I went over to her. “That was Mom and Dad’s room.”
Only a bare box spring and an iron headboard remained. Like my room, it was barren and grubby. My heart squeezed as memories trickled into my mind: dawn-tinted bedsheets, the space between their warm bodies, soft lips on my forehead, fingers running lazily through my hair.
They’d coddled me-their only child-with unyielding affection and infinite gentleness.
And Aidan had taken that from me. Desire to understand why he’d shot Dad and then insisted on dining with me made me shake with anger.
A hand wrapped around mine.
“Oh, querida.”
I leaned into Evelyn, and she tightened her grip, tugging me around the empty house to a wall that was all sliding glass doors.
“The kitchen was Mom’s favorite room.”
Evelyn turned her gaze up to the strip of sunshine pouring through the mottled gray skylight Dad and Nelson had put in one summer. August had assisted our fathers while I’d served them extra-sour lemonade to show them what I thought about not being allowed to help. I’d felt immense satisfaction when they’d all squinted from the bitter taste.
My parents didn’t want me climbing high, afraid I’d fall and break my neck. I hadn’t shifted yet, so although everyone watched me closely for a sign that I’d inherited the Boulder gene, I was still deemed a delicate human
One night, though, after Mom had headed into town for a girls’ dinner, Dad had let me climb up on the roof with him. With our backs against the sun-warmed slate, we’d gazed up at the sheet of stars. He’d told me how he’d once wished upon a shooting star that Mom would marry him and bear him a healthy baby.
“Are you sad I’m a girl?” I’d asked him.
He’d fixed me with his eyes that resembled the surface of Coot Lake at sunrise-a deep gray that veered to silver-and stroked my cheek. “No, sweetheart. I am terribly happy you were born a girl.”
I touched my cheek as his caress ghosted over it.
Evelyn stepped in front of me, the scent of menthol eddying thickly around her…around me. “Enough. We are leaving.”
“I’m okay.”
“You are not okay.” She swiped her thumbs against my cheeks.
Finally, I relented with a deep, rattling sigh. She was right. I was experiencing a sensorial overload and needed distance. As we walked away, my phone vibrated inside my bag. I checked who was calling-August. I didn’t pick up.
“Boy trouble?” Evelyn asked.
“No. I just don’t feel like talking to anyone right now. Except you.”
She snaked an arm around my waist and gave me a long squeeze.
“Are you liking it here?” I asked.
She bit her rouged upper lip before answering, “Sí. Jeb is a kind man.”
“But Lucy isn’t?”
“Your aunt is a little…bossy, which is not to say she is malicious. I just prefer your uncle.” Once we’d reached the junction with the main road, she said, “The boy who brought you home on Saturday…he is handsome.”
Her words flicked my heart. Nope. I was not touching the Liam subject with a ten-foot pole, or a fifty-foot one for that matter.
“He was very worried when he dropped you off…”
My cheeks burned with the memory of how he’d violated me. I would never dare tell Evelyn what he’d done. She’d be disgusted, but perhaps not only with him. Perhaps she’d be disgusted with me too. Because she’d ask what prompted him to do such a thing.
It was a can of worms I had no desire to open.
Not now.
Not ever.
Iarrived for the meeting five minutes early, but I was still the last one there. I breezed past Liam sitting at the sleek wooden bar that separated the kitchen from the living room.
Lucas was his usual jovial, annoying self, leering at me from underneath the baseball cap he’d fit sideways on his head. “Have a good time at Robbie’s engagement party?”
Instead of freezing up or ignoring him, I pasted on a fake smile. “It was awesome.”
The five elders clenched their jaws, and gazes met and lowered to the chopped centennial tree trunk used as a coffee table. I guessed they’d all been brought up to speed about my visit to the Pine Pack.
Lucas’s gaze tightened on the elders, their lack of condemnation obviously irritating him. “I have an ethical problem with Ness competing in this trial.”
Eric shifted on the tan suede couch. “Perhaps she had a good reason for attending.” The clear glass globe pendent suspended over the living room cast a white sheen on his bald head.
“I did. I wanted to get to know our neighbors,” I said. “Isn’t that required of Alphas? To be aware of everything and everyone around them? Besides, wouldn’t it be nice if the Boulders and the Pines could interact without violence?”
“They’re calculating pricks,” Lucas hissed.
“Because you’re not?” I tossed back into his face.
Lucas scowled.
“You’vebeen plotting my downfall since I signed up for this, Lucas. That’s the very definition of being calculating anda prick.”
“Aren’t you a little firecracker today?” He laid both his elbows on the bar behind him and leaned back. “Why are we even allowing her to continue? She broke the rules.”
“She shifted to help Matt,” Frank said, his bushy white eyebrows shadowing his eyes.
Lucas snorted. “He would’ve been fine.”
“Still,” Eric said, “empathy is commendable.”
Lucas’s nostrils flared. His hatred for me was as acrimonious as the sweaty half-moons staining his gray muscle tee.
“Ness, why don’t you take a seat so we can discuss the second trial?” Frank tipped his head toward the barstool between Liam and Lucas.
Like hell I would sit there.
“I’m good standing.” I leaned against the built-in bookcase that was stacked with hundreds of books. Horrible Heath had apparently been an avid reader. Too bad it hadn’t made him a kinder person.