Bayou Blues (25 page)

He put me down on the edge of the tub, and I braced my arms on his shoulders to keep from falling backwards. Methodically he got the water running and put a bath mat on the floor, which he kneeled on so he was even height with me.

“Do you think you can help me get your jeans off?” His voice was soft, but the edge of anger I’d heard earlier was still there. His words trembled slightly.

“Why?”

“We need to see how bad it is, and I don’t think you want me to rip them off. I can make sure you don’t need to put your weight on your feet, but it will go faster if you help.”

The way he explained it was so obvious I was amazed he didn’t walk around talking all women out of their pants every day. His point was valid, though. I only had the one pair of jeans. I hadn’t been expecting to stay in Franklinton this long.

I nodded and undid the button on my jeans with shaking fingers. Wilder looked up at the ceiling. He waited until I had the zipper undone then lowered his gaze back to me. “Put your arms around my neck.”

I did as he asked. Any energy for more questions had vanished. He could have told me to stand on my head and sing the national anthem and I wouldn’t have resisted.

With my arms around him, he hoisted me up again, long enough for him to tug my jeans down over my hips. As he pulled them off, his fingertips lingered, the effort to remove my pants taking longer than it probably needed to. My breath hitched, and I closed my eyes, resting my forehead against his cheek. I felt the warmth of my exhalations on his skin.

We both froze there, his fingers behind my knees. I lifted my face, my lips next to his. He was warm and strong. Everything about this, the smell, the imagined taste of his skin, the way his fingers felt as they dug into my calf, it was all so perfectly right.

And yet, so wrong.

I shuddered. He let go of my knees and tugged the jeans over my feet cautiously. The frozen moment was gone. We were both in motion, remembering what had brought us here in the first place. I winced as he touched my feet, and braced myself against the cold tub.

When my feet hit the water, I growled, an unmistakably animal sound. I tried to recoil, but he touched my calf, stilling me. “I know it hurts. We need to clean it though. If you got anything stuck in your skin, you don’t want to heal with it still inside you.”

I gave a tight nod. He was right, of course, and thank goodness one of us was thinking rationally. Werewolves healed fast, and the damage to my feet was relatively superficial. But my body couldn’t just make rocks and glass vanish. If we didn’t get all the crap out now, it would mean cutting the wounds open later to get the stuff out.

Healing my feet twice in twenty-four hours was not my idea of a good time.

I looped one of my arms around his neck and closed my eyes against the pain as he massaged my feet and went over them with the focus of a doctor. He scoured every inch, top to bottom, up my ankles and down the back of my calf. It was agony. Everything he touched was raw and torn, and healing had already begun in a few places. He had to dig his nails into my skin to pull something free, and I whimpered, letting the tears flow free as he tugged it loose.

I opened one eyelid, feeling nauseous when I couldn’t see what he’d found. Wilder held up a short, bloody screw for me to look at before he tossed it in the sink, which was a mess thanks to the other things he’d found. Bits of branch and gravel sat in a bloody pool, stark red against the yellowing white porcelain.

“Jesus,” I muttered.

“I can’t believe you ran here.”

Neither could I, after seeing what had been in my skin.

After one final inspection he seemed satisfied. The water in the tub had begun to cool and was now a dark pink shade. Wilder pulled my feet into his lap and dried them, patting the bottoms so gently it was actually a relief compared to what I’d just felt. The healing wouldn’t take long. Maybe a couple hours and I’d be good as new.

I tried to argue I could walk on my own, but he wasn’t having any of it. He carried me back into the main room and set me on the still-made bed. I flushed with embarrassment, realizing what a mess I’d made of the sheets and comforter on his.

“Lay down,” he instructed.

“No, we have to go.”

“Look, Princess, I get it. Danger lurking at every turn. The world is against us. I know.”

He had to think I was going to be okay. He was calling me
Princess
again. “You don’t under—”

Wilder pushed me down when I tried to get up. Not in a way that might have normally made me uneasy, considering I
was
half naked in his bedroom. It was just him keeping me in place, not menacing me. I didn’t think I could ever feel unsafe with him after tonight.

