Молли Харпер - How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf

Alan was increasingly frustrated with his inability to track the wolf. He called in experts from the universities and the wildlife department, but they always emerged from the woods without anything close to a clue. Alan blamed himself for Abner’s death, for the hikers, and even for Susie Q, despite the fact that every expert told him this wolf didn’t follow any typical patterns of behavior, that he couldn’t possibly predict where or when it could strike. I wanted Cooper to talk to him, to explain about the werewolves, but I knew that wouldn’t happen. And I couldn’t betray the pack’s secrets, even if it would make Alan stop beating himself into an emotional pulp. All I could do was listen when Alan vented and remind him to eat.

We didn’t bury Abner in Grundy. His last wishes had been that he be returned to his native Oklahoma, to be buried with his family. We held a memorial at the saloon, where we drank his favorite beer, sang his favorite songs, and told stories about him until our sides hurt from laughing. It was a fitting tribute to a good friend. And Cooper missed all of it.

I hadn’t seen him since that afternoon on the trail. He didn’t return my calls. Checking on his house became part of my evening routine. Clock out at work, check Cooper’s house, walk Oscar, eat, go to bed. I tried to tell myself that he’d been called out of town or had been helping the rangers track the monster that had killed Abner and just hadn’t had time to call me back. Then, one night, I saw his kitchen light on. I saw his silhouette against the window as he stood at his sink. From his vantage point, he had to see my truck. He couldn’t miss it. I waited, wanting him to come running out of the house or even amble leisurely, armed with a good reason for dropping off the freaking planet. But he moved away from the window and turned off the light.

About a week later, I saw him loading camping gear into his truck in front of Hannigan’s Grocery. He looked haggard and miserable, as if he hadn’t slept in days. Although my first instinct was to soothe, to brush kisses over those tired eyes and wrap my arms around him, the stronger instinct to smack him won out.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded, slapping the back of his head.

Cooper seemed to have missed the fact that his girlfriend had just bitch-slapped him on a public sidewalk. He wouldn’t even look at me as he raised the tailgate of his truck. “Not now.”

“Oh, you’re right, we have spent so much time together over the last couple of days, you must be getting sick of me.” I followed him to the driver’s side.

He opened the door to his truck and stepped in, putting it between us. “I can’t be around you right now.”

I skidded to a stop. “What?”

“You need to stay away from me,” he said, his voice low and hoarse. “You know why. Susie Q, those hikers, Abner. I can’t be near you. I can’t take the chance that I could hurt you, too. I couldn’t stand it.”

My jaw fell slack, the indignant anger draining away. “You weren’t a wolf on the night Abner was attacked,” I whispered, well aware of the crowds gathering in shop windows to watch what promised to be the public lovers’ quarrel of the decade.

“We don’t know that!” He slammed his truck door, grabbed my elbow, and dragged me around the corner, behind the buildings of Main Street, until we’d reached the trees that surrounded Grundy. No one would hear us there. No one would see.

Cooper let go of my arm, and the momentum of my body carried me a half-dozen steps from where he stopped. “I can’t remember anything from that night, no dreams, not waking up to check on you, nothing,” he said. “I could have crawled out of the sleeping bag and phased without waking you up. How else could Abner get mauled by a wolf so close to our campsite?”

I protested, “You’ve never done that at home—”

“But I could have! How many wolves do you think were running in that area? When Abner saw me, he was terrified of me. Like he recognized me as the thing that hurt him.”

“You are not a thing, do you hear me?” I insisted. He gave me a long, piteous stare. “You don’t bully Oscar when you’re in wolf form. Every time I’ve been around you while you’re a wolf, your concern has been for my safety. You’ve never snapped at me, even when you were wounded. And you were nowhere near here when those boys went missing.”

Cooper looked at the ground and muttered, “Yeah, I was.”

“What?”

“I was worried about you. I couldn’t take being so far away from you so long, so I waited until the hunters went to sleep, changed, and ran home to check on you. I changed back, ran through the preserve, and got back to the camp before anybody woke up. Then I got back to town and heard that two kids went missing from the preserve, near your house, on the night I was running. I tried to ignore the signs, Mo, but it all keeps adding up.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“It doesn’t matter. As long as there are people being hurt, I can’t see you.” He turned on his heel and walked away. I managed to skirt around him and put my hand against his chest, stopping him—for the most part.

“So, you love me too much to leave me and too much to let me be anywhere near you? Well, pardon me, but that’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard.”

“You can honestly tell me that it’s never even crossed your mind that I could be the one doing this?” he demanded. “There’s not some little voice in your head telling you that you need to get as far away from me as possible? You know what I can do, Mo. You know I’ve killed before. You’re not stupid.”

I looked down, and I felt the tears coursing down my cheeks before I realized I was crying. “Yes, OK? Yes. Every once in a while, I think it’s possible that you could do this without being aware of it. But then I look at you, and I have to believe that it’s not in you.”

He let out a bitter laugh. “Well, that’s one of us.”

“What do you want from me, Cooper, permission? My blessing to run off and leave me? Or do you want me to give up, to leave you because you might be hurting people? You want me to give you an out? Well, you’re not going to get it. Let’s just call this what it is. Instead of facing a problem, you’re running again. You talk this big talk about how hard it was to leave your pack, but the truth is that when things get difficult, that’s when you run. Running is easy.”

Cooper recoiled as if I’d punched him. And damned if I could find it in me to apologize for it. With one last look at me, Cooper took a few steps, his clothes landing with a subtle thwump as he shifted midair. After landing deftly on his paws, he disappeared into the woods, his long ululate howl echoing behind him as he ran away from me.

IN MY HEAD, I’D understood that Cooper wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time with me. But somehow I expected to see him in town. I thought we would be carrying on the pretense of “parting as friends.” But he kept his promise to stay away. He told our neighbors stories about hunting trips, backpacking expeditions, fishing. Evie seemed to understand that something had happened, but she was too wise to ask me direct questions.

When I stormed back into town alone, our public spar became the topic of choice for gossiping saloon patrons, until Denny Greene sustained second-degree electrocution burns trying to rig up a TV/VCR on the lip of his bathtub and gave them something better to chew on.

Alan was the only one whose focus remained on me, even in the face of Denny’s oddly placed bandages. He took to squeezing my fingers in his while I took down his lunch order. He asked me to movies, to dinner at a new Chinese buffet that had opened in Burnee, to his place to play board games with Buzz and Evie. I appreciated it, but I just couldn’t muster the energy to be social after I left the saloon.