“And then when Elise—ah, fuck.”
I look up, and there’s no mistaking it from his expression. He heard me say her name. Fucking tripping at the finish line. Great job, man.
Logan’s dark eyes hold mine, his brow furrows. I can hear his teeth grind together.
23
Elise
It’s the morning of the wedding, and I keep looking for Shawn every time I get a few spare seconds. When I got to the Hayes House, Deanna answered the door, and said they would be back soon.
It’s kind of getting on my nerves that Shawn is actually doing a good job of avoiding me, or at least better than the rest of his family. I’ve barely seen him.
And, like, I guess he wouldn’t want to see me after he just kind of abruptly left last night. But I need to talk to him.
I’ve been over the order of things I have to put in the oven a dozen times. I have everything I need prepped, but I feel like I need to just stare at the trays and agonize. It’s too quiet.
A couple days ago, I had planned to tell Deanna I was going to move after all this was over and figure out an end date for our contract. The plan was to go back to packing up my things after all the dishes were done. The money that would have been a down payment on my cottage would be a cushion while I rented and looked for new contacts. One of my cooking school friends actually replied to my message and knew a restaurant that needed a new sous chef. It wouldn’t be working for myself, but it would be a good opportunity.
No more Shawn, no more Hayes family, no more werewolves.
No more anyone.
The thought isn’t reassuring the way it was supposed to be. I don’t have a family here; these people are not my friends. They’re the same people who would have rejected me before.
Laura’s always good company, I think as I wander upstairs, but it sinks my heart a little, knowing that I won’t be able to hang out with her after I leave. Maybe we could keep in touch, but texting every now and then just won’t be the same as hanging out on her terrible couch with a pint of melted ice cream.
In one of the guest rooms, I catch sight of Ava—Laura’s friend—and what I’m assuming is the back of Laura’s head. Ava has a couple flowers pinched by the stems in one hand, and a couple of hairpins in the other. She’s decorated Laura’s braided updo with a variety of little buds.
Leftovers from the flower arch, I realize as I get closer.
Ava has been here today about as long as I have. Laura stopped in earlier to introduce her florist friend to me, before showing her the backyard. Every time I glanced out the window, the clearing before the woods was a little more fairytale-like. Ava waved at me through the kitchen door every time she passed by with another box of flowers, and I kept wondering where she was going to find more places to stick them.
“Someone actually got attacked and chased by a wolf a couple nights ago,” Ava says when I walk in the door, the smell of flowers greeting me. Her eyes are wide and genuinely worried. “It’s so scary what’s happening.”
“Oh! Those hikers, right? I heard they just saw something they thought was a wolf,” Laura says, waving me in. Apparently,Deanna’s rule that they weren’t to encourage the rumors didn’t apply to her.
“My high school best friend,” Ava continues in a hushed voice. “I had just lent her my coat the day before it happened. She sent me a picture of what was left of it when she got away.”
“Oh, shit,” Laura murmurs, looking genuinely bothered for a moment, before she throws me a half-hearted smile. I ache to comfort her, but that would mean telling her that I know everything when I’m not supposed to. Maybe it would be too much of a shock during an already difficult moment.
At that, Ava puts down the handful of little flower stems, and takes out her phone, swiping through to find the message and show us. “Terrifying. I can’t imagine what I’d do if that happened to me.”
The photo on her screen was bone chilling.
I could barely tell that it was a coat, just a shredded pile of fabric and zipper. Half of it looked like it had been torn off, maybe left on the trail with the wolf. It couldn’t have been Shawn that chased the hiker, could it?
I swallowed, reluctant to even think about it, with the emotions that mixed uncomfortably in my stomach: fear for the hiker’s safety, worry about just how much control Shawn had as a beast, and I cringed at myself to admit that I felt the tiniest bit jealous. It was completely irrational. If he didn’t have control over himself as a wolf, I couldn’t exactly get mad that he was sniffing other girls, right? And there wasn’t even proof that it was him, for all I knew it could be any of the others.
“Oh, have either of you seen Logan?” Deanna sighs, sweeping into the room with her usual exasperation with the people around her.
She catches sight of Ava’s phone screen, and her mouth immediately becomes a hard line.
Laura, for once, looks guilty. “Sorry, Aunt Dea.”
“Girls, let’s not bring today down with...just put it away,” she says, and it’s hard to miss the way her skin blanches.
I have to wonder, then, about her. Shawn said this was his family’s curse. If it includes everyone, even his mother, how long has it been going? And if his mom is also a werewolf, then that story about his aunt...what really happened with her? He said something about a wolf being seen in the area before she disappeared.
