CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lance walked out of the bathroom wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and carrying his boots. He looked like he was on a mission, but he hadn’t yet shared the plan with Lily.

“Where are you going?” she asked as she raised her coffee mug to her lips.

“Walk.” He pulled a chair out from the table and sat, planting his boots on the floor in front of him.

“I thought you wanted to know what happened at Blue’s.” She was having the damnedest time making sense of his moods. “Don’t you want to know?” she asked. “I do.”

“Do you really?”

She nodded. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get past that night until I know what happened. Between the two of us, maybe we can put all the puzzle pieces together.”

Propping his forearms onto his knees, he twined his fingers and stared at the floor.

Perhaps she’d annoyed him with her earlier questions, but she thought any self-respecting woman would have demanded to know the truth. Their circumstances weren’t at all normal, but the rules of common decency couldn’t get tossed to the wayside.

Still silent, he fidgeted with his phone in his left hand, swiping across the screen with his thumb. He wasn’t looking at it, though. He was looking at her.

Curious, and a touch confused, she held his stare. He didn’t make sense. She should have been thinking strategically like shifters did to get the information she needed, but she wasn’t a shifter. She didn’t want to be a shifter. She didn’t want to have to change and get to know her body all over again. It’d taken her far too long to get used to the one she already had.

Finally, he straightened up and let out a breath. “There’d only been a few inches left in that bottle of mescal,” he said.

“Right.” She snapped her fingers. “The mescal. I don’t even know where it came from.”

“Pretty sure Tito brought it with his housewarming gift. I should have been suspicious that he didn’t want to drink any.”

Lily smiled at the thought that straight-shooting Tito would purposefully sabotage a partygoer. “Tito’s more of a Tecate guy. I’m not certain he has the constitution to get drunk, anyway. Demigod metabolism is too fast.”

The corner of Lance’s mouth tilted the tiniest bit upward. “Still don’t trust him.”

She put up a hand in concession. “Fair, but you can take me at my word that he’s okay. I’ve known him all my life. When I was a kid, I knew him as that trucker who hung out at the diner a lot and whose pickup’s sound system made all the old ladies groan. I didn’t find out who he really was until a few years ago.”

“He and Lola seem to have an interesting relationship.”

She shrugged and took a long sip of coffee. “Parent-child relationships are sometimes messy. Doesn’t matter if the kid is twenty-six or going on a thousand. You can’t pick your parents. You get what you get.”

“True that.” Lance straightened up a little more, but into what was actually a more relaxed posture. He was sitting sideways on the chair with an arm slung over the back. “Anyway, someone was walking around with the bottle. There was only a little left in it, and Willa told me to go ahead and finish it.”

“Willa did? She’s not the kind of lady who’d promote debauchery.”

Lance scoffed. “She’s not, but she wanted to use the bottle as a vase and figured someone should finish the expensive swill in it first.”

“That’s right! It was a fancy bottle, wasn’t it?” Lily closed her eyes and massaged her temples. The memory of the bottle, shaped like a voluptuous woman, was half-formed in her mind and fraying at the edges. She worried that if she didn’t get all the pieces glued down, it would completely blow away. It suddenly seemed important.

“Limited edition, I think,” he said. “Molded by some famous Mexican glassmaker.”

“Maybe I should have taken it.”

“I think Willa would have fought you for it. She’d been eying it with unusual ruthlessness all night.”

Lily guffawed. “Willa” and “ruthlessness” were sounds that simply didn’t go together.

“You had some. I polished off what was left,” he said, “handed Willa the bottle, and then shambled to the kitchen to get something to drink that wasn’t alcohol. I usually hold my liquor okay, but I think that night, we were all going hard and fast.”

“And playing off each other so we were refilling our cups faster than we normally would.” She grimaced. That seemed clearer now. Vaguely, she recalled being crowded onto the sofas with her cousins’ wives, Belle, their friend Alex, and a couple of elves.

Lily should have been wary, too, now that she thought of it. One of the elves had demonstrated signs of the slightest bit of tipsiness. By the time an elf got drunk, most other people should have been undergoing treatment for alcohol poisoning.

“I’m never drinking again,” she muttered.

“Didn’t learn that lesson in college?”

“No, because of that whole ‘my body is a temple’ thing. I don’t think I had more than a frozen daiquiri in the entire four years.”

“My, my, shortcake, you’ve led a sheltered life.”

She couldn’t really argue that, but she didn’t particularly like being teased about it. Even with her limited experience, she knew that she should always drink in safe spaces and around people she trusted. They would make sure nothing happened to her.

But something had happened—a big something.

“How did we manage to disappear for so long and no one noticed?” she asked Lance. “And how did we get upstairs in the first place?”

He made a frustrated grunting sound as he ground the meat of his palm against his eyes. “I think…you were antagonizing me.”

