Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever) (11 page)

My arms still hung by my sides, right where Sam had put them. I frowned at him. “You were supposed to kiss me.”

“I thought about it.”

I just kept looking at the soft, sad shape of his lips, looking just like his voice sounded. I was probably staring, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I wanted him to kiss me and how stupid it was to want it so badly. “Why don’t you?”

He leaned over and gave me the lightest of kisses. His lips, cool and dry, ever so polite and incredibly maddening. “I have to get inside soon,” he whispered. “It’s getting cold.”

For the first time I paid attention to the icy wind that cut through my long sleeves. One of the frigid gusts hurled thousands of fallen leaves back into the air, and for a single second, I thought I smelled wolf.

Sam shuddered.

Squinting at his face in the dim light, I realized suddenly that his eyes were afraid.

We didn’t run back to the house. Running would’ve meant acknowledging something that I wasn’t ready to face in front of her — something that I
was
. Instead, we walked with a giant’s strides, dried leaves and branches snapping under our feet, our breaths drowning out the other sounds of the evening. Cold snaked under my collar, tightening my skin into goose bumps.

If I didn’t let go of her hand, I’d be all right.

A wrong turn would lead us away from the house, but I couldn’t concentrate on the trees around me. My vision flashed with jerky memories of humans shifting into wolves, hundreds of shifts over my years with the pack. The memory of the first time I’d seen Beck shift was vivid in my mind — more real than the screaming red sunset through the trees in front of Grace and me. I remembered the frigid white light streaming in the living room windows of Beck’s house, and I remembered the shaking line of his shoulders as he braced his arms against the back of the sofa.

I stood beside him, looking up, no words in my mouth.

“Take him out!” Beck shouted, his face toward the hallway but his eyes half-closed. “Ulrik, take Sam out of here!”

Ulrik’s fingers around my arm then were as tight as Grace’s fingers around my hand were now, pulling me through the woods, leading us back over the trail we’d left earlier. Night crouched in the trees, waiting to overtake us, cold and black. But Grace didn’t look away from the sun glowing through the trees as she headed toward it.

The brilliant nimbus of the sun half blinded me, making stark silhouettes of the trees, and suddenly I was seven again. I saw the star pattern of my old bedspread so clearly that I stumbled. My fingers clutched the fabric, balling and tearing it under my grip.

“Mama!” My voice broke on the second syllable. “Mama, I’m going to be sick!”

I was tangled on the floor in blankets and noise and puke, shaking and clawing at the floor, trying to hold on to something, when my mother came to the bedroom door, a familiar silhouette. I looked at her, my cheek resting against the floor, and I started to say her name, but no sound came out.

She dropped to her knees and she watched me change for the first time.

“Finally,” Grace said, tearing my brain back to the woods around us. She sounded out of breath, as if we’d been running. “There it is.”

I couldn’t let Grace see me change. I couldn’t change now.

I followed Grace’s gaze to the back of Beck’s house, a flash of warm red-brown in this chilly blue evening.

And now I ran.

Two steps from the car, all my hopes of getting warm in the Bronco were crushed in the moment it took for Grace to uselessly tug the locked door handle. Inside, the keys swung from the ignition with her effort. Grace’s face twisted with frustration.

“We’ll have to try the house,” she said.

We didn’t have to break into Beck’s house. He always left a spare key stuck in the weather lining of the back door. I tried not to think of the car keys hanging in the Bronco’s ignition; if we had them, I would’ve been warm again already. My hands shook as I pulled the spare key from the lining and tried to slide it into the dead bolt. I was hurting already.
Hurry up, you idiot. Hurry up.

I just couldn’t stop shaking.

Grace carefully took the key from me, with not even a hint of fear, though she had to know what was happening. She closed one of her warm hands over my cold, shuddering ones, and with the other she shoved the key into the knob and unlocked it.

God, please let the power be on. Please let the heat be on.

Her hand on my elbow pushed me inside the dark kitchen. I couldn’t shed the cold; it clung to every bit of me. My muscles began to cramp and I put my fingers over my face, shoulders hunched.

