Forever

They were saving me.

The white wolf met my gaze one last time. This time.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

ISABEL

I spent the weekend waiting for Grace to call and invite me over to Beck’s house, and when I finally realized that she was probably waiting for me to invite myself as usual, it was Monday. And by then, Cole’s box of dangerous toys had arrived and I figured I could deliver it and see Grace at the same time. Then it wasn’t like I was going over specially to see Cole. I knew what was good for me. Even if I didn’t like it.

When Cole answered the front door of Beck’s house, he was shirtless and faintly sweaty. He looked like he’d been excavating with his bare hands and he had a bit of bruising around his left eye. He wore a smile across his entire face, wide and benevolent. It was a very grand-looking expression, even though he had bedhead and was wearing only sweatpants. There was something undeniably theatrical about Cole, even when his stage was the mundane.

“Good morning,” he said. He peered at the warm day. “It’s so Minnesota out here. I hadn’t realized.”

It was a gorgeous day, one of the perfect spring days that Minnesota seemed to have no problem inserting in between weeks of frigid weather or into the middle of a summer heat wave. The lawn smelled like the boxwoods that were planted unevenly in front of the house.

“It’s not morning anymore,” I said. “Your stuff is in the car. You didn’t say what kind of sedatives, so I got the worst I could find.”

Cole rubbed his filthy palm across his chest and stretched his neck up as if he could see what I’d brought from the front step. “How well you know me. Come in, I was just making a fresh pot of uppers. I had a helluva night.”

Music was blaring from the living room behind him; it was hard to believe that Grace was in the same house as it. “I don’t know if I’m coming in,” I said.

Cole laughed, a very cavalier laugh that completely dismissed my statement as fanciful, and walked barefoot to my SUV. “Front seat or backseat?”

“Very back.” It wasn’t a huge box and I could’ve carried it, but I preferred to see Cole’s arms wrapped around it instead.

“Come into my workshop, little girl,” Cole said.

I followed him into the house. It felt cooler than the outside, and smelled like something burnt. The howlingly loud music had a backbeat that vibrated in the soles of my shoes; I had to nearly shout to be heard over it. “Where are Sam and Grace?”

“Ringo left in his car a few hours ago. He must’ve taken Grace with him. I don’t know where they went.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“We’re not married,” Cole said, and added, in a humble tone, “yet.”

He kicked the door shut behind him, his arms full of the box, and said, “Kitchen.”

With the music providing a chaotic soundtrack, I led the way into the kitchen, where the burnt smell was most potent. It looked like a disaster zone. The counter was all glasses, markers, syringes, books, a bag of sugar ripped open and rolled down to show its contents. Every one of the cabinets was covered with photographs of the wolves of Mercy Falls in their human bodies. I tried not to touch anything.

“What’s burning?”

“My brain,” Cole replied. He used the last available counter space to shove the box next to the microwave. “Sorry about the mess. We’re having amitriptyline for dinner.”

“Does Sam know you’ve turned his kitchen into a drug lab?”

“It’s Sam Roth approved, yeah. Do you want coffee before we go set up this trap?”

Sugar gritted under the heels of my boots. I said, “I never said I was going to help you set it up.”

Cole examined the inside of a mug before setting it down on the island in front of me and filling it with coffee. “I read between the lines. Sugar? Milk?”

“Are you high? Why are you never wearing a shirt?”

“I sleep naked,” Cole said. He put both milk and sugar in my coffee. “As the day goes on, I put on more and more clothing. You should’ve come over an hour ago.”

I glared at him.

He said, “Also, I am not high. It offends me that you had to ask.” He didn’t look offended.

I took a sip of the coffee. It wasn’t horrible. “What are you really working on here?”

“Something to not kill Beck,” he said. He managed to seem both dismissive and possessive of the chemicals in the room. “Do you know what would be really excellent? If you helped me get into your high school’s lab this evening.”

“As in break in?”

“As in I need a microscope. I can only make so many scientific discoveries with a research lab built out of Legos and Play-Doh. I need real equipment.”

I regarded him. This Cole, electric and confident, was hard to resist. I scowled. “I’m not helping you break into my school.”

Cole held out his hand. “Fine. I would like my coffee back, then.”

I hadn’t realized how much I’d had to raise my voice to be heard over the music until there was a pause between tracks and I could lower it. “It’s mine now,” I said, echoing what he’d said to me back at the bookstore. “I might help you get into my mom’s clinic, though.”

“You’re a mensch,” he said.

“I have no idea what that means,” I replied.

“Me neither. Sam said it the other day. I liked the sound of it.”

That was pretty much all you needed to know about Cole, right there. He saw something he didn’t quite understand, liked it, and just took it to be his.

I dug in my tiny purse. “I brought you something else, too.”

I handed him a little die-cast Mustang, black and shiny.

Cole accepted it and set it in the open palm of his hand. He stood still; I hadn’t realized that he hadn’t been before that moment. After a pause, he said, “Bet this one gets better mileage than my real one.”

He drove it along the edge of the counter, making a soft, ascending sound for the engine note as he did. At the end of the island, he had it take off into the sky. He said, “I’m not letting you drive it, though.”

“I wouldn’t look good in a black car,” I said.

Cole suddenly snaked his arm out and grabbed my waist. My eyes widened. He said, “You’d look good in anything. Perfect ten, Isabel Culpeper.”

He started to dance. And all at once, because Cole was dancing, I was dancing. And this Cole was even more persuasive than the last one. This was everything about Cole’s smile made into a real thing, a physical object made out of his hands looped around me and his long body pushed up against mine. I loved to dance, but I’d always been aware that I was dancing, aware of what my body was doing. Now, with the music thumping and Cole dancing with me, everything became invisible but the music. I was invisible. My h*ps were the booming bass. My hands on Cole were the wails of the synthesizer. My body was nothing but the hard, pulsing beat of the track.