Page 69 of The Girl in the Forest

The desire to protect him was so unexpected that I rocked back, wanting to take him anywhere else, other than here—a complete reversal of my earlier impulse.

And foolish or not, reckless or damning, I didn’t care about what the witches said, if it was false or true. I could never abandon him, watch while he battled alone, whether against an enemy or his emotions.

I could not.

Maybe that was my ultimate weakness. Why the witches were almost right about one thing. This man destroyed me with his palm pressed against an old wooden door, splintered and rain-swollen, while his head remained unbowed and my fingers on his back kept us tethered.

Grayson rolled his shoulders, sleek, shedding the tension, and just like that, he stepped back into control.

“It was a year after Keelan Ross adopted Mace into the pack,” he said. “Mace still fought it, settling in. He would disappear, and the alpha asked me to track him. See where he went. So I tracked him all the way… here.”

I glanced around at the isolation. Grayson’s old home was the only visible building. Nothing in the distance. “How did he know to come here?”

“Fallon probably told him. She was always trying to connect. She’d pester Mace with our stories so he wouldn’t feel left out. But I never told him about this place. It was my secret. My private business. That’s what I told the alpha when he ordered me to track Mace. That I’d be poking into Mace’s private business. And the alpha told me prying wasn’t always a bad thing.”

Grayson’s mouth twisted. “He said we were alike, Mace and I, both of us wounded. But we could heal each other if we tried.”

I brushed my fingers down his arm. “What was Mace doing when you found him?”

“Nailing a board back in place—this board.” Grayson slapped his palm against the splintered wood, half-nailed and crooked, hanging beside the door.

“He was trying to fix things, but I beat the crap out of him for it—and he beat the crap out of me in return. Neither of us would give up. Kept slugging, breathing hard, slug again, stumble. Finally, I caught him off balance, and he dragged me with him when he went down. We were both out there in the dirt.”

Grayson gestured to a space now overgrown with twiggy weeds. “Just laid there breathing hard, staring at the sky and blinking tears away. I asked him why. He said because he’d never had a home. Wanted to see what mine was like. Then he said it seemed wrong to leave it all torn up when maybe he could fix it. That led to a lot of talking. We were up here a few days, dragging wood, bending nails. Mace finally got around to talking about himself. Told me his father drank a lot, and one day, when Mace was six, his father got mad about something and locked him in a closet with rats. He still has the scars on his hands. He said he’d heard about me, guarding my dead parents, and he…”

Grayson shifted his weight while I struggled to breathe.

“He said he wished he’d had courage, like me. And I told him my mother shoved me into the house, locked the door and told me not to look. But I looked, and I pissed my pants. Cried for two hours, hiding under the bed, too scared to unlock the door, go for help. I had a stick in my hand because I couldn’t make myself let it go, and when I was sitting beside my parents, it wasn’t because I was guarding them. I was afraid to be by myself. But when the alpha came and found me, I let him think what he did because I was ashamed. And in all the years, I never changed the story.”

After a long moment, Grayson turned his head and held my gaze. “Mace is the only one who knows that about me.”

And now I knew. “You were a little boy.”

“I was a wolf.”

Silently, I vowed to keep the secret the way Mace had done on the Night of the Beacons, when he’d told me about Grayson guarding his parents and believing in hope.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

His smile was sad. “I wanted you to see me, Noa. To know what’s real.”

“This.” I traced my fingers across his forehead, over his temple to the damp of his hair. “This is real.”

Grayson froze, too quiet, and then pushed the door open until it was wide enough for us to enter. I expected dust and cobwebs, but the floor was spotless. Wood waited in the fireplace. Light fell through the windows, and I realized the boarded-up window frames were only on the front and designed to make the cabin look abandoned.

I was afraid to enter with my wet clothes and mud-stuck hair, but Grayson didn’t hesitate, and so neither did I.

“After we’d talked,” he continued, “I told Mace trying to fix this place was like trying to hide the shame. And he told me every wound needs a scab before it can heal. Something tough to cover the tender until it’s strong again. So we stayed up here until Fallon came. She picked up a hammer and said we were hogging all the fun. When Keelan found us, he was grinning. Said he’d sent a bunch of misfits poking into people’s business and found himself a team. And that’s what we are. I love them like family—Mace and Fallon. I’d do anything for them, and they’d do the same for me.”

He stood in the kitchen, checking cupboards with the neatly stacked dishes. After a spurt and rattle of pipes, water swooshed into the sink.

“Do you still come here?” I asked, sliding my palm over a round table that made me think of family meals and laughter.

“Every so often, just to check up on things. Make sure the roof doesn’t leak. I don’t stay. Fee drops in from time to time, but ever since he tried to cook, the stove won’t light. I think he scrambled the burners.”

Fee. The Green Man. The King of the Forest.

I looked at the glass hurricane lamps on shelves. A set of overstuffed chairs. A hall that, when I peeked in, revealed open doors. Bedrooms. Two. A third door was closed, and I wandered back toward the cold fireplace. The space wasn’t a shrine to loss, as I’d first expected. But shadows lurked in the corners. Echoes of time and lost dreams. A reminder that everything heals but does not always end up the same.

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