Linger

“Mom!” I snapped, my entire face hot. “I am not you. I am nothing like you. You have no idea what goes on in my head, or how my brain works, or whether or not I’m in love with Sam or vice versa. So don’t even try to have this conversation with me. Don’t even—ugh. You know what? I’m done.”

I snatched my forbidden phone from where it sat on the kitchen counter, got my coat, and stomped out. I slid the back door shut behind me and walked off the deck without looking back. Snapping at Mom should have made me feel guilty, but I couldn’t feel one ounce of contrition.

I missed Sam so badly that it hurt.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

• SAM •

By the time I got done at the store, the day was freakishly warm, even warmer than the day before. The sun was warm on my cheeks when I got back to Beck’s house and opened the car door. I stepped out and stretched my hands as far as they could go, closing my eyes until I felt like I was falling. In between gusts of wind, the air around me felt like the same temperature as my body, and it made it seem like I had no skin at all, like I was suspended, a spirit.

Birds, convinced that this afternoon meant that fickle spring had finally returned for good, shrilled excited love songs to one another from the bushes around the house. A song welled in me, too, the lyrics silent as I mouthed them, trying them out.

I walk through the seasons and always the birds

are singing and screaming and keening for love.

When you’re with me it seems so absurd

that I should be jealous of the jay and the dove.

It reminded me of the warm spring days that used to unfold me from my wolf form, days when I was so happy to get my fingers back.

It seemed so wrong to be alone right now.

I would check the shed again. I hadn’t seen Cole yet today, but I knew he had to be human somewhere, with this kind of weather. And it was warm enough that at least one of the other new wolves might have changed as well. And it was something practical to do instead of listlessly wandering inside the house, waiting for tomorrow and wondering if I really was going to the studio, and if Grace was really coming with me.

Plus, Grace would’ve wanted me to watch for Olivia.

I knew someone was inside the shed as soon as I got within a few feet of it; the door was ajar, and I heard the sound of movement from inside. My sense of smell was nowhere near what it had been when I was a wolf, but my nose still conveyed to me that whoever was inside was one of us; the musky scent of the pack was only partially obscured by the scent of human sweat. As a wolf, I would’ve been able to tell exactly which pack member it was. Now, as a human, I was blind.

So I walked to the door and knocked the back of my knuckles on it three times. “Cole? All decent in there?” I asked.

“Sam?” Cole’s voice sounded—relieved? It seemed odd for him. I heard the scrabbling of claws, then a groan. I felt the fine hairs on the back of my neck prickle to attention.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, cautiously pushing the door open. Inside the shed, it absolutely reeked of wolf, as if the walls bled with the smell. First I saw Cole, clothed, standing by the bins, one of his knuckles pressed against his lip in an uncertain gesture. And then I followed his eyes to the corner of the shed and saw a guy crumpled there, half covered by a bright blue polar fleece blanket.

“Who is that?” I whispered.

Cole removed his knuckle and looked away from both me and the figure in the corner.

“Victor,” he said flatly.

At the name, the guy turned his face to look at us. Light brown hair, knotted and curled around his cheekbones. Maybe a few years older than me. My mind instantly went to the last time I’d seen him. Sitting in the back of Beck’s Tahoe, wrists zip tied, looking at me. His lips silently forming the word help.

“Do you know each other?” I asked.

Victor shut his eyes, his shoulders shuddering, and then he said, “I—hold on—”

While I blinked, he shook out of his skin and into a pale gray wolf with dark facial markings, faster than I’d ever seen any of us shift. It was not quite effortless, but it worked naturally, like a snake rubbing out of its skin or a cicada stepping out of the brittle shell of its former self. No gagging. No pain. None of the agony of every other shift I’d ever witnessed or experienced.

The wolf shook itself, fluffing its coat, staring balefully up at me with Victor’s brown eyes. I started to move away from the door, to give him an easy exit, but Cole said, voice strange, “Don’t bother.”

And then, as if on cue, the wolf sat down on its haunches hard, ears trembling. He yawned, whining as he did, and then his whole body shook violently.

Cole and I turned our faces away at the same time, just as Victor gasped audibly, shifting back into his human form. Just like that. In and out. My mind couldn’t quite grasp it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him tug up the blanket. More for the warmth than for the privacy, I was guessing.

Victor said, softly, “Goddammit.”

I looked at Cole, who had an utterly blank expression on his face, one that I was learning accompanied anything that mattered.

“Victor?” I said. “I’m Sam. Do you remember me?”

He was crouched on the floor now, rocking back and forth on his heels like he wasn’t sure if he should sit or kneel. That and the shape of his mouth told me that he was in pain. He said, “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe.” He shot a glance at Cole, and Cole winced slightly.

“Well, I’m Beck’s son,” I said. Close enough to the truth and faster to spit out. “I’ll help you, if I can.”

• COLE •

Sam was handling Victor a lot better than I had. I’d only stood and stared by the door, waiting to let him out if he managed to stay a wolf.

“That was…How do you shift that quickly?” Sam asked him.

Victor grimaced, glancing from Sam to me and back to Sam again. I could tell it was taking a big effort on his part to keep his voice steady. “It’s worse from wolf to me. From me to wolf is easy. Too easy, man. I keep shifting back even though it’s warm. That’s what does it, right?”

“This is the hottest day we’ve had so far,” Sam answered. “It’s not supposed to be this warm the rest of the week.”

“God,” Victor said, “I didn’t think it would be like this.”

Sam looked at me, as if I had anything to do with anything. He stepped around me to get a folding chair, then sat down across from Victor. Suddenly, he reminded me of Beck. Everything about him was saying interest and concern and sincerity, from the curve of his shoulders to the lowering of his eyebrows over his heavy-lidded eyes. I couldn’t remember if that was how Sam had first looked at me. I couldn’t remember the first thing I’d said to him.