“No,” Grace said, her voice even and firm, just like she was answering a simple question. “No, come on.”

She pulled me away from the door and shut it behind me. Her hand slid along the wall by the door, finding the light switches, and miraculously, the lights flickered on, coming to
ugly, fluorescent life above us. Grace pulled on me again, dragging me farther away from the door, but I didn’t want to move. I just wanted to curl in on myself and give in. “I can’t, Grace. I can’t.”

I didn’t know if I’d said it out loud or not, but she wasn’t listening to me if I had. Instead, she sat me on the floor directly on top of an air vent, and she pulled off her jacket to wrap around my shoulders and over the top of my head. Then she crouched in front of me and gathered my cold hands against her body.

I shook and clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering, trying to focus on her, on being human, on getting warm. She was saying something; I couldn’t understand her. She was too loud. Everything was too loud. It smelled in here. This close, her scent was exploding in my nostrils. I hurt. Everything hurt. I whined, very softly.

She leaped up and ran down the hall, her hands smacking light switches as she did, and then she disappeared. I groaned and put my head down on my knees.
No, no, no, no.
I didn’t even know what I was supposed to be fighting anymore. The pain? The shuddering?

She was back. Her hands were wet. She grabbed my wrists and her mouth moved, her voice ringing out, indecipherable. Sounds meant for someone else’s ears. I stared at her.

She pulled again; she was stronger than I thought she was. I got to my feet; my height somehow surprised me. I shivered so violently that her jacket fell from my shoulders. The cold air hitting my neck racked me with another shudder and I nearly went to my knees.

The girl got a better grip on my arms and pulled me along, talking all the time, low, soothing sounds with an edge of iron beneath them. She pushed me into a doorway; heat emanated from inside it.

God, no. No.
No.
I pulled and fought against her hold, eyes locked on the far wall of the little tiled room. A bathtub lay in front of me like a tomb. Steam rolled off the water, the heat tempting and wonderful, but every part of my body resisted.

“Sam, don’t fight me! I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to do.”

Eyes fixed on the tub, I hooked my fingers on the edge of the door. “Please,” I whispered.

In my head, the hands held me down in the tub, hands that smelled of childhood and familiarity, of hugs and clean sheets and everything I’d ever known. They pushed me into the water. It was warm, the temperature of my body. The voices counted together. They didn’t say my name.
Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut.
They were poking holes in my skin, letting what was inside get out. The water turned red in little wispy strands. I gasped, struggled, cried. They didn’t speak. The woman cried into the water as she held me down.
I’m Sam
, I told them, holding my face above the red water.
I’m Sam. I’m Sam. I’m

“Sam!” The girl ripped me from the door and pushed off the wall against me; I stumbled and fell toward the tub. She shoved me as I fought to regain my balance, sending my head smacking against the wall and into the steaming water.

I lay perfectly still, sinking, water closing over my face, scalding my skin, boiling my body, drowning my shudders. Grace gently lifted my head above water, cradling it in her arms,
one foot in the tub behind me. She was sopping wet and shivering.

“Sam,” she said. “God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do. Please forgive me. I’m sorry.”

I couldn’t stop shaking, my fingers gripped on the side of the tub. I wanted out. I wanted her to hold me, so I could feel safe. I wanted to forget the blood running from the scars on my wrists. “Get me out,” I whispered. “Please get me out.”

“Are you warm enough?”

I couldn’t answer. I was bleeding to death. I balled my hands into fists and drew them to my chest. Every caress of water over my wrists sent a new wave of shivers through me. Her face was full of pain.

“I’m going to find the thermostat and turn the heat up. Sam, you have to stay in there until I come back with towels. I’m so sorry.”

I closed my eyes.

I passed a lifetime with my head held barely above water, unable to move, and then Grace came back, holding a stack of mismatched towels. She knelt by the tub and reached past me; I heard a gurgle behind my head. I felt myself slipping down the drain with the water in red circling swirls.

“I can’t get you out if you don’t help. Please, Sam.” She stared at me as if she was waiting for me to move. The water drained away from my wrists, my shoulders, my back, until I lay in an empty tub. Grace laid a towel on top of me; it was very warm, as if she’d heated it somehow. Then she took one of my scarred wrists in her hands and looked at me. “You can come out now.”

