CHAPTER SIX
Lily took a deep breath as she approached the door of Lance’s trailer and glanced over her shoulder at Blanca. Blanca may have been pretending to be disinterested, standing near the road’s edge and studying her chewed-short nails, but Lily knew better. Those women had a resounding skepticism about Lance and didn’t trust him as far as they could throw him.
Lily knew the feeling.
“Well. Thanks for dinner,” Lily called out to her.
“We give you food, you teach us the dance, sí?”
“If I would have known the choreography for the Cupid Shuffle could be used as currency, I would actually have enough money in my savings account right now to buy a plane ticket to see my mother. I’ve led that dance at every quinceañera, bar mitzvah, and cookout I’ve been to since 2007.”
Blanca swatted dismissively in Lily’s direction. “Ah. Put ticket on your credit card. See your mamá.”
“Gotta pay those things off, you know.”
“¿Pero de a poquite, sí?” Blanca grinned like a Cheshire cat. Or Cheshire Jaguar, rather. She had her canines deployed for heightened comical effect.
“Slowly?” Lily giggled, knowing she shouldn’t have been laughing it up with the ladies given the circumstances, but she couldn’t help herself. They were so normal and, collectively, they reminded her of her mother. Boisterous and irreverent.
Lily hadn’t been able to visit her for two years, and that was about average for them with her mother being unable to enter the country. She missed her so much.
“You okay,” Blanca said, starting for the tents and van. She tapped her temple and narrowed her eyes before disappearing from Lily’s view. “Think what we say. We watch you.”
That kind of sounded like a threat to Lily, but she couldn’t tell for sure. Some of their English grammar and vocabulary choices perplexed her.
Shrugging, she stepped into the trailer and closed the door. She locked it, too, but she didn’t know if that mattered. If a shifter wanted to get into something badly enough, they’d find a way.
Lance was on the sofa, tossing his phone from hand to hand. His gaze cut from the television to her and then immediately back to the screen. He didn’t say anything. He slouched even deeper into his leisurely loll on the chair that left no room for anyone else unless they were going to perch on the back like a giant bird.
She passed between him and the television with her fist turned over and full of shells from the beach. She didn’t know if the sand was native or if it’d been trucked in from somewhere else, but she’d picked up the little shell shards anyway to remind herself she’d been there. Not that she was certain she wanted to remember the trip, but there was a chance she’d change her mind one day.
She covered the sink’s drain hole with a paper towel and gave the shells atop it a gentle rinse with the sprayer.
Lance didn’t say anything to her. She didn’t say anything to him.
There was plenty to say, but she didn’t want to be the first to say any of it. If he wanted to talk, he could offer up some words and be the bigger person for a change.
He didn’t, though. Not while she got a glass of water or after she emerged from the bathroom, showered and clad in pajamas. Not when she climbed up onto the slightly claustrophobic bunk nestled into the tight bump-out and immediately noticed there were no sheets under the blanket there.
He did roll his eyes, however, toss the remote onto a sofa cushion, and heave himself up. He opened a storage compartment near the entertainment system and produced sheets and a pillowcase.
She stared back.
Apparently, that wasn’t the result he wanted, so he escalated the communication to an entire grunt and deigned to crook his thumb to indicate that she should move.
She got down from the bunk and stood back, watching him climb and awkwardly maneuver the sheets into place. He looked like a bear that had tried to squeeze into a den sized for a muskrat. Too big.
Most of the shifters she knew tended to be leanly muscled, but Lance had a brawler’s build. He looked strong and unfuckwithable. She must have found that appealing one night.
If she had to be completely honest with herself, she’d admit her opinion hadn’t changed any. Perhaps her inner cavewoman thought he was a safe bet, at least as far as protection went. The jury was still out on whether or not he was sufficiently evolved in the ways that mattered.
Clutching the duvet tighter around her neck, she watched him tuck the sheets into the oddly shaped corners, grumbling all the while.
Her phone chirped from somewhere or other, and she spun on her heels to scan the tidy space, wondering where she’d left the thing. It wasn’t like she’d had time to get comfortable yet, so there were only so many places the phone could be.
Not on the table or counters, though. Not in the sink.
It chirped again and sounded kind of muffled.
“Bathroom,” Lance muttered.
“Oh.”
