“Well, you’ll see when you get home,” Jack said. “It’ll give you more of an incentive to get here quicker. As if I weren’t incentive enough.”
“No, you’re definitely enough,” I laughed sadly. It was stupid how much I missed him.
Laughing at his silly jokes made me want to sob.
I talked to Jack a little bit longer, listening to him regale stories of what I had missed at home.
Eventually, I had to get off the phone. Peter could only hide out in the bathroom for so long, and talking to Jack would only make me sadder. When I hung up, I knocked on the bathroom to let Peter know the coast was clear, and he came out a minute later. He was much more subdued after that, so we said very little to each other. I showered and got dressed, and after that, there wasn’t much else to do. Peter laid on the bed with his fingers latched behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. I paced the room and frequently peeked out of the curtains. We just waited for Ezra to return.
Sun had started filtering around the edges of the curtains, and while neither one of us said anything, that definitely made Peter and I nervous. The lycan we even more strict about their nocturnal habits than we were, so the odds of them continuing a discussion into the daylight didn’t seem likely. If Ezra weren’t back soon, the only conclusion we could come is that he wasn’t coming back. At least not on his own. It probably would’ve been a much better use if our time if Peter and I been formulating a rescue plan for Ezra, instead of wasting it pacing and laying down.
“He’s still not here.” I peered out the curtain, letting the warm morning light stream in, burning my overly sensitive retina, and then let it swing closed. I looked back behind me, where Peter laid immobile, the same way he had all day. “Peter?”
“I’m aware that he’s not here, Alice,” Peter muttered tightly.
“Don’t you think we should do something?” I stood with my hands on my hips and glowered down at him. Laying in bed just did not seem like the right answer for this situation.
“I’m thinking.” Peter closed his eyes, as if that could block out my voice.
“You’ve been thinking all day! We should’ve been plotting for this eventuality! We knew there was a good chance that Ezra wouldn’t come back, and he’s obviously not going-”
“I have been thinking, Alice!” Peter snapped, and his green eyes looked accusatorily at me.
“I don’t know what you’ve been doing all day long, but I’ve been preparing for this.”
“Well… you should’ve let me on it!” I stammered in a huff, and insecurely crossed my arms over my chest, trying to continue looking angry even though he had caught me off guard. “I could’ve helped! I have lots of good ideas!”
“You mean like pointing out the obvious and peeking out the curtain?” Peter asked dryly, and almost reluctantly, he pushed himself up into the sitting position, letting his legs dangle off the edge of the bed.
“I don’t know what else to do! I don’t know what to do!” There was an unnecessary whine growing in my voice. I felt powerless and on the verge of tears, and I didn’t like it at all. I took a deep breath, and decided to work on controlling the only thing I actual had control of us, namely myself. Pushing a dark strand of hair behind my ears, I decided to start over. “What did you come up with?”
“Nothing useful,” Peter admitted wearily, keeping his gaze on the floor.
“Come on,” I scoffed. “You just said you’d been preparing for this-”
“I’ve been trying,” Peter cut me off again. “But I just can’t see a way around anything.” He sighed darkly, then muttered to himself. “I suppose that’s why he brought you.”
“What are you talking about?” I felt myself stiffening, as if he was claiming something derogatory. “I came with Ezra because I thought I could help.”
“No, Ezra brought you with because he knew how utterly useless you would be, and he thought I would be unwilling to facilitate in your murder for a second time,” Peter explained, his voice dripping with venom. “And I’m been going back in forth between it all day long, wondering what I would I finally do when it came down to it.”
There was a sinking feeling growing in my chest, as if I had been used in a pawn in all of this. I had come back here to try to talk some sense into Peter, and I thought that I had managed to that, if only a little.
But the way Peter was talking made it sound like I had been brought on as more of an anchor. I hadn’t been brought along because of my skills, but rather the lack thereof.
“What?” I demanded, but my anger was wearing off, replaced with an aching sense of uselessness.
“If I leave to go after Ezra, and I bring you along, you’ll get killed! If I leave you here, they’ll follow my scent back and slaughter you! If I try to put you on a plane to get out of here, you’ll probably do something horrible in bloodlust and get yourself killed or something even worse. And if you managed to make it back home, the lycan would probably follow you back. There’s nothing I can do except stay here and babysit you!” Peter growled.
