4. Chapter 4
Bram
I wake up warm. That's a first.
Gargoyles are never warm. Something is wrong with me. Something is very, very wrong.
This morning my skin is still holding heat like a woodstove, and I lie there half asleep inside my own heat bubble for one long, stupid second, reaching an arm across the bed.
Nothing.
I open my eyes and slide my hand farther across the mattress. There's nobody there. I leave my hand on her side of the bed for a moment, listening for movement downstairs.
Again, nothing.
I sit up. The moonlight across the floorboards has given way to the flat gray of a November morning, and the floor at the foot of the bed is empty.
Her clothes were there last night. I could swear it.
I look toward the landing, then the glass doors, as if she's going to appear and explain why I'm waking up alone.
Last night she fell asleep under my wing. I lay there a little longer, with her heartbeat steady against my chest, thinking, with the last working corner of my brain, that I was going to make her waffles the next morning.
Waffles, coffee, fresh berries. I was going to feed her and pamper her. Looks like she had other plans.
Plans that didn’t include me, apparently.
I go downstairs, listening as I make my way through the nest. In the hallway, there's my shirt, alone on the floorboards with its torn seam, like the last man standing after a party. Her coat, purse, and shoes are gone.
Okay. I know what this means. It means she got dressed, gathered everything up, and let herself out, and I didn't hear a damn thing.
The notepad hangs by the kitchen doorway. I check it, but not with much hope.
I stand in my own kitchen in the gray light and look at a blank pad of paper for longer than I will ever admit to another living soul, like maybe she wrote in invisible ink.
She left without a single word.
Not even a thank you. I'd have framed a thank-you note.
She could have woken me. Said she wanted to go. I'd have taken her home, and we could have endured an uncomfortable trip together like adults. Instead, she snuck out like a thief in the night.
Shit. Looks like Rory Hale has no appetite for my breakfast feast. Or my company, apparently.
I can’t help but feel the sharp pang of disappointment as I realize she may want nothing more to do with me than a one-night stand. It stings, sure. I was already planning on feeding her and taking her for another long flight to a little island offshore this weekend.
Guess it won’t happen now.
I drag a hand down my face, and something scrapes. Stone on stone. A small hard catch against my jaw where there should be nothing but knuckle.
I hold my hand up to the window light. There's a band around my left ring finger. The raised stone is smooth and seamless, rising from the granite at the base of my finger. I turn my hand over. It goes all the way around.
It was not there yesterday. I spread my fingers, then curl them slowly. The band moves with me, part of my hand. Part of my body.
I press my thumb to it. There's no edge to get beneath, nothing to pull off. I know that before I try, but I try anyway.
Because I know what this is. Every gargoyle knows what this is. It's the first lore anybody teaches you, before flight, before anything, back when you're still small enough to climb the furniture.
Gargoyles mate once. The bond begins on contact. It completes on its own, silently. Irrevocably, etched on a gargoyle’s skin as permanently as stone carvings. I stare at the mating band.
Fuck. There’s only one explanation for a mating band appearing on my finger.
Rory Hale is my mate.
I put my other hand flat on the counter.
This is the part where I would have gotten upstairs and woken her.
Shown her my hand. Tried to explain why I'm standing beside the bed looking like I've forgotten how to speak. The part where I would have told her what this means to me, what this means to her if she’d given me a chance.
Instead, I'm alone in my kitchen, and she has no idea. She probably doesn’t even care.
Beneath the shock, I become aware of a faint hum. It's been there since I opened my eyes, quiet enough that I haven't paid attention to it. Now I stand still and listen, though it isn't something I hear with my ears.
Feelings that aren't mine stir beneath my own. They're distant, too faint to make out clearly, but I find myself turning toward the window, toward the town beyond the pines. Somewhere out there, Rory is going about her morning. I can feel her.
I wait, concentrating, hoping for something I can recognize. Is she upset? Does she regret it? But all I have is that faint, steady presence. It tells me she's there. It doesn't tell me why she left.
The lore covers that part too. With a human, the bond runs one way.
I'll feel her moods under my skin, her nearness arriving as warmth from the inside out, all the way to the wingtips.
She'll feel none of it. She could stand next to me at the copier for the next forty years and never once suspect I can feel her bad days from across the building.
I’m mated. For life. There's no second chance when it comes to mates. Whatever happens from here, whoever she decides I am to her, there will never be another woman for me. Not a date. Not a someday. Nothing.
She can decide last night was all she wanted. Say it was a mistake, go back to calling me Coach Stryge, and get on with her life. I'll still be her mate.
I knew something was happening when the warmth wouldn't fade. I wanted to believe it was the kiss, the first touch I'd let myself have in years. Those stories about recognizing your mate seemed a lot easier to dismiss without a mating mark on my hand.
I sit down.
"Okay," I tell the empty kitchen. “It’ll be alright. Everything will work out.”
It comes out steady. Encouraging. The rest of me could use some work.
I don't know what a man is supposed to do with this information when his mate left him behind before she could even know she’s his mate.
All I know is that it’s seven on a Monday morning.
By now I ought to be getting ready for school.
I have classes to teach, film to get through, a team to put through practice.
All things I know how to do, and I'm sitting here trying to imagine saying good morning to one small woman without making a complete ass of myself.
This is a mess. This is such a spectacular mess.
I lean back in the chair and let my hand rest on my thigh. The hum is still there, and underneath the panic, I discover that I'm glad. I like being able to feel her.
