Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
CALEB
I’d squeezed the phone’s receiver between my chin and shoulder as I’d stuffed the roll of cash from Nana into a small duffel bag I sometimes used for football practice. “Maybe, but it’s not like them. They’re never spontaneous. And my mom is weird about restaurant food.”
The one time I wanted to talk to my parents, they were MIA.
My mother’s car was in the garage, but my dad’s SUV was missing.
Normally, I’d rejoice at my good fortune.
Right now, I just wanted to walk out the door and never look back.
Leave it to my parents to sabotage my big “fuck you, I’m out” moment.
Jesse had waited a beat before answering. “All right. Give it another fifteen minutes and then go. I’m parked in a cul-de-sac one street over.” Another beat, and then his voice had dipped low. “And Caleb? If you’re late, you’ll apologize over my knee.”
The time on the microwave flipped to 6:41. But I barely noticed as the memory of Jesse’s promise flooded my head. It should have made me angry. Where the fuck did he get off threatening to spank me? I barely knew him. He had exactly zero right to throw down that kind of ultimatum.
Except he sort of did. Because I’d let him do it twice already.
And I’d been a big, glaring green light today, my body flashing go, go, go as he’d brought Welch’s paddle down on my all-too-eager ass.
The soreness hadn’t lasted long. And when I’d reached the house and examined my cheeks in my bathroom mirror, my skin was back to normal—no trace of red in sight.
Jesse can fix that. My dick twitched as images of me slung over his lap materialized in my mind.
It was undeniably stupid to trust him, let alone go home with him.
But what choice did I have? He’d shifted his whole arm into a wolf’s paw, and I hadn’t missed his fangs today in Welch’s office.
Then there was the whole thing where he’d spanked and fingered me to a Cat 5 orgasm.
Maybe I hadn’t yet wrapped my mind around being a werewolf, but I understood pleasure.
Jesse van der Meer made me feel good. So far, he hadn’t hurt me.
He’d promised to help me. My life had been a downward spiral since August. If Jesse had answers, I wanted them.
And I wanted him. There was no use denying it.
Sweat prickled under my arms as I went to the junk drawer and pulled out paper and a pen.
A big crystal vase of red roses trembled on the counter as I shut the drawer with my hip.
I stared at the paper, which had “From the Desk of Natalie Lawson” printed across the top.
My mother had probably bought it after she binged Downton Abbey or something.
Two minutes later, I was still trying to figure out how to tell my parents to fuck off in note form when the sound of the garage door drifted from the mudroom.
Fuck.
I shoved the paper into the drawer and hefted my duffel bag as my father entered the kitchen, my mother on his heels. Her lips turned down the second she spotted me.
“Caleb?” Her blue eyes went to my hand on my duffel strap.
“What’s going on?” my father demanded.
There was no point beating around the bush. “I’m moving out,” I said. “I’ll be staying with a friend.”
For a second, my parents simply stared at me. Then my dad’s expression darkened. “You’re really going to pull this stunt now?”
“A friend?” my mother asked, pressing a hand to her neck like she was searching for pearls to clutch. She said “friend” the same way someone else might say “mafia” or “small arms dealer.”
“Bullshit,” my dad said. “I didn’t agree to this.” Behind him, my mother gasped, probably seconds away from slapping her hands over her ears in case he tossed out more profanity.
“I’m an adult,” I said. “You don’t have to agree.”
Something in the air shifted. Before August, I probably wouldn’t have noticed.
But now, a charge filled the kitchen. It lifted the hair on my nape, tensing my muscles and making anger flare hot in my chest. The rest of the usual symptoms scuttled after it.
My pounding head. The ants crawling through me. My skin shrink-wrapping to my bones.
Every bit of it was bad news—and it would only get worse. Memories of Aiden Cross’s bloodied face flashed in my head.
“I’m going,” I said through a tight throat. “Don’t try to find me.” I spun on my heel and headed for the front door. But I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
Chaos exploded behind me, my father’s bellow bouncing off the walls. “You think you’re walking out of here?”
Well, yeah, that was exactly what I was doing.
I took two more steps when something hard nailed me in the back of the head, pitching me forward and almost taking me down.
