CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lance had no furniture.
That was the first thing Lily noticed when he nudged her across his threshold and into the dim front room.
The second thing she noticed was that his place was freezing cold.
He eased around her, hit the lights, and fidgeted with the thermostat. Seconds later, there was a pleasing whir of warm air coming out of the floorboard vents. “Sorry. I’m not home a hell of a lot.”
“I’m sure you don’t get cold enough even when you are here to turn the heater on.”
“Haven’t yet, but winter may change that trend.” He hooked his keys onto the rack near the door and gestured toward the rear of the house. “If you want a bottle of water or something, you can check the fridge. I’m going to go unhitch the trailer before it gets dark.”
“Okay.”
He slipped back through the door and closed it softly.
Lily stuffed her hands into her pockets and ambled toward the kitchen. The house itself wasn’t all that interesting. It was a typical kit house. Dozens of the mill-cut homes sprang up in Maria after World War II to accommodate returning soldiers eager to play their part in the imminent baby boom. The house she and Belle had once rented downtown was similar, though a bit larger.
Heeding his suggestion, she went into the kitchen. He did actually have a table and chairs and the requisite piles of paper clutter everyone seemed to have. She stifled the compulsion to riffle through his mail and instead opened the fridge, right as her phone rang.
She bumped the door closed, read Belle’s number on the caller ID, and sighed. She wasn’t going to be able to avoid her cousin for long. Belle would track her down like a repo lady who had a quota to meet.
“Uh. Hey,” Lily answered weakly.
Lily could hear labored breathing on the other end, and definitely not the exertion kind.
“Belle?”
A scoff. “You know,” Belle started in her usual husky drawl, “I never forgot how when I was like thirteen and you were like sixteen, you told me that you’d always be straight-up with me because you never wanted me to think you didn’t trust me.”
“I meant that.”
“So why didn’t you tell me you got married?”
Lily let out a breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. The question was a valid one, and one she’d known she’d be confronted with. That didn’t make the words come any easier, though. “Belle, I didn’t tell anyone. We were still living separately and barely even talking to each other. We weren’t going to tell anyone until we had to, but it didn’t matter because we were going to get a divorce. We knew getting married so fast was reckless.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“The reason you probably think.”
Silence. They didn’t say anything for maybe a minute. Unusual for them, but sometimes the quiet was necessary for perspective. “That’s…not a good reason,” Belle finally said.
“Well, it doesn’t matter. That reason no longer applies.”
More silence. Awkward. Tense. Heartbreaking, because Belle always knew what to say, and for this, she had nothing except a whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Lily shrugged but realized Belle couldn’t see her. “Who’d you find out from?”
“One of the Delacroix sisters. She found out from some lady at the coffee shop.”
“Yeah, Dad was there earlier.”
“Is he mad?”
“Of course he is. He only knows about the elopement, though.”
“Why’d you tell him?”
“Hadn’t planned to.” Lily reopened the fridge and got the water she’d forgotten about just that quickly. “You know how Dad is. He was needling me, and I guess I looked flustered. Lance must have thought he was being overbearing and said what he did to get him to back off. He says I…smell bad when I’m stressed. I didn’t even know he was nearby.”
Silence again.
“Belle?”
“Where are you right now?”
“At Lance’s. Got back into town a couple of hours ago. We’re going to talk this thing out, I guess. Figure out what we want.”
“Forget about ‘we.’ What do you want?”
It was Lily’s turn to be silent. She was afraid to want anything—to wish for anything.
“Come on, Lily,” Belle said with a voice dripping with exasperation. “Tell me so I can get behind you on this. Tell me so I can back you up on whatever it is you want to do, even if it’s ridiculous. I’m trusting that you know what you’re doing.”
She didn’t know what she was doing. “You don’t have to do that,” Lily said. “I’ll figure things out.”
“Yeah, you’ve always been good at figuring things out, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use a little help. Come on. My brothers and I always showed up for you when you needed us to. Just tell me where to be, and I’ll be there. No one stood up for Mom before it was too late, but it doesn’t have to be like that for you. So tell me what you want.”
What I want?
Lily had no flipping clue what she wanted. She was so rarely asked, and she had no idea how to even begin the list.
Or maybe she did. There was one small thing.
