“I don’t know, Nikki! I don’t fucking know.” He punched his steering wheel with his unbandaged hand. “All I know is that I’m done putting you in harm’s way, so stay the hell away from the bunker.” His serrated gaze landed on my shoulder, and the arm I’d unconsciously nestled against my chest. “And from me.”
I frowned. “Why from you?”
“Why?Because I dislocated your fucking arm!”
“You didn’t do it on purpose, Liam.”
“It doesn’t matter why I did it. The point is I hurt everyone who gets close to me. Ness lost her eye. Tammy lost her damn life.”
“Youdidn’t damage Ness’s eye; Cassandra Morgan did. As for Storm’s mother, how can you even blame yourself for her death?”
“I put a shifter baby in her, and that baby killed her.”
I stared at his flaring nostrils a long time in the roughened silence, wondering if there was any point arguing with him when he was in such a self-flagellating mood.
“Just get away from me, Nicole. Andstayaway.”
I didn’t move.
“Get. Away!”
“Fine, but the only person you’re hurting by shutting people out is yourself.” I exited the car and closed the door.
At least, Adalyn would no longer have to worry about that do-over.
Chapter 39
For two entire days, I didn’t run into Liam. Then again, I didn’t leave my cabin, not even to pick up my car, which Adalyn ended up driving back to the compound, a handful of parking tickets wedged beneath the wiper. I wasn’t wallowing or anything, simply catching up on a mountain of work.
Mom rescued my eyesight and my sanity when she came over with lunch and Storm, who took an instant liking to the luminescent garland of paper stars I’d strung over my headboard. I taught him how to click them on and off, and his already twinkly eyes twinkled some more.
Mom leaned against my doorframe, watching me guide Storm’s fingers along the edge of a star. “I went to see Lori today. She’s agreed to Nate’s idea.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What idea is that?”
“Biting Bea and the coroner on the full moon. Your brother thinks that more venom might help them shift completely.”
I hadn’t heard that one yet. Most of what I’d heard, all of it from my social butterfly of a brother Niall, was along the lines of killing the vampwolves and the shifter who’d made them. “You think it could work?”
Mom sighed. “I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“Have you visited Bea again?”
“I went yesterday.”
“Was she in skin or in her other form?”
“In skin. Lori’s been supplying them with her blood again. I got to talk to her for a little while. She’s exhausted and disheartened. Especially since the coroner won’t stop crying. She feels guilty for his grief.” Mom swiped a finger underneath her lower lash line, whisking away a tear. “It’s so hard for me to see her hurting and not be able to do anything.”
“Oh, Mom.”
“I told her not to give up hope,” she added thickly, “when I hardly have any left.”
I walked over to my mother and curled one arm around her shaking shoulders.
Storm squeezed the back of my arm with one hand and gripped my braid with the other, anchoring himself to me as though worried I might drop him. “Mamamama.”
I froze; Mom, too. When we pulled apart, our gazes converged on Liam’s son, who looked between the two of us, drool glittering down his lopsided smile.
