Linger

“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.

“Do you know each other?” I asked.

Victor shut his eyes, his shoulders shuddering, and then he said, “I—hold on—”

While I blinked, he shook out of his skin and into a pale gray wolf with dark facial markings, faster than I’d ever seen any of us shift. It was not quite effortless, but it worked naturally, like a snake rubbing out of its skin or a cicada stepping out of the brittle shell of its former self. No gagging. No pain. None of the agony of every other shift I’d ever witnessed or experienced.

The wolf shook itself, fluffing its coat, staring balefully up at me with Victor’s brown eyes. I started to move away from the door, to give him an easy exit, but Cole said, voice strange, “Don’t bother.”

And then, as if on cue, the wolf sat down on its haunches hard, ears trembling. He yawned, whining as he did, and then his whole body shook violently.

Cole and I turned our faces away at the same time, just as Victor gasped audibly, shifting back into his human form. Just like that. In and out. My mind couldn’t quite grasp it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him tug up the blanket. More for the warmth than for the privacy, I was guessing.

Victor said, softly, “Goddammit.”

I looked at Cole, who had an utterly blank expression on his face, one that I was learning accompanied anything that mattered.

“Victor?” I said. “I’m Sam. Do you remember me?”

He was crouched on the floor now, rocking back and forth on his heels like he wasn’t sure if he should sit or kneel. That and the shape of his mouth told me that he was in pain. He said, “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe.” He shot a glance at Cole, and Cole winced slightly.

“Well, I’m Beck’s son,” I said. Close enough to the truth and faster to spit out. “I’ll help you, if I can.”

• COLE •

Sam was handling Victor a lot better than I had. I’d only stood and stared by the door, waiting to let him out if he managed to stay a wolf.

“That was…How do you shift that quickly?” Sam asked him.

Victor grimaced, glancing from Sam to me and back to Sam again. I could tell it was taking a big effort on his part to keep his voice steady. “It’s worse from wolf to me. From me to wolf is easy. Too easy, man. I keep shifting back even though it’s warm. That’s what does it, right?”

“This is the hottest day we’ve had so far,” Sam answered. “It’s not supposed to be this warm the rest of the week.”

“God,” Victor said, “I didn’t think it would be like this.”

Sam looked at me, as if I had anything to do with anything. He stepped around me to get a folding chair, then sat down across from Victor. Suddenly, he reminded me of Beck. Everything about him was saying interest and concern and sincerity, from the curve of his shoulders to the lowering of his eyebrows over his heavy-lidded eyes. I couldn’t remember if that was how Sam had first looked at me. I couldn’t remember the first thing I’d said to him.

“Is this the first time you’ve shifted back?” he asked Victor.

Victor nodded. “That I can remember, anyway.” He stared at me then, and I was very aware of my human body. At how I was just standing there, not in pain, not a wolf, just standing there.

Sam went on, like the whole thing was just a walk in the park, perfectly normal, “Are you hungry?”

“I—” Victor started. “Wait. I’m s—”

And he slid back to a wolf.

I could tell from the shock on Sam’s face and the way he pressed a finger to one of his eyebrows that this wasn’t normal, which made me feel a little better about finding the entire situation completely messed up. Victor the wolf stood there, eyeing the doorway and me and Sam, ears pricked and posture stiff.