Page 43 of Cold Moon

I gave the counter a dubious look. I’d never gotten anything, even on the unusual occasion I went to the theater. As a kid, because my mother was a penny pincher, and then, well, there had been my diet. All that sugar and grease and... I shook my head. “Maybe just water. Oh, but you can get something if you want. I’d never stop you—”

He was already shaking his head. “I know you wouldn’t. But I don’t really need it. Mrs. Hill stuffs us all full of food every chance she gets.”

So we got bottles of water—ooh, fancy—and headed into the darkened theater.

I hadn’t watched a lot of the superhero movies from the last ten years, so I suspected I was missing a lot of important things, but the movie was nice enough. The heroine was beautiful, and despite her diminutive size and the rampant sexism of the villains, she kicked everyone’s asses with ease.

More importantly, Dante kept my hand clasped in his the whole time, rubbing his thumb softly over the sensitive skin of my wrist, his knee pressed lightly against mine, so I could feel the warmth of him through the fabric. It was all I could do to bother paying attention to the movie at all. Just those points of warm pressure were my whole focus, body and mind.

I was only half paying attention, so when a villain jumped out at the heroine, I startled, my heart hammering in my chest. Dante bumped his shoulder against mine, and gave my hand a little squeeze, and I breathed out a laugh.

But my heart didn’t stop hammering, and after a moment, I started to feel disconnected, like my head was floating away in the dark, and my fingers started to tingle.

Oh no.

No.

Not now.

I leaned over to whisper to him, “Be right back,” before stumbling up the aisle out of the theater, into the bathroom across the hall. The whole time, my heart kept pounding, worse and worse, until I could feel it everywhere, and the blood rushing in my ears was all I could hear.

I almost fell into the toilet, bracing my hands on the cubicle walls at the last moment, but that was as lucky as I got. My whole body spasmed, and everything I’d eaten since breakfast made a sudden reappearance. It wasn’t much, but that didn’t stop my stomach.

It went on for long minutes, my body getting rid of everything it could, and then just heaving painfully when it was all gone, as though trying to find any last traces.

When that ended, I pressed my sweat-sticky face against the cool metal of the cubicle wall and sat there on the floor, panting and trying not to cry. I was still dizzy every time I tried to move, my heart beating too fast and extremities tingling.

Blood pressure too high, my time with Linden told me. Stress or symptom?

I hadn’t had an episode this bad since the state fair, and if my experience was right, it wasn’t going to get better soon.

Call Linden, my common sense ordered.

But... I was on a date.

I’d never in my life been on a date. Or asked on a date. Or anything more than seen everyone around me date. If I called Linden, then it was over. And would Dante ever ask me out again, when we managed half a movie and that was it?

Why would anyone ask me out again after this?

My shoulders shook, and it made my head pound, too hot and too heavy. That made my stomach cramp up again, not finished with its torture, but when I leaned forward, my sweaty hand slipped against the wall, once again almost sending me for a header into the toilet.

Then, again, there was nothing but my stomach heaving, and trying not to fall down. Damn my stubbornness, why hadn’t I called Linden when I’d had a moment’s respite?

Too late now.

25

Dante

Iwas having a normal date—anentirelynormal date—with a werewolf. That wasn’t something I’d ever thought was even possible, given werewolf dynamics and interests. Okay, so my pack hadn’t had a lot of options for dating—no restaurants or cozy pack taverns or movie theaters. It’d been all about growling and claiming and, well, I’d figured that was just what werewolves did.

But there Skye was, holding my hand in a dark movie theater, a secret smile on his face. So, the pack I’d grown up in was toxic, but maybe I could still be what I was without being as crappy as they were.

There was an edge of tension in Skye’s voice when he excused himself, but I wondered if I was imagining it—expecting things to go wrong simply because that was what I was used to.

I stayed in the theater, mostly empty on a weeknight, and tried to watch the movie. It was impossible. Minutes ticked by, counted on the dimly illuminated screen of my prepaid flip phone.

Skye never came back, and my immediate thought was that I’d done something wrong and he’d run off.

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