“All I know is that…I don’t want to cut and run,” Lily said with a strained laugh. She couldn’t believe she was admitting any of it—what a fool she was and how, for a change, she was the one who was shamefully disorganized and as reckless as a shifter. “That doesn’t feel right, and not because I don’t want to be a quitter.”
“Of course it doesn’t feel right,” Belle mused, voice soft. “You’re probably his mate.”
“Pardon me?” Lily nearly dropped her water onto the floor. She managed to slap her free hand down just in time and pin the bottle against her thighs. She hadn’t seen that speculation coming.
“I don’t know everything about Coyotes, but I can tell you how it is with Cougars. If a man’s so put off by your scent that he’d tell you he’s bothered, you’ve really gotten through his defenses. Shifters aren’t generally so candid about what they sense. He trusts you.”
And perhaps that was the same reason she carried his scent. She certainly didn’t mind. It meant she’d have fewer conversations with hot-blooded shifters who sucked at reading body language and couldn’t tell when a lady wasn’t looking for a hookup.
“So, it’s like that with you and Steven?” Lily wanted to feel like the situation was normal and that it was fine for her to be hopeful even if the way they’d gotten together had been messy.
She didn’t want to feel like she was desperate, just understood.
“Sort of,” Belle said. “Every now and then, I’ll catch a whiff of his distress before anyone else does, but we’ve got a symbiotic relationship that’s typical only of certain types of Cougars. I don’t know what it is lately. I’m apparently the harbinger of mate news to humans who’ve fallen into shapeshifter snares. I’ve been around enough true mate pairs to know the signs. Most people don’t know what to look for, but I do because I got to watch my parents.”
“Is that why you didn’t…” Lily grimaced, remembering what Lance had recalled. “You didn’t interrupt.”
“Yeah. Hey. I thought the pairing was…unlikely initially, because I’ve known you forever. You’ve got preppy inclinations and he’s a—”
“Rough-dried Coyote,” Lily murmured. She moved to the side window and caught a glimpse of Lance nudging the trailer a few feet back onto its parking pad. He apparently had some kind of truck-reversing magic. She didn’t think she’d be able to do it. She could barely even parallel park. “But I like that,” she found herself admitting. “With him, there are no pretenses. I never have to guess if he’s being forthright.”
“Breath of fresh air, huh?”
“Yeah.” Lily smiled. “And there’s this crackle between us. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“You don’t have to. I get it. You poke at each other because you can’t stand silence when you’re together, and you don’t know how to show you’re desperate to gobble up more of those little morsels about them that they haven’t shared with anyone else.”
“Yes,” Lily whispered. “He fascinates me.”
“He should. If you’re his mate, he always will. Hey. Listen. My brothers will probably find out soon,” Belle said. “I know they don’t tend to be especially tuned in to what’s happening in town, but I wouldn’t put it past some dipshit to be tactless enough to call them about it. They’re always fielding calls about you.”
Lily’s body went rigid with mortification. “What…kind of calls?”
“Oh, you know. The usual ‘Who’s Lily dating now?’ kind of stuff. I guess guys are less afraid of my brothers than they are of your father lecturing them.”
“Be that as it may, I’ll do what I can to soften the blow for them. Better that they hear it from me.”
“You gonna be able to manage them?”
“No, I’ll let their wives do that. I’m sure their first compulsion would be to drive into town and chase Lance up a tree, but I don’t think that’ll do anyone any good. It’ll just drum up more tension between the Cougars and Coyotes, and personally, I’ve been liking the relative quiet we’ve had since Blue rolled into town.”
“Ditto.”
“Call when you’re heading this way. I’ll run interference.”
“Thanks, Belle. Really.”
“No problem.” Belle disconnected.
Lily let out a breath and replaced it with a deep one.
Mate.
That was what Lola had been hinting at when she’d said his scent was in her—probably something she couldn’t say outright. She never interfered, and she certainly wouldn’t have wanted to become enmeshed in Coyote affairs.
“Too late for that, though.”
The word didn’t change anything as far as Lily was concerned. It just meant that they’d be attracted no matter what. That they’d drift together, no matter what. Mates couldn’t avoid each other, no matter how much they wanted to.
