“Sam,” she said. “God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.
Please forgive me. I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t stop shaking, my fingers gripped on the side of the tub. I wanted out. I wanted her to hold me, so I could feel safe. I wanted to forget the blood running from the scars on my wrists. “Get me out,” I whispered. “Please get me out.”
“Are you warm enough?”
I couldn’t answer. I was bleeding to death. I balled my hands into fists and drew them to my chest. Every caress of water over my wrists sent a new wave of shivers through me.
Her face was full of pain.
“I’m going to find the thermostat and turn the heat up. Sam, you have to stay in there until I come back with towels. I’m so sorry.”
I closed my eyes.
I passed a lifetime with my head held barely above water, unable to move, and then Grace came back, holding a stack of mismatched towels. She knelt by the tub and reached past me; I heard a gurgle behind my head. I felt myself slipping down the drain with the water in red circling swirls.
“I can’t get you out if you don’t help. Please, Sam.” She stared at me as if she was waiting for me to move. The water drained away from my wrists, my shoulders, my back, until I lay in an empty tub. Grace laid a towel on top of me; it was very warm, as if she’d heated it somehow. Then she took one of my scarred wrists in her hands and looked at me. “You can come out now.”
I looked back at her, unblinking, my legs folded up the side of the tiled wall like a giant insect.
She reached down and traced my eyebrows. “You do have really beautiful eyes.”
“We get to keep them,” I said.
Grace started at my voice. “What?”
“It’s the one thing we keep. Our eyes stay the same.” I unclenched my fists. “I was born with these eyes. I was born for this life.”
As if there was no bitterness in my voice, Grace replied, “Well, they’re beautiful. Beautiful and sad.” She reached down and took my fingers, her eyes locked on mine, holding my gaze. “Do you think you can stand up now?”
And I did. Looking at her brown eyes and nothing else, I stepped out of the tub, and she led me out of the bathroom and back into my life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX GRACE
35°F I couldn’t keep my thoughts together. I stood in the kitchen, staring at the cabinets, which were covered with pinned-up photographs of smiling people—the pack members as humans. Normally, I would’ve looked through them to find Sam’s face, but I kept seeing the broken shape of his body in the bathtub and hearing the terror in his voice. The vision of him shaking in the woods right before I realized what was happening to him replayed over and over in my head.
Saucepan. Can of soup. Bread from freezer. Spoons. Beck’s kitchen was obviously stocked by someone who was familiar with a werewolf’s peculiar schedule; it was full of canned goods and boxed foods with long shelf lives. I lined up all of the ingredients for a makeshift dinner on the counter, forcing myself to concentrate on the task at hand.
In the next room, Sam sat on the couch under a blanket, his clothing running through the wash. My jeans were still soaking, but they’d have to wait. Turning on a burner for the soup, I tried to focus on the slick black controls, the shiny aluminum surface.
But instead I remembered Sam convulsing on the floor, eyes vacant, and the animal whimper he made as he realized that he was losing himself.
My hands shook as I tipped the soup from the can to the saucepan.
I couldn’t keep it together.
I would keep it together.
I saw the look on his face as I shoved him into the bathtub, just like his parents must haveGod, I couldn’t think about that. Opening the fridge, I was surprised to see a gallon of milk, the first perishable food I’d found in the house. It looked so out of place that I felt my thoughts sharpen. Checking the expiration date—only three weeks ago—I poured the odiferous milk down the drain and frowned into the fridge for other signs of recent life.
Sam was still curled on the couch when I emerged from the kitchen to hand him a bowl of soup and some toast. He accepted it with a more mournful look than usual. “You must think I’m a total freak.”
I sat on a plaid chair across from him, tucking my legs beneath me, and held my bowl of soup against my chest for warmth. The living room ceiling went all the way up to the roof and the room was still drafty. “I am so sorry.”
Sam shook his head. “It was the only thing you could do. I just—I shouldn’t have lost it that way.”
I winced, remembering the crack of his head hitting the wall and his splayed fingers, reaching through the air as he careened into the tub.
“You did really well,” Sam said, glancing at me as he picked at the toast. He seemed to consider his words, and then just repeated, “You did really well. Are you—” He hesitated and then looked to where I sat, several feet away from him. Something in his glance made the empty stretch of couch next to him painfully obvious.
“I’m not afraid of you!” I said. “Is that what you think? I just thought you’d like some elbow room while you ate.”
Actually, any other time I’d have happily crawled under the blanket with him—especially with him looking warm and sexy in a set of old sweats he’d gotten from his room. But I just wanted—I just needed to put my thoughts in order, and didn’t think I could do that while sitting next to him just yet.
Sam smiled, relief all over his face. “The soup’s good.”
“Thanks.” It wasn’t actually that good—in fact, it tasted completely canned and bland, but I was hungry enough that I didn’t care. And the mechanical action of eating helped dull the images of Sam in the bathtub.
“Tell me more about the mind-meld thing,” I said, wanting to keep him talking, to hear his human voice.
Sam swallowed. “The what?”
“You said you showed me the woods, when you were a wolf. And that the wolves talked to each other that way. Tell me more about it. I want to know how it works.”
Sam leaned forward to set his bowl on the floor, and when he sat back and looked at me, his face looked tired. “It’s not like that.”
“I didn’t say it was like anything!” I said. “Not like what?”
“It’s not a superpower,” he replied. “It’s a consolation prize.” When I just looked at him, he added, “It’s the only way we get to communicate. We can’t remember words. We couldn’t say them even if we could wrap our wolf brains around them. So all we get are little images that we can send to each other. Simple images. Postcards from the other side.”
“Can you send me one now?”
Sam slouched down on the couch, tightening the blanket around himself. “I can’t even remember how to do it now. While I’m me. I only do it when I’m a wolf. Why would I need it now? I have words. I can say anything I want to you.”
I thought about saying But words aren’t enough, but just thinking it made me ache in an unfamiliar way. So instead I said, “But I wasn’t a wolf when you showed me the woods.
So can the wolves talk to other pack members when those members are human?”
Sam’s heavy-lidded eyes flicked over my face. “I don’t know. I don’t think I ever tried with anyone else. Just wolves.” He said, again, “Why would I need to?”
There was something bitter and tired in his voice. I set my bowl down on the end table and joined him on the couch. He lifted the blanket so that I could press myself against his side, and then he leaned his forehead against mine, closing his eyes. For a long moment, he just rested there, and then he opened his eyes again.
“All I cared about was showing you how to get home,” he said, voice low. His breath warmed my lips. “When you changed, I wanted to make sure you knew how to find me.”
I ran my fingers across the triangle of bare chest that was visible above the loose collar of his sweatshirt. My voice came out a little uneven. “Well, I found you.”