Chapter 17
Tuesday’s week slipped by in a blur of airports, client meetings, and texts that made her smile at her phone like a teenager.
She flew to New York on Tuesday evening for a seasonal menu overhaul, and she was surprised when Knife asked for her flight numbers. She was simultaneously touched and troubled. It was good he cared enough to want them, but another danger signal of how they felt about each other.
When she turned her phone off airplane mode after landing, she found a text telling her to be safe in the big city.
The restaurant owner’s son sent her a pin, and she easily found him after collecting her bag. She’d worked with this family for years, and she stayed in the guest bedroom in their sprawling Long Island home at night. She rode back and forth to the restaurant with them.
The work was intense but satisfying, making several possibilities and then deciding on the winner based on taste, cost, and ease of obtaining the ingredients. Then it came down to honing the techniques and training the line.
The second night, she and Knife texted about their days, and he asked if she wanted to talk face-to-face.
Seconds later, they were video-chatting, and the conversation stretched well past midnight.
They talked about silly childhood things: his collection of toy cars, the full-size tractor he’d driven at five to help with the garden, the race car his father had let him drive around the track at eight.
They shared stories about how both had learned to drive on back roads and then the interstate before getting their license.
He went quiet, but her inner wolf told her not to fill the silence.
Thirty seconds later, he finally said, “I killed my best friend. Senior year of high school, I was showing off. I’d been driving since I was eight, had been taught by one of the best race car drivers on the planet.
I thought I was invincible, and I pushed too hard.
Too fast for the curves.” A pause. “I’d driven that mountain in another car, but not this one. I was an idiot.”
Tuesday sat very still.
“He was human, and he died while we waited for the ambulance. I had a broken arm, and I let it heal slow. Didn’t change to fix it.
People saw the wreck, so I couldn’t really magically be okay while the police were paying attention.
But a week later, I could’ve changed and then just stayed home, but I didn’t.
I even rebroke it, punishing myself.” He shook his head at the painful memory.
“My grandfather made me change after that, and I fucking broke it again the next day.”
His voice was even, but she could feel his pain across the miles.
“I refused to get close to humans until…” He closed his eyes.
“Some of my brothers have human ol’ladies.
I love my brothers, they love their ol’ladies.
Terrifies me, but I try to watch out for them.
” He rolled his eyes. “And then there’s Silver, with Mythic Beast. Totally human, and so fragile.
When she’s around the clubhouse, it’s like my wolf has to make sure Silver is fine, and it doesn’t matter if she’s currently in girl-mode or boy-mode.
It isn’t sexual with Silver, more protective, for a reason I can’t answer. ”
His story hit her hard. She never shared why she avoids getting close to humans, so she landed on the Silver angle to change the subject.
“That’s right, ya’ll are friends with Mythic Beast. I remember seeing that somewhere.
Are they as cool behind the scenes as they are on stage and on social media? ”
“Even more. They are all genuinely good people. Will… Lord Byron, jumped straight into helping us with some of our charity work right off the bat.” He drew his eyebrows together. “Why do you look so troubled?”
Damn, he was too fucking perceptive. Without a way to obfuscate, and not wanting to lie, she had to tell him, “It’s…
your story. It’s more we have in common, kind of.
” She drew in a breath. “My college roommate was addicted to drugs. Not terribly bad at first, but enough I scented something was off. It got really bad a few months later, and I—”
She stopped. Started again. “I tried everything. Stayed up with her. Hid things. Called people. Thought I could just want it hard enough to make it work. Make her stop.” She could still hear the sirens in the distance, too far away to help.
“She overdosed just before spring break of my sophomore year. I was on the phone with 911, begging the lady to make the ambulance hurry, but they didn’t get there soon enough.
Her heart stopped beating seven minutes before they got there.
I did CPR, but they couldn’t bring her back. ”
She felt her eyes watering, and she looked down. “They tried everything, but she was gone. Just… gone. And blue. I’d never seen a dead human before. Rabbits and deer, I guess we eat them before we see the effects of death.”
