Authors: J. Rose Allister
“The guilt he bore for that night was terrible,” her mother said.
Terra felt bile rise in her throat. “
I
was the one yelling when he took his eyes off the road. He started shouting back, and we crashed. It was my fault.” Much of the rest was a blur—the screeching metal, flashing red lights, a passerby carrying her broken body from the flaming wreck because Tommy had staggered out and hadn’t even thought of saving her. He was too dazed.
“It wasn’t your fault,” her mother said.
Terra sniffed. “When did he tell you all this?”
“Two months after the accident,” her father said. “When the doctors told us the coma might be permanent.”
“I knew they were wrong,” her mother said with fire in her eyes. “I knew I would never pull the plug on my baby. You just needed your own time to heal.”
Terra shifted in her seat. “So if you already knew, why did you ask me what happened when I woke up?”
“We wanted to hear it from you,” her mother said. “And we weren’t sure how much you remembered.”
“I can’t believe he admitted we were fighting over my not wanting to sleep with him.”
Her father nodded. “It took a lot of guts to admit it, but he felt he owed us the truth. He couldn’t live with what he’d done anymore.”
Terra snorted. “Right,
he
couldn’t live with it. That’s why he graduated with our class and went off to college, which is where I should be now.”
“He left because he couldn’t face his guilt,” her father said. “He still can’t. That’s why he didn’t come back when we called to tell him you were awake.”
Her stomach heated. “I’m the one who has to face this, every single day. Every ache and pain, every lost chance, every ugly scar. I stopped living that night, and I still haven’t started again.” Until Connor and Nash had come along. But her parents sure as hell wouldn’t want to hear that.
“You’re lucky to be breathing,” her mother said. “You have a chance at a life, even if you feel impatient over the time you lost. And don’t think for one moment that the accident only happened to you. It happened to all of us. It changed us forever.”
“But who’s the one facing an inquisition over decisions I have every right to make at age twenty-one?”
“You’re not ready for those decisions,” her father said. “Twenty-one is just a number. You were still a high school senior when they pulled you out of that car wreck. You went to sleep and didn’t truly finish waking up until six months ago. You can’t expect to pick things up where they would have been if the accident had never happened.”
“It’s not like I woke up last week,” she argued. “I’ve been working on this for months.”
“Yet you’re making choices like these,” her mother said. “Maybe you’re angry that the rest of your friends went on and lived. I don’t blame you. But hurting yourself won’t change anything. It will ruin your chance to get your life back.”
“I have a life. I know what I want it to be.”
“And what’s that?” Her father’s eyes narrowed. “Getting drunk with a couple of no-account cowboys who think nothing of treating you like a punching bag?”
“They didn’t hurt me.”
He got to his feet and pointed at her. “What do you call that bite? Do you really want men disrespecting you like that? I won’t allow it.” His voice broke. “You mean too much to me.”
“Maybe there’s some residual trauma from the accident,” her mother said, tears welling again. “Some brain damage that didn’t show up before.”
Terra scraped her chair along the floor and stood up. “I’m not brain damaged!”
“It could be psychological.” Her father folded his arms. “I think she should talk to someone.”
“We have to take her to the hospital, anyway,” her mother added. “I’ve heard that human bites are full of diseases. It could get infected.”
Terra bit back the urge to mention the bite wasn’t human. It was lucky her mother hadn’t seen the way Connor’s jaw mutated when he made the mark.
Her father nodded. “Not to mention what other kinds of diseases men like that carry.” Terra flinched as he leveled his gaze on her. “Did you at least use some kind of protection?”
She averted her eyes. That thought should scare her shitless right now, but somehow she felt it wasn’t an issue where werewolves were concerned.
“I take it that means no.” He shook his head. “Shit.”
Terra flinched at the word. She’d never heard it come out of her father’s mouth before.
“She definitely needs an exam, then,” her mother said. “For the shoulder as well as to test for STDs.” She paused. “And pregnancy, though it’s too soon to know.”
Pregnancy? She couldn’t have conceived from that one time, could she? Maybe werewolves couldn’t even reproduce.
Still, she swallowed at the thought. “I don’t want to go to the hospital for all that. It isn’t necessary.”
Her father leaned his hands on the table. “Did you stop for one minute to consider the consequences of your actions? Everything your mother just said is quite possible. Likely, even, from her description of those men.” His fist pounded the table, and Terra jerked. “Damn it, I can’t believe you would do something like this without even thinking about what could happen! That’s not like you, Terra.” He stood up again, letting out a heavy sigh. “I agree with your mother. You need a medical evaluation. And a psychological one.”
“I’m not crazy.” She’d thought so at first. Now she knew werewolves were real, and that she was falling in love with two of them.
Her mother eyed her. “You’ll want to change out of those pajamas. We’re taking you into the emergency room right now for testing. I’ll get a referral to a psychiatrist in the morning.”