I whirled, pain blazing through the base of my skull, as the crystal vase shattered on the floor, sending water and roses spraying in a dozen different directions.
I stared at the mess, disbelief pounding through me, before lifting my gaze to my father. He stared back from the kitchen doorway, his face draining of color.
“You moved so fast,” he said, shock glazing his eyes. The sharp scent of burning rubber hit my nose.
His fear. The anger pushed against my chest. Red tinted my vision, washing my mother’s white cabinets in pink.
“You threw a fucking vase at me,” I growled, my voice low and dangerous in my ears.
The urge to leave fled, replaced with a need to punish the source of my pain.
And the man backing away from me had caused me more pain than I cared to acknowledge.
I’d never been good enough for him. My whole life, he’d forced me to contort myself to fit an ideal.
And I’d tried. For years, I’d twisted and bent, struggling to mold to a definition I couldn’t see or touch.
Now I knew he couldn’t see or touch it, either.
Because he didn’t want me to change. He simply didn’t want me.
And maybe I would have been okay with that, but he couldn’t be.
It wasn’t enough that he hated my guts. No, he hated my guts and he wanted to see me suffer.
He wanted me to hurt because he thought I deserved it.
How fitting that it finally took a vase slammed into the back of my head to drive that home.
The anger exploded, propelling me forward and wrapping my hand around my father’s throat.
His eyes bulged, and someone screamed as I lifted him off the ground and carried him into the kitchen.
He clawed at my hand, but his pitiful attempts to free himself were nothing to me.
The gouges he dug into my skin healed instantly, pain spiking and ebbing.
Laughter built in my throat as I raised him higher.
My skin itched fiercely, the stinging sensation worse than the time I slept in a patch of poison ivy during a scouting weekend. I’d been forced into that too. Never good enough. Never worth the time or effort.
“Fuck you,” I grunted, the words so mangled by anger I wasn’t sure my father understood them. But my expression must have conveyed the sentiment, because his bloodshot eyes flared with outrage. Just as swiftly, his lids drooped. He was losing consciousness.
Movement in my peripheral vision made me turn my head.
My mother’s reflection flashed in the oven as more movement fluttered on my other side.
Before I could spin toward it, something slammed into the side of my face, bringing a white-hot burst of pain.
I staggered, releasing my grip on my dad’s throat as my mom struck again, braining me with a frying pan.
A sizzling sound filled my ears just as the stench of burnt flesh seared my nostrils.
I hissed as pins and needles spread across my face. Fatigue swept in, too, dragging at my limbs. Chest heaving, I flung up a hand to ward off another blow.
My mom stood a short distance away, her blond hair tangled around her shoulders and her face a mask of fear and shock.
She held the frying pan in both hands like a batter at home plate.
The piece was one of her splurges—solid silver cookware that went for something like two grand a pop.
She had no idea she’d chosen the perfect weapon to take me down.
“Run, Michael!” she screamed, darting a look at my dad. He’d fallen to all fours on the floor, one hand clutching at his chest like he was having a heart attack. Shit, maybe he was.
I lurched toward him, twenty-three years of good manners prompting me to help, but he lifted his head and glared at me with malevolence that stole my breath.
“You are no son of mine.”
The words hit me square in the chest. I’d known he felt that way, of course. But hearing it out loud was like a bitch-slap—abrupt and somehow more humiliating than a punch. His raspy declaration hung in the air, and for a second, the kitchen was still.
Then my mother hefted the frying pan higher.
I ran past her, ducking as she swung. The pan caught me in the ribs, but my duffel absorbed most of the blow.
I kept running, and I hit the front door and stumbled into the night.
Frozen air blasted my lungs as I raced down the sidewalk, passing landscaping lights and basketball hoops.
Shiny SUVs and front doors festooned with big wreaths.
Ordinary family shit. Things that didn’t belong to me and never would.
No son of mine. No son of mine. The words flowed through my head on a ribbon of malice. But it was easier this way, right? My parents disowning me was the best-case scenario. I didn’t need them or their money. Not when I had Jesse.
I ran faster, my feet flying over sidewalks I used to ride my bike down as a kid. For the first time in my life, someone was waiting for me. And he wanted me. That knowledge was like an oasis shimmering in the distance—and I was so fucking parched for it.