I looked back at her, unblinking, my legs folded up the side of the tiled wall like a giant insect.

She reached down and traced my eyebrows. “You do have really beautiful eyes.”

“We get to keep them,” I said.

Grace started at my voice. “What?”

“It’s the one thing we keep. Our eyes stay the same.” I unclenched my fists. “I was born with these eyes. I was born for this life.”

As if there was no bitterness in my voice, Grace replied, “Well, they’re beautiful. Beautiful and sad.” She reached down and took my fingers, her eyes locked on mine, holding my gaze. “Do you think you can stand up now?”

And I did. Looking at her brown eyes and nothing else, I stepped out of the tub, and she led me out of the bathroom and back into my life.

I couldn’t keep my thoughts together. I stood in the kitchen, staring at the cabinets, which were covered with pinned-up photographs of smiling people — the pack members as humans. Normally, I would’ve looked through them to find Sam’s face, but I kept seeing the broken shape of his body in the bathtub and hearing the terror in his voice. The vision of him shaking in the woods right before I realized what was happening to him replayed over and over in my head.

Saucepan. Can of soup. Bread from freezer. Spoons. Beck’s kitchen was obviously stocked by someone who was familiar with a werewolf’s peculiar schedule; it was full of canned goods and boxed foods with long shelf lives. I lined up all of the ingredients for a makeshift dinner on the counter, forcing myself to concentrate on the task at hand.

In the next room, Sam sat on the couch under a blanket, his clothing running through the wash. My jeans were still soaking, but they’d have to wait. Turning on a burner for the soup, I tried to focus on the slick black controls, the shiny aluminum surface.

But instead I remembered Sam convulsing on the floor, eyes vacant, and the animal whimper he made as he realized that he was losing himself.

My hands shook as I tipped the soup from the can to the saucepan.

I couldn’t keep it together.

I would keep it together.

I saw the look on his face as I shoved him into the bathtub, just like his parents must have —

God, I couldn’t think about that. Opening the fridge, I was surprised to see a gallon of milk, the first perishable food I’d found in the house. It looked so out of place that I felt my thoughts sharpen. Checking the expiration date — only three weeks ago — I poured the odiferous milk down the drain and frowned into the fridge for other signs of recent life.

Sam was still curled on the couch when I emerged from the kitchen to hand him a bowl of soup and some toast. He accepted it with a more mournful look than usual. “You must think I’m a total freak.”

I sat on a plaid chair across from him, tucking my legs beneath me, and held my bowl of soup against my chest for warmth. The living room ceiling went all the way up to the roof and the room was still drafty. “I am so sorry.”

Sam shook his head. “It was the only thing you could do. I just — I shouldn’t have lost it that way.”

I winced, remembering the crack of his head hitting the wall and his splayed fingers, reaching through the air as he careened into the tub.

“You did really well,” Sam said, glancing at me as he picked at the toast. He seemed to consider his words, and then just repeated, “You did really well. Are you —” He hesitated and then looked to where I sat, several feet away from him. Something in his glance made the empty stretch of couch next to him painfully obvious.

“I’m not afraid of you!” I said. “Is that what you think? I just thought you’d like some elbow room while you ate.”

Actually, any other time I’d have happily crawled under the blanket with him — especially with him looking warm and sexy in a set of old sweats he’d gotten from his room. But I just wanted — I just needed to put my thoughts in order, and didn’t think I could do that while sitting next to him just yet.

Sam smiled, relief all over his face. “The soup’s good.”

“Thanks.” It wasn’t actually that good — in fact, it tasted completely canned and bland, but I was hungry enough that I didn’t care. And the mechanical action of eating helped dull the images of Sam in the bathtub.

“Tell me more about the mind-meld thing,” I said, wanting to keep him talking, to hear his human voice.

Sam swallowed. “The what?”

“You said you showed me the woods, when you were a wolf. And that the wolves talked to each other that way. Tell me more about it. I want to know how it works.”

