Deceived By the Others

chapter 22



I didn’t pay a lot of attention to what Chaz said on the way back. He talked nonstop for half an hour, explaining as I stared out the window at the passing trees and houses that being changed into a werewolf did something to your hormones, made you need sex and violence like drugs. All I’d walked in on was a quick, no-strings tryst. It was just an outlet, not a relationship. Not like what we had.

He knew how upsetting all this must be to me; he and Kimberly forgave me for my temper tantrum, though she’d like me to reimburse her for the clothing I’d destroyed. He, on the other hand, wouldn’t hold my rash acts of the moment against me.

He talked about how understanding Kimberly had been, how very gracious she was about the whole thing. That she’d taken it all in stride when he explained to her that he might be sharing his body with her, but his heart lay with me.

It was all flowery and flattering and passionate—and clearly horseshit. I didn’t believe any of it for a moment. His justifications were just that—a means for him to make it okay to cheat on me. The lengths to which he went to delude himself, coupled with the tiny voice screaming in the back of my mind about how I might have to seek him out during the next full moon for help, edged a spell of car sickness closer to a full-on bout of vertigo-inducing nausea.

When he figured out I wasn’t speaking to him, he quieted, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. I snuck a glance at him under my lashes; he wore the tiniest frown, biting the inside of his cheek as he sometimes did when stressed or uncertain what to say. It was a trait I’d once found remarkably endearing. Now the sight of him like that further roiled my already upset stomach.

It took a couple of hours for us to get back to the city. Thankfully, I didn’t barf. We made one pit stop on the way, otherwise shooting straight for home, with little said between us other than an acknowledgment of directions or curt remarks about stopping for gas or food. When we reached the heavy traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike that preceded the George Washington Bridge, he started talking again, this time with a touch of that trademark anger that called so easily to my own.

“Why aren’t you talking to me about this, Shia? Why can’t you accept what I am? I saw the contract—you very nearly did it. What’s so hard about letting me be who I really am? You know how perfect we are together. We can make this work.”

I thought about all those lazy afternoons spent in his arms, the nights we shared before I found out what he was and kicked him out of my apartment over a year ago. He’d been deceitful then, and I hadn’t given him an opportunity to explain himself or regain my good graces until my mom had intervened on his behalf at a badly timed moment. That led to his helping me fight the psychotic sorcerer planning to destroy or forcefully rule over all of the Others in New York, and me coming to realize that I’d been foolish to judge him for hiding his nature.

After all, my response to Chaz’s revelation was typical—he’d decided a little wining and dining would make me more responsive to the truth. That he chose to shift in front of me right after we’d had sex had only served to underscore how shocked and appalled I’d been about being blind to all the signs.

Now that I’d had my nose rubbed in the fact that his entire f*cking pack knew he was cheating on me while I’d been busy obliviously agonizing over whether or not to sign a contract, it stung all the more. I was a private investigator who specialized in spotting and outing cheating spouses.

Don’t judge. Despite hours of boring surveillance work, it was often better paying and more interesting than insurance work.

That I’d missed all the signs with him—again—was a gut blow. It wounded far more than my pride. It cut down to the very core of who and what I considered myself to be—an ace P.I. with enough experience and know-how to spot the signs of a cheater without effort. Clearly I’d been deluding myself about that. Perhaps there were other things I’d been wrong about, too. This situation undermined everything about who and what I was—and for that, I could never forgive him.

“There is no ‘we’ anymore, Chaz. You burned that bridge and any other chance you might have had with me when you chose to lie and hide things from me.”

He glanced over at me, brows deeply furrowed over his eyes, though he seemed more puzzled than angry. “Don’t say that. I may not have talked to you about it, but I never lied. You forgave me for waiting to tell you about what I was. How is this so different? It’s just a different aspect of the same beast.”

“No, it’s not,” I said, fighting to keep my voice level. “It’s nothing like that. It’s true, before I knew what you were, I said some shitty things about Others. When I broke up with you, it was because I was pissed off at you for being manipulative and for hiding things from me. Acting like that makes you no better than Royce.”

That shut him up. The lines etched into his face, particularly the deepening crow’s-feet around his eyes, spoke of just how deeply I’d managed to wound him with that last comment. He hated Royce with a burning passion. Knowing that, I’d use it to the hilt. Maybe it was low, maybe it was unfair, and maybe it even made me a bitch—but at the moment, I was beyond caring. If it hurt him, I’d wield that knowledge against him, and gladly. Petty or not, at this point I was willing to do anything that might make him hurt the way he and his pack had hurt me.

“Royce,” I hissed, leaning in to whisper in his ear, “never—ever—treated me with the disrespect you’ve shown me. Never hurt me like you did. Even with the contract and the blood bond. How’s it feel to be lower than a leech?”

For the first time in his presence, I felt a thrill of fear for myself as Chaz raised his right hand off the steering wheel, clenching his fingers into such a tight fist that his knuckles popped. He’d never made such an overtly threatening move toward me before. I know his strength, so the move was sobering and had me withdrawing against the car door.

“Don’t you ever—”

His fist came down, cracking the dash. I jumped, staring wide-eyed at the indentation he’d left in the plastic.

“—ever compare me to that leech again. We’re nothing alike.”

Only my fear of what he might do to retaliate kept me from speaking again. He huffed in silence for several minutes. Gradually, the tension eased out of his shoulders, and he resumed speaking, though his tone remained sharp and cutting.

“I never forced you into doing something you didn’t want to do. Didn’t change you, didn’t harm you. Don’t talk about me like I’m one of those … those monsters.”