She didn’t want to avoid Lance. She wanted to drive him wild. It was the most fun she could have for free, and she knew without a shadow of a doubt he wouldn’t tease her for being the initiator. Good girls weren’t supposed to provoke men. She didn’t want to be good with him.
Lance spied Lily in the window and pointed with an alarming amount of animation to a dark scuff on the side of his trailer.
Lily squinted at it then clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle the laughter.
Not a scuff. Graffiti. There was no way of knowing when they’d picked up the bit of artwork, but the pearl-clutchers in Maria were going to have a field day if he didn’t get that buffed off. The sentiment was plain—a clearly projected middle finger in black marker—but the artist obviously lacked training. It was pretty cartoony.
“I wouldn’t take it personally,” she said when he entered the kitchen through the back door and scrubbed mud from his sneakers onto the mat.
“It doesn’t look fresh. There’s a sheen of dirt over it. Must have picked it up at the state park.”
“You don’t think the artwork is courtesy of a Jaguar, do you?”
Lance snorted. “I wouldn’t put it past them, but no, I don’t think so. I think they’d tell me to go fuck myself in a noisier way.” He shut the door and moved about the kitchen, opening heat vents, shaking dust off the blinds.
“So. Where do you sleep if not here?”
He shrugged and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. “If Blue doesn’t need me, I’m either in the air or driving someplace for a few days.”
“For what?”
“Just to see. I like watching the countryside change. So different from ground level than up in the air.”
“Where all have you been?”
“That’s a long list.”
“Oh.” She fidgeted the tab of her zipper and toed a bit of cracked tile near the window. “You go alone?”
“Usually. Why?”
“Just wondering. I don’t like to travel alone, especially far. That’s the other reason I don’t see my mother as much as I’d like to. I’ve never been outside the country, except to Mexico. One day.”
“Where do you want to go?”
She scoffed and fetched from the refrigerator an apple that looked to be on approach to a geriatric state. She needed to do something with her hands. “Too many possibilities.”
“Know the feeling,” he murmured.
His water bottle was already empty. He fidgeted with the seal ring, eying her levelly as she chewed.
It was uncomfortable, knowing what she knew and not knowing how he felt.
For too long, they stood in that state, not quite staring, silence heavy in the air, and then they both spoke at once.
She asked, “So, what do you want to do about this mess?” at the same time he said, “Do you think Martha’s alone right now?”
His question jarred her so much that she could only make nonsense sounds in return. If he’d heard her question, he didn’t seem to be contemplating it at all. His expression was neutral, stance casual.
“Martha’s…well, I’m…I’m sure she’s fine? Right?” he asked.
She put down the water and the apple so she could grab his jacket lapels because it was important to her that the child was safe. “Why would you bring that up?”
“Can’t help but to think about it.”
“Are you trying to tilt me off my edge, knowing I’ll worry?”
“No,” he said softly. “I’m trying to see what you think because there’s no one else I can ask.” He shifted his weight and avoided her gaze. “Hard not to get attached when they’re so needy, huh?”
“Oh.” Mollified, she grasped his chin and gently turned his face toward hers. She wanted him to look her in the eyes again and see how she felt—not just smell the hormones she was putting off. She’d liked his answer a great deal. “I think about going back and just telling them to just let me hold onto her, and that she wouldn’t know the difference, but of course she would. And she needs to be with people like her.”
“Why?”
“So that she grows up knowing what the limits of her life will be, and so that…she doesn’t expect more,” Lily said, wringing her hands with frustration. “Why would Lola do that? Why would she just…a quarter life isn’t much of a life. If I were one of them, I’d probably be dead already, and I haven’t accomplished anything. I haven’t—”
“Stop.” He gripped her wrists and squeezed them as if to punctuate his command, but she’d never been one to do what she was told.
“I haven’t done anything. I haven’t really been anywhere or made anything important. The one thing I wanted to do in my life, I was too afraid of failing at because I would come home and hear, ‘Well, I told you so, Liliana,’ and—”
“Lily.” Lance gave Lily’s shoulders a little shake. “Stop.”
“But you don’t understand.”