Sam leaned forward to set his bowl on the floor, and when he sat back and looked at me, his face looked tired. “It’s not like that.”

“I didn’t say it was like anything!” I said. “Not like what?”

“It’s not a superpower,” he replied. “It’s a consolation prize.” When I just looked at him, he added, “It’s the only way we get to communicate. We can’t remember words. We couldn’t say them even if we could wrap our wolf brains around them. So all we get are little images that we can send to each other. Simple images. Postcards from the other side.”

“Can you send me one now?”

Sam slouched down on the couch, tightening the blanket around himself. “I can’t even remember how to do it now. While I’m
me
. I only do it when I’m a wolf. Why would I need it now? I have words. I can say anything I want to you.”

I thought about saying
But words aren’t enough
, but just thinking it made me ache in an unfamiliar way. So instead I said, “But I wasn’t a wolf when you showed me the woods. So can the wolves talk to other pack members when those members are human?”

Sam’s heavy-lidded eyes flicked over my face. “I don’t know. I don’t think I ever tried with anyone else. Just wolves.” He said, again, “Why would I need to?”

There was something bitter and tired in his voice. I set my bowl down on the end table and joined him on the couch. He lifted the blanket so that I could press myself against his side, and then he leaned his forehead against mine, closing his eyes. For a long moment, he just rested there, and then he opened his eyes again.

“All I cared about was showing you how to get home,” he said, voice low. His breath warmed my lips. “When you changed, I wanted to make sure you knew how to find me.”

I ran my fingers across the triangle of bare chest that was visible above the loose collar of his sweatshirt. My voice came out a little uneven. “Well, I found you.”

The dryer buzzed from down the hall, a strange sound of occupation in this empty house. Sam blinked and leaned back. “I should get my clothing.” He opened his mouth as if he was going to say something else and blushed instead.

“The clothing’s not going anywhere,” I said.

“Neither are we, if we don’t break into the Bronco to get the keys,” Sam pointed out. “I’m thinking sooner rather than later for that. Especially since it’s going to have to be you doing it. I can’t stand out there that long.”

I reluctantly moved back so that he could stand, holding the blanket around him like some sort of primitive chieftain. I could see the outline of his square shoulders underneath it and thought about the feel of his skin underneath my fingers. He saw me looking and held my gaze for half a second before vanishing into the dark hallway.

Something gnawed inside me, hungry and wanting.

I sat on the couch after he left, debating whether or not to follow him to the laundry room, until reason won over. I took the plates to the kitchen, then returned to the living room to poke around the bits and pieces on the mantel. I wanted to get a handle on the werewolf he called Beck, the one who owned the house. The one who had raised Sam.

The living room, like the exterior of the house, looked comfortable and lived in. It was all tartans and rich reds and dark wood accents. One wall of the living room was almost entirely made up of tall windows, and the now-dark winter night seemed
to enter the room without permission. I turned my back on the windows and looked at a photo on the mantel: a loosely posed group of faces smiling at the camera. It made me think of the picture of Rachel, Olivia, and me, and I felt a twinge of loss before focusing on the people in this photo. Out of the six figures in the photo, my eyes immediately found Sam. This was a slightly younger version of him, with summer-tanned skin. The one girl in the photograph stood next to him, about his age, her white-blonde hair reaching beyond her shoulders. She was the only one not smiling at the camera. Instead, she was looking at Sam in an intense way that made my stomach churn.

A soft touch on my neck made me whirl around, defensive, and Sam jumped back, laughing, hands up in the air. “Easy!”

I swallowed the growl in my throat, feeling stupid, and rubbed the still-tingling skin on my neck where he’d kissed it. “You should make some noise.” I gestured to the photo, still feeling uncharitable toward the unnamed girl beside him. “Who’s that?”

Sam lowered his hands and stood behind me, wrapping his arms around my stomach. His clothing smelled clean and soapy; his skin gave off hints of wolf from his near-transformation earlier. “Shelby.” He leaned his head on my shoulder, his cheek against mine.

I kept my voice light. “She’s pretty.”

Sam growled in a soft, wild way that made my gut tense with longing. He pressed his lips against my neck, not quite a kiss. “You’ve met her, you know.”