The silence between them had a different weight now. A shared experience that Tuesday didn’t know what to do with.
“Has it made you avoid humans?” he asked.
“Yes. Shifters don’t do drugs. We don’t try to kill ourselves.
If we want to die, we can just go to animal and stay there — it gives us a better way to escape the human world.
You know, assuming our family will let us.
I had to help bully a cousin into coming back to his two-legged shape, but that’s another story. ”
And she didn’t want to tell that story, so she searched her mind for a way to change the conversation.
“My first car was a beat-to-hell BMW. My dad wanted me in a safe car that drove well, but told me he wasn’t buying me something nice right off the bat.
I hated that car. The body was black but the driver side door was fucking red, and the passenger door right behind it was a different color black than the rest of the car. ”
She learned his first car had been a seventies Trans Am his father had bought for him and then helped him restore. It’d looked like shit for two years, until he’d worked through all the mechanical issues and could focus on the body.
From there, they talked about their favorite cars, his first bike.
She told him about traveling around the country with her dad on NFL road trips, and the way her wolf had hated every hotel room once she hit puberty.
He told her about the mountain his family still owned in North Carolina, and about how they practiced self-sufficiency as much as possible in the modern era.
She survived on coffee the following day with no regrets.
It was good to get to know the person outside of sex, and she ignored all the red flags.
She couldn’t have all of him, but she’d take what she could get.
Also, the more she understood him, the better she could manage the arrangement.
Or, that’s what she told herself, anyway.
She landed back in Chattanooga late Saturday afternoon after dealing with delayed flights in Atlanta, and decided her wolf needed to run. The wolf detests big cities and airports, and this was her way of giving her wolf some time after having to navigate all those people.
She drove to the pack lands, parked, stripped, and tossed her clothes into her car.
Her car doors were programmed to lock automatically, so she put her keys on the screened-in back porch, and then changed the second her bare feet were on the grass again, her wolf bursting free in a single breath as soon as she released her hold.
There’s nothing quite like running through the forest alone.
She loved the thunder of paws on full-moon runs with the pack, the synchronized rhythm of the hunt, but sometimes she craved this: a solo run, feet pounding the frost-stiffened leaf litter, oaks and hickories blurring past, scents rolling over her in waves — damp earth, rotting leaves and mast, the sharp tang of vole urine.
The scents permeated and faded with an odd Doppler effect as she flew through them, paws and legs propelling her through the dense forest.
Her wolf ran until long past winded, lungs burning, legs leaden, then pounced on a cottontail and tore into it. Warm meat, heated the old-fashioned way. Fire not necessary.
It was a small rabbit though, barely a mouthful, and the wolf went looking for more.
She scented a raccoon’s musky trail, tracked it to a hollow oak, but the creature scrambled up before she could leap.
She went on the prowl, moving slow and quiet, and caught movement — a flock of wild turkeys.
She crept close to them and then leapt. They erupted in their escape, feathers exploding like gray smoke, but she managed to pounce on a yearling, his clumsy wings no match for her hunger.
She lay in the forest and feasted, listening for coyotes just in case, but nothing approached, and she gorged on fresh turkey until her belly was good and full.
When she left, there wasn’t much for the vultures to devour, and she was a fat and happy wolf.
She slept in the shallow cave the pack most often uses, woke with the sun, and ran back to the human’s car. Not the fun car. The wolf liked it when the human drove the fun car.
Once back in human form, Tuesday dressed, brushed her hair and put it into a ponytail holder, and then drove to First Watch for breakfast. She was always starving after a change.
She occupied herself the rest of the day with laundry, grocery shopping, and the latest cozy mystery from one of her favorite authors.
And the whole time, she watched the clock for how close she was to Monday.
All week the texts had come steadily — quick check-ins, silly memes, a photo of a perfect ribeye. But there was nothing today. She knew he spent weekends with his club brothers and he was probably busy.
But he’d texted at work when he was busy. Or probably between being busy, but still.
- - - ? - - -