“Uh, I was there for that. That polar bear shifter’s name is Ava, and Red Dead Mayhem pushed her into a Change. I used to hate their whole Clan, but I’ve thought about it, and she was newly Changed. Those bears are protective, and we took someone she loved. If someone messed with someone I cared for? I would’ve Changed and worse. It ain’t her fault. She just got blamed by the media.”
“You know what I’ve noticed about you?” Leah asked as he led her toward his Harley parked a few doors down.
“That I’m a psychopath?”
“Yes, and I’ve also noticed you own your shit. Tonight, those humans were mean to you because you turned into a crow. Because of what you are. And you could’ve been pissed off at that polar bear for Changing and getting y’all busted, but instead, you owned some of the blame. That’s a rare find nowadays, boyfriend.”
Ethan huffed. “Christ, woman, you don’t want me as your boyfriend. You shouldn’t call me that.”
“One, you scratched my neck, and now I’m damaged goods for anyone else. B, you mowed my yard without me asking. Three, I got a message from one of your friends to come save you, and I did. Four, I stole hotel shampoo to up my bad-assery points so we match better. Five, you made me come, like, four times tonight and scraped the top layer of skin off my face with your beard. I didn’t even complain once.” She pointed to herself. “Ride-or-die. Congratulations, you found the one.”
“Back up to three. Someone messaged you?”
“Yep. Called twice and then texted. We are public now, boyfriend.”
“Let me see your phone,” he muttered, holding out his hand.
“Six, possessive and already checking my phone.”
“Not my style. Let me just see the number. No one knows about you. I wanted to keep it that way.”
Well, that stung really bad. Bad enough she froze by his bike and dropped her gaze to the cement so he wouldn’t see how slapped she felt.
“Hey,” he rumbled, hooking his finger under her chin. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” she answered. Be cool.
Storms swirled in his black eyes as he searched hers in the dim glow of the hotel lights. “We’re gonna stand here until you fess up, so you might as well tell me what I did wrong. I’m not good at hints or feelings or people in general. Spell it out.”
With a sigh, Leah explained. “You don’t want anyone to know about me. I already did that rodeo circuit. Don’t really want to do it again. Not with you.”
“Someone hid you?”
She tried to smile. She wanted to keep talking, but her throat felt thick and she was afraid her voice would break. So she nodded instead.
“And you felt unimportant?”
She nodded again.
“How long?”
“A year. It was my longest relationship. I felt lucky because I thought no one would ever put up with me long-term. I never met his family, never met his friends. He found somebody better a few weeks before he broke up with me and told the world about her a month into them dating. I got to see it all over social media.”
“Hmm,” he said, dropping his hand from her face. “What’s his name?”
“Heath.”
“Last name?” he asked nonchalantly.
“Ooooh no. I don’t want him ending up in a ditch somewhere with his eyes pecked out. He’s an asshole, but I don’t want him murdered.”
But Ethan wasn’t paying attention. He was pushing buttons on his phone. “Heath Miller. He looks like a dweeb.”
Leah’s mouth flopped open. “How did you do that? How did you find him?”
“I followed all your social media accounts so I could learn more about you.”
“Stalker,” she said through a grin. “I tried to do the same but all you have is your work profile.”
“Did you look at it today?”
“No. I was busy seducing this hot, bearded manimal that I met.”
Ethan turned his phone toward her. It was his handyman profile, but the picture was different. It was the one she’d taken in her kitchen. He looked surprised, but fit as fuck, standing there with his muscles pressed against the short sleeves of his shirt, his tool belt hung low on his hips. He was even yummier than in the smirky pic he used to have on there.
“You used the picture I took,” she said softly.
“Some hot girl I met said it’s a better picture for business. And she’s hella smart, so I listened.”
“You think I’m smart?”