“I know we’re in trouble. But up until fifteen minutes ago I thought you might be dead. Anything else is a secondary concern to me right now.”

“What about Hank?”

“Cash is still with Hank. He and his lawyer buddy have been there all day. His phone is off, and I haven’t had a chance to tell them what happened yet. Which is good because he’s not going to be all that happy when he sees what I did to his car. Or what happened to you.”

He nudged me, and this time I yielded, putting my head on the pillow. My whole body felt like it weighed a hundred thousand pounds. Now that the pain in my feet was bearable, the splitting headache I’d been ignoring came roaring back.

“Can you turn off the lights?” I asked, burying my face into the dark comfort of the musty hotel pillowcase.

His weight shifted off the bed, and soon the room was flooded with perfect, beautiful darkness. He walked past the bed, and a moment later, his comforter was draped over me. A notification light blinked on the phone in his hand.

“Wilder?”

“Mmm?”

“Can you stay with me until I fall asleep?” I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell him I was sorry for getting us into this mess. I wanted to explain that it would be my fault if the Church went after Hank as a sacrifice because they’d lost me, but none of those words came out. I found it impossible to be sorry for saving my own life. I’d survived, and I was damned proud of myself for it.

“Yeah. I can stay with you, Princess.” His weight settled on the other side of the bed, and as if it were habit, I rolled over, nestling myself against his side. I needed his warmth, the smell of forest and home. He froze briefly before he let himself yield to it and wrapped his arm around my shoulder.

“What happened to you?” I asked. Now that I felt safe, I wondered how he’d gotten away and why he hadn’t come back for me.

He sighed, and I knew he didn’t want to talk about this, but instead of resisting he said, “They were really focused on you. They hauled us back to this cabin area and split us up. I didn’t know where they took you, and with all the smells there, I couldn’t find you again. I managed to get away from the guys who were holding me, but… I couldn’t find you.”

I was quiet, hanging in the precipice between alertness and exhaustion. The worry in his voice was real and I felt grateful he hadn’t tried.

“I’m so sorry,” he added. “I got the hell out of there and went to find a cop. Spotted the sheriff at the diner and tried to tell him what happened. That was about as helpful as you might imagine.”

I mumbled my agreement, too tired to remind him I never trusted Sheriff McGraw in the first place.

“He dicked me around for over an hour, took me to the station to file a report and wouldn’t let me leave until it was finished. I thought I might see Cash, but he must have been with Hank. I’d just gotten back and was on the phone with Amelia when you showed up.”

“You were calling for help?”

He whispered something to me, but I was already gone, sleep stealing over me so quickly it felt like I hadn’t rested in a year.

It might be a long, long time before I’d get to sleep soundly again.

Wilder was gone when I woke up. The side of the bed he’d been occupying still held his form, but the comforter was cold. He’d been up awhile.

The lamp over the small table was on, and the fan was humming in the bathroom. I rubbed sleep from my eyes and gave myself a quick once-over. My feet had healed, and my migraine had downgraded to a nuisance headache. Nothing I couldn’t ignore.

My jeans were folded on one of the chairs next to the table, and the knife I’d stolen from Anderson was on the nightstand beside me. How thoughtful, Wilder had left me a weapon within arm’s reach.

That was the sort of thing a man used to living in fear would do.

It made me wonder what kind of life Wilder’d had with his other pack, and if maybe there were multiple reasons he’d returned to St. Francisville. It didn’t matter. If we got out of this place alive, I’d make sure he always had a home with our pack. I’d put him under my own damned protection if I needed to.

I slipped my jeans on, ignoring the stiff crust of blood around the hem. I’d need to find something to use for shoes before we ventured too far. The clock over the TV said it was three a.m. The motel office would be closed. No chance of getting plastic flip-flops at this hour.

Three a.m.

Where was Wilder?

As if on cue, I got my answer. Voices came from mine and Cash’s room next door. They weren’t hushed, but they also weren’t raised in anger, which was a relief. I considered the knife on the nightstand but decided to leave it for now.

