Page 120 of The Reveal
He backs me up into that gate and then leans in, his hands fisting around the iron bars on either side of my head.
“If you are going to react this way every time you encounter a former lover of mine, you are going to exhaust yourself quickly,” he tells me, and his voice has some of his own iron in it. “Besides, it’s boring.”
“A happy solution would be to not spend any time with me, then.”
“That’s even more boring.”
Then he leans in and sets his mouth to mine.
I expect the spike of flaming heat. I expect my body to shudder, practically at its flashpoint that easily.
What I don’t expect is the way he kisses me. Soft. Knowing. Easy.
Sweet,I might even say, if I didn’t feel—every now and then—the hint of his fangs.
He kisses me until I’m limp against him, melted down like candle wax, clinging to his T-shirt like I want to climb him.
He kisses me until I betray myself so completely that I don’t even protest when he sets me back against the gate, fixes me with one of those dark, searching looks he loves so much, and then leaves me there.
With nothing but regret and an ache inside me, so deep and so wide it won’t let me sleep.
27.
Samuel picks us up before first light.
I sit with Gran in the back seat so that Augie can bro it up in the front.
What that looks like initially is a monosyllabic exchange that peters out long before we make it down the hill into Jacksonville.
“I can’t even think when I was last at Crater Lake,” Gran says, musingly, gazing out the window. “Years ago. I think I went with your grandfather.”
“Neither one of you liked snow that much,” I say, remembering. “So it would have to have been in summer.”
“That lake is bitter cold at the height of August.” Gran laughs, but there’s something almost wistful in her expression, I think. Maybe even sad. She catches me looking and nods. “This will be quite an adventure, child.”
It already is. We drive out of Medford, heading north through communities I haven’t been to in well over three years. Most of them are in ruins. White City is little more than rubble, with the Table Rocks standing sentry. Created millions of years ago, the two volcanic mesas were popular hiking destinations throughout my childhood and are now the aeries of harpies, gorgons, and other terrifying winged things. Eagle Point is nothing but empty houses and the packs of wildlife that inhabit them until some other enterprising creature decides to have a buffet.
Shady Cove, a hardscrabble little river town that was always a bit on the scruffy side, is filled with goblins. They chatter at us as we drive by, and I get my guns ready because I expect them to chase the car, but they don’t.
“That’s weird,” I mutter. “Since when do goblins sit by and let anything roll on through?”
Gran taps her fingers against the window. “We have an escort.”
That’s when I see that there are wolves trailing Samuel’s truck. Easily keeping up with it when they like, but also falling back to teach a few lessons to the creatures who fail to keep their distance.
I feel a warmth I really shouldn’t. All through me.
We wind our way deeper into the wild countryside of Oregon, heading east into the Cascades. Up by Lost Creek Lake, it’s so pretty on this gray morning that I can’t seem to think about anything but long-ago camping trips. Augie and me and our high school friends would come up here and get silly with only the stars as witness.
We had no idea how innocent we were. Or how quickly everything would change, even before the Reveal.
I can’t decide if the nostalgia feels good or if it hurts.
At least Augie’s right here, in the same truck, and if he’s not exactly clean, well. He’s morehimthan he’s been since back in our camping trip days, and that feels like a circle well closed.
Samuel navigates around a gaping hole in the side of the bridge we need to cross that’s eaten up most of one lane, and we keep going. It’s green and cold, and the farther we go, the higher we climb, the more the bit of frost on the ground turns to snow. The drive takes us through what has to be the prettiest stretch of forest I know. Douglas firs stand tall and let the light peek through, here and there, like hints of faraway hope filtered through trees that are some seven hundred years old.
Still younger than Ariel, I can’t help but think.