He eased down from the bunk, grimacing as his shin scraped against the side of the bed.
She hurried for the phone and answered just after the sixth ring, her brain registering the caller ID on a delay. She thought shit even as the word “Hello” left her mouth.
“Hello, Liliana. How are you?”
Damn.
Even if she hadn’t recognized the priggish voice, she could have made a good guess of the owner by what he’d chosen to address her as.
Liliana.
No one called her that except her father and the elderly nurse who used to work at the high school.
Lily dragged a hand down her face and suppressed a sigh. “Hi, Dad. I’m…okay.”
Because she’d answered, he was going to start calling her at that time of day thinking he’d be able to catch her. She wished he would just text her like normal people did.
Well, her mother wasn’t normal, either. Her mother preferred FaceTime. “I want to see the person I made,” she’d said when Lily whined. “I carried you for forty-one weeks, preciosa. Let me see your grateful smile.”
“That’s good,” Dad said. “I’m okay, too. What are you doing?”
“Oh, not much.” She sidled past Lance who was giving his best effort at pretending to be interested in the television. That would have been easier if he’d turned the sound on.
She climbed up to the bunk and lay on her side with her back toward Lance. She’d rather stare at the corner than watch him watch her. “What’s up?” she asked her father.
“I wanted to tell you about a conversation I had earlier today. Do you remember Norris Stump?”
“Uh…” She stretched her legs out in front of her, curled her toes, and tried to remember why the name rang a bell. She couldn’t, though. Her father was an accountant and also the county clerk. Knowing a lot of people was part and parcel of his jobs. “Refresh my memory about him.”
“Okay, well, Norris supervises the county utility office. You know the one where you can go pay your water bill and all that?”
“Mm-hmm?” Lily rubbed her eyes again. Her father probably spoke at a perfectly normal speed, but she’d gotten so used to being around shapeshifters and they did everything in less time. Worse, her father was always so careful to precisely articulate every. Single. Word. He was a stickler about enunciation. It was probably a habit he’d picked up those three years he’d been with Lily’s mother. Her English was okay, but she was much better at writing English than speaking it.
“He told me that the administrative assistant in his department is leaving to stay at home with her children fulltime. Her position is opening up on the last day of December.”
“Oh?” She tried to sound interested.
“Yes. I checked the minimum position requirements to see if you meet them. You’re actually overqualified because of your degree, but at least you would get a foot through the door.”
She didn’t want to put a foot through the door. She’d rather be on a saddle than at a desk.
Lily drew in a cleansing breath and said in a forced light tone, “Thanks for letting me know about it.” She wouldn’t be applying, but there was no reason to let him know that so far from the application closure date. She knew exactly how county offices worked. They’d be doing interviews up until December twenty-third at the very earliest.
“I figured it would be a good opportunity for you to move back into town.”
She liked where she was, but didn’t want to argue with him. She kept the thought to herself.
“I know I couldn’t wait to get off the ranch when I was your age,” he said.
Because he was afraid of everything. She wasn’t.
“Oh! While I have you on the line, are you going with me to visit the family in Albuquerque for Christmas?”
Lily let her breath out in a sputter.
“What was that?” he asked.
Oops. “I dunno,” she lied. “Must be the wind against the shutters or something.”
She didn’t want to see her cousins and aunts and uncles in Albuquerque. Personally, she didn’t want to rub elbows with anyone who still excluded Aunt Glenda and her kids. Sure, the guys were a bit surly and Belle was a little wicked, but they were always the first people to show up and try to fix things whenever she was in trouble. They didn’t ask questions. They just did the work. No one else did that for her. No one else would have driven all the way up to Boulder to help her move out of the dorm and into her first apartment. She hadn’t asked, but they’d shown up because they were family. She would have done the same for them.
“Listen, Dad. I’ve gotta get up early. Lots of chores.”
“Well, okay. I’ll let you go, then. Just think about what I told you. You could do better than what you’re doing, Liliana. I understand you wanted to try something different, but no one’s going to fault you if you’ve had enough and decide you want to move on. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Goodnight. I love you.”
“Love you, too. Bye.” Lily disconnected before he could remember one more thing.
She was tempted to turn off the phone and hide it under the mattress or something but knew that wouldn’t solve anything. If her father had more things to tell her, he’d leave her messages that would wait in a demoralizing electronic queue for her earliest convenience.
