He let go of the chair and when he turned, his face was an odd mixture of anger, hope, and determination. “I can’t let you team up with Jace without some kind of reassurance.”
I blinked. “You can’t let me?”
“You know what I mean.”
Yeah, and I didn’t like it one bit. I’d already apologized for bringing Andrew into our lives. And I was more than willing to pamper Marc through a little insecurity. But beyond that, he was being completely unreasonable. None of this had anything to do with Jace. “You don’t trust me?”
He arched one eyebrow. “Would you trust you?”
Okay, he had a point there. I’d left him at the altar. Apparently I was never going to live that one down. “What kind of reassurance do you want?”
“A promise.” Eyes swimming in vulnerability, he dug into his right pocket and pulled out a ring. “Marry me, Faythe. Say you’ll marry me.”
Twenty-Three
My heart thudded in panic as I stared at the ring. I backpedaled so fast I fell on my ass beside the bed, and still I retreated, crawling from the shiny silver band between his thumb and forefinger as if it were connected to the pin in a grenade, rather than to his heart.
One was just as dangerous as the other.
“You’re overreacting, Faythe.” Marc scowled as he hauled me up by one arm. He sat on the side of my bed and pulled me next to him, our legs touching from knee to hip. “It’s not an engagement ring. See?” He held it up to the light for my inspection. “It’s silver, not gold. And there’s no stone. So no one has to know.”
I looked. And looked. And still my fear refused to retreat. “I don’t understand.”
He smiled, and his eyes held so much hope, so much heartbreaking, soul-bruising anticipation. “This isn’t for show. It’s a private promise, just for me. The ring’s sized for your ring finger because that’s the only one I knew, but you can wear it on your right hand, if you want. Or on a chain around your neck. I don’t care where. And we don’t have to tell anyone. Even your dad. I just need to know you’re serious about this. About us.”
“Marc…” I still stared at the ring, trying not to notice the carving of a delicate ivy vine snaking its way around the band. As badly as I hated to admit it, the ring was…pretty.
Damn it.
He sighed. “I’m not asking you to marry me tomorrow. Or even next year. I’m just asking you to tell me it’ll happen someday. Promise me I’m not just wasting my time. Show me. Please.”
“I can promise that without wearing a ring,” I pointed out, with what seemed to me to be absolutely flawless logic.
His expression hardened, and his fingers closed over the ring.
I frowned, at a loss for how to make him understand without hurting him. Again. “Working apart for a couple of days isn’t going to make me forget you. I’m not interested in anything extra on the side, and I’m not going anywhere. But I don’t want to get married. I’m only twenty-three. I’m not ready for that. I’m not even ready to think about it. You know that.”
He exhaled slowly, then stood, stalking across the room. “I know. Believe me, I know. But I need this, Faythe. Please.”
My eyes closed, my heart breaking in slow, agonizing increments. Then I opened my eyes, praying for the right words to come. “I love you, Marc. I always will. I’m giving you my word on that, and asking you to trust me. No symbols, no complications. Just my promise, which means as much to me as that ring means to you. Right now, that’s what I have to offer.” I paused, pleading with him silently. Then aloud. “Please tell me it’s enough.”
Marc stared at me in disappointment bordering on devastation, and in that moment, I came closer to going back on my own word than I ever had. My resolve wavered as my focus shifted back and forth between his face and the fist enclosing the ring. I couldn’t stand seeing him in such pain because of me.
“It’s not enough,” he whispered through clenched teeth, his jaw bulging. “I need to know we have a future together. Here, with the Pride. Where we belong.”
“Marc. I can’t…” I stood and took a step toward him, but he only stepped back.
Disappointment drained from his features with alarming speed, replaced with anger. Very, very familiar anger. “Thank you, Faythe.” He shoved the ring into his pocket, and I shuddered as the gravelly quality of fury in his voice sent tremors up my spine. “You’ve just handed me back my balls, and given me the resolve to do what I should have done years ago.”
