Page 17 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

Thompson’s place was just at the edge of town.

His house backed onto a quiet wood which made it the perfect place for house parties.

The nearest neighbor was three blocks away and was a partially deaf older man who went to bed at eight.

No one to call the cops. And the cops had little reason to drive down a dead-end road without a call.

The uber let us off near the old man’s house a few blocks away. It was Thompson’s only rule when he had a party. If you’re getting a ride, you don’t get it right to the house. People in the small town of Forest Grove could be nosey.

The uber who drove us was a girl named Jess’ uncle’s best friend, Jack. Even though it was unlikely he would rat us out, especially since I saw the creep checking out my minimal cleavage in the rearview, it was possible he could tell someone about the party who would.

We hopped out and took a breath of the crisp air after being stuffed in the cab for too long with the stale smell of tequila on our breaths and the faint odor of cigarettes clinging to the fabric seats.

The last time Layla, Viv, and I had been to a party together it was the height of summer and people were shooting water guns full of raspberry vodka into other people’s mouths. The pool in Thompson’s backyard was warm and filled with half-naked bodies. That wasn’t the reason we came tonight.

It was cold as fuck.

And as we hustled down the road under the glow of the uber’s retreating headlights, I could see my breath clouding in the air. The thrumming bass drew us nearer like a moth to a flame. The prospect of a warm house full of bodies spurring us faster.

I tugged out my phone and thumbed a quick reply to Jared. I’d meant to do it in the cab, but I’d forgotten.

Allie: We just got to Thompsons

Jared’s reply came in almost immediately.

Jared: Almost there

I peered down the street for the headlights of his Jeep coming up the road but didn’t see any car approaching.

The music grew louder, accompanied by the indignant whine of someone who probably just had beer spilled on them. I felt for them. No one liked to wake up the next morning smelling of stale beer. Barf.

“Looks like the party started without us,” Viv called back over the music as we picked across a once pristine lawn now littered with cigarette butts, empty beer cans, and what looked like the remnants of a stuffed unicorn…I raised my brow at that one.

My new converse shoes stuck to something sticky on the wooden steps leading up to the open door and the crush of bodies milling around inside the large house.

Viv’s height and broad shoulders came in handy in a crowd.

She always went first to clear a path for Layla and I to trail behind in her wake.

Her size coupled with her very loud attitude usually did the trick.

If you didn’t see her and move, she would bark at you to get the fuck out of the way without batting an eye.

I loved her for it.

I shivered as my body adjusted to the temperature difference, my cheeks flushing as I tore off my jacket, almost tripping over someone’s discarded boot on the hardwood in the hall.

It seemed like the entire eleventh and twelfth grade classes were here.

I coughed as we walked through a haze of pot smoke near the back of the house.

It wasn’t much worse than the general cloying reek of hair product and dollar-store aftershave.

Viv saw someone from her lacrosse team and vanished into the kitchen, rushing to whisper a hasty be right back before she vanished.

I turned to Layla and gestured to the only empty nook I could see in the house.

A wide window ledge looking out into the back yard that stood directly across from the wide, dim stairwell leading down to the basement.

The clinking of pool balls and the sound of a TV blaring could be heard below. “Drink?”

“Please,” she said, her body tensing as she craned her neck to get a look around the corner of the wall and up the stairs that were positioned directly above the ones leading down.

“Pour me one?” she asked, raising her voice above the thumping music.

“I’m just going to run to the washroom. Be right back. ”

I nodded, tugging off my pack to set it down on the window’s ledge. I dug around for the bottle of tequila, wondering if it would be safe to leave the bag for a second while I dipped into the kitchen for a couple of plastic cups to pour the tequila in.

“Viv,” I hollered into the kitchen, stepping back from the bag to get a look inside.

I was about to shout again when a loud curse behind me made me whirl around in time to see a fist connect with a face and for a guy I didn’t know to stumble backwards, knocking me hard in the middle of my chest. I fell back, my feet leaving the floor as I lost my balance.

Gasping, my eyes widened as I plummeted backwards down the stairs.

Except, I didn’t hit the hard edges of stairs. Didn’t break my neck as I tumbled backward into the basement. The breath was knocked from my lungs as I connected with warm, hard flesh instead. His arms caught me, righting me back on shaking feet. My knees quaked.

