Linger

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“Find a bed,” he said.

“I’m not sleeping with you.” The high of the kiss was starting to wear off, and it was like the first time I’d met him all over again. Why did I let him get to me? What was wrong with me? I stood up, got my coat off the counter, and put it back on. Suddenly, I was horribly afraid that Sam would know that we’d kissed.

“And again I’m left feeling like I must be a bad kisser,” Cole said.

“I need to go home,” I told him. “I have school tomorrow—today. I have to be home before my dad leaves for work.”

“A really bad kisser.”

“Just say thanks for your fingers and toes.” I had my hand on the doorknob. “And let’s leave it at that.”

Cole should’ve been looking at me like I was crazy, but he was just looking at me. Like he didn’t seem to get that this was a rejection.

“Thanks for my fingers and toes,” he said.

I shut the bathroom door behind me and left the house without finding Sam. It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I remembered how Cole had told me that he was hoping to lose himself. It made me feel better to think that he was broken.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

• COLE •

I woke up human, though the sheets were twisted and smelled of wolf.

After Isabel left the night before, Sam had led me past a pile of linens that had clearly just been torn from a bed, and set me up in a downstairs bedroom. The entire room was so yellow that it looked like the sun had thrown up on the walls and wiped its mouth afterward on the dresser and curtains. But it had a freshly made bed in the middle of the room, and that was all that mattered.

“Good night,” Sam said, voice cool but not hostile.

I didn’t reply. I was already under the covers, dead to the world, dreaming of nothing.

Now, blinking in the late morning sunshine, I left the bed unmade and padded into the living room, which looked entirely different in the daylight. All reds and tartans made brilliant by the sun pouring in the wall of windows behind me. It looked comfortable. Not at all like the stiff gothic perfection of Isabel’s house.

In the kitchen, photos were stuck every which way on the cabinets, a mess of tape and pushpins and smiling faces. I immediately found Beck in dozens of them, and Sam, too, looking like a stop-motion video as he aged in each one. No Isabel.

The faces, for the most part, were all happy and grinning and comfortable, like they were making the best of a strange life. There were photos of grilling and canoeing and playing guitars together, but it was pretty obvious that they all took place either in this house or in the immediate vicinity of Mercy Falls. It was like there were two messages being given out by the cabinets of photos: We are a family, and You are a prisoner.

You chose this, I reminded myself. The truth was, I hadn’t given much thought to the times in between being a wolf. I hadn’t really given much thought to anything.

“How are your fingers?”

My muscles tensed for a second before I recognized the voice as Sam’s. I turned toward it and found him standing in the wide doorway to the kitchen, a cup of tea in his hand, the light from behind haloing his shoulders. His eyes had a shadowed look that was equal parts sleep deprivation and uncertainty about me.

It was a weird and surprisingly freeing feeling, to have someone not take you at face value.

To answer his question, I lifted my hands beside my head and wiggled my fingers, a gesture with cavalier overtones that I hadn’t initially intended.

Sam’s unnervingly yellow eyes—I never got used to them—kept looking, looking at me, waging a battle with himself. Finally he said in a flat voice, “There’s cereal and eggs and milk.”

I raised an eyebrow.

Sam’s shoulders had already ducked as he started to retreat back into the hall, but my raised eyebrow stopped him. He closed his eyes for a moment, then reopened them. “Okay, this.” He set his mug on the island between us and crossed his arms. “This: Why are you here?”

The pugilistic tone made me like him slightly better. It offset his stupid floppy hair and sad, fake-looking eyes. Evidence of a spine was a good thing.

“To be a wolf,” I said, flippant. “Which, coincidentally, isn’t the reason you’re here, if rumors are true.”

Sam’s eyes flicked to the photos behind me, so many of them containing him, and then back to my face. “It doesn’t matter why I’m here. This is my home.”

“I see that,” I replied. I could’ve helped him out, but I didn’t see the point.

Sam considered for a moment. I could actually see him mentally reviewing how much effort he wanted to put into the conversation. “Look. I’m not normally a jerk. But I’m having a really hard time understanding why someone would choose this life. If you could explain that to me, we’d be a lot closer to getting along.”

I held out my hands as if I were presenting something. When I did that at shows, the audience went wild, because it meant I was about to sing something new. Victor would’ve gotten the reference and laughed. Sam didn’t have the context, so he just looked at my hands until I said, “To make a fresh start, Ringo. The same reason your man Beck did it.”

Sam’s expression went totally flat. “But you chose this. On purpose.”

Clearly Beck had given Sam a different story of his genesis than the one he’d given me; I wondered which one was real. I wasn’t about to get into a lengthy discussion with Sam, however, who was looking at me like he expected me to debunk Santa Claus next. “Yeah, I did. Make of that what you will. Now can I get some breakfast, or what?”

Sam shook his head—not like he was angry, but like he was shaking gnats away from his thoughts. He glanced at his watch. “Yeah. Whatever. I’ve got to get to work.” He stepped past me, not meeting my eyes, and then checked himself. He went back into the kitchen and jotted something on a Post-it note, which he then smacked onto the door of the fridge. “That’s my cell and my work. Call me if you need me.”

It was clearly killing him to be nice to me, but still, he was. An ingrained sense of politeness? Duty? What was it? I wasn’t really a fan of nice people.

Sam started again to head out, but he stopped again, in the doorway, his car keys jingling. “You’ll probably change back soon. When the sun goes down, anyway, or if you’re outside too long. So try to stick around here, okay? So no one will see you shift?”