped out and stretched my hands as far as they could go, closing my eyes until I felt like I was falling. In between gusts of wind, the air around me felt like the same temperature as my body, and it made it seem like I had no skin at all, like I was suspended, a spirit.
Birds, convinced that this afternoon meant that fickle spring had finally returned for good, shrilled excited love songs to one another from the bushes around the house. A song welled in me, too, the lyrics silent as I mouthed them, trying them out.
I walk through the seasons and always the birds
are singing and screaming and keening for love.
When you’re with me it seems so absurd
that I should be jealous of the jay and the dove.
It reminded me of the warm spring days that used to unfold me from my wolf form, days when I was so happy to get my fingers back.
It seemed so wrong to be alone right now.
I would check the shed again. I hadn’t seen Cole yet today, but I knew he had to be human somewhere, with this kind of weather. And it was warm enough that at least one of the other new wolves might have changed as well. And it was something practical to do instead of listlessly wandering inside the house, waiting for tomorrow and wondering if I really was going to the studio, and if Grace was really coming with me.
Plus, Grace would’ve wanted me to watch for Olivia.
I knew someone was inside the shed as soon as I got within a few feet of it; the door was ajar, and I heard the sound of movement from inside. My sense of smell was nowhere near what it had been when I was a wolf, but my nose still conveyed to me that whoever was inside was one of us; the musky scent of the pack was only partially obscured by the scent of human sweat. As a wolf, I would’ve been able to tell exactly which pack member it was. Now, as a human, I was blind.
So I walked to the door and knocked the back of my knuckles on it three times. “Cole? All decent in there?” I asked.
“Sam?” Cole’s voice sounded—relieved? It seemed odd for him. I heard the scrabbling of claws, then a groan. I felt the fine hairs on the back of my neck prickle to attention.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, cautiously pushing the door open. Inside the shed, it absolutely reeked of wolf, as if the walls bled with the smell. First I saw Cole, clothed, standing by the bins, one of his knuckles pressed against his lip in an uncertain gesture. And then I followed his eyes to the corner of the shed and saw a guy crumpled there, half covered by a bright blue polar fleece blanket.
“Who is that?” I whispered.
Cole removed his knuckle and looked away from both me and the figure in the corner.
“Victor,” he said flatly.
At the name, the guy turned his face to look at us. Light brown hair, knotted and curled around his cheekbones. Maybe a few years older than me. My mind instantly went to the last time I’d seen him. Sitting in the back of Beck’s Tahoe, wrists zip tied, looking at me. His lips silently forming the word help.