It wasn’t Cash
or
Wilder who answered the door, but rather Cash’s lawyer friend, Matthew Chen. “Oh. Genie. Hey.” Each word was its own little sentence. His inky-black hair was a mess, and the bags under his eyes suggested it had been a long day for everyone.

“Hey, Matt. Can I come in?” It
was
my room after all.

He seemed to realize he was blocking my way and nodded vigorously as he stepped aside to allow me entrance. “Sorry.”

Cash and Wilder were seated at the table. The queen bed was untouched by any signs of sleep and was covered in papers. The guys looked up as I entered, falling silent in my presence. “You’re up,” Wilder said.

Cash got to his feet and came to me, wrapping me up in a tight hug that caught me off-guard and stole my breath. He pushed my hair back from my face with both hands and gave me a hard stare. “Don’t you go being brave anymore, okay?”

I nodded. I didn’t feel particularly brave at the moment.

When he pulled away, there was an uncomfortable tension in the air, and I wondered what the talk had been like between them when Wilder had to explain why I was asleep in
his
room rather than the one I was meant to be sharing with Cash. I hope he left out the part where I made Wilder stay with me. Or how he took off my pants.

Nothing had happened.

Weirdly hot tense moment aside.

That had been the culmination of a lot of stress. Emotions were running high. And besides, nothing had come of it. It was just a…thing. A thing that happened and was now done. Never to occur again.

Ever.

Right?

“How are you feeling?” Matt asked, I think in an attempt to keep things from getting more awkward. “Wilder said you were hurt.”

I lifted my feet and turned so they could see the soles. “Score one for glorious werewolf healing powers, I guess. Though I’m going to need shoes.”

“We’ll take care of that,” Cash said, though his attention was elsewhere now.

“When did you get back?” I took the chair he offered, sitting across from Wilder at the table. Matt had to nudge some papers aside to sit on the bed, and Cash dragged an armchair over, its old springs groaning in protest when he sat down.

“Around midnight. I would have come sooner if I’d known you were hurt.” He shot Wilder a look that said this had already been discussed at length, probably with yelling.

“You were at the police station that whole time?” I couldn’t hide the disbelief in my tone. Wilder had been there and hadn’t seen them.

“No. Matt and I spent a couple hours at the bar after the fact, going over our notes, talking about what we could do to help Hank. When we got back, you weren’t here, but my car looked like someone had thrown a rock through the window.” Another scowl.

“That might be because I
did
throw a rock through the window,” Wilder told me.

Cash frowned. “You’d think someone who runs a body shop could come up with a better way to get into a locked car.”

“So sorry. I left my slim jim in my other pocket.”

“Good Lord, I’ll pay to get the fucking window replaced,” I snapped. “I think Wilder had other things on his mind at the time.”

They both got quiet, realizing they’d been squabbling like fat hens over the last corn kernel. In the grand scheme of things, a car window was
not
worth this much fuss.

“Sorry,” they both said.

“Forget it. We’re fine, right? For now, anyway. There are bigger problems we need to deal with. Like the fact that Timothy Deerling is a serial killer, and I think he has a secret family of creepy ginger children in the woods.”

They were all quiet again, and Cash gave me a puzzled look. “Did you hit your head when you were out there?”

Well, it had actually been hit for me, several times, but that didn’t seem altogether relevant right now. “On what planet could I dream up something that specific?”

“A planet where you’d sustained a serious brain injury?”

I let out a disgusted sigh. “My brain is fine. I know what I saw. I know what that insane asshole, Anderson, told me, so don’t try to convince me I imagined any of it. You weren’t the one hung up like a chandelier, okay? When someone ties you up like you’re being led to the slaughter, you can talk to me about what’s real and what’s imagined, but until then, just shut up and listen.”

The guys all gawped at me like live snakes had fallen out of my mouth. Their silence was the only invitation I needed. I laid out, in more detail than they probably wanted, everything that had happened to me while I was being held, and everything Anderson had told me about Deerling’s murderous history. I told them about the house, and the woman with all her kids, and what I’d overheard about how Pastor Tim preferred to kill women.