“I was?” Lily asked in a near shriek. Antagonizing didn’t sound like her, and she didn’t appreciate the insinuation that she was that petty—drunk or not.

“You were giving me the evil eye all night,” he said. “I remember that clearly.”

“Oh.” Her indignation stood down, for the time being. “Well, that wasn’t antagonizing, in my opinion. Some people deserve a perpetual stink-eye.” And of course, she’d thought she’d known everything she needed to know about Lance. He was a bossy, domineering Coyote—a rolling stone who every human woman in Maria knew on a first name basis. He was the owner of a very loud vehicle. He was the guy who always bought every last ounce of carnitas at the taco truck before respectable citizens had a chance to get any.

Perhaps it was the carnitas thing that soured her on him the most. The greediness was flat-out rude, and Ms. Minnie worked some serious devil magic on that decadently tender pork.

“The little coyote in my brain took offense,” he muttered.

“To my evil eye?”

“Yep.”

“So you followed me to the bathroom, didn’t you?”

He’d been waiting outside the powder room and had a lecture already cued up. She’d cut him off fifteen seconds in and yelled at him about taco meat.

She closed her eyes and put her head back, groaning. I must have sounded like a lunatic.

“I think I followed you down the hall to continue to state my objections to your treatment of me,” he said.

“And I…was walking in circles,” she murmured, embarrassed of past-Lily’s decisions. Instead of returning to the safety of the sofa, she’d probably walked a mile inside Blue’s house, hectoring Lance all the while.

“People were ignoring us,” he said.

“Like it was all so typical to them. Bunch of enablers.” She topped off her coffee and leaned against the counter. There was another hole in her memory after that. Something had to have happened between them arguing while doing laps and her ending up on her back in a closet. “Do I want to know what happened next?”

“I think that’s when King brought you his leash and you shouted that someone should walk Willa’s dog.”

“And I said someone else needed to do it because I’d been walking one all night.”

That was a brutal burn, even for Lily. Mescal obviously made her extra mean.

“We argued some more while stomping upstairs to walk some more up there, I guess,” he said, “and I told you that I’m no average dog.”

“I laughed at you. You gotta admit that’s a pretty corny line.”

“Yeah.” He grimaced. “I think there was a childish ‘am not,’ ‘are, too’ back-and-forth for about five minutes after that.”

“Okay. This choreography sounds familiar, but there are still a few beats missing. What happened next?”

He blinked at her.

“You don’t remember?” she asked.

Drat.

They’d been making such good progress weaving the fabric of events back together.

“Oh, no, I remember,” he said under his breath. “I was hoping you did so I wouldn’t have to say it.”

“What the hell happened?”

Lance started fidgeting with his phone again. She’d never known dominant Coyotes to be prone to nervous movements, so his actions didn’t bode well.

“Tell me,” she insisted.

“No.”

“Tell me!” she shrieked.

“Fine, if you insist. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I asked if you wanted to take a peek inside my pants to see if I was as average as you claimed. Wasn’t my best fucking moment, that’s for damn sure.”

Oh my God.

She’d been the kind of sloppy mess that probably comprised her father’s worst fears for her. “And…I said…”

“You didn’t say shit. You just had yourself a little look, and I’m pretty sure I stood there like a jackass, smirking.”

She couldn’t remember if he’d smirked or not, but there were the barest fragments of memory in which she’d pondered, “How does he stay upright with that thing?”

“I think we were standing there like that for a good five minutes,” he said.

“If we did, that’s pathetic.”

“Yeah, well.” He shrugged. “Mescal.”

“Is this where the one-thing-leads-to-another comes into play?”

“It’s going to have to, because that’s all I remember until…” All of a sudden, terror settled into his features. Eyes wide, mouth agape, spine rigid as a fence post.

“What?” She put down her coffee and gave his shoulder a poke.

He gave his head a tiny shake. “Shit.”

“Shit what? What happened?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed with what appeared to be a laborious swallow.

“It can’t be that bad, can it?”

“You tell me. You wondered how it was that no one noticed we were missing. Well, they did.”

“Oh?” Lily asked lightly, in spite of the fact that her pulse had immediately kicked into overdrive. Someone had seen them and had probably encountered her daily after that and said nothing. She was so humiliated.

“Who was it? Willa? Blue? Diana?” She groaned at the next possibility. “Don’t tell me it was Kenny.”

Lance grimaced.

“It was Kenny, wasn’t it?”

“No. Kenny wouldn’t have given a shit. Coyotes walk in on worse spectacles all the time.”

“Then who? Don’t tell me it was Aunt Glenda. She was there for a while that night.”

“No, but just as bad, maybe,” he muttered. “Belle.”

No.

She shook her head hard, refusing to believe him. “Nope. Impossible. She would have said something to me.”

“She was pretty chill about it overall. I think we’d left the closet door open, and she closed it on her way out.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Mm-yup.”