In one fierce motion, he pulled my door open without bothering to turn the knob first. Wood splintered as the fragile frame broke and the hinges tore free. The hollow panel fell forward, pulling a thin strip of wood with it. The strip fell to my carpet, and Marc lifted the door out of the way, propping it against my wall. Then he turned left into the hallway without a single glance back at me.
Seconds later, the back door slammed shut behind him, and I flinched.
Marc was gone.
After Marc left, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t do anything but stand in the middle of my room clutching the broken piece of door frame. I still smelled him, no matter which way I turned, and it actually took me several minutes to figure out that his scent was coming from me. From all over me.
Numb, I sank to the floor at the foot of my bed, leaning against the footboard with my knees pulled up to my chest. I held my hands cupped over my face, trying to stop the tears as I breathed in Marc’s scent.
Something nudged my foot, and I looked up, hoping to see Marc, even if he was still mad. It was Ethan. He didn’t smile at me, and he didn’t say anything. He just pulled me up by my tear-damp hands and wrapped his arms around me.
Finally, when I could breathe without hiccuping, he thumped my back twice and let me go. “I brought you something,” he said, gesturing that I should sit by waving a hand at my bed. I sat against my headboard and wiped my face on my rumpled comforter before pulling my punching pillow onto my lap.
At my dresser, Ethan turned his back to me, blocking my view of whatever he was doing. I heard a soft scraping sound, like a lid being unscrewed, then the gurgle of liquid being poured. When he turned around, he held a small paper cup in one hand and one of my mother’s everyday saucers in the other. The saucer held a single, huge brownie. Double-fudge-chunk, from the looks of it.
“Where did you get that?” I asked, sniffling one last time as he carried the supersize serving of comfort food closer.
“Angela made them. Or maybe Andrea.”
“Wow. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” He sank onto the bed next to me to recline on one elbow. “Seriously. They’re Jace’s, and if he finds out I snatched some of his goodies, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Understood.” I picked up the brownie in one hand and took a big bite, closing my eyes as I treasured the perfect, cakey texture and the smooth, creamy taste of quality chocolate. The brownie didn’t make me feel any better about Marc, but it got the taste of him out of my mouth. Which was a mercy, considering.
“Damn, those girls can bake,” I said around my mouthful.
Ethan laughed, nodding. “They’re majoring in Home Ec. Or some shit like that.”
Ha. Our mother would probably love them.
“You guys will be okay, you know,” Ethan said, pressing the paper cup into my hand. Doubtful, I drank from it without thinking to ask what it was, and nearly choked on Scotch.
“Is this Dad’s?” I asked, still sputtering as I located the bottle of Scoresby on my dresser.
“You think I’ve got a death wish?” Ethan asked. “It’s mine. And that’s all you’re getting.”
“It’s more than enough, thanks,” I said, peering at the two inches left in the bottom of the cup. I took another sip and cradled the tiny cup in both hands as I met Ethan’s eyes. “I think he dumped me.”
“I think you’re right.” He pinched a crumb from the corner of my brownie. “Seriously, though, what did you expect? How many times can you not marry
a guy and still expect him to hang around?”
“You heard us?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep. And it’s not like you guys were whispering.”
I set the paper cup on my nightstand and reached for another bite of the brownie. Of course he’d heard. “You really think he’ll come back?”
“Well, I didn’t say that. But it’s not like getting dumped is lethal.”
I glared at him as I chewed. “Yeah, like you’d know.”
“I’m pretty sure none of my exes have died of it,” he said. I glared harder, and Ethan smiled in sympathy. “Sorry, Faythe, but you have to admit you kind of deserved it. You did stand him up at his own wedding.”
“That was five years ago! Whose side are you on, anyway?” I snapped, reaching for the paper cup. I drained the contents in a single, scorching gulp, and Ethan nodded in approval. And a little amusement.
“There are no sides,” he said, and I kicked his elbow out from under him. He sat up, smiling faintly. “Look, I’m not saying he won’t take you back. I’m just saying it won’t hurt you to stew in your own juices until he does.”