“Woman, you ain’t dumb. Clumsiest creature on this planet, yeah, but not dumb. You talk a million miles a minute, intelligently, and you’re quick as a whip. You can tell a joke before I’m even done setting you up for it. Your mind is a beautiful thing, Leah. And seriously, fuck that dork who hid you. He missed out. I’m not hiding you like that, and I’m sorry you thought it for a second. My life is right in the middle of complete disaster. I want you safe.” He cleared his throat and then huffed a breath, hooked his hands on his hips. “I need you safe. I’m at the edge of what I can handle already. Stay here. I’m gonna toss this bag in your toolbox, and then we’ll head out.
He walked away with long, confident strides, hefted the tool bag into the back of her truck, checked the door—yep, it was really locked—and when he cupped his hands on the window and saw the keys, he shook his head again and made his way back to her.
“What do you mean you’re at the edge of what you can handle? Does it have to do with you talking to yourself a lot?”
“I’m not talking to myself,” he said, pulling a helmet over her head and adjusting it.
“Who are you talking to then?”
“Lucian Blackwood. My dad.”
She frowned. “I thought your dad was dead.”
“He is. Doesn’t mean he left, though.”
Chills rippled up her forearms as things clicked into place. “The other night, when you Changed into a crow and got thrown into me…”
“He’s getting stronger.”
Suddenly feeling frozen to the bone, she rubbed her arms and looked around. “Is he here now?”
“I can’t see him, but I can feel him.”
“Where is he?”
Ethan lifted his solid, tar-colored eyes to hers. “Inside of me.”
He mounted the bike smoothly and held out his hand, giving her a choice. Get on behind him or run.
A wise woman would’ve run.
But she’d never claimed to be wise.
The blood frosted in her veins from his terrifying admission, but when she slid her hand against his, instant heat spread from his touch up her arm, to her chest, neck, legs…
Ethan’s touch thawed her, and that told her one thing. He wasn’t totally lost. She didn’t know how, but she was going to make sure he stayed found.
After she climbed on behind him, he pulled her arms around his waist. And then he did something she would’ve never expected from him or any man. He lifted her hand and pressed his lips against her knuckles. He lingered there for a few moments and then settled her hand back on his ribs. Body possessed by butterflies, she rested her cheek against his back. She didn’t even care the helmet got in her way a little. She just wanted to be closer to him. To hug him. To reward him for touching her without her begging for affection.
Her first Harley ride was fast, windy, loud, and exhilarating. For so long, her days had been exactly the same. Wake up, eat a granola bar, make coffee, get ready, go to work, hustle for as many tips as she could, go home, eat alone, wish for more, go to sleep, repeat. Some days she thought she would go insane with the monotony, but what choice did she have? She’d had a bigger life in the city, but then she’d inherited the house and hadn’t been able to let it go. She wouldn’t be able to stomach watching it go to foreclosure just because she couldn’t pay the property taxes. Or watch liens be taken out on the house because she couldn’t pay the utility bills. For the last year, her life had revolved around a big empty house, and it had begun to make her feel big and empty, too.
>
But a man had just kissed her knuckles and made her feel special.
And that was pretty cool. This week hadn’t been like all the other weeks. Ethan made things better.
She should be exhausted. It was one in the morning, and the full moon hung low in the sky as they wound this way and that on snaking mountain roads. So when the edges of her vision brightened, at first she thought she must be dreaming. She clutched onto Ethan tighter as he began to slow down. Then he hit the brakes hard when, up in the night sky, a long rip materialized to expose a cloudy daytime sky.
What the hell?
“Ethan?” she asked in confusion as the night sky melted away, and the forest morphed to a leaf-blanketed meadow surrounded by tall trees. Just as the motorcycle came to a stop, the road beneath the wheels faded away. It was freezing, the breeze more like fall than summer, and the blanket of leaves on the ground crackled under Ethan’s boot as he settled the motorcycle on its kickstand.
