Linger

Moving into the dark room, I knocked my shin on the corner of one of the therapy boxes on my way to the floor lamp. I swore softly, clicked on the light, and for the first time contemplated what I was doing: digging through my dead brother’s stuff to find clothing for a totally swoonworthy but jerkish werewolf standing in my bathroom, after telling my mom that I’d been sleeping with him.

Maybe she was right and I did need therapy.

I twisted my way through the boxes and threw open the closet. A rush of Jack-smell came out—pretty gross, really. Partially washed jerseys and man-shampoo and old shoes. But for a second, just for a second, it made me stand still, staring at the dark shapes of the hanging clothing. Then I heard my mother, far away downstairs, drop something, and remembered that I needed to get Cole out of here before my father came home. Mom wouldn’t tell him. She was good like that. She didn’t like to see crap get broken any more than I did.

I found a ratty sweatshirt, a T-shirt, and a decent pair of jeans. Satisfied, I turned around—right into Cole.

I bit off another swearword, my heart thumping. I had to crane my head back a bit to see his face this close; he was pretty tall. The dim floor lamp cast his face in sharp relief, like a Rembrandt portrait.

“You were taking a long time,” Cole said, taking a step back for politeness’ sake. “I came to see if you’d gone to get a gun.”

I shoved the clothing at him. “You’ll have to go commando.”

“Is there any other way?” He tossed the shirt and sweater onto the bed and half turned to pull on the jeans. They hung a little loosely on him; I could see the lines of his hip bones casting shadows as they disappeared into the waist.

I looked away quickly as he turned back around, but I knew he had seen me watching. I wanted to scratch the cocky lift of his eyebrows from his face. He reached for the T-shirt, and as it unfolded in his hands, I saw that it was Jack’s favorite Vikings T-shirt, the bottom right edge of it smeared with a bit of white from when he’d painted the garage last year. He used to wear the shirt for days at a time, until eventually even he admitted it smelled. I’d hated it.

Cole stretched his arm above his head to put it on, and suddenly all I could think was that I couldn’t stand to see anyone but my brother wear that T-shirt. Unthinking, I grabbed a handful of the fabric and Cole froze, looking down at me, expression blank. Maybe a little puzzled.

I tugged, indicating what I wanted, and still with a vaguely curious expression, he released his fist, letting me pull the shirt from his hands. Once I had the shirt, I didn’t want to explain why I had taken it back, so I kissed him instead. It was easier kissing him, pressing him back up against the wall, trying out the shape of his smirk on my lips, than it was to sort out why Jack’s shirt in someone else’s hands made me feel so sharp and exposed inside.

And he was a good kisser. I felt his flat stomach and ribs slide up against mine, even though his hands didn’t lift to touch me. This close, he smelled like Sam had on the first night that I met him, all musky wolf and pine. There was a certain earnest hungriness to the way Cole pressed his mouth against mine that made me think there was more truth in him here, kissing me, than there was when he spoke.

When I pulled back, Cole stayed where he was, leaned back against the wall, fingers hooked in the pockets of his stillunzipped jeans, his head cocked to one side, just studying me. My heart was thumping in my chest, and my hands were trembling with the effort of not kissing him again, but he didn’t seem fazed. I could see how slow and soft his pulse was beating through the skin of his abdomen.

The fact that he wasn’t as revved up as I was instantly infuriated me, and I took a step back, throwing Jack’s sweatshirt at him. He reached up to catch it a second after it bounced off his chest.

“That bad?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, crossing my arms to keep them still. “It was like you were trying to eat an apple.”

His eyebrows spiked as if he could tell I was lying. “Rematch?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. I pressed a finger into one of my eyebrows. “I think it’s time for you to go.”

I was afraid he was going to ask where he was supposed to go, but he just tugged on the sweatshirt and zipped up the jeans with an air of finality. “You’re probably right.”

Even though I saw that the soles of his feet were cut up pretty bad, he didn’t ask for shoes and I didn’t offer them. The weight of not explaining myself to him was choking the words out of me, so I just led him downstairs and back toward the door he’d come in.

I saw him hesitate, just a moment, as we passed by the door to the kitchen, and I remembered the feel of his ribs against mine. Part of me knew I should offer him something to eat, but most of me just wanted him gone as quickly as possible. Why was it so much easier to leave a dish out for the wolves?

Probably because wolves didn’t have arrogant smirks.

In the mudroom, I stopped by the door and crossed my arms again. “My dad shoots wolves,” I told him. “Just for the record. So you might want to keep out of the woods behind the house.”

“I’ll keep that in mind when I’m in the body of an animal with no higher thought,” Cole said. “Thanks for that.”

“I live to please,” I said, throwing open the door. Sleet, coming in sideways from the dark night, dotted my arm.

I expected a hangdog expression, or something else meant to elicit sympathy, but Cole just looked at me, a weird, firm smile on his face. Then he walked right out into the sleet, pulling the door out of my hands to shut it behind him.

After the door had closed, I stood there for a long moment, softly cursing under my breath, not knowing why I was letting it bother me. Then I went to the kitchen and got the first thing I could see—a bagged loaf of bread—and returned to the back door.

I planned in my head what I would say—something like, Don’t expect anything else—but when I opened the door, he was already gone.

I flicked on the back light. Dim yellow light splashed across the frozen yard, odd reflections thrown by the thin layer of crusted sleet. About ten feet from the door, I saw the jeans and tattered sweatshirt lying in a haphazard pile.

My ears and nose burning in the cold, I crunched slowly out to the clothing, stopping to study the shape of it. One of the sleeves of the sweatshirt was flung out, as if pointing to the distant pine woods. I lifted my eyes and, sure enough, there he was. A gray-brown wolf standing just a few yards beyond me, staring at me with Cole’s green eyes.