I didn’t, but at the same time I didn’t want him to pin my nervousness on anything else. So I reminded him about the race, about the landslide. His entire body stiffened. He reached down and picked up the blanket, but I stepped on it.
“August, it’s fine. I promise. Besides, like Mom used to say, best way to chase away a bad memory is to make a new one.”
When he still hadn’t let go of the blanket, I pried the edge out of his clenched fingers and let it flutter back to the stone floor. And then I sat, gathering my knees against me.
“I bet the sunrise is spectacular from here,” I said, looking out at the ultraviolet darkness that stretched around us.
It took a while for August to shake off the tension in his body, but finally, he sat beside me. “Best in Boulder.” He took a thermos out of his pack. “Here.” When I raised an eyebrow, he said, “Coffee.”
I twisted the top open, then took a sip of the scalding, bitter beverage before handing it back. “I didn’t even think about bringing water. If I wasn’t a shifter, and I was lost in the wilderness, I’d probably not make it out alive.” I tucked my chin onto my knees. “You know, that show, Naked and Afraid?” I’d been watching a lot of TV recently. “They’d probably give me a survival rating of one-point-two.”
August chuckled softly. “That’s very specific. And incorrect, I’m sure.”
“Maybe I should sign us up.”
He glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “Don’t we spend enough time naked and afraid as werewolves?”
“In my case, yes, but what are you afraid of?”
He passed me the thermos, gaze cast on the sky. “Helicopters.”
“Helicopters? That’s specific. Why helicopters?”
“Because I crashed in one.”
My heart soared so high I felt it inside my throat. “When?”
“Three years ago.” The darkness around us increased the shadows populating his face. “It’s the reason I came back to Boulder.”
I waited, not wanting to press him, but the stretch of time between that last sentence and the next lasted an eternity.
“My buddy was piloting it. I was in the backseat with two other guys from my squad when we caught enemy fire. One of them had been telling me how he planned on proposing to his girlfriend… ” He stopped talking, and his lids came down hard. “Anyway, I made it. None of the others did. One of the medics kept saying how lucky I was. It made me so angry because how the hell was I the lucky one? I saw all of them die, Ness. All of them.” He finally opened his eyes. They glinted. “And now I’m the one stuck with the memory every damn day.”
I tightened my hold on my knees. I wanted to reach out to him, but then I remembered when Dad had been shot, how I’d hated the mere brush of a hand. Or the litany of sorrys. The only person I’d wanted to be around had been my mother. I’d even pushed August and Isobel away.
“You know what I thought when I was lying in that hospital bed?” He finally looked at me. “I thought about you. Of how brave you’d been at only eleven. I was in my twenties, and a freaking mess. It took me almost a year to stop having nightmares.”
“I wasn’t brave, August. I just shut myself off. I’m not even sure I’ve ever really turned myself back on. Not fully. A part of me died right alongside my father.”
He blinked, but no tears slid out of his shiny eyes.
“How did you stomach enlisting again?” I asked after a long while.
“I thought it would help me get over what had happened.” He grabbed the thermos of coffee and took a long swallow.
“Did it?”
He gave me a tight smile. “Nope. Just reminded me how much I hate helicopters.”
I smiled, even though my heart bled. “You’d think that being magical creatures would give us the upper hand on death.” I raised my face toward the absent moon. Although it hadn’t birthed werewolves, the traction of Earth’s satellite influenced our magic. “Do you still want to go back into the military?”
He sighed. “I’m not sure what I want anymore.”
A strange warmth pooled inside my stomach. Relief that he might not leave?
“But I might have to.” He grabbed a loose rock and flung it through the quiet air as though he were trying to skip it on the sky.
My kneecaps dug into my cheek. “Why?”
He side-eyed me. “To make things… easier.”
My heart sped up.
And up…
“On who?” I asked so softly I wasn’t sure my words would carry to his ears.
“On both of us.”
“Because of the link?”
Nodding, he rolled onto his back, cushioning his head with his palms. I glanced at him over my shoulder, hoping he couldn’t feel all I was feeling, but I sensed he could. Hopefully, he’d chalk it up to the stress of the coming day.
“This is your home, August. You shouldn’t have to leave it because of me.”
His thick eyebrows slanted over his green eyes.
“Instead of going to UCB, I could attend college in some other state. I hear New England’s nice.”
Would the pack pay for a school that wasn’t in Boulder, or did they only foot the bill when their wolves stayed on pack territory?
I gripped the thermos of coffee and tipped it up to my lips, then set it on the blanket and lay down next to August.
He hadn’t opposed my decision to go to some faraway college, and my navel wasn’t pulsing with any repressed emotion on his part. Whatever I was feeling for him was one-sided.
Could he sense my disappointment? I hoped not.
I balled my fingers into fists, then flexed them back out, damning Matt for planting ideas inside my head and damning myself for letting them take root.
Isobel’s surgery went smoothly, so I got to see her that very afternoon.
Although she was hooked to an EKG machine, and there were drainage tubes sticking out from underneath her powder-blue hospital gown, she was smiling and sported a way better complexion than I did. I kissed her forehead, nose prickling from the strong odor of antiseptic and infected blood, then sat in the chair August had occupied but freed up for me.
We talked about everything and nothing: the weather, college, doctors, even her work which I was supposed to take over the following day. Greg stopped by to see her at some point. Although the pack doctor hadn’t been the one to operate on her, he’d been the one to choose the surgeon. Isobel laughed at something he told her, something I didn’t catch because of who’d just walked into the room.
As our gazes collided, the room and all of the noise-the steady beeping of the heart monitor, Isobel’s tinkling laughter, August and Nelson’s quiet conversation-it all faded out for a moment. It had been eleven days since I’d seen Liam, but it felt like a month.
I jerked my gaze down to my lap, and then I jerked to my feet. “I’m going to grab something to eat from the cafeteria. Does anyone want anything?”