A man blinked in and out of existence and then held, became solid right under the branches of an old pine. And then two little boys appeared in front of him. He was looking down at them with such hatred twisted onto his face. His eyes were black like Ethan’s, and his hair was dark, the same shade as his, too. He was eerily familiar, much like Ethan, but his beard had silver streaked through it. His hair was greasy, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He was even built like Ethan, but this man’s eyes were empty, as if he had no soul at all. She could feel it—this was a very very bad man. Her stomach curdled at the way he glared at the two little boys. They were maybe six and eight with a crop of dark hair on both of their heads. She couldn’t see their faces, but she was pretty sure the taller of the two was Ethan.
“Your momma can’t save you now, boys. She can’t turn you into little pussies when you’re out in these woods alone with me. This is how it’ll be from here on. No wolves. No bitching, whiney mother to coddle you. I’m gonna teach you how to be proper crows. Now…fly.”
“I already told you, I cain’t. I tried and I cain’t,” the taller boy said, his little fists clenched at his sides. “And if I’m too young, then Brandon’s too young, too.”
In a blur, the man backhanded the little boy, and Leah and Ethan both flinched at the same time. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Can you see them?”
“Please tell me you can’t,” Ethan ground out in a gravelly voice she barely recognized.
Leah held on tighter, wrapping her arms all the way around his middle. “This isn’t real,” she said. “Ethan, it’s not real. Okay?”
“It is for me.”
Lucian yelled, “It ain’t hard! You think of the crow and then you jump off the ground and let him take over. Look!” In a puff of black smoke, he disappeared, and then from the top of the thick cloud flew a massive crow. He changed direction fast and dove for the boys. They ducked, but they were too late. Both whimpered and clutched their arms where blood welled from talon marks. Lucian landed on the ground, blurring from bird to man, and the smile on his face was evil, as if he’d enjoyed drawing blood from his sons. “Fly now or I’ll make you fly.”
“I don’t want to see this,” Leah said, panicking. “I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to see this, Ethan. Let’s go!”
But Ethan remained frozen in front of her, eyes trained in horror on the boys.
The tall one, Young Ethan, grabbed Brandon’s arm and stared at it with as much rage as she’d ever seen on a child’s face. She could clearly see Ethan’s profile now and his pitch-black eyes. He seemed to care nothing for the claw marks on his own arm, but his shoulders were heaving with his heavy breath as he studied his brother’s.
“Someday,” Young Ethan promised, “I’m going to grow bigger than you…” The boy glared up at the towering Lucian. “And I’m going to kill you.”
The woods echoed with Lucian’s laughter. It went on and on, but suddenly stopped, and at the look of fury on the old man’s face, Leah yanked her arms away from Ethan to cover her face. And the second she stopped touching him, the scene turned back into the night woods near Corvallis.
It was done. It was done! It was over! She glanced up to reassure Ethan, but his profile and the way his eyes were trained on the woods said it wasn’t done for him.
Touch had done it. She knew it. She could see what he saw as long as she touched him, and she wanted—no, she needed—to know how Ethan had been built. The good and the bad.
In a rush, before she could change her mind, she rested her palms against his back, and she was right back there in those haunted woods. She was back just in time to see Lucian throw Ethan straight up into the air. The boy didn’t scream. He didn’t even look surprised, and that was the saddest part. How many times had something this awful happened that he wasn’t shocked by violence? Instead, he was looking down at Lucian with dead black eyes. And then at the top of his arc, a small crow exploded from his body. She had a moment of relief before she realized he was too small to fly. Not enough flight feathers yet. He flapped his wings, but it didn’t even slow him down.
“No!” she screamed, and Lucian looked right at her and smiled.
And just as Young Ethan’s crow plummeted to the earth, the haunted woods disappeared.
Tears burning her eyes, breath short like a scared rabbit’s, Leah frantically searched the woods for that awful ghost. But she and Ethan were alone. Just them and the road and the motorcycle and the moon.
“I’m sorry,” Ethan murmured in the saddest voice she’d ever heard.
