Page 13 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

The rest of Thursday and Friday came and went without incident. Jared and I shared a late-night dinner of spaghetti with meat sauce that I’d offered to cook. We set a plate aside for Clay who was presumably still in the shop out back working on something.

Friday felt almost…normal.

I gossiped with Layla and Viv at lunch. Almost got trampled in the hallway.

Quinn actually helped with the day’s task in culinary class, though he still wasn’t overly chatty—and I didn’t blame him.

And lucky for me Devin didn’t seem to be at school again, which meant I didn’t have to deal with seeing his unsettling face in the crush of students between classes.

A part of me wondered where he was, but the other part—the angry rational part told me it didn’t matter where the hell he was, just that he wasn’t at school.

After his reply message yesterday, I didn’t know what to think. I’m not sure what I expected, but an apology was not it. After I’d asked him what the fuck was wrong with him and told him Quinn didn’t deserve to be treated like that his response was all of two lines.

I don’t know. I’m sorry.

What. The. fuck.

But no new messages came in. Not that day at school, or during my shift at the bookshop.

Not at all that evening while Jared and I sat on opposite ends of the living room and watched the new Star Wars TV series.

I didn’t peg him for a sci-fi guy. But I didn’t think he pegged me for a sci-fi lover, either.

We were both pleasantly surprised to find such a mundane commonality after all the chaos of the week.

The fact that he also liked to mix Milk Duds into his popcorn only made him seem even more human. My dad taught me to do that when I was barely four years old. It was the best.

We hadn’t talked much about the heavier stuff since Thursday. He hadn’t asked me about my breakdown at the storage unit, and I didn’t ask him any more questions about being a wolf. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the questions, it was just that it was kind of hard to work into a conversation.

Hey Allie, want some more coffee?

Yeah, Jared, another coffee would be great…oh and by the way, were you a wolf or a human first? Who else knows? Who’s Ryland and why would he be angry if he knew you had me here? How many of you are there? Are there other things I don’t know about?

I shivered in the early morning chill as I stood outside on the front deck with my hands wrapped around my coffee mug, leeching the warmth from the porcelain. I wanted to know the answers to all those questions and about a million more, but I was afraid to ask.

My perception of this world had already been shattered once this week and I’d survived it. I didn’t want to tempt fate by shattering it again. The pieces of me might not come back together properly if I pushed it too far too fast.

I inhaled a deep breath of molting leaves and cold pine.

The air was so clean at the cabin, like it had been at the blind when I left the window flaps open.

If I closed my eyes I could almost pretend that I was still there, up on that platform between the trees, nothing but a canvas wall separating me from the surrounding universe.

“Hey,” the brusque voice caught me by surprise, and I reeled back, sloshing my coffee over my arm, hot trails of it ran down my sleeve to my forearm.

“God damn motherfucking shit balls,” I cursed, trying to flick off the scalding liquid as I breathed in hard through clenched teeth and did my best not to spill any more of it. I didn’t have time to make another pot before I had to leave for my early afternoon shift at the shop.

When I finally looked up, blushing, it was into the stunned icy blue eyes of Clay as he came around the cabin and up onto the deck.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, not seeming to care at all that I’d just spilled boiling coffee all over myself and effectively ruined my light gray sweater—probably the nicest article of clothing I owned.

“Yeah. Sure.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a girl curse like that.”

I tried to reign in my temper. It got easier as the burning sensation dissipated.

“Well I’m not most girls. And most humans make noise when they walk. They don’t just fucking appear.”

It was the truth. I should have heard him coming if he’d walked from the shop around back over the dirt and gravel drive, but I hadn’t heard a sound. “Well I’m not human,” he said in rebuttal, lifting a brow. “But you already knew that.”

His blue eyes pulsed with an otherworldly glow, a warning. I stood my ground and didn’t flinch away from his hard stare. Jared’s words replayed in my mind. He’s all bark and no bite.

Clay backed down after a moment, some of the ire in his expression melding into something more like indifference, but with a hint of something else. Respect.

He’d challenged me. Tried to scare me with his stupid unfair wolfishness, and I hadn’t backed down. He cocked his head at me. “You aren’t what I thought you were.”