“I do understand.” His hands chafed her arms, rough patches of his palms whirring over the fabric of her jacket. “You’ve got this target in your head, and at the very center of it is what a safe Lily looks like. She probably has a job behind a desk. Everyone in town knows her as the good girl who always does what she’s supposed to. They all know she’s good at some things, but in the end, she settled down and did the stable thing.”
“That Lily doesn’t disappoint people,” she whispered.
“Except herself.”
“It’s too late to do anything about that.”
“You’re not dead yet.”
He rubbed some more, thumbs skimming along the line of her open collar, gaze fixed on the goose-pimpled skin beneath the pads.
“No,” she said. “I’m not. But I can’t have what I want.”
“Why not?”
“Because what I want is so far outside that bullseye that no one would recognize me if I seized it.”
“I’ll recognize you.”
She laughed.
“I don’t matter, huh?”
“Oh, you matter.” She scraped her nail against the edge of the peeling screen-printed pattern of his shirt. It was so old, she couldn’t even make out what the picture had been. “Maybe things would be better if you didn’t.”
“Better or easier?”
She looked up at him, wondering what the right answer was. Wondering if he knew that the reason she was so far outside that paragon of perfection was because she wanted what her aunt had. If that made her wild and reckless, she didn’t care. She wanted someone to love her so much that she just didn’t care.
“Better,” she said finally. “What good is easy if the rewards aren’t satisfying? I want the rewards. I want to feel like every minute of my life is worth something. I want to feel like I matter, too.”
“How can I help?”
She laughed again. She couldn’t help it. When he asked her questions like that in his typical flat tone, her immediate instinct was to rebuff him for the sarcasm, but that was just Lance. The delivery of his words wasn’t what mattered, but his behavior.
She took his hand and squeezed it in hers. “We could…try this.”
“This?”
“You. Me. We could try and see why it is we can’t stop poking at each other.”
She already knew the answer to that.
“We could try to figure out if we can actually cooperate without everything going sideways.”
Of course they could.
“Or we could just…do what we have to for the divorce and try to make a clean break as quickly as possible. Let’s not drag this out anymore. I don’t know if I could take it.”
The idea of that made stinging bile creep up her chest. It made her mouth dry and throat tighten.
She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to go back to the way things were, when they couldn’t talk, couldn’t touch, couldn’t be civil because everyone expected them not to be.
He tucked his knuckle under her chin and lifted it, but she couldn’t look at him. She wasn’t confident that what he would tell her would be what her heart wanted to hear. “You want a divorce?”
“No,” she whispered. She wanted to try. Wanted to hold on to something that she wanted for a change.
“How would you feel if I said I don’t want one either?”
She did look up then, if only to memorialize his expression in her brain. She searched for the joke in his features—the twitching of the corners of his lips, the slight narrowing of his eyes. Those signs weren’t there.
“I can’t bear the thought of you ending up with some human man who can’t appreciate who you are and what you can do.” He grazed her lips with the underside of his thumb, staring at her with wonder. “You just have a way of connecting with people, I guess. And beasts like me especially.”
“I treat you the same as everyone else. I just assume you’re a little more dangerous, is all. I brace myself accordingly.”
“You don’t have to brace yourself to deal with me. I’m nothing to be afraid of. I’m a guy who can’t sleep half the time because of nightmares I try not to remember, and who gets carsick at speeds over forty.”
“And a guy who terrifies ninety-eight percent of the Coyotes in Maria.”
“Do I terrify you, though?”
She wasn’t going to lie. He could probably smell the shift of her hormones.
She swallowed. Shrugged. “You do.”
He started to pull his hand away, but she pulled it back and squeezed it hard in both of hers.
“You do, but not for the reasons you think. You terrify me because you’re chasing me out of a place where everything is rote and makes sense to one where I have to trust my instincts.”
“And what are your instincts telling you?”
She expelled a little tuft of air and got moving backward, pulling him along with her, stare locked on his as she did.
He moved without resistance, even without knowing where she was taking him. No questioning. No scoffing.
Easing them into the hallway, she looked back over her shoulder. Four doors. “Which?”
His response came out choked and garbled, forcing him to clear his throat. “The open one.”
“Would this be easier with a bottle of mescal?” she teased.
“Maybe if I wanted to forget it.” He lifted her off her feet without so much as a grunt and closed the door with his foot, barely missing a step. “This time, I don’t plan on forgetting.”