She parted her lips to tell him to never apologize for the hand he’d been dealt, but he revved the engine, hit the throttle, and blasted off down the road, stealing her breath with the speed, stealing her air so she couldn’t tell him all the things she wanted to. The erasers. The words that would take the sting off his life. Off his troubles. She wanted to fix them, but not him. He was stronger than titanium, but she wanted things to be easier for him. Had he not been through enough? It wasn’t fair he had to relive this shit. Going through it once was tragic enough.
Ethan didn’t stop or slow the rest of the way home. He pulled right up to the bottom stair of her front porch, helped her off, and told her, “It’s best I find somewhere else to stay.”
“W-what?” she asked. “No, you can stay here. I have, like, eighty-four bedrooms.”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes, so she grabbed his arm, the one that had been clawed by Lucian. It was covered in tattoos, and now she understood why. In the light from the porch, she could see the scars. Crisscrosses, like Lucian had fancied himself some kind of fucked-up artist.
“Don’t go,” she pleaded.
“You think I want to?” he asked, looking like he wanted to puke. “You make things feel easier.”
“Because they can be. You aren’t alone.”
Ethan shook his head and clenched his teeth so hard his jaw twitched. “Those visions happen more and more. Something’s agitating him, and I can’t put you in Lucian’s path, Leah. He killed an entire Clan of werewolves. Strong, dominant werewolves. I watched him do it. I know what he’s capable of—”
“What he was capable of!”
“I need to stop what’s happening between us before we can’t turn back. Please, Leah. Please understand.”
She exhaled harshly at the pain and staggered back a step. “Typical. Typical man.”
Moments ticked by as he stared at her, his nostrils flaring with each breath. “I wish…fuck. Doesn’t matter what I wish.” He pulled back on his handlebar and revved the engine to a deafening sound. “I’m sorry.”
And then he rode right out of her life.
Just like everyone else.
Chapter Eight
Taking her lunch break, Leah squinted at her truck in the parking lot as she leaned against the counter of the Hamburger Shack. She crunched on the pickle spear and chewed it, overexaggerating like a cow chewing its cud. Why? Because Billy said she ate like an animal, and he was watching. She was good at three things now: falli
ng a lot, kissing, and annoying people. Her dad had always said, “practice makes perfect.”
“Why does it take you three years to eat lunch?” Billy asked.
“Hypothetically asking,” she said, leaning on the counter and waving her half-devoured pickle spear into the air. “If you sleep with someone, they leave that night, and they don’t call for a week, is that considered a one-night stand?”
“Hypothetically?” he asked as he cleaned the grill in the kitchen.
“Yep.”
“Hypothetically, you are now a floozy. That’s definitely a one-night stand. Congratulations. You are now the same as most of the population of the world. Ho status achieved.”
“I’m going to check out a book on feminism and the harmful ways words like ‘ho’ and ‘floozy’ can hurt women. And I’m going to let you read it.”
“I’m not reading that crap.”
“Then I’ll spend every three-year lunch break reading it out loud to you until it’s finished.”
“I fuckin’ hate this job,” Billy griped.
“I made you a present.”
Billy glared at her suspiciously. “What is it?”
She pulled the blue construction paper out of her pocket and unfolded it, then slid it across the partition between the main room and the kitchen. It was a macaroni picture she’d made of her and Billy holding hands under a bright yellow sun with some flowers around them. Two of the macaroni’s had fallen off in her pocket, but whatever. She’d even glued pictures of their faces to the stick figures. She was smiling in hers, but Billy’s was of his profile and he looked really mad since she’d snuck the picture when he was in the middle of yelling at her for accidentally locking him in the freezer.
He didn’t say anything, just took the picture, stared at it with an unamused expression on his face, then folded it up and shoved it in his pocket. Her creation didn’t go straight into the garbage can beside him, though. Victory.
When the bell above the door dinged, Leah looked up from checking her phone for a text message from Ethan for the four-millionth time to find a delivery worker holding a package and heading her way. “Leah Hawthorne?” he asked.