Scratch the Surface (Wolf Within) (32 page)

“I’ll take the keys.” I found my voice somehow and held out my hand.

After a moment, Allerton put them in my palm.

“Thank you, Ray. Thank you, Noah,” he said, addressing the two strange men. One was balding and verging past middle age, the other young, around my age. Possibly grandfather and grandson. Now that I was closer, I knew their faces from Regionals, but I was pretty sure I’d never spoken to either of them. My wolf had kept me isolated from most of the men in other packs. While I’d sometimes participated in the Great Hunts, I’d never shifted with anyone outside Riverglow. When I’d been first bonded to Grey, I hadn’t wanted to, and after we’d been together a few years all of New England and upper-state New York knew about my wolf. Opportunities to shift with men outside my pack had noticeably dwindled. No one wanted to babysit when they shifted.

The younger one gave me a knowing stare and a surge of humiliation burned in my gut. Next the asshole would make a comment like
How’s the wolf these days, Stanzie
? Or
Seen any good trees lately?
That was a particular favorite. Everyone in the region knew how much my wolf loved to run so that the world became a blur of speed and motion. They thought they were so goddamn clever. I’d show them someday when my wolf was normal just like theirs.

Abruptly, I became aware of my clenched fists and forced my fingers straight.

The older one nudged the younger and they faded back to a small red pickup which belched blue smoke from the exhaust pipe when the engine roared to life.

We watched them drive away then Kathy and Allerton began to pick their way carefully across the snowy expanse of the parking lot toward the Town Car and the Jaguar.

Kathy got into the Jaguar and drove off. Allerton got behind the wheel of the Town Car.

Murphy stared across the lot at me, the wind tumbling his hair across his forehead then he got into the Town Car and slammed the door shut so I couldn’t see him anymore.

I waited until the Town Car was gone out of the lot before I turned back to the Prelude. Now I would stop being such a goddamn baby and take some control of my life.

The hood and trunk had been closed but I checked them both anyway. All I needed was for either of them to pop open when I was doing fifty miles per hour. I checked the tires too. I knew I was procrastinating but I couldn’t help it. I took my time examining the car, not letting myself acknowledge I was only trying to delay getting into it.

Even though I knew there was no bomb, the idea of one sat like a malignant tumor at the base of my brain, flooding my body with random bursts of terror.

It couldn’t have been more than twenty degrees, but I could feel cold sweat trickling down the back of my neck.

“I can do this.” I spoke the words aloud to see if they gave me courage. Except that I sounded so scared and shaky it was a joke.

My hand reached for the door handle three times before I made contact and then it was a good minute and a half before I could bring myself to open the damn door.

Above the keening of the wind I could hear my own frightened, shallow breathing. I wished Murphy were there with me. Then, for having that traitorous thought, I took the heel of my hand and slammed it between my eyes hard enough to make my head swim.

“Baby,” I spat at myself. “Coward. Pathetic fucking freak.”

Yelling at myself, I got behind the wheel. One of my feet hit the brake pedal and I froze. My mind blanked. I didn’t remember how to drive. I didn’t remember my own goddamn name.

The keys were heavy in my fist. I couldn’t make my fingers uncurl and I sat there for five minutes staring at my own hand, the car door yawning open, wind whipping inside, as icy, slick sweat trickled down my back.

“The Comet or Blue Moon, Grey? Which club do you want to go to?”

I heard my own words echo in my head from a night two and a half years in the past. I could see myself sitting behind the wheel of the Mustang in my little black dress and my gold spike-heel sandals. I could smell my perfume. J’adore. Four parts Dior, six parts unique Stanzie. I could see Grandfather Tobias scooting underneath the car on the little board on wheels he kept in the garage. The car was jacked up off the ground so he could fit and the gold paint on the car shone with a metallic brilliance in the August sun. I could see his work boots and the cuffs of his faded jeans as he tampered with the brake line when I thought he was just checking everything out. I could see Grey sitting beside me with his hair pulled back. His black t-shirt was tucked into his black jeans. I could see Elena in the backseat in her white mini dress and white sandals, the ones that had ties that twirled around her shapely calves and knotted just below her knee. I could smell her perfume too—Estee Lauder’s Pleasures, the scent she always wore in the summer.

Their faces were bright and clear in my memory today. No fading. No blurring. They were as plain and in focus as if they were really sitting in the car with me.

“
Fuuuck
!” I screamed, pounding on the wheel with both my fists. “
Fuuuck
!”

I fumbled open the door and got the hell out of the car.

My purse was in the trunk. So was my cellphone. After retrieving both, I leaned back against the bumper and stared at the cellphone. I put it down on the trunk and pulled my glove off with my teeth. My right hand still clutched the keys and wouldn’t uncurl.

I picked up the phone in my left hand and scrolled through my contacts until I got to Murphy’s name.

“Epic fail, Stanzie,” I whispered before I pressed
send
.

Twelve seconds later I heard a cellphone ring from the glove compartment.

Swearing, I disconnected and shoved my cellphone back into my purse. Murphy’s phone, muffled by the glove compartment, stopped its goddamn noise.

I got back into the car, the passenger seat this time. I could breathe again and I took several deep breaths before I opened the glove compartment.

Hidden under Murphy’s cellphone, the insurance papers, owner’s manual and maintenance receipts were our bond pendants. Curled up in little chain link balls beside each other. His chain was longer, with bigger links. Mine was shinier.

The wind rocked the car then it came inside. Along with Murphy. I couldn’t look at him, I was so ashamed. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been sitting in the passenger seat staring at our pendants but something told me it had been awhile.