I snorted, but didn’t answer, raising the mug to my lips for a sip as I looked away from him and out into the misty trees. My spine tingled as I felt his gaze sweep over me one last time before he vanished into the cabin without another word and I let loose a breath, unfurling my tense muscles.

I zipped my sweater the rest of the way and I sat down on the top step of the porch, draining what was left of my coffee and then set the mug down and curled my arms into my chest, taking in the silence, or rather the peaceful sounds of the forest that passed as silence in an otherwise boisterously loud world.

The gentle rustle of dry leaves. The whistling of wind through branches. The calls of songbirds in the gray light of early morning. It was my favorite part about being out here. The sound of nature’s silence.

Clay ruined it the moment he stepped back outside, the screen door banging loudly closed behind him.

I scooched to one side of the stairs so he could pass, trying not to flinch at his stomping approach.

If he was any louder, he’d wake up Jared.

And I had been trying really hard to be quiet this morning as I showered and made coffee to let him sleep in.

Just because I couldn’t sleep last night and had to work today didn’t mean the whole house had to wake up with me.

“So,” Clay said, and I craned my neck to see his jaw twitch as he spoke. “You know bikes?”

“Most.”

“Cars?”

“The older models. I don’t touch any of that new computerized bullshit.”

His lips twitched. Was that…

Was that a smile?

He nodded, but the motion seemed to be more for himself, as though he was agreeing with a thought thunk within the confines of his own mind. “Okay.”

I squinted up at him. “Okay?”

He nodded again. “Okay,” he repeated without elaborating and jumped down the four steps to the ground and began to walk off towards the back of the cabin. That was…weird.

He’s so…I couldn’t think of the word just yet, but it was there on the tip of my tongue. Closed-off ? No, that wasn’t it. Hostile? Yes, but that wasn’t it either.

I didn’t really know what the hell Clayton Armstrong was, but he was really something.

Not just the bad boy who graduated a few years back that supposedly took on an entire football team once in a straight-up brawl on the field.

Not just the guy who broke the hearts of at least five girls during his high-school career.

Or the guy who allegedly blackmailed a teacher and told off Principal Dane to his face on his last day of school.

There was more to him. And I didn’t think it was all bad.

No one was all bad.

Not even me.

No matter what my mind tried to tell me when I fell asleep at night.

I didn’t only cause pain and devastation everywhere I went.

Not always. If I could make a guy like Clay smile even for an instant, I couldn’t be completely bad.

I wasn’t rotted inside like the version of myself I saw in my nightmares.

Those were silly manifestations of my own thoughts.

At least, that’s what the therapist my dad had me see for two months before he passed told me. He’d paid her a pretty penny to see me every Wednesday evening after school during those months. He wanted me to be properly prepared he said. To be able to handle his death.

Handle it, like grieving his loss was the same as cleaning spilled milk or acing an exam. Like getting stitches to close a deep cut. It was when he suggested the therapist that I knew he wouldn’t survive. And not because he didn’t have a good chance of it. No. Because he didn’t want to.

Because he was tired of fighting.

I guess everyone gets tired sometimes. “And just who might you be?”

If I had had any more coffee to spill, I would’ve as I jolted at the sudden appearance of an older woman at the edge of the trees and knocked over the empty mug. “Uh…”

I struggled to find the words for an excuse. But found nothing.

The woman at the edge of the woods looked so out of place among the dark wood and gray mist. She had long brown hair that was mostly gray now, swept to the side in a loose braid down her front.

She wore a simple thin white dress that almost looked like a nightgown with a deep jade green shawl over top of it.

She was carrying a wicker basket covered in a red cloth.

I noticed as she drew near that she was sort of hobbling, and her feet were bare. The age spots around her dull blue eyes spoke of an age far beyond what I’d initially thought.

“Grams?” Clay said as he came crashing back around the cabin. He looked between me and the older woman. He gestured roughly for me to go inside and I rose as quietly as I could to excuse myself. “Grams what are you—”

“I was just about to introduce myself to your friend,” the older woman said as she reached the bottom step of the porch.