Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Grayson and I hold each other, his shoulders shuddering and his arms tight to keep me in place.
I’m not going anywhere.
Golden afternoon shifts into dusk and Colt stirs beneath the blanket. A slight shuddering shifts dirt free of the makeshift door to Lacey’s hideout but I can’t move.
“I’m sorry.” Grayson’s voice rumbles through me.
His veins pulse with red and black—the same as the big top tent. They bulge from his skin, thicker and wider than they were before.
The potion slowed our madness but it’s there, crawling under our skin, growing with proximity.
I have no words for him to make this situation better. Somehow I deliver some anyway.
“You couldn’t help it. You were trying to save me.”
He pulls away and the moment is gone. I glance up at him and, this close, the quickening of his pulse is a signal, bright and loud.
The scent of him sends my mind racing until he grabs my hands, lifting them for his inspection.
His eyes narrow. “Did I do this?”
He brushes his thumb over the gash on my palm. Newly pink as the skin struggles to heal itself against the curse.
“I grabbed a piece of stained glass.”
Grayson lifts my hand to his mouth and brushes his lips to the area.
For a quicksilver second, magic flashes in my veins. There’s nothing but the touch, how he’s much stronger than I am. His arms had closed around me, as if somehow without trying, his touch alone will mend my wounds.
I bite my tongue to keep from ruining it and my heart scratches against my ribs before he breaks contact.
The witches help Lacey free from the cavity of the tree. “Let’s get on the road. We’ve got ten hours.”
Night hits and clouds roll in to blanket the sky. The electrical hiss of lightning and ozone fill the clearing and the heaviness in the air promises rain. Luckily, we’ve left the forest behind us.
RJ drives us free from the madness of the wilderness in a van with black-painted windows.
We drive through the darkness, hours ticking away and the first pellets of rain hitting the roof.
Soon the windshield wipers beat a mad rush to keep the glass clear through the downpour. My stomach gives a few plaintive cries for food then falls still when I notice it.
Colt keeps his distance from Grayson, like no one will notice the tension beating like a baby bird’s wings, desperate for flight. Whatever happened in their fight, neither of them are willing to speak about it.
Aimee, being the type of person who thinks ahead, had packed a change of clothes, but before Grayson can pull the shirt over his head, I stop him.
“My wounds are fine. They’ll heal,” he tells me gruffly.
His sluggish movements and the awful swelling of those veins say otherwise.
I make him sit against the side of the van and move between his outstretched legs. “But they’re not. You’re getting worse.” So am I. “I have to do something.”
This is more for me than it is for him.
He releases a tired laugh before forcing his reply out. “It doesn’t matter, Mandi. This is the end.”
Copper fills my mouth at the acknowledgment.
His heart thuds against his ribs like it’s waiting for the next sucker punch, and blood flows from the scratches across his abdomen. Bruises spread across his ribs and I can’t tell if these are claw marks or dragging lines from bites.
“What happened?”
Grayson glances down at the tender spot, hissing. “Colt had to restrain me. I don’t remember much of it. He says I attacked him and wrecked the car when…the change happened.”
I drag the first aid kit closer and think of Grayson at the vending machine. The stretch of his smile, his high cheeks, the healthy flirtation.
The man in front of me is not the same person, and every second that passes is nothing but us shouting into the void.
“You don’t remember losing control?” I ask.
“No. One minute I was there with you. The next…I’m not sure how to describe it.
It’s painful, but also a strange numb sensation in my head.
And through the numbness it’s those voices again.
They’re screaming at me until it’s impossible to remember who I am.
I have no idea what I’m doing until I come out of it. ”
He used himself as a battering ram. That’s what.
“It’s the curse,” I say instead.
I pop open the lid of the kit that Aimee also had the good sense to pack and grab one of the flimsy antiseptic wipes. It curls around my finger and comes away from Grayson stained.
“I’m really sorry.” Grayson’s voice drops low, rough and exhausted. “I put you in this position. You should have left me the night I found you.”
“You mean the night I found you.”
“Mandi.” A ghost of a smile lifts his lips. “I’ve almost killed you on multiple occasions. If we’d been alone, if Colt weren’t strong enough to contain me, what do you think would have happened?”
I brush the wipe across one of the claw marks, careful, but he winces anyway. “I’m used to it by now.”
“But you shouldn’t have to be. None of this would be a problem for you if you’d watched the meteor shower the way you wanted to. You had a chance to run. I hate knowing you stayed because you felt like you had to save me.”
The words prod against something molten inside of me, something too painful to acknowledge. Here in the back of the van with the thunder rolling and the hum of rain and tires over asphalt, we’re in our own world.
“I didn’t stay because—”
“Yes, you did, and we both know it,” he interrupts.
I discard one wipe for another, going through a handful of them before the blood is cleansed. “So what if I did?”
Being with him is a hell of a lot better than anything else. Dying with him is the most alive I’ve ever felt. I’d take some of the pain away for both of us, some of the uncertainty, but the rest? I wouldn’t trade.
Even if we never get another chance to see what this can be.
“I’m scared,” he admits. “Not of dying. But of hurting you. I’m scared of being alone with you and losing it.”
Lacey and Colt keep their backs to us, their heads dipped together with Aimee in the passenger seat. RJ’s knuckles tighten on the steering wheel.
“I’ve spent a long time taking care of myself, Grayson,” I say, my throat tight. “I know what I’m doing. You don’t have to worry so much. If we were alone together and you lost it, then I’d find another frying pan.”
A quick squeeze dots my fingers with antiseptic ointment and I brush it across the grazes on his ribs. His skin quivers at the touch.