“I actually did unbend my knees. I was sitting where you are for a little while anyway,” I whispered when he didn’t say anything. “I just can’t unmake my fist.” I lifted my right hand, still clenched, and waved it for emphasis. “The keys are there.”

“See, progress,” he said, a smile in his voice.

I didn’t answer.

“Someday, Stanzie, you’re going to drive this car. You’ll be ready. You’re doing really well, you know, better than you think.”

“Bullshit. Every week you ask me if I want to drive and every week I laugh at you and say no way. I let you do all the driving and I hate it when other people drive. I get so scared when other people drive me.”

“But not when I do?”

I shrugged. “No. You, I trust.”

“You didn’t in the beginning. That first time you got into a car with me, you wouldn’t fasten your seatbelt, remember that? And then when you finally did, you spent the whole drive between the chateau and Paris with your hands clutched into fists, knuckles so white it hurt me to look at them. Stiff and upright in your seat, just this side of panic. And every time you’d get into the car with me at first, you’d start to tense up before we even unlocked the doors. And again with the clenched fists and the stiff body. I used to stop every ten miles just so you could get the blood circulating through your fingers again.”

“I remember you stopping, but not my clenched fists.” I stole a look at him.

He was smiling at me, his face so kind. “I know. You hated every minute in the car the first couple of weeks. But you got in the car and you did it. And now it’s gotten to the point where you’re still anxious, but I can go two hours now without stopping instead of fifteen minutes. And the first time I asked if you wanted to drive, you shut down for an entire hour. You didn’t talk, you didn’t look at me. You just shut down. Now you laugh at me when I ask you. You’ve come a long way, honey, and you don’t see it but I do. You think everything has to happen all at once in a big rush or it doesn’t mean anything, it’s not real, but that’s not true. It’s one step at a time, Stanzie. You don’t have to do it all at once. And look at you, today in the car with Kathy? She drove like a lunatic on purpose and you handled it. If that had happened three months ago you would have been crying and begging her to let you out of the car, you know that? So stop beating yourself up.”

“We were all the way to the Starbucks yesterday before I realized you weren’t driving,” I offered and his smile got bigger.

“Yes, exactly. You see?”

“I was too scared of being shot at to be scared at driving in a car,” I sighed. “I just traded one fear for another.”

“People can’t be scared of multiple things at the same time? You handled the car yesterday, Stanzie. You handled being shot at too.”

“Ha. I woke up screaming in the middle of the night. Delayed reaction,” I said.

He sighed.

“Sorcha died falling down the stairs. I don’t see you scared of staircases now. But if she’d been my bond mate, I’ll bet I’d be afraid and have to live on the ground floor, take a Valium if I need to step up more than three stairs at a time. I’m a coward, Murphy.”

“No, you’re not. I didn’t fall down the stairs with Sorcha, did I? You were in the car. You were in a terrible, terrible accident. You were with your bond mates when they died. You saw it all. You heard it. You smelled it. You touched it. And you got fuck all for support after it happened. From anybody. Not your bloody ex pack, not your birth pack, you had no friends or anybody at all. And you were alone. All alone. I’ve never been that. I moved to Belfast, sure, but I had friends from Mac Tire visiting me all the damn time. Ringing me up, dropping by all the way from Dublin, emailing me, everything. My mother was there for me and me da too. They wouldn’t let me be even when I begged them, when I screamed at them.

“So don’t you tell me you’re a coward, Constance Newcastle, because you are not. You’ve got your fears and you’re facing them. You push yourself too hard is what you do. Push and get frustrated and it kills me to watch you doing it. I want to help. I want to be there for you and now you’re thinking you’re hiding behind me and you’re going to push me away but I’m not going to let you, so you’d just better give it up, okay? You push me all you want but I’m not going anywhere.”

For once the waterworks didn’t start. My eyes remained dry. I felt hollow and yet strangely heavy and weighted down all at the same time.

“You forget. Everyone blamed me for Grey and Elena. Nobody but Colin Hunter blamed you for Sorcha. Why should anyone have bothered with me if I really had been at fault?”

“For one thing, you weren’t, and nobody stuck by you. I would have. Even if you had been guilty. People make mistakes. All the time they make them. And if they’re smart enough, they learn from them and go on. Say you had been drunk that night and you lost control of that car and drove off that embankment. Do you think every pack in the world would have cast you out?” Murphy’s voice was passionate but so was mine when I said,

“You don’t kill Pack!”

“Not deliberately, but sometimes shit happens.” Murphy sighed in frustration. “There was this woman in Mac Tire once. The Alpha before me. She had a little four-year-old daughter who liked to play with everything but her own toys. This woman was well aware of that. She smoked cigarettes. Can you guess what happened? That little girl found her mother’s matches one morning before anybody else in the house was up. Set herself and the house on fire. She died, the father died, the mother, she lived. Do you think Mac Tire kicked her out?”

I shrugged.

“It gets worse. They had a party the night before. That’s why she left out the matches. She was drunk. She admitted that to the Council. She thought about cleaning up before going to bed but was too drunk. She passed out in the bathroom which was near the back door and the only reason she didn’t die in the fire too.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear it.

“The Council judged her guilty of gross negligence, Stanzie. Left the punishment up to the Alphas. You know what we did?”

“Let her stay in the pack,” I whispered to get him to shut up.

“Yes, we did. Sorcha and I,” he said with a bleak smile. “She bonded with a duo. Her best friend and her bond mate. Last I knew she was teaching art to the kids in the pack.”