So many arguments flew through Terra’s thoughts that she wasn’t sure which to throw out first. Big deal if she’d been asleep during most of the past few years. She was still an adult, and she was being treated like a child. Her parents were still taking charge of her body and her medical decisions, whether she liked it or not. What was the use in refusing, though? Maybe when she got a clean bill of health, her folks could chill out and start dealing with the fact that their little girl was a woman now, with a woman’s needs. The sooner they came to terms with that, the sooner they could all reach détente.
“Fine,” Terra said. “I’ll go.”
Upstairs, she slipped on some underwear and shoved hangers around her closet in search of her favorite jeans and ribbed, white turtleneck. When she tossed the latter on the bed, she noticed an odd silver rectangle lying on her pillow. It was a cell phone that didn’t belong to her, one of the cheapie-looking prepaid types. Had Nash dropped it earlier when he’d come to get her?
She eyed it closer. No, this looked deliberately placed for her to find. They’d come back.
Her pulse fluttered. Still wearing only black cotton panties, she reached over and grabbed the phone. A text message alert flashed on the screen.
412-555-2364. Call when you get this
.
It had to be from Connor and Nash.
Angry voices drifted up the stairwell, and her head whipped toward her doorway. Her parents were headed upstairs, no doubt to get dressed for the fun trip to the emergency room. They kept a low edge to the sharp words, but it was clear they were arguing again.
She stuffed the phone beneath her clothes and tiptoed over to push her door closed. She didn’t dare call them back right now. Her parents would overhear through the thin walls for sure. Padding back to the bed, she got dressed in a hurry and picked up the phone. After checking the settings to make sure the cell was in silent mode and would not chirp, blare music, or vibrate, she sent back a text.
It’s me. Text only. Can’t risk phone chat.
A reply came moments later.
Prove it’s you. Name a certain four-letter word that describes me.
She swore under her breath and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. There wasn’t time for games. Her parents would be ready in minutes. Still, it wasn’t out of line for him to want to make sure it was really Terra who’d found the phone.
A four-letter word that described him. She frowned. Which
him
? Oh, she had a few four-letter words that would apply to Nash. Then the logical response clicked into place, and she typed the answer with a tight smile.
Wolf
.
Voices rose in the room down the hall, but she couldn’t make out the words. Not that there was any question as to what—or who—the subject of the argument was.
We’re leaving town
, came the response.
Now
.
Come with us
.
She stared down at the message while she grabbed a pair of clean socks from her pine dresser. Did she dare do it? Skip the whole humiliation of a post-drinking, sex, and wolf bite exam to be with the men who were already very much under her skin?
After tugging on her white ankle socks and sneakers, she glanced at the still-open window. She would never make it past her parents’ room. Could she risk climbing out? On the way to the windowsill, she slipped on her denim jacket and grabbed her shoulder bag. Leaning out the window gave her a dizzying view of the front yard, including the bushes she would land on if she couldn’t keep her grip on the drainpipe. And she probably wouldn’t. Even in her cheerleading days she wouldn’t have tried this stunt, and now with a trick knee and barely regained strength, it would be beyond stupid to try.
With a sigh, she pulled her head inside and glanced at the phone still in her hand. Her parents couldn’t stop her. She was an adult. In truth, she could pack a bag right now and march out the front door, and they couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Demand that she leave the car behind, perhaps. They paid for it. So what? She’d be with her cowboys, which prompted a yearning that thudded against her sternum and tugged her gaze back outside.
She eagerly scanned the darkened landscape for golden eyes that could penetrate her soul, full lips that held sinful promise, and hard bodies that fit hers with perfection. She needed to see them waiting, texting from the night shadows and beckoning her to their side. Indeed, she
felt
them near, somehow, felt their desire for her. They seemed so close, yet the view from her window showed no sign of them.
Another text flashed on the phone screen.
Name the place. We’ll meet you within the hour
.
Several rendezvous spots flashed to mind. The mall, the coffee shop, the parking lot at Springton High School. Go out the window or through the front door, leave everything behind, and meet up with the men who had burst into her life on destiny’s whim.
Her
men.
Leave everything behind.
She swallowed and glanced around at the leopard-print bedding representing the Springton High Leopards, the school pennant on the wall, the shelves displaying her pom-poms and school trophies. There was a Robert Pattinson poster behind the door. All of it represented the teenager she’d been the day everything had changed. Little wonder her parents didn’t see her as anything more.
Her fingers hovered over the text keys, wondering if the time had come to launch into formal adulthood. She’d dreamt of this moment for years, when she would step off the threshold of childhood and into a life of her own. But was she prepared to lay waste to her parents’ hopes and trust to do it? After all their love, the long months of living in fear that she would never wake from the coma, would this be how she thanked them?
Her knee throbbed while she stood there, contemplating the next few hours. She could sneak out and reunite with the men she had fallen in love with too hard and fast to seem real. If not for the ache in her marrow from their absence, she still wouldn’t believe it. But if she went to them, what then? How would they live, two displaced cowboys and an accidental high school dropout with no prospects? And they would be on the run from a crazy redhead with some kind of vendetta. Nowhere to turn, no parents to understand. They never would, and they certainly would never lift a finger to help the men they saw as enemies.