“I don’t…” I started to stumble out some kind of protest about needing a baby-sitter, but I realized that everything he was said was probably true, and I was an idiot for not seeing it sooner.
After the initial sting of that wore off, I thought of something even stranger, especially given the way that Peter talked to me.
“What do you even care if I die? So what? Let’s just go out there and give them hell.”
“Like you could really give them hell,” Peter laughed hollowly. “You’d just slow me down.”
“Maybe,” I admitted and swallowed. “What you’re saying … or thinking… If Ezra isn’t coming back and they’re only going to come after us… then… Why don’t you just go? I’ll just wait here until you come back or they come for me. I don’t want to slow down your fight. But it’s better than the both of us waiting here to die.”
His expression changed instantly into something that was completely foreign to me. It took me a minute to realize that it was something that resembled concern and affection for me, of all things. Even when we had been bonded, he’d never looked at me like that. His emerald eyes were swimming with something harder, and he lowered them before I could get a complete read on what he was thinking.
“That’s an idiotic plan,” Peter shook his head.
“That’s pretty much what your plan is,” I countered evenly.
“I’m not gonna just leave you here!” Peter insisted tightly.
“But you’re saying they’ll kill me no matter what! At least this way you can get in a few good punches, take out some of the bastards that-” I stopped myself before I said anything about Ezra being injured. Even though I was talking about and even thinking about, I couldn’t really believe it was true. He was Ezra, and he was all powerful. If anybody could make out through a pack of lycan, it was him. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one that thought that way, or Peter never would’ve let Ezra go off alone with them.
“You’d be completely unprotected. You wouldn’t even stand a chance,” Peter shook his head again, sounding tired of this conversation, and stood up.
“So what? You almost killed me once before and now you’re suddenly my body guard?” I wrinkled my nose at his hypocrisy.
“Oh, god dammit!” Peter rolled his eyes. “I’m so sick of having that thrown in my face! I did that because I loved you, Alice!” He immediately regretted saying that and stared off anywhere but me.
“Yeah, cause that’s a healthy way to express love! By killing another person!” I was purposely pushing his buttons. If the only chance at a rescue mission was Peter going off without me, then I had to piss him off enough to leave me. Although, it didn’t really make sense that he’d need any persuading.
Normally he couldn’t wait to get away from me, and with the bond between us broken, I figured he’d be even more eager to.
“I wasn’t trying to kill you! I was trying to kill me!” Peter rubbed his eyes, looking as if he’d said too much and not knowing how to take it back. “Jack was in the house. I knew he was tuned in to your heart.
When I grabbed in the kitchen, he came flying in to save you. I thought if he found me, draining the life from you, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me.” Tiredly, Peter exhaled. “I knew he was a better match for you than I was, and I didn’t see any other way out.”
For once, I was too flabbergasted to say anything. I don’t think that I had ever truly believed that Peter cared about me. The bond made him feel things for me, but I’d always suspected that he hated me. But I found out that not only did Peter care about me, he loved me so much, he’d been planning to die for my happiness. My heart thumped dully in my chest and I tried to think of something say to him.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Peter snapped when he finally met my eyes again. “I don’t know why it’s so shocking that I wouldn’t want you to die. Do you really think Ezra would be so willing to sacrifice himself for me if I was such a psychopath?”
“Peter, I am so sorry,” I whispered, unable to muster the full strength of my voice.
“Stop!” Peter repeated. “Look, Ezra is the one out there! We need to be worrying about him, not us!
Because there isn’t even an ‘us’ to worry about!”
“You’re right.” I shook my head, trying to clear it of any confused thoughts about Peter.
It was hard, though. That changed the way I thought about everything. All the time I had been messing around with Jack, falling in love with him, the one thing that had given me the green light was that Peter had tried to kill me. I hadn’t been angry with him for it, but I hadn’t really wanted to pursue a relationship with him after that. But when I thought about it as his own suicide attempt, that he had loved me so much he had been willing to give me up… then I suddenly felt like a total hussy. We had been bound together, and he had truly loved me, but I had run off with his brother instead.