“Bullshit. You’re trying to get me angry again.”

“What the hell for? To get the coyote part of me yelping with anxiety again? As cute as you are, I can’t stand that smell you put off when you’re pissed. It’s a disturbing mix of pine floor cleaner and minestrone soup. You smell like a school cafeteria.”

“Shut up. I don’t smell like that.”

Do I?

She gave her shoulder a surreptitious sniff. All she could catch were notes of conditioner and fabric softener. If he was bullshitting her, she had to give him props for his advanced level improv skills.

“Dead serious. And…yeah,” he said, grimacing once more. “I think we kinda carried on after that as if there’d been no interruption.”

“Must have been good for both of us, then.”

He raised a brow. “You saying it was good for you?”

“I…” Ugh.

She’d walked right into that trap and didn’t want to answer. Her memory might have been spotty, but there was no doubt that mischief had been delicious. A little confirming voice in her subconscious shouted out, “Yaaaaas, get it,” every time the man walked past her.

Lily twined a bit of wild hair around her index finger and put her back to him. She needed a distraction and her coffee needed more sugar, anyway.

“You know, there’s this one memory I can’t shake, and I probably won’t be able to until I see for myself…if it was real,” he said.

“What was the memory?” She didn’t turn to look but heard the squeak of the chair legs as he pushed away from the table. Next came the echoing thuds of his footfalls and creaks of the trailer floor as he moved closer to her.

He was in her periphery, facing her.

She lifted the coffee to her lips, keeping her gaze straight ahead, feigning disinterest. She’d just swallowed a gulp of the sweetened brew and set down the mug when he lifted a hand. His fingertips pressed against a tender spot at the intersection of her jaw and earlobe and immediately a gasp fell out of her mouth.

She slapped her hand over the spot and turned to him.

“Huh.” Looking up at the ceiling contemplatively, he nodded.

“Does that answer your question, then?”

“Yeah, I think it does.”

She swallowed and asked, warily, “And what memory do you have of that spot?”

“Mostly you shooing me away from it. I think you were sober enough to assert that a hickey wouldn’t be a good idea.”

No, it certainly wouldn’t have—at least not there for the entire town of Maria including her father to see and speculate on.

“I moved on to other places.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Remember that, huh?” The look on his face could only be described as “smug satisfaction.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I was talking about here, though.” He slid two fingers under her collar and gently massaged the top of her shoulder.

Another tickle spot, so she giggled embarrassedly and reflexively stepped away, but apparently, Lance had his own reflexes, and they were telling him to “Sic.”

She was still as a statue, arms straight and tense at her sides, breathing ragged, eyes wide as his tongue danced over the sensitive circle of skin. Little spasms were forming in her belly and back. Her shaking fingers splayed. She couldn’t move, couldn’t be sure she wanted to. It felt good, the silken glide of his tongue, the daring press of his hands up her back—despite the fact she couldn’t remember how or when they’d gotten there.

She wasn’t even drunk and she was losing memories.

Maybe try breathing?

So she took a deep breath, and his mouth was at the bend of her neck, kissing up to that other critical failure spot.

“Lance?” she whispered.

“Hmm?” His hands were so big. He had his hands rubbing up and down her ribs, his thumbs hooked around to her front. Encapsulating her, in a way. Clamping her exactly where he wanted her to be.

And her head was tilting sideways and eyes closing—making more room for his mouth, and his tongue, even though her brain kept telling her “Remember what happened last time?”

But she didn’t want to think about last time again. Not yet, anyway. She wanted a new memory before she and Lance stopped making them together. She wanted a clear recollection of what she was going to be missing once they got all their paperwork in order and quit their claims on each other.

He freed a hand from her shirt and fisted it around her ponytail, once, twice, grunting his pleasure as he pulled her head to the exact angle of his liking and bared her throat to him.

His target was the hollow at the base of her neck. His tongue dipped into the unprotected niche, making her breath falter again. She shouldn’t trust a beast to kiss her there, or let him skate his beard down her breastbone. She was little more than prey, and according to her father, people like Lance were wild animals. Dangerous, dirty, untrustworthy.

“They’re just not like us. That’s all.”

They weren’t, but at that moment, it didn’t matter because that was what she wanted. Her hands were inside his shirt, trying to get a grip on his waistband. Her weight was on the balls of her feet because she was trying to put more of her body against his, but he was holding himself back. Leaning in, and then teasing her by pulling away, even as his grip held firm in her hair.

“You know who you’re here with?” he asked.

“Hmm?” Growing frustrated with the will-he, won’t-he choreography, she gave his waistband a forceful tug.

He hardly budged.

“Do you know who you’re here with, Lily?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I just want to make sure you know who’s heating your blood right now. I’m wondering if you know who’s making those pretty little chirps come out of your mouth. Or whose boxer shorts you’re trying to dig into.”

