Sinner

As I led him out beside the car, I talked myself down, explaining to myself all of the ways that his being here changed nothing, meant nothing, was nothing. Nothing, nothing.

I turned around, my mouth open to say something else scathing about him not calling me before showing up in my state, in my work, in my life.

But then he wrapped his arms around me.

My breath stopped as if he’d slapped a hand over my mouth.

I didn’t hug him back right away, because I didn’t have enough information to know how to hug him back.

He smelled like strange airport hand soap and felt like a hole to fall into.

Cole stepped back. I couldn’t tell from his face what was going on.

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“Hello, too,” he replied.

“Hello is what you say when you first call someone.”

He was completely unoffended. “You don’t call someone before ta-da.”

“Maybe I don’t like ta-das.”

Honestly, I had no idea what I liked. I only knew that my heart was galloping so fast that my fingers were numb. Logically, I knew it was just from surprise, but I didn’t know if it was like Surprise, here is a cake or Surprise, you’ve had a stroke.

In front of me, Cole’s smile had emptied. His eyes were going blank, which was what happened to Cole when you hurt him. The real Cole vacated the situation and left his body standing by itself.

Cruelly, I was grateful for it, as grateful as I’d been for the brief glimpse of his true smile earlier. Because this reaction was real. It meant he really cared how I felt about this reunion. A smile I couldn’t trust, but pain — I knew what the genuine article looked like.

“Look,” I said. “You can’t just show up and expect me to scream and giggle, because I’m not that person. So don’t look all hurt because I’m not doing that.”

His expression poured back into his face. This new one was hungry and restless. “Come somewhere with me. Let’s go somewhere.

Where is there to go around here? Let’s go there.”

“I have to work until six.” Six? Seven? I couldn’t even remember when my workday ended at the moment. Where were we? The alley behind .blush. The ocean breeze finding my skin, the starling overhead singing dreamily on a telephone wire, a dry palm leaf drifting down to rest on the concrete. This was real. This was happening.

He jumped from foot to foot — I had almost forgotten how he only stopped moving when things went badly for him. “What’s the next meal? Lunch? Dinner? Yes. Have dinner with me.”

“Dinner?” To this point, my evening plan had involved battling my way back to Glendale to the House of Divorce and Separation for an evening of estrogen and laughs that were the same as tears and vice versa. “Then what?”

He grabbed one of my hands. “Dessert. Sex. Life.” He kissed my palm — not a sweet kiss. A kiss that made my skin twist with sudden, furious desire. His mouth.

Now I thought I was having a stroke. “Cole, stop, wait.”

Stopping and waiting were not strong concepts for him.

“Cole,” I said. I thought I might drown in this blue alley.

“What?”

I started to say stop again, but that wasn’t what I meant. I said, “Give me a second. God!”

He let me have my hand back. I stared at him. This was Cole St. Clair: sharp-edged jaw, brilliant green eyes, tussled and spiked dark brown hair. His smile would have been famous even without NARKOTIKA. I could tell he liked me staring at him. I could tell that he liked everything about this moment.

Everything about it had been designed to catch me off guard, to make me react.

Hope and terror rose in me in equal measure.

I asked, “Why are you here?”

“You.”

It was the perfect answer said in an imperfect way. He’d answered so fast. Just like that: You. It was so easy to say just one word. I wanted him to say it again, so that the second time around, I’d have a chance to feel something.

You.

Me.

“Okay,” I said. I could feel a smile trying to happen. I hid it, fast. No way did he get a smile without calling me first. “Dinner.

Are you picking me up?”

Cole laughed, a sound utterly unattainable in its pure joy. “I just did.”

Chapter Four

· cole ·

According to the clock in the taxi, I was incredibly late for my appointment with Baby North. Tardiness is not one of my multiple vices, and normally this would have bothered me. But nothing could knock me at the moment. I buzzed with the pleasant anxiety spurred by the razor line of Isabel’s mouth.

When we had met, I had just saved my life by becoming a werewolf, and her brother had just died trying to stop being one.

Isabel had been the only thing in Mercy Falls sharper than I was.

She was the only one who knew me.

Above me, the sun glowed in the sky, one thousand times more brilliant than the sun over Minnesota. Everything in this place was concrete and invented grass and palm spikes.

“What’s the street again?” asked the cab driver. He wore a hat that was from a country that was not L.A., and he looked tired.

“Ocean Front Walk,” I said. “Venice. If there are two.

Probably not. But in the case of duplication.”

“That’s not a driving street,” he replied. “It is on the beach.

I will have to let you out. You will have to walk.”

I didn’t know if it was because I hadn’t been to the West Coast for a long time, or because I hadn’t been anywhere but Minnesota for a long time, but I kept being surprised by the fact of California. As we grew closer to Baby North’s home, everything seemed familiar and dreamy, seen before on tour or in a dream or movie. The names of the streets — Mulholland Drive and Wilshire Boulevard — and the names painted on the signs — Hollywood, Cheviot, Beverly Hills — called up thoughts of blond hair, red cars, palm trees, endless summer.

Isabel —

Los Angeles. The first time I was here, a Yankee usurper, a bumbling almost-there, I snapped a photo of a Hollywood Boulevard street sign and sent it to my mother with a text: guess what i’m famous.

Now I actually was famous, though I didn’t text my mother anymore.

I’m back.

It felt good. It was like when you had been unhappy and didn’t know it until you weren’t anymore. I had thought I was fine in Minnesota. Bored, lonely, fine.

California, California, California.

I could still feel the realness of Isabel in my arms. It was like the sun on my eyelids and the ocean scent in my mouth as I sucked the air in over my teeth. I’d been here before.