Chasing wolves with her, watching her dive-bomb tech because she can’t fly a drone for shit. Laughing with her when neither of us could work something out. My eyes sting at the deluge of memories as I stand stock-still on someone else’s lawn.Dammit.
I love you.
Hearing those words from her meant everything to me. They still do. If I hadn’t made the bet, none of this would have happened. But she sat there through the days when I was out in the hospital, and she never left. The nurses and West both confirmed it. Winnie has slapped me over the head with that piece of information time and again since the homestead grew cold and empty without her.
So if she loves me and stayed that long when I was unconscious, why the hell did she leave?
A cold fury, fueled by my inability to bring her back to me in this moment, erupts inside me. Before I can think the action through, my feet move faster than my body can take. I plow through the middle of Jenkins’s camera crew and shove at the first body that gets in my way.
“Get your ass off this poor woman’s lawn, Jenkins, or you’ll find your business won’t last another week. Is that clear?” I bark, uncaring who films me or what words fall out of my mouth.
West storms toward me, his face darkening. I agree with his unspoken sentiment broadcast all over his face; logically, I know my outburst just cost me a small fortune in legal fees, but I no longer care. All I want right now is peace and fucking quiet, a fast trip to Alaska, and Lanie back in my arms. Hell, I’ll bring her wolves back to Coyote Falls if that’s what she needs. How fast can I buy land in Alaska? Are there tariffs or treaties I need to know about?
My head swirls with the overfocus. West isn’t the only onewith superpowers when it comes to work. This is what I do—or at least, it’s who I used to be, tackling problems on a larger scale in an instant.
A hand grips my shoulder, but his grip isn’t as forceful as I expect as West levers me back.
I don’t twist, knowing I can’t, and stare Jenkins down. “Get this circus gone, or you’ll find your next interview heavily features the color orange,” I murmur, my threat all the more implicit for my sudden calm.
Jenkins takes one look at my face and scampers. His cult follows in his wake, leaving a trampled mud puddle where grass used to be. The mob did more damage than the supposed dire wolf. I still swear that vandalism was more likely done by a human than it was any beastie.
“Better,” West mutters near my ear. “Now, you owe a pretty lady a big apology for scaring the absolute shit out of her and everyone here, because no one else here except for Dallas and me are used to seeing the great Cordell Rand lose his shit in public. Then you can pay Dallas for screwing with that nice lawn you’ve trounced all over like a pony having a temper tantrum. McCullins’s legal office is going to need to know what the hell just happened, and we need a trip to the local hardware store because Miss Swanson is now out of the supplies I just used up. You sure your bank account can handle all that, Rand?” West’s voice strains at the end of the largest speech I’ve ever heard him give.
Mine isn’t the only limit tested today. He’s never managed well with crowds, unless it’s the rodeo life. The one exception to his rule.
I nod, letting him guide me to my truck parked behind a line of cars that’s fast disappearing. “My bank account might manage. It’s my ego that’s taking the hit,” I acknowledge. “And maybe my heart. After we do this, have we got time to work out the cost of travel to Alaska? Plus, there’s another job I need you to do for me.”
West starts the engine of my truck after he helps me strap in. I’m still crap at working the seat belt clasp. “A job is something I’vealways got time for, even when you’re neck-deep in show-ponying. Just don’t try to wrangle yourself a dire wolf, and I’ll be there for you.”
I grin, easing my ass onto the leather seat heater I can barely feel. But I can feelsomething, and that matters.
“Deal.”
TWENTY-FOUR
LANIE
Who We Are Together
I cuddle the thermos that my host family provided me earlier in the day as the juvenile wolves bounce around my camouflaged cover in a rambunctious game of hide-and-seek. Well, their playtime began as hide and seek and is fast devolving into outright wrestling.
Not that I mind. My note-taking hand and camera finger work in tandem to create a jigsaw picture of the behaviors I missed during my sojourn at Coyote Falls. I wrap myself tighter in my brand-new wolf blanket that Gayaaxa, my host mother, gave me the moment I turned back up on her doorstep at the Alexander Archipelago in Alaska. Even when I arrived unannounced, she greeted me with the just-completed weave and an enormous smile, like the Haida woman knew I was homeward bound.
Only this time, returning to Alaska doesn’t feel the same.
Not that the string of islands with its rainforest-dwelling, unique gray wolves ever feels any different to any other patch of dirt on this planet to me, because I’ve never had a distinct sense of belonging anywhere.
At least, not until I discovered Coyote Falls and fell in love with both the place and the man.
Maybe leaving is the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. Only I can’t work out if it’s the people I miss most, a certain rancher who haunts every shadow regardless of which state I’m in, the enormous expanse of land spread out beneath an endless sky that never pressured me at any point, or the wild gray wolves I observed with Cord.
Or the glowing eyes I swear weren’t a hallucination that watched me back from inside the tree line back at the falls. The ones that I never fessed up to seeing.
No.
I shake my head to dispel the ethereal image and dislodge a part of the hide I made last year. Hours ago I managed to crawl back into my handmade cubby before my subjects, who are now well into living their best young wolf lives, turned up this morning. Armed with my thermos, I donned my lightest pre-snow kit and braved the weather to enter my hide.
And now, here I sit.