“Are you kidding me?” I exploded, unable to keep my temper in check, no matter the consequence. Some niggling sense of self-preservation kept me from telling him about the cuts Dillon had inflicted. Even now, enraged, I knew somehow things would go far more badly than they already had if he found out that I might have been infected with lycanthropy by one of his own. “What do you think seeing you and Kimberly f*cking like bunnies was, Chaz? A walk in the park? Of course that hurt me, you selfish prick!”

He had the grace to redden. Some of the plastic steering wheel coverlet shredded when his fingernails grew into claws as his agitation got the better of him.

“She doesn’t mean anything to me. She’s just an outlet. You’re the one I love,” he insisted.

“Bullshit. I call bullshit.”

“For God’s sake—”

“Do you have any idea how hurtful this is to me? Do you even have a clue?”

“Of course you’re hurt; you’re always hurt whenever you find out something about me isn’t human enough for you—”

“This isn’t about that!” I shouted.

“Then what’s it about, Shia? I told you what’s wrong. I told you why I had to do it. I knew you’d freak out, just like you did when you found out what I was, and just like you’re doing now. This isn’t how I would’ve wanted you to find out, but it’s too late for that now, and I don’t know any words to say that will make it better. So what exactly is the problem here? What is it about, huh?”

“You! You lying … deceitful …” I sputtered off, too angry to continue.

“You know what? F*ck this. Get out.”

I stared at him, some of my immediate anger edging over into confusion. “What?”

“You heard me. Get out of the car.”

We were somewhere in the Bronx. Nowhere near home. We hadn’t even hit Long Island yet.

“Are you kidding me?”

“No. I’m not dealing with your shit anymore.” He cut through traffic in a few savage, jerking motions, and before I knew it, we’d pulled off I-95 and into a part of town I was completely unfamiliar with. He didn’t bother to pull into a lot or find a parking spot, instead choosing to double-park at the side of the road. “Get out. Get your stuff and get out.”

Numbly, I did what he said, hefting my purse on my shoulder as I slid out of the Jeep. He barely waited for me to pull my bag out of the back and shut the door before he pulled back into traffic to the accompanying honks and shouts of irate drivers as he cut people off and shot back onto the expressway.

I stood there between two parked cars for a long time, staring after him, not quite able to believe that he’d dumped me, literally and figuratively. The people passing by barely paid me a glance. Those who did quickly looked somewhere else and hurried on their way.

With a shudder, I hefted my purse higher on my shoulder and grabbed my bag, trying hard not to cry. That could come later, sometime when I was alone and curled up in bed with a pint or two of ice cream and enough chick flicks and alcohol to help me forget this weekend had ever happened.

That Chaz had ever happened.

There was a diner down the street, a real dive, but they might have a phone they’d be willing to let me use. I trudged the half a block to the storefront, dubiously taking in the glass fogged with dirt and cracked cement stairs leading inside. The place was empty save for a tired looking old lady with wispy white hair tied up into a fraying bun who was leaning against the counter, a cigarette hanging limply from her fingertips while she jawed with a cook over the serving counter. They both quieted, looking at me with wide eyes as I stumbled inside.

“Lawd’s sakes, girl, you look like you done seen a ghost,” the woman remarked, stubbing out her cigarette and standing straight. “Come in, sit down. You hurt? Need an ambulance?”

The mention of an ambulance made me jerk in response, terror at being discovered as a possible lycanthrope making my fingers fly to the cuts on my arm hidden beneath my long-sleeved shirt. She couldn’t have seen. She couldn’t possibly know. But the way the waitress looked at me, the concerned wariness in her dark brown eyes, filled me with a bone-deep terror that she somehow saw the monster I might be peeking out of my eyes.

“Jesus, girl, we don’t bite here. Come in; sit down before you pass out. You gonna be all right?”

My throat tightened up at this unexpected kindness, and I shook my head. With some effort, I picked my purse and bag off the checkered tile, inching over to one of the tables by the window and setting my stuff down. My voice cracked when I spoke, so I had to clear my throat a couple of times before it came normally. “I’m sorry. Thank you. I’m just looking for a phone to call a cab, if that’s okay.”

The lady exchanged a look with the cook, one I interpreted as “no sudden moves, don’t alarm the crazy lady.” She gave me a smile, her teeth nicotine stained in places to a color that very nearly matched the chocolate hue of her skin. “Sure thing, sugar. You just have a sit right there. I’ll call for you. You want anything while you wait? Some coffee, maybe a slice of pie?”

I gave her a watery smile, and she disappeared through a swinging door into the kitchen. A few minutes later, she came out bearing a cup of steaming coffee and a plate with a slice of warm apple pie. The scoop of vanilla ice cream next to it was already making a sugary pool.

“The cab company will send someone along in about twenty minutes. You just enjoy that now, and let me know if you need anything else.”

I settled in to the comfort food and found it helped ease the nervous tension that had wrung my stomach into knots. Knowing I could curl up into a ball of misery in private at home soon also helped. My eyes burned from the effort to keep from spilling any tears, nothing I wanted to do considering how carefully the cook and waitress were watching me, despite that they’d resumed their casual chat behind the counter.

Already I was worried about strangers thinking I was something different. Something Other. If I went to the hospital, it would come out how I was injured. If anyone recognized me, word might get back to the newshounds who now kept such close tabs on me. Either would be a disaster.

But going to the hospital to get tested or vaccinated would be worse. The thought of what it might do to me to get the news that I was beyond treatment right on the heels of what had just happened with Chaz was terrifying. I didn’t want to get the news that it was too late, that nothing could be done. I didn’t want to be like Ethan, falling apart in a parking lot where anyone could stumble upon me and discover my secret.

I didn’t want to be one of those statistics who disappeared.