I reached out for her, cupped the side of her face with my hand. “Oh, no, you don’t, Grace. No, you don’t.”
She shook her head against the pillow. “I feel so miserable when I hear the howling. I felt so awful when you disappeared for the summer.”
“Oh, angel, I would take you with me if I could,” I said, and I was simultaneously surprised that the word angel came out of my mouth and that it felt right to call her that. I ran a hand over her hair, fingers catching in the strands. “But you don’t want this. I lose more of myself every year.”
Grace’s voice was strange. “Tell me what happens, at the end.”
It took me a moment to figure out what she meant. “Oh, the end.” There were one thousand ways to tell her, a thousand ways to color it. Grace wouldn’t fall for the rose-colored version that Beck had told me at first, so I just told it straight. “I become me—become human—later in the spring every year. And one year—I guess I just won’t change. I’ve seen it happen to the older wolves. One year, they don’t become human again, and they’re just…a wolf. And they live a little longer than natural wolves. But still—fifteen years, maybe.”
“How can you talk about your own death like that?”
I looked at her, eyes glistening in the dim light. “How else could I talk about it?”
“Like you regret it.”
“I regret it every day.”
Grace was silent, but I felt her processing what I’d said, pragmatically putting everything into its proper place in her head. “You were a wolf when you got shot.”
I wanted to press my fingers to her lips, push the words she was forming back into her mouth. It was too soon. I didn’t want her to say it yet.
But Grace went on, her voice low. “You missed the hottest months this year. It wasn’t that cold when you got shot. It was cold, but not winter cold. But you were a wolf. When were you a human this year?”
I whispered, “I don’t remember.”
“What if you hadn’t been shot? When would you have become you again?”
I closed my eyes. “I don’t know, Grace.” It was the perfect moment to tell her. This is my last year. But I couldn’t say it. Not yet. I wanted another minute, another hour, another night of pretending this wasn’t the end.
Grace inhaled a slow, shaky breath, and something in the way she did it made me realize that somehow, on some level, she knew. She’d known all along.
She wasn’t crying, but I thought I might.
Grace put her fingers back into my hair, and mine were in hers. Our bare arms pressed against each other in a cool tangle of skin. Every little movement against her arm rubbed off a tiny spark of her scent, a tantalizing mix of flowery soap, faint sweat, and desire for me.
I wondered if she knew how transparent her scent made her, how it told me what she was feeling when she didn’t say it out loud.
Of course, I’d seen her smelling the air just as often as I did. She had to know that she was driving me crazy right now, that every touch of her skin on mine tingled, electric.
Every touch pushed the reality of the oncoming winter further away.
As if to prove me right, Grace moved closer, kicking away the blankets between us, pressing her mouth to mine. I let her part my lips and sighed, tasting her breath. I listened to her almost inaudible gasp as I wrapped my arms around her. Every one of my senses was whispering to me over and over to get closer to her, closer to her, as close as I could. She twined her bare legs in mine and we kissed until we had no more breath and got closer until distant howls outside the window brought me back to my senses.
Grace made a soft noise of disappointment as I disentangled my legs from hers, aching with wanting more. I shifted to lie next to her, my fingers still caught in her hair. We listened to the wolves howling outside the window, the ones who hadn’t changed. Or who would never change again. And we buried our heads against each other so we couldn’t hear anything but the racing of our hearts.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT • GRACE
49°F
School felt like an alien planet on Monday. It took me a long moment of sitting behind the wheel of the Bronco, watching the students milling on the sidewalks and the cars circling the lot and the buses filing neatly into place, to realize that school hadn’t changed. I had.
“You have to go to school,” Sam said, and if I hadn’t known him, I wouldn’t have heard the hopeful questioning note. I wondered where he would go while I was sitting in class.
“I know,” I replied, frowning at the multicolored sweaters and scarves trailing into the school, evidence of winter’s approach. “It just seems so…” What it seemed was irrelevant, disconnected from my life. It was hard to remember what was important about sitting in a classroom with a stack of notes that would be meaningless by next year.
Beside me, Sam jumped in surprise as the driver’s-side door came open. Rachel climbed into the Bronco with her backpack, shoving me across the bench seat to make room for herself.
She slammed the door shut and let out a big sigh. The car seemed very full with her in it. “Nice truck.” She leaned forward and looked over at Sam. “Ooh, a boy. Hi, Boy! Grace, I’m so hyper. Coffee! Are you mad at me?”
I leaned back in surprise, blinking. “No?”
“Good! Because when you didn’t call me in forever, I figured you’d either died or were mad at me. And you’re obviously not dead, so I thought it was the mad thing.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “But you are pissed at Olivia, right?”
“Yes,” I said, although I wasn’t sure if it was still true. I remembered why we fought, but I couldn’t really remember why it had been meaningful. “No. I don’t think so. It was stupid.”
“Yeah, I thought so,” Rachel said. She leaned forward and rested her chin on the steering wheel so that she could look at Sam. “So, Boy, why are you in Grace’s car?”
Despite myself, I smiled. I knew what Sam was needed to be a secret, but Sam himself didn’t have to be, did he? I was suddenly filled with the need for Rachel to approve of him. “Yeah, Boy,” I said, craning my neck to see Sam right beside me. He wore an expression caught somewhere between amusement and doubt. “Why are you in my car?”
“I’m here for visual interest,” Sam said.
“Wow,” Rachel replied. “Like, long-term, or short-term?”