These wounds won’t heal. And when he changes again, it won’t matter how much ointment I used.
“I do worry. You’re not stuck with me, no matter what warped sense of responsibility keeps you with me. You should get as far away from me as possible. You should work on coming up with an answer to what you want out of this life.”
“What then?”
“You’re not responsible.”
I nod. “I know I’m not.”
A dark chuckle rumbles out of him. “Little liar.”
With the ointment slicked over his wounds, I grab a roll of gauze and unwind it. Grayson flinches when he arches off the van wall.
“I know what I want, Grayson.” I’m all business as I wrap the gauze around his abdomen and chest. “I want to walk outside and turn my face up to the sun and know the day is full of possibilities instead of dread. I want to go to Club Mera and dance without having to ask permission. I want a love like they write about in romance books, one I can fall asleep to knowing the night’s been spent right. ”
A blush steals up my cheeks.
Those are pretty straightforward wants. Simple. Nothing too extraordinary to ask for. They feel like they are to me.
“We’re going to make it this time. We’re leaning on each other. We have a cure now; we’ll use my blood.” I swallow hard. “Hopefully it works with me being moonlocked.”
“You can’t have a night like that with Jrue. Not when he doesn’t understand you being moonlocked.” Grayson’s voice drops.
I shake my head. “He will. I’ll tell him when the time is right. Now it doesn’t matter. The potion to dampen the effects of the moon madness is fading. When we get home, we both need the cure.”
“You shouldn’t risk yourself by staying around me.”
I tie off the gauze and secure it with a piece of medical tape. “Why not? This won’t just help us. It will help everyone. Those wolves we treat like a disease because we don’t have a way to help them.”
His brows draw together in a grimace. “I don’t care about them. I care about you. I care about how you’ve had to suffer and lie your entire life and you’re still bending over backwards for other people.”
My hand stills and I force it into motion again, tucking the supplies into the kit. “You’re angry.”
“Of course I’m angry. I’m furious you’d risk yourself.”
Grayson’s hand locks around my wrist and he holds me for a second too long before unfurling his fingers with a whispered apology.
The outline of his fingertips stays on my skin long after he’s released me.
Gold rings his topaz eyes and the bruises beneath both stand to attention against his dusky skin.
The cut over his eyebrow has knitted together in a long pink line.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” I murmur.
“I’m not fighting with you. I’m fighting for you. I don’t want you to break yourself for me. It’s not worth it.”
Fire erupts inside my chest and I straighten. “What do you mean, it’s not worth it? Do you not want to save yourself?”
He shakes his head. “Not at your expense.”
My heart thuds out an uneven rhythm. I cough, the argument softening before it truly begins.
Grayson rests his hand on my knee in a comforting weight, a powerful warmth.
Like his hand belongs on me and it’s his right to touch and claim.
I want it to be.
My own hands have lingered too long on him. I could tell him I’d be fine. Not to worry about me. To let me do this because I want to.
The words are too paltry. They won’t mean much given our circumstances.
Grayson sighs and constricts in on himself. “If I lose myself, I want the last thing I remember to be you.”
His eyes flutter shut.
He doesn’t want me to break myself for him? It’s too late. It’s out of my control. It happened, right now, with his confession.
I’ve never been that for someone. I’ve never been the sacred thing they hold close to their heart, nothing like how he speaks about me.
I finish binding his other wounds and by the time I’m through, Grayson weaves in and out of consciousness.
Ten long, excruciating hours later, we pull into the witch’s driveway on Willow Grove Lane. Sunrise peeks over the horizon as they lead us into the house to sleep or to donate blood in their attic turned chemistry lab.
Sleep is the last thing on my mind. After handing over a vile of opaque liquid, which I can only assume is their vampire venom, Lacey and Colt settle in for the day someplace they don’t need moss or dirt to block the sun.
Part of me is curious how they were able to extract it—like one does with a snake?
—but the other part of me is content with keeping it a mystery.
Yikes.
Grayson forgoes the shower to pass out. And after donating my blood, I lay at his side, settling along his contours, my mind racing.
His lips open slightly in sleep, a sight I could definitely get used to, as if he’s ready to tell me a secret. We were given RJ’s room while the witches started immediately on the cure.
What will it feel like to accomplish the impossible?
Better yet, what would life be if I were a normal person, a normal werewolf with a boyfriend like Grayson? We could walk outside without worry or fever or voices of madness in our heads.
My jaw clenches and my senses go wild like someone dumped a bucket of icy water over my head. An insistent tickle at the rear of my skull has me sitting up and pushing a curtain of limp hair out of my face.
Someone’s here.
The room is shadowed, the curtains shut to give us a better shot at rest.
Grayson hasn’t moved, sprawled on his back on the mattress with a slight compression at his side where I fit perfectly.
My senses scream at me to sit up and pay attention. I slowly push my legs out from under the blanket, casting a single look at him before padding out of the room.
With the rest of the house distracted or sleeping, I walk outside, shutting the door behind me. A slight chill sends goosebumps over my arm.
“Mandi! There you are.”
The male voice comes from the left and when I turn, Jrue is there. Smiling. Perfect.
Ice isn’t the right term for it. Not when it burns so much, my intuition now a harsh roar in my head. It only grows louder on his approach. I blink my eyes wide, something harsh grating at my nerves.
He stops at the edge of the porch with his hands in his pockets and his features set to charm.
Panic never felt like this. “What are you doing here?” I whisper.
“I tracked you.” He says it simply. “And I’m here to bring you home.”