When I open my eyes again, Sabrina is looking up into my face. I expect to see frustration, rage, even hatred there after everything we told her tonight. But all I see is a girl with full, parted lips and eyes no longer shining with tears.
No, now they’re shining with something else.
Desire.
The pull between us suddenly becomes so overwhelming, I fear it’s going to swallow me whole.
My voice breaks.
“We can’t be with you in the traditional pack sense,” I say, quietly. “But we can be with you, somehow. Some way.”
I press my lips into her palm, feeling the smoothness of her skin against mine. “We just have to take it one day at a time.”
Rory steps up behind us in the darkness, and when he reaches for Sabrina, she closes her eyes and lets his hand run along the line of her collarbone.
“It won’t be easy, but we have to give it a try.”
“If you’ll let us,” Kaleb finishes. He too steps up, but he isn’t able to keep his distance.
He sweeps Sabrina up off her feet, lifting her up above him with a startled, muffled cry as he spins her once around. His face, turned up beseechingly into hers, is so overwhelmed with puppy-love that none of us, not even Sabrina, can keep from chuckling.
“Fine!” Sabrina squeals, kicking her feet out and meeting nothing but air. “Fine, fine … we’ll give it a try. But only if you put me down right. Now.”
I’ve never heard Kaleb laugh the way he does now. It’s pure, unadulterated joy.
Exactly how I feel.
Even if I know, deep down in the pit in my stomach that never fully goes away, that this can’t last the way it is now … that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy this now.
Not when I know that when this inevitably comes to an end, I’ll never feel anything like it again.
28
Sabrina
I’m a fool for staying, for even listening.
But I’m a happy fool.
It’s probably because I’m just so tired of running, so tired of starting over that I can’t bring myself to hate them for being honest with me. We might be different—so different we’re not even technically the same species—but that doesn’t mean we can’t come to an understanding.
An understanding that, for now, things don’t have to change. They can stay the way they are. I know it won’t last forever … but a small part of me is holding on to the hope that when things change, as they always do, it will be for the better.
Even if it doesn’t … I always knew I’d have to run eventually. I always knew I’d end up leaving this place behind, and them with it. I just didn’t expect just the thought of that, just the idea, to hurt so bad.
But for now, I push those thoughts away. I have to enjoy what I have here, now, in front of me.
Rory. Marlowe. Kaleb.
I don’t deserve them, really. Maybe that’s why I’m stuck in the purgatory with them to begin with.
Civilizations class on Monday is a far cry from what it was before. There’s an entirely new dynamic now as Rory and I work on our project together. Little did I know when I chose lycanthropes as our project focus, that my partner would actually be one. Or at least, as close to one as a person can actually get.
It makes me wonder if a little subconscious part of me had suspicions all along.
The visual is the last component that we need to agree on. We’ve been putting things off for the last couple weeks, letting ourselves slip into a lazy haze of afternoons spent between the three of us down by the river or in the forest, and evenings spent up at the mansion. At least, most nights. One full moon has passed since they told me about their … affliction … but I’ve yet to learn much more about their actual transformation.
They always disappear for a couple days before it happens.