chapter Forty-Seven
Seventy-six.
That was the number of calls, texts and emails I received from Lucas in the two weeks following our failed wedding.
Zero was the number I had returned.
Maybe it would have been smarter of me to send back one line. Something short and brutal, like F*ck you, I never want to speak to you again. But I didn’t. That felt childish, and it would have made me out to be a caricature of a jilted bride.
Jilted. It was one of those words you only ever hear used in one context.
I paced my kitchen as the seventy-seventh phone call came through. Billy Idol no longer sang to me when it rang. Now Lily Allen’s “F*ck You” was the go-to ringtone. At least for Lucas. Everyone else got Hall & Oates’s “Maneater”.
Yeah, that’s right.
While I waited for the call to go to voicemail, I opened my freezer and looked inside. Reaching past the half-empty bottle of vodka, I withdrew an ice cube tray and inspected the contents. My engagement ring lay frozen in one of the cubes, glimmering at me even in the low kitchen light. I sneered, thrust the tray back into the freezer and then punished myself a little by listening to Lucas’s message.
“Secret…” His voice sounded the same on every message. Tired, apologetic, but the last ten or so had also come across with some of his signature impatience. “I know you’re still upset.” I snorted. “But we need to sit down and talk about this like mature adults.” Really, he was pulling the mature adults card? There was a long, loaded pause. “I miss you.”
I deleted the message.
Leave it to Lucas to make me seem like the irrational one. It didn’t matter that Page Six had spent a whole week covering the fallout from the so-called “White Wedding Massacre”. Forget the gossip column, our wedding had been front page on The Times and the Post. Both articles made sure to mention how right before the gunfire started I had been stood up.
According to pack law, we were still married.
According to me, I didn’t give a f*ck what pack law thought. Lucas and I were done.
I picked up the phone again and made a call. After three rings it was answered with a sleepy, rumbling, “Hey.”
“Did I wake you?”
Rustling sheets and a cough to clear the traces of sleep out of his voice. “No,” Desmond lied.
“I woke you, I’m sorry. Go back to bed.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Liar.”
I stared at the light on my microwave. Eleven forty-seven. I should have checked before I called, but I was still so used to Desmond being on my schedule it was hard to adjust now that he was living like a normal human man again. Out in the daylight where he belonged, not stuck down in a brick-windowed basement dungeon with me.
“I…” miss you, I thought, but didn’t quite manage to say. “Just wanted to see how you were feeling.”
“Got myself a nice little scar. Doc said one inch over and you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
I choked back a sob. A bit of noise must have come out because he asked, “You sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah.”
Another silence.
“The pack came back with a decision about Morgan.”
“Oh?” It was all I could say. After I’d brought her out of the hedge maze in one piece, everyone was so shocked she was still alive it had taken them a little time to figure out how she should be punished. As far as the general public was concerned—police, her day job, her friends—she had vanished without a trace after failing to kill me.
Since then the pack had been having heated debates about her fate. Debates I wasn’t a part of because it would mean being in the same room as Lucas. He was right, we were going to have to talk sooner or later so we could figure out where I fit in the pack now that we were through. But I was still holding on to later.
“Yeah,” Desmond continued. “Apparently there’s a pack in Siberia…”
“Siberia?”
“That’s all I know.”
“Desmond…” I rested my head against the cool kitchen wall and imagined I was lying next to him.
“Mmhmm?” Sleep was clouding his voice again, and I knew I’d lose him soon.
“Do you ever think…maybe…about coming home?”
Silence.
I waited, thinking he was just carefully considering his answer. Then the breathing on the other end grew slow and regular, and he began to snore softly. I kept my eyes closed and listened, lying with him in my mind, even though twenty-eight city blocks separated us.
It might as well have been twenty-eight states.
After too many minutes to be healthy for me, I hung up.
May was a great time for night walks in New York. It wasn’t too hot, nor was it so cold as to need layers. I wore Dominick’s leather jacket over my white V-neck shirt and jeans as I traversed the path from my apartment to the only destination my feet seemed willing to go.
In spite of the late hour, the streets teemed with life. The city was awake and alive, ready to drink in as much spring as it could before the seasons shifted and summer swelled up, bloated and stinky with offensive heat.
I wove through the crowds, barely conscious of my own movements. In SoHo a new tattoo studio was still open, and a guy smoking on the front steps offered me a nod as I passed. I smiled, but not too much, and kept walking. I moved past the council headquarters without so much as a second glance, and walked until my feet hit the familiar tile lobby of an apartment building I hadn’t seen in quite some time.
I took the stairs slowly, head down, until I reached the appropriate floor, and once I was outside the door I shook off the stupor that had cloaked me the whole way here. I stared at the green door with its peeling paint, and my heart began to hammer. For a second I thought about turning around and going back home.
But what was waiting for me at home? An empty apartment. A cat that missed a man almost as much as I did.
I raised my hand, and after a heartbeat of debate, I rapped on the door.
A moment later it swung open, and I offered a weak smile to the dark-haired owner of the suite. “I know it’s late…”
“It’s fine.” He gave me a confused look. “What’s up?”
I glanced past him, into the wide-open loft, then I met his gaze and held it for a long time. Long enough it took on more meaning than I meant it to. Finally I said, “I’ve come to make good on a promise.”
Holden stared at me, his eyes widening only slightly. Then he stepped out of the doorway and let me in.