The only other decorations in the room where some newspaper clippings taped to the wall beside the bed. There were five of them, and they were all of me.
“Youʼre thinking that Iʼm a crazy stalker person, arenʼt you?” Alex asked. He must have been paying more attention than I thought.
I rested my chin on his sternum so that I could see his face. “You are a stalker,” I said.
“What else would you call a guy that follows you around in his sleep for ten years?”
“So you think Iʼm a creeper?”
I reached up and kissed the underside of his jaw. “I think that youʼre my hero. Thank you for coming to my rescue.”
“Anytime,” he muttered into my hair. “No, I donʼt mean that. What I meant to say was, donʼt you ever scare me like that again. What were you doing out there?”
“Ummm...I was coming to save you?”
“Save me? From what?”
“Jase. And Charlie.” I still had trouble saying Charlieʼs name in front of Alex. It was due in equal parts to the pang I got in my chest, and the look on Alexʼs face. “I overheard them planning to do something to you last night. When you wouldnʼt return my calls or texts, I decided to go look for you.” Really, it seemed like a sound plan at the time. “Then I got lost and that freak storm came up out of nowhere.”
“The storm came from Arkansas, which is not technically ʻnowhereʼ. Theyʼve been talking about it on the local weather for nearly two days now. Youʼre lucky we didnʼt get the tornadoes they were predicting.”
“You do realize that you have an unnatural fascination with weather forecasts, right?”
“Too bad I canʼt make some of it rub off on you,” he snapped.
“Iʼm sorry,” I said as I tried to disentangle myself from his embrace. “I didnʼt mean to make you angry.”
His arms tightened around me, holding me fast. “Iʼm not mad at you. Honestly, I donʼt know if itʼs even possible for me to be mad at you.” He loosened his hold and began tracing patterns along my spine. “Iʼm upset by the whole situation. This... animosity the Hagan pack has towards us is ridiculous. Someone is going to end up getting hurt and for what? Turf? Pride?” The hand on my back had clenched into a fist. “Liam thinks we should just leave, move back up north. Itʼs the only conversation we have anymore.”
“Where will you go?”
“Weʼre not going anywhere.”
I was selfish enough to be happy at his declaration. However, I was also practical. “Why not?”
“Do you want me to leave?”
“God, no.” It was bad enough when he was gone in November. I couldnʼt imagine how painful it would be if he left me now. “But I do want you to be safe.” Alex let out a single chuckle. “Itʼs not me Iʼm worried about. I know how much you care about Jase and the others. You wouldnʼt be able to forgive me if one of them got hurt.” I thought perhaps he wasnʼt giving the Hagans enough credit. “And then thereʼs you. None of us would be able to live with ourselves if something happened to you.” I could think of at least one exception. Liam would probably throw a party if I got good and battered. He would declare it a holiday if I managed to go off and get myself killed.
“The only risk to me is my own stupidity.”
“If that were the case, we would have nothing to worry about, Miss Valedictorian.” #
“Last night was not one of my finer moments.”
“You wouldnʼt have had a reason to be out in the woods if it hadnʼt been for me.”
“And my brother,” I added. I wasnʼt about to ignore the amount of blame he deserved. I love my brother, but he and Charlie were being the unreasonable ones. Their bigotry was really starting to screw up my life. “He was so certain you were going to be in the woods between Pelican Landing and the dock at the end of Chestnut-Oak, but you werenʼt.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you would have found me sooner.” It sounded a bit presumptuous to my ears, but I knew it was true. Alex would have come to me if he had been anywhere around.
“Not necessarily,” he said. “You were nowhere near Pelican Landing or Chestnut-Oak when we found you. You were only a mile south of the dam.” A mile south of the dam? Not only was that a good five miles from Pelican Landing, it was also in the completely wrong direction.
“What was that about me not being an idiot?”
His laughter was so quiet I might have missed it if my ear hadnʼt been pressed to his chest.
“You are an extremely intelligent person, but your sense of direction sucks.” I propped myself up on my elbows. I missed the warmth of his body, but getting to look at his face made it an even trade. “But you werenʼt near Pelican Landing last night, were you?”
“No, we werenʼt.”
“Why not? Where were you?” If he thought I was being too nosey he didnʼt show it.
“We got tipped off on Friday that there might be some trouble if we stuck around for the full moon, so Liam and I took a weekend trip to the other side of the river. The Hagans never go that far. We were driving back when I fell asleep and Saw you huddled on the forest floor turning blue.” His thumb brushed my lips and I imagined that he was seeing the frozen lips from last night instead of the pink ones that tingled at his touch.
“Tipped off? How?”
“Doesnʼt matter,” he said as he pulled my face down to his, effectively ending our conversation. His hands slid over my shoulders and down my back as I kissed his cheeks, his eyelids, his ear, and his neck. When I slid my hand up under his shirt, still hungry for warmth, he let out a moan and rolled us over so that he was positioned above me.
His lips followed the same pattern on my face I had forged on his moments earlier. My breath was coming in shallow gasps. My hands seemed to be running over the smooth flesh of Alexʼs back on their own accord.
Then, Alex lifted his head and started talking to the wall.
“You donʼt actually have to sit there and listen, Perv. You could go for a walk or a nice long drive. Maybe you could even go find a girlfriend of your very own.” Alex quit addressing the wall directly and looked at me. My heart skipped a beat in response to the intense longing on his face. “Please, Liam.”
Seconds later there was the unmistakable sound of a screen door slamming shut.
“Now,” Alex said, “where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?”