My lungs burned, but I relished the feeling. I had Jesse, and I finally had my freedom. Things could only get easier from here.
A siren split the air, the sound like stakes driving into my skull. I stumbled and then lurched around, my chest heaving. Blue and red lights flashed as a police cruiser rounded the corner at the end of the street.
It had to be for me. Undoubtedly, my parents had called the cops.
My mother had pretty much tried to kill me, but it didn’t matter.
Who were the police more likely to believe: the problem child with a documented history of “mental health intervention,” or Michael and Natalie Lawson, respectable churchgoers?
I spun and sprinted toward the woods behind the nearest houses.
The whole neighborhood was bordered by trees.
I reached them within seconds and plunged into the greenery.
My heart raced, and a cold sweat broke out over my body.
As I moved deeper into the woods, the memory of Jesse’s voice rang in my head.
You could lose control and expose us to the human world.
It didn’t take a genius to understand why that could never happen.
Werewolves weren’t supposed to exist. My wrists had healed almost instantly after he released me from those handcuffs.
My face still smarted from my mother’s frying pan, but the pain was fading rapidly.
I’d lived most of my life being different from the majority of people, and it fucking sucked.
How would people treat me if they knew I was an actual monster?
The night sky was overcast, the forest a maze of shadows and skeletal branches.
Patches of dirty, melting snow huddled at the base of the trees.
Roots and fallen trunks tangled with my feet, impeding my progress.
After a minute, I slowed to a walk to avoid falling on my face.
My breath puffed in white clouds around my head, and I shivered as the promise of winter nipped at my nose and ears.
The wail of the police siren faded, but I didn’t turn back.
The woods connected to the forest behind campus.
If I kept going, I’d eventually hit a trail that looped back to my parents’ neighborhood.
Then it was just a matter of waiting out the cops and finding Jesse.
The wind picked up. I stopped, a tingling awareness sliding down my spine. Suddenly, my heart pumped faster. I gazed around, the awareness shifting into something more urgent.
A warning.
It whispered through the trees, making the bare branches dance and shiver. All at once, I was a kid in my parents’ basement, my eyes watering as the feeling of being watched pressed against me from all sides. Something was coming.
I broke into a run, adrenaline like gasoline in my veins.
My duffel thumped against my side. Cold air seared my lungs.
The ground had lost the hard, compact crunch of fall.
Now, it was wet and soggy, the terrain treacherous.
I knew the forest. Had spent countless scouting weekends learning how to navigate and identify different types of trees.
But nothing was familiar now. Shadows loomed.
Branches reached out and slapped my face.
Something seized my duffel, pulling me to an abrupt halt, and I released a short, startled shout as I whirled and fought to untangle my shoulder strap from a dead branch.
Rustling ahead of me had me whipping back around, another shout lodging in my throat.
“Caleb!” Jesse appeared out of the gloom. He was dressed in dark joggers and a white, long-sleeve T-shirt that molded to his chest. His eyes glowed, the irises like chips of amber. And he was such a welcome sight that I yanked myself free of the branch and rushed into his arms.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said, my heart tripping over itself. “I was going to meet you like you said, but I saw a cop car.”
He held me, his thick arms around my shoulders and his heart a strong, steady beat against my chest. “You missed two check-ins. I came looking.” He tightened his arms. “It’s all right. Breathe, okay? I’ve got you.”
The odd, panicky awareness faded. Slowly, my heartbeat synced to his.
Another werewolf thing, probably, but I was too damn tired to question it.
Unable to stop myself, I buried my face in the dip where his neck met his shoulder.
I dragged in his scent—laundry detergent, forest, and that spicy undercurrent that smelled like money and…
him. Later, I’d undoubtedly regret throwing myself at him like a toddler.
But right now, his arms around me felt too damn good to give up.
After a second, he eased me away from him, and his golden eyes narrowed as he reached up and angled my face to the side. “What happened?”
“Silver frying pan.”
He turned my gaze back to his. “Your parents?” At my nod, his eyes lightened several more shades. “Come on,” he said, taking my arm. “You can tell me everything in the car.”