Engine grease and spice filled my nose.

“Break it up,” Clay growled, pulling the one guy off the other as though they were half as big as they were. As the guy who had clearly been the instigator leveled his glassy stare at Clay, his eyes widened.

“Clayton?”

Clay jabbed two fingers hard into the guy’s chest as I bent with shaky fingers to help the other smaller guy stand up, his eye already swelling shut. “You could’ve fucking killed her,” he was practically frothing at the mouth. “If I hadn’t been watching, she could have a broken neck!”

I opened my mouth to say something. To stop him.

But I was still in shock. What was Clay doing here? He never went to these kinds of things anymore. Had he just…

Had he just caught me?

“Fuck off, man” the guy I recognized to be a senior named Jason spat back at Clay.

Clay rolled his shoulders back and I saw a flicker of something cross his face. His fists clenched at his side, the big knuckles stark white against the olive tone of his hands. Shit. A spark of blue glow was beginning to ring his iris’.

In a knee-jerk reaction, I stepped between Clay and Jason, placing my hands firmly on Clay’s chest even though Jason was the one who was swinging only a moment before. I knew who the real threat here was. If Clay lost control, Jason would have more than a black eye.

“Calm down,” I whispered to Clay, breathless and with my heart thrumming wildly in my ears. “I’m fine.”

Clay glared down at me with a set jaw, the slightest glow that’d been starting in his eyes was already fading, and I doubted anyone noticed it.

Just a trick of the light, they would think.

Clay jabbed a finger over his shoulder at Jason one more time, turning his haughty stare back at the drunken idiot who’s desire to pick a fight almost had some serious collateral damage. “Leave,” he all but roared.

Jason’s expression hardened.

“Let’s go man,” one of his buddies said, grabbing Jason by the shoulder. “This party fucking blows anyway.”

When Jason didn’t move to depart with his friend right away, Clay gripped me by the shoulder and gently, but forcefully, shoved me from his path, his big barrel chest rising as he stared with murderous intent down at Jason. “Get the fuck out. Now.”

Something within Jason seemed to recognize the predator standing before him. Seemed to recognize that he was the prey. His lips parted and he fell back a step as though seeing Clay for the first time. Then he shook it off. “Yeah, whatever man. This shit’s lame, anyway.”

Jason turned and fled with his friend and I sagged against the windowsill where the other guy with the black eye was wincing at the ice-filled rag a girl was pressing to his eye.

The girl kneeling in front of him holding it to his face was grimacing as she looked at the garish swelling and small cuts around his eyebrow.

“What’s your name?” he asked her. “Myra,” she said with a pained smile.

“Want to go upstairs?” He blushed. “It’s quieter there and we can rinse off the blood in the bathroom.”

She smirked and nodded, rising with a little difficulty from the ledge. The guy thanked Clay quietly as he passed. “Don’t know what that guy’s problem was.”

Clay grunted as a response and then turned back to me, his shoulders still tense and raised. His body still tightly coiled and ready for a fight. “You alright?”

His icy blue eyes had softened, and he was staring at me intently, waiting for my response.

He was so unlike Jared. Where Jared seemed unsure and was always gentle, thoughtful—Clay was all hard edges.

A straight shooter if I ever saw one. He held my gaze with a fire in his eyes as though if I told him I wasn’t alright he would go hunt down the guy that almost knocked me down the stairs and throw him down them instead.

“I’m good,” I said and he visibly relaxed, nodding.

I barely heard his response as the song switched to one that seemed even louder, as if that were even possible. “Good.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked him after a beat of silence between us, and when he showed no signs of leaving.

Clay paused and I saw his gaze fix on something behind me out the window. “Could you just…find someplace else to sit?” he said, though his tone told me it wasn’t a question. He was telling me I needed to move. That sitting across from a stairwell in a house full of drunk teenagers wasn’t safe.

But that also meant that Clay—the guy who almost chewed my head off a few nights ago, the one who told me the cabin wasn’t a shelter for the homeless and that he didn’t want me there—cared about me enough to not want me to fall and hurt myself.

That was progress.

I couldn’t help the small smile that climbed onto my lips.

“Don’t look so smug,” Clay said, the ire I’d grown used to back in his stare. “You could have been seriously hurt.”