At least with her living out at the Double B, he didn’t stop by for unannounced visits like he did when she was working in town. She loved him and appreciated how hard he’d worked his ass off as a single dad after her mother got deported.
Lily had been barely two years old, and her parents’ formerly easygoing relationship didn’t endure long under the weight of distance. He hadn’t wanted to move to Mexico, and Lily’s mother was banned from even visiting the U.S. They’d decided it’d be best for Lily to stay put in Maria. Her father had done his best for her, but he didn’t seem to grasp that Lily was an adult who was free to make her own decisions, for better or worse.
Lance’s surprise hand press to small of her back made her jerk and bump her head against the trailer ceiling.
“Ow!”
“Easy,” he murmured. “Need you to turn the hormones down a little.”
Annoyed, she whipped over to glower at him. “What?”
She wanted to smack that perturbed expression right off his face. He didn’t have the right to be perturbed. After all, she was the one who had to live with him for the next couple of days.
“When you get super agitated,” he said without emotion, “that energy feeds the wilder part of me. It makes me think there’s danger nearby that I haven’t accounted for, and if I don’t quiet that instinct, I won’t be able to be still.”
“Well, then!” She scoffed. “Excuse the hell out of me for having human emotions and actually being affected by things.”
“I’m not saying that you can’t be affected by things,” he said through clenched teeth. His pale eyes narrowed. “I’m merely suggesting that if there’s any way at all for you to work quickly through whatever’s bothering you, that would be super.”
“Oh. Well, in that case, I’ll be sure to solve my problems in the next five minutes or so.” She batted her eyelashes at him. “I hope that suits you.”
He stared dourly.
She stared back, annoyed enough at him that she didn’t feel even the slightest bit of shyness about it. She was tired of people guilting and intimidating her into behaving the way they wanted rather than in the way she needed to.
A quiet growl rumbled in his chest, and he backed away.
He grabbed himself a beer from the fridge, popped the cap, sprawled on the sofa once more, and turned up the television volume.
Dick.
She crawled under the covers, pulled the pillow over her face, and closed her eyes.
She had an entire five minutes to get her shit together. Seemed she needed to get started with that on the double.
*
It was dark when Lily’s eyes opened. She lay still with her brow furrowed, disoriented. Body stiff.
“Oh,” she whispered, rubbing her face.
She wasn’t in her bed at the ranch. She was on a thin RV mattress in a tiny sleeping niche, but the strange feeling shouldn’t have been enough to wake her. There’d probably been a noise outside that had startled her out of her sleep.
That didn’t make sense, though. If there were a sound, Lance would have heard it. He had a dominant shapeshifter’s superior sense of hearing.
She rolled onto her belly, crawled to the edge of the bunk, and squinted into the dark.
Quiet and still.
For a minute, she waited with an ear cocked toward the door. Then she thought that perhaps a loud vehicle had passed and she’d merely been in a light enough stage of sleep for it to bother her.
She shrugged and eased back to her pillow.
“Where’s Ma?” Lance muttered.
“Hmm?” Lily inched back to the edge.
“Was supposed to pick me up,” he said. “Why’re you here?”
“Lance, what are you talking about?”
“You never pick me up.”
“I’m not following what you mean. What are you asking me?”
“Why aren’t you answering? Where’s Ma?”
“Lance?”
“Happened again, didn’t it? Don’t lie to me. I’m old enough to know.”
What he was saying didn’t make sense.
Lily grabbed the railing and dangled over the edge of the bunk to see him.
Lance was sprawled on his back, arms and legs in a spread-eagle position, head whipping side-to-side, eyes closed. “Where is she?” he asked.
Oh.
He was dreaming, and she was a reluctant witness to his distress. Her lovers’ dreams had always seemed too personal a thing to eavesdrop on, and she didn’t know the rules—whether she should wake him or let the dream play out. From past experience, though, she knew that waking shapeshifters was a perilous exercise. She’d nearly gotten clawed by Belle more times than she could count back when they’d shared a house. On the rare occasion they weren’t sleeping lightly enough for them to wake the second she stepped into the room, their instinctive response to being molested in their sleep was to swipe at the intruder.