I ought to be furious. My whole future has just changed while I was asleep. But I can't quite wish the bond away, even sitting here with no reason to think she'll want it. I want another night with her. I want her here this morning. Apparently forever isn't enough to frighten me out of that.
I've managed to mate for life before finding out whether she even wants a second night. There's a version of this where that's funny, and maybe I'll figure it out sometime.
Right. Enough of this sob story I’m telling myself.
I've gone to work through injuries, through losses, through every kind of bad day this town has manufactured. I can get through one Monday. The kids still need their coach, and I have spent years keeping things to myself. This will just take more effort.
I shower. I dress. I put on a team hoodie and slip the whistle around my neck. Then I take some black field gloves out of the coat bench, and I pull them on in front of the hallway mirror like it's a perfectly normal thing to wear gloves to school.
The band disappears under the leather.
There. At least nobody will see it. It's November in Maine; gloves won't look strange on the field. If anyone asks why I'm still wearing them in class, I'll think of something. I'm a teacher. Answering questions I wasn't prepared for is half the job.
I go back upstairs and out through the bedroom doors onto the roof deck.
The pines are black and dripping beneath a low sky, and the bay past the treetops is the color of an old nickel.
Cold air moves over the membranes. I spread my wings, crouch, and launch on habit, and the town unrolls below me the way it does every morning of my life.
Every wingbeat toward the school makes the hum under my skin a little stronger. I can feel the warmth spreading, even with cold air moving over my chest and along my wings. I'm flying toward her. I haven't even seen her yet and I’m already burning.
Fucking. Excellent.
Six minutes later, I land behind the field house with one soft boom, walk up past the empty bleachers with my breath fogging, and by the time I hit the doors my face is set to Coach Stryge.
Lock it down. Go to work.
The athletics wing at seven a.m. smells of liniment and laundry detergent under the buzzing lights.
The walls are the same familiar gold cinder block to waist height and navy the rest of the way up.
Somewhere back in the showers a pipe knocks.
I head toward my office. I know what I'm doing here. It helps.
Cole Braddock is coming away from the locker-room door, bag over one shoulder.
He's six foot six of slate-gray gargoyle teenager, wings furled neat under his jacket, moving with that loose, unhurried ease of young athletes. He’s got the best arm I've ever coached.
Best arm this town has ever produced, and I'm including everything in the trophy case by my back wall in this assessment.
Four years ago he was a freshman with wingspan problems and a throwing motion like a lawn sprinkler, and I have rebuilt that delivery one insufferable rep at a time.
I want a championship for the team and a college future for him, and this year we have a real chance at both.
"Morning, Coach." He gives me that easy grin, the one that makes adults like him before he's said much of anything.
"Cole." My voice comes out level and ordinary. Good. “Is Coach Gene in yet?"
"Yes, sir. In his office."
"Good." I step aside to let him pass.
He lifts two fingers off the bag strap by way of salute and heads down the wing toward the main corridor, no hurry in him anywhere, and for a moment I watch him go, proud to the brim. Head Coach Gene and I have both worked our asses off to get him this far.
Whatever else today is, I can still help that kid get where he wants to go.
Behind him, the locker-room door swings again.
Eli Navarro, a young human boy, comes out with his hood up and his head down.
He cuts along the far wall, tight to the cinder block, shoulder practically dragging the paint.
He's moving fast, that stiff, busy walk kids deploy when running would attract attention. I frown as I look at him. There’s something about his attitude that sets me on edge.
He doesn't look at Cole. He doesn't look at me.
His bag is clamped under one arm, and he keeps his face turned toward the floor.
“Hi, Eli,” I call after him.
He doesn't answer. He doesn't slow. Doesn't turn. Doesn't so much as hitch a step. I watch his hunched back retreat up the wing, waiting for him to glance over his shoulder, but he disappears around the corner into the main corridor.
I stay where I am, frowning. Two seasons that kid has been team manager.
Two seasons of six a.m. buses and taped ankles and water bottles racked before anyone thinks to ask, every player's gear size in his head, every stat in his notebooks, the most reliable person on my sideline, even counting the coaching staff.
And in two seasons, Eli Navarro has never once failed to return a greeting. Not once. The kid says "morning, Coach" when he's soaked, when we've lost, when he's got a fever and shouldn't have come in at all.
Maybe he didn't hear me. But I don't like the way he was holding himself, shoulders hunched and face hidden, trying to get through a nearly empty corridor without anyone looking at him.
He could be sick. Worried about a test. I don't know, and I don't intend to guess. I'll find a quiet minute at practice and ask him. Away from the players, where he won't have to worry about anybody overhearing.
The frown is still on my face when the front doors open at the far end of the building.
I feel it before I hear it. That's the part no lore ever prepared me for. The hum under my skin lifts, swells, turns over into warmth, inside-out heat, rolling up through my chest and out along both wings to the very tips. I turn toward the entrance before I get a clear look down the corridor.
Then the sound arrives. Heels on terrazzo. Quick, clicking, familiar enough that I don't need to see her face to know it’s her.
She comes through the doors with the November draft, coat cinched, chin up, curls loose, lipstick red against her fair skin.
Rory.
For one stupid second, I forget where I'm standing. She looks just the same as she always did. Sexy, quirky, adorable and perfect, and I want to cross the corridor and take her in my arms as if waking up without her never happened.
Of course, I don’t. It would be insanity.
I stay put. My fingers tighten inside the leather gloves, the mark safely out of sight while the rest of me warms at the sight of her.
So much for keeping my mind on work.