“Of course I know who I’m standing in front of.”

“Yeah? You sure? Just a couple of months ago, you wouldn’t voluntarily come within a foot of me without Señora Mescal’s unholy influence.”

“Same goes for you. You can hardly look at me without your upper lip curling.”

“I’ve never curled my lip at you.”

“It twitches. That’s close enough.”

“That’s my way of smiling.”

“Bullshit, Lance.”

With his grip loosening on her hair and mouth skimming over her parted lips, he laughed. “Oh? You an expert on what my smiles look like?”

“I don’t think you’ve ever really smiled a day in your life. If you have, it was while beating someone up.”

“Yeah, I do tend to smile a lot then.”

“You’re deranged.”

“Yeah. Sometimes, I am. That’s how the coyote part of me gets shit done.”

His inner beast must have been pulling his puppet strings for sure. Lance scooped her up, set her ass on the counter, and had just wrapped her legs around his waist when the trailer shuddered from someone’s heavy knock on the door.

“Shh.”

Sighing, she pinched the bridge of her nose. Just as well. Maybe he was right that she’d lost her head for a moment. Well, she could resist the irresistible. She’d done it before and needed to keep doing that for her own sanity. “You should get that.”

Another knock, and heavier.

“They’ll go away,” he murmured against her neck, pressing against that spot.

She let out another of those pitiful chirps.

“Gods, the noises you make. How am I supposed to ignore those?”

Whoever was outside knocked hard enough to make the windows rattle.

Coming out of her daze of anticipation, Lily swatted Lance’s hands away and scrambled down from the counter’s edge. “Whoever it is, they’re not going to go away. They obviously know we’re in here.”

She headed to the door, but Lance got around her, blocking the exit with his big body.

“Are you nuts?” he asked.

“Last time I checked, no,” she said through clenched teeth. When they weren’t touching, they were so good at reminding each other why they shouldn’t be in the same room.

“I’ll get it.”

“What do you think is going to happen if I answer it? I’m not the one who ended up tied to a van seat a couple of days ago. That was you.”

“I could have gotten free,” he said evenly with his hand on the door lever.

“But not without chaos. I’m the antidote to the shifter chaos, right? I’m human and I know what you should be hiding. Never forget that I’m competent. Now get the hell out of my way.”

One of his pale eyebrows darted up.

“Move,” she demanded.

He moved, but while snarling.

Months ago, she might have been afraid of that noise, but she’d learned that the only thing different about Lance from any other man was that he owned up to the fact he was an animal. That actually made him pretty predictable.

She opened the door.

Guadalupe guided French Fry up the step by the collar and slid Martha’s diaper bag behind him. Blanca thrust Martha up to Lily as soon as Guadalupe got out of the way.

“Come a las once,” Blanca instructed. “Duerme a las doce. Volveremos a las…” She looked to Guadalupe behind her. “Eh?”

Guadalupe was busy scraping what looked to be clay residue off her shirt. “¿Qué?”

“Ugh, mierda, oye, ¿a qué hora regresamos?”

Guadalupe shrugged. “Seguramente tarde.”

Blanca turned back to Lily. “Tarde.”

“What are they saying?” Lance barked.

“Bye.” Blanca blew Lily a kiss and waved over her shoulder as she and Guadalupe walked toward the Jaguars’ idling van. Estela was behind the wheel.

“Hey! Where are you going?” Lily called after them.

“El mercado. Chao, guapa.” Then Blanca added in English, “Estela say sell it all. Ka-ching. Rock bottom.”

“But why? You price too low as it is.”

Yawning, Blanca shrugged and then jogged to catch up to Guadalupe. “No ask why. She know, eh? We trust.”

“I don’t trust her,” Lance said. “Not one little bit. And they can’t just keep—”

“Shh.” Lily closed the door before Lance could get the words out and hurried to the window.

She watched Blanca help Nayeli into the van after the younger woman missed the step and nearly face-planted. All of the Jaguars were moving a bit slower than usual, but Nayeli looked especially wiped out: even worse off than the last time Lily had seen her.

“Let them go,” Lily whispered to Lance, sounding a bit washed out, herself.

Just before Guadalupe pulled the van door closed, Lily could see Nayeli’s head lolling onto the back of the seat and someone waving a paper fan near her.

What’s wrong with her?

“You know something I don’t?” Lance joined her at the window.

“No. I think we just need to see what plays out. Something’s up with them.”

“That’s obvious, but what?”

“I don’t know.” She shifted Martha to her hip and stepped away from the window, pondering.

She had no idea what the Jaguars were up to. She’d be lying if she said she had a good feeling about any of it, but she remembered Aunt Glenda’s very important lesson for people like her and Lily: to not poke at the shifters. They wouldn’t poke back.

They’d bite.