“Thanks, Ethan. You’re a huge help.”
“No problem.” He crushed the paper cup and tossed it across the room into the trash can by my desk.
From the foyer, the grandfather clock chimed four times, and I glanced at the clock on my radio to confirm the time. Sure enough, it was four in the morning and I had yet to close my eyes for anything longer than a single blink. Wonderful.
“You’d better go get some sleep before you lose your chance,” I said, knowing full well that Michael would make Ethan do most of the day’s driving.
“Yeah, I guess.” He stood, backing toward my nonfunctional door and watching me through eyes just a shade greener than my own. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, pulling my covers straight. “I deserved it, remember?”
He grinned. “Yeah, you’re the devil’s spawn. Really, you’re lucky he didn’t call for an exorcist.”
I tossed my punching pillow at him, and Ethan laughed, dashing into the hall as the fluffy pink missile narrowly missed his head, bouncing off the splintered door frame instead. Suddenly exhausted, I got up and set my door in place, propping my desk chair against it when it wouldn’t stand on its own. I bent down for the pillow, and as I stood, my eye caught my reflection in the dresser mirror.
My face was red and puffy from crying, my hair swept back behind one shoulder, framing the row of crescent-shaped scars trailing up my neck—a permanent reminder of my run-in with Miguel, the jungle cat who’d haunted my nightmares ever since. Miguel was the first stray I’d ever personally seen, other than Marc, and in spite of similar looks and a shared tendency to cuss at me in Spanish, they had almost nothing in common.
Wait…. Miguel wasn’t my first encounter with a stray. Luiz was. I’d fought him on campus and sent him packing with a broken nose. That was the night Marc showed up to haul me home. It was also only hours after I’d bitten my human boyfriend. If Marc hadn’t come for me, I’d have figured out what happened to Andrew that very night. I would have taken care of him. I would never have left him to the mercy of whatever psychotic cat happened upon him first….
Oh, fuck. My eyes closed, and my image in the mirror was swallowed by my own private darkness.
Luiz. There were no other cats on campus, or anywhere near UNT. We’d have known, if there had been. But Luiz was there. He’d been sent to snatch me, and Miguel would not have been happy with his failure. He might even have sent Luiz back for a second shot. Fortunately, I was already gone. But Andrew wasn’t. He was sick, and by then likely reeking of my base scent.
Andrew’s with Luiz. The minute the thought surfaced, I knew it was true. No wonder they were targeting strippers who look like me. They both hated me.
My new theory made perfect sense to me, but no one else was ever going to believe Luiz had been not only alive, but in our territory all this time. Undetected. The only way he could possibly have hidden from a Pride of more than thirty cats for more than ninety days was to lie low and stay in one place. But that wasn’t Luiz’s style. Three months ago, he’d been killing college girls and leaving them exposed, on some sort of assignment from Miguel. If he’d kept up his little project, we would have found him. Shit, even the police would have caught up with him eventually, which would have been disastrous.
But since the night I’d kicked Luiz’s ass at UNT, we hadn’t found a single dead college girl. Or any other sign of Luiz, until the strippers started disappearing. No one else knew he was involved with that yet, but I had no doubt. Was Luiz continuing his “work” with a new set of victims? If so, why the change in MO? And why the three-month hiatus?
Three months. I grabbed the fluffy pink pillow from my dresser and twisted it in my hands, pacing as I worked to piece together the puzzle in my head. The hiatus was Andrew’s recovery period. It had to be. Luiz had put his little hobby on hold to nurse my ex through scratch-fever.
But that was oddly altruistic for a jungle cat. Why would he give a shit whether or not one more stray survived?
Because I’d infected Andrew. Luiz probably thought he could use my ex to draw me out. It was because of me. He had likely followed Andrew around the day after I’d left, trying to find me, and discovered what I’d done by accident.
I’d not only infected Andrew, I’d led Luiz right to him.