It didn’t take rocket science to figure it out. “The white she-wolf.” And then I just asked it, because I wanted to know. “Why is she looking at you like that?”

“Oh, Grace,” he said, taking his lips from my neck. “I don’t know. She’s — I don’t know. She thinks she’s in love with me. She wants to be in love with me.”

“Why?” I asked.

He gave a little laugh, not at all amused. “Why do you ask such hard questions? I don’t know. She had a bad life, I think, before she came to the pack. She likes being a wolf. She likes belonging. I guess maybe she sees how Beck and I are around each other and thinks that being with me would make her belong even more.”

“It is possible to be in love with you just because of who you are,” I pointed out.

Sam’s body tensed behind me. “But it’s not because of who I am. It’s … obsession.”

“I’m obsessed,” I said.

Sam let out a long breath and pulled away from me.

I sighed. “Shhhhh. You didn’t have to
move
.”

“I’m trying to be a gentleman.”

I leaned back against him, smiling at his worried eyes. “You don’t have to try so hard.”

He sucked in his breath, waited a long moment, and then carefully kissed my neck, just underneath my jawbone. I turned around in his arms so I could kiss his lips, still charmingly hesitant.

“I was thinking about the refrigerator,” I whispered.

Sam pulled back, ever so slightly, without removing himself from my arms. “You were thinking about the refrigerator?”

“Yes. I was thinking about how you didn’t know if the power would be turned on here for the winter. But it is.”

He frowned at me, and I rubbed the crease between his eyebrows.

“So who pays the power bill? Beck?” When he nodded, I went on, “There was milk in the fridge, Sam. It was only a few weeks old. Someone has been in here. Recently.”

Sam’s arms around me had loosened and his sad eyes had gone even sadder. His entire expression was complicated, his face a book in a language I didn’t understand.

“Sam,” I said, wanting to bring him back to me.

But his body had gone stiff. “I should get you home. Your parents will be worried.”

I laughed, short and humorless. “Yeah. I’m sure. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Sam shook his head, but he was clearly distracted. “I mean, not nothing. It’s been a hell of a day, that’s all. I’m just — I’m just tired, I guess.”

He did look tired, something dark and somber in his expression. I wondered if almost changing had affected him, or if I should’ve just stayed quiet about Shelby and Beck. “You’re coming home with me, then.”

He jerked his chin toward the house around him.

“C’mon,” I said. “I’m still worried that you’ll disappear.”

“I won’t disappear.”

Inadvertently, I thought of him on the floor in the hallway,
curled up, making a soft noise as he struggled to stay human. I immediately wished I hadn’t. “You can’t promise that. I don’t want to go home. Not unless you’re coming with me.”

Sam groaned softly. His palms brushed the bare skin at the bottom edge of my T-shirt, his thumbs tracing desire on my sides. “Don’t tempt me.”

I didn’t say anything; just stood in his arms looking up at him.

He pushed his face against my shoulder and groaned again. “It’s so hard to behave myself around you.” He pushed away from me. “I don’t know if I should keep staying with you. God, you’re only, what — you’re only seventeen.”

“And you’re so old, right?” I said, suddenly defensive.

“Eighteen,” he said, as if it were something to be sad about. “At least I’m legal.”

I actually laughed, though nothing was funny. My cheeks felt hot and my heart pounded in my chest. “Are you kidding me?”

“Grace,” he said, and the sound of my name slowed my heart immediately. He took my arm. “I just want to do things right, okay? I only get this one chance to do things right with you.”

I looked at him. The room was silent except for the rattle of leaves blowing up against the windows. I wondered what my face looked like just then, turned up at Sam. Was it the same intense gaze that Shelby wore in the photograph? Obsession?

The frigid night pressed up against the window beside us, a threat that had become abruptly real tonight. This wasn’t about lust. It was about fear.

“Please come back with me,” I said. I didn’t know what I’d do if he said no. I couldn’t stand to return here tomorrow and find him a wolf.

Sam must have seen it in my eyes, because he just nodded and picked up the slim-jim.