Belle had told her that was one of the main reasons why some shifters who were married to non-shifters tended to maintain continuous touch throughout the night. If the touch was consistent, their fighting reflexes wouldn’t engage when their partners tried to get their attention. Apparently, Belle’s husband, Steven, had gotten nicked a few times before he’d figured that out.
“How long can a dream possibly last?” Lily asked herself.
“Where’s she at? Home?” Lance asked.
There was so much anguish in his voice that Lily wondered if he were recounting an actual event. She didn’t know all that much about him, really. They hadn’t been interested in getting to know each other. Their mission was to dissolve their legal attachment. That was all.
“Why’re we taking this road? Home’s the other way.”
“Home” for Lance had, for most of his life, been in Sparks, Nevada. That was where he, Kenny, Blue, and Blue’s sister Diana had come from. Studying the vagaries of Coyote politics wasn’t one of Lily’s hobbies, but it was hard for her to not pick up a stray bit of information every now and then. Blue’s wife Willa was her friend, and Lily had gone to Sparks with her once. She didn’t completely understand the ins and outs of pack structures, but she knew the Coyote pack in Sparks was a functional one, but also an oppressive one. According to Diana, most Coyote packs tended to fall into one of three categories: chaotic, organized-oppressive, and organized-liberal. Before Blue had taken over in Maria, the local pack had been chaotic. Initially, he’d implemented a few oppressive policies to dry up some of the holdover reckless behavior in the pack, but as the pack settled—and dried out—the Coyotes gained more trust, more freedom.
They’d stopped streaking through town at midday in their canine forms, so that was definitely a good thing.
“Hospital?” Lance asked. “Why? What’s happening now?”
Lily grabbed the rail yet again and looked down at him. He’d balled his hands into fists, and he had so much tension coiled in his body that he was practically thrumming with it. “Lance?”
“Ma’s in there?”
“Lance,” she said, a bit louder. That wasn’t a dream. That was a nightmare. The thought of her mother being in the hospital made a cold chill settle like a block of ice in her gut. She was so far away. Lily couldn’t do anything to help her.
“No, no, no. I wanna go home. Not goin’ in there.”
“Lance.”
“Dad, no.”
“Lance!”
His eyelids sprang up and brow furrowed. He rubbed his eyes and after a minute, saw her hanging over the edge. “What?”
The tinge of hostility in the query took her aback momentarily. She forgave him for it, given his agitated state. That time, at least.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” he said groggily. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You…woke me,” she said carefully.
“Sorry. Aitkensons tend to snore. There are some foam earplugs in the bathroom drawer if you need them. I keep them in there for guests.”
“Guests?”
“Yeah. You know, people who spend the night in my trailer.” He straightened the covers around him and rolled onto his side, facing the wall.
“What kind of people?” She regretted asking the moment the question came out of her mouth. What he did in his free time, or who he spent it with, wasn’t any of her business.
“People who want to spend quality time with me.”
She could practically hear the smirk in his voice.
“And how many of those people wake up with bite wounds?”
“Too many to count, but don’t worry. They all knew whose bed they were getting into.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Can’t fault people for the kinds of souvenirs they like.”
“Ugh.” Lily crawled back to her corner and pulled the pillow over her head once more. Then, in a surge of capriciousness, she lifted it and added, “You know what? I don’t care if the divorce is hush-hush. Let’s just get it done in the most expeditious way we can manage. You deal with your people and I’ll deal with mine. We’ll handle any fallout that happens and keep the two sides from going to war over it. Cool?”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Fine,” he growled.
“So freaking rude.”
“So freaking stuck-up.”
“Screw you, Lance.”
“Screwing me is what got us into this mess in the first place, remember?”
“Why did you…have to go and say that?” she asked, breathless with shock. He was obviously something well past rude. He was sadistic.
“Seemed like you needed a sip of truth, served up straight. Now that we’ve gotten that little nugget out of the way, we’ll proceed accordingly.”
“Yes, we’ll proceed accordingly.” She scoffed and fixed the pillow over her head. “I should have just let the Jaguars have their way with you. No one would have faulted me.” She should have left him in that van to suffocate in the heat.
She should have let his nightmare play out and left him to his torment.
“I hate you,” she whispered.
“Okay, well, if that’s what you need to tell yourself, have at it, shortcake.”