I stood up and slid into my jacket. “I’m sorry. Please, don’t call me. Don’t show up around my valley. Stay away from me and mine. Please.”
“Maggie, don’t—” But I’d slammed the door before he could get out of bed.
AFTER I’D HANDED over my clothes and bag, Samson and Cooper let me run home solo. Given the way my face was all pinched up, I think they knew I needed some time alone. I ran until I thought my lungs would burst. I collapsed to the ground outside town, phasing to human and lying on my back.
I lay there, staring up at the pine needles shifting over the endless expanse of blue.
I could smell a badger shuffling in the underbrush. I hated badgers; they were like sour-smelling, crotchety old men who could claw your face off. I considered chasing it just for the hell of it, but I just didn’t have the energy.
I had to pull it together. I couldn’t go home like this, all frazzled and twitchy. I took deep breaths, pulling the air down through my toes. I closed my eyes and went to my happy place, the ferry from Bellingham. My mother took me on a rare visit to her family in Seattle when I was seven, and I’d spent most of the three-day trip sitting on the deck, with my legs dangling under the railing, my face in the wind. It gave my mom fits, seeing me that close to the edge, but she couldn’t keep me inside.
I’d never been anywhere before, really, and I remember marveling at how big the world was. How you could actually taste salt on the wind. How the spray from the ocean broke down to almost nothing and whispered across my face like kisses.
That’s about as poetic as I got.
Nothing I’d done since had ever been as peaceful or as right. Every time I was stressed or just needed a few minutes to myself, I closed my eyes and put myself right back on that boat. And I felt better for it.
The moment I closed my eyes, I could almost feel the tilt and roll of the deck under me. I leaned my chin on the cool aluminum rail and watched the whitecaps lap against the hull. I smiled, deciding to give myself just a few more minutes before I returned to reality.
“Hi.”
I looked up to see Nick standing over me. He sat down next to me without benefit of a doughnut pillow, so I figured I’d managed to slip into a dream state. It didn’t stop me from being really annoyed.
“What the hell are you doing in my happy place?”
He smirked at me. “I was this close to getting to your happy place, so if that’s an invitation, I accept.”
My dream version of Nick was pretty perverted.
“What are you doing here? This is where I go to get away from things that bother me.”
He looked offended. “I bother you?”
“A lot.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“How would you know?”
“Because if you were really upset with me, you probably would have dreamed me with a hump or a debilitating, itchy disease.”
“Well, you’re not wrong,” I muttered. “So, what, you think you can show up here and put in a good word for reality Nick?”
He shrugged. “How should I know? It’s your happy place.”
I muttered, “Well, you could at least do this with your shirt off. What are you doing here, anyway?”
“I think there are probably some things you left unsaid earlier, and your brain is just giving you a chance to get it out of your system.”
“No, that couldn’t be it.”
“Fine,” he huffed, pulling his T-shirt over his head.
My eyes went wide at the sight of finely sculpted abs lightly dusted with a little gold happy trail. “God, this is going to be so much worse if you look like that in real life.”
“Oh, it’s even better,” he assured me.
“Bastard.” I sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I have to lie to you. And I’m sorry I have to make you feel crazy or unsure of yourself. I wish I could help you, but I just can’t. As much as I think you could mean to me, I can’t put you ahead of the people I love. You are a smart, funny, strange, drop-dead-gorgeous man. And I would like nothing more than to get to know you a hell of a lot better. But I think it’s better this way.”
“But none of that had anything to do with you, or you being a wolf, or how you feel. It’s about everybody else.”
“Exactly.”
“So your reasons are bullshit. You’re so afraid of expressing how you really feel that you’ll use any excuse to stay away from me. You’ve never had someone interested in you and only you. And you’re so afraid that’s not enough to keep me around that you’ll do anything to avoid finding out one way or the other.”
“I don’t think my figments are supposed to mouth off to me,” I grumbled.
“I was never much for rules.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I muttered.
“Butterflies taste with their feet.”
I raised my eyebrows.
He shrugged. “I bet you didn’t know that.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. You can’t help yourself, can you?”
“Well, I don’t think you’d want a lesser version of me in your happy place,” he said, giving me a cheeky little leer.
I snorted and closed my eyes. “Good-bye, Nick.”
I felt a featherlight touch on my shoulder. “Good-bye for now, Maggie.”
I woke up with a start.
Well, that was helpful.
My head throbbing, I sat up, wondering how long I’d been sleeping. The sun was hanging low over the mountain range. I sat up, feeling more groggy than refreshed. This was not the point of the happy place. Stupid Dream Nick and his verbal riddles consisting of stuff I already suspected.
I stretched my arms over my head and popped my back. Sleeping on the ground might connect you with the earth and all that crap, but it was hell on the vertebrae. Sure that my mom was worried enough to chew through phone books by now, I jogged toward home. I felt a fresh flush of guilt as I entered the village. This must be what parents felt like, returning to their kids after a long weekend away. I was a short step from giving every member of the pack a tacky T-shirt and a teddy bear. But at the moment, all I wanted was a hot meal, a large one, a hotter shower, and my bed. My front door was in sight when I heard my name called.
“Maggie!”
I turned and saw Clay jogging down Main Street toward me. I groaned inwardly, bidding that hot meal a mental farewell. But I took a deep breath and turned to him with a genuine smile on my face. Clay was a good guy and considerably less of a pain in the ass than most people I knew. He deserved my undivided and nonirritated attention.