Furious, I threw the pillow at my headboard, irritated with the harmless way it bounced onto the comforter. The whole mess—the missing strippers, the dead toms, Marc’s…issues—would never have happened if I’d realized I’d infected Andrew.
I had to tell my father about Luiz. I was already in the hall, the tile cold against my bare feet, before I came to my senses. I couldn’t wake my father up after less than two hours of sleep to ramble on about a theory based on a hunch. I needed proof, something to validate what was otherwise merely the instinct of a vastly underexperienced enforcer.
Ryan. I had to talk to the Cowardly Lion himself. He might know something about Miguel’s plans and accomplices that would substantiate my speculation. Spinning on one heel, I ran back down the hall toward the kitchen, pausing in the foyer to glance at the grandfather clock. Even with only pale moonlight shining through the front windows, I could read the time clearly. Four-twenty-two in the morning. I probably wouldn’t see my bed again before dawn. Which was just as well, because I couldn’t have slept, anyway.
In the kitchen, I yawned as I passed the bar on my way to the basement door before my exhausted brain processed what I’d seen sitting on the long white countertop. There, next to the wall, where the guys had clearly pushed it to make room for their ice cream, was a shiny silver tray, on which sat a dinner plate, loaded with baked halibut, scalloped potatoes, and several spears of asparagus covered in cold, congealed hollandaise. Next to the dinner plate lay a linen napkin, a dinner fork, a dessert fork, and a dessert plate, empty but for a crumb of graham-cracker crust and a smear of strawberry. And a glass of tea, into which the ice had long ago melted.
Ryan’s dinner. No one had bothered to take it to him. I shook my head, half in shame and half in frustration. The fact that it lay unnoticed on the counter said that my mother had spent her entire evening in the woods. She made him a tray every night when she cleaned the kitchen, but had consistently refused to take it to him, even when my father had pushed the issue. One of us was supposed to do it, but apparently everyone’s least-favorite chore had been neglected in the excitement of the evening’s discoveries.
Of course, the ice cream hadn’t been neglected, and someone had obviously found time to eat Ryan’s cheesecake.
Great, I thought. He’s going to be in no mood to talk tonight. If he was even awake. Huffing in frustration, I set the empty dessert plate and fork on the counter, then picked up the tray. I balanced the tray on one hand as I pulled the basement door open, then marched down the stairs, glad the basement light was still on to
illuminate my way.
Halfway along the steps, the stench of an un-flushed toilet hit me, no doubt made worse by the stifling heat in the basement, even in the predawn hours.
“’Bout time,” Ryan snapped by way of a greeting, sitting up on his mattress. “You guys forget I was alive down here? Or has Dad decided to remedy that?”
“One can only hope.” I stopped several feet in front of the cage to stare at him. “And don’t blame me for the delay. I spent most of today in New Orleans.”
For an instant, his eyes lit up in curiosity. But then his usual scowl slipped into place, and he whipped the conversation back around to his favorite topic: Ryan Sanders. “Yeah, well, someone could have at least emptied the damned coffee can and brought me some dinner. Or has the list of basic human necessities changed since I last saw daylight?”
Frowning, I set the tray on the seat of a ladder-backed chair next to the cage. “You’re in the lap of luxury compared to the hell you put me through, so shut up before I flush your dinner down the toilet along with this.” Growling, I picked up the foul-smelling coffee can he’d set just outside the bars of his cage and carried it into the bathroom on the other side of the basement, behind the weight bench and stand of free weights. “Why aren’t you asleep, anyway?”
“The sound of my stomach growling kept me awake.”
My teeth ground together as I rinsed the can in the sink. “Try sleeping through the sound of your cousin crying herself to sleep after being raped.” Angry now, I stomped back to his cell and set the can where he could reach it, then returned to the bathroom to wash my hands.
Back at the bars, I picked up Ryan’s plate, sloshing hollandaise over the side, and dropped the fork into the middle of his scalloped potatoes. “Step against the far wall and put your hands over your head, palms flat against the bricks.”