It was a quiet car ride back to the Bar. Jack and Mel probably talked about something; I wasn't listening. From how Jack kept glancing at me in the rearview mirror, I guessed it was about me.
The mind-static was back. I could hardly move through it.
It felt like I blinked, and we were back in the apartment. Mel had me help make chocolate chip cookies. She always made some baked treats on Sundays after church; I was usually thrilled to lick the spoon, but on that day, I was going through the motions.
Afterward, Mel carefully placed the cookies into a wicker basket lined with patterned fabric, then covered them with another cloth. She thrust the basket at me.
"Take this over to the Ashwoods," she instructed.
"What?" I asked, my voice blank with shock.
"Did I stutter?"
"They're not too far," Jack interjected, standing up from his chair with a groan.
I pretended to listen while he gave me directions I didn't need.
While my feet moved like they were encased in cinder blocks, my mind raced at a hundred miles an hour. What if he answered the door? Would it be rude to thrust the basket in his arms and run in the other direction? Probably not. But it would be suspicious. Maybe I could leave the basket at the door. Someone was bound to find it, eventually, right?
None of this was my plan; my muscles were tensed for battle like I was going to a fight. My body knew where it was headed and ached to move faster, but I kept my pace measured like I was walking behind a hearse.
I knew it would be my death if I looked into his eyes. I had to prevent myself from seeing him before he caught me off guard. Then I would spill the whole secret—there was no denying him anything; I would do whatever he asked—when I should've been busy keeping my big mouth shut.
I heard Jake's old excuses for telling Bella all the pack secrets. I'd been particularly pissed at him for telling her everything that happened between Sam and me. Now I understood why he couldn't lie, why he had to tell her everything, why it was law you could tell your imprint everything about the wolves. There was no other choice.
How did the boys cope with this? Jared had never looked twice at Kim before he phased, and the next day, her face was the sun. Jacob had always been so far up Bella's ass that I didn't think he counted. Paul was an idiot and had very few safe-for-work thoughts.
Which left only one other example.
If you looked at the outcome, it was the best-case scenario, but in the beginning, it was anything but.
As many times as I'd tried to suppress the memory of having my heart ripped from my chest, it still popped up fresh in my mind, only now it was attached to the exact moment through Sam's eyes. I'd always avoided prying at this particular moment in the pack's mind, but even so, I knew it as well as he did.
I'd introduced them when we got engaged. I wanted her to approve of him—some little selfish part of me was showing off—but I had no reason to suspect supernatural forces would intervene in our lives.
Once he met her eyes, he was gone. Everything holding him to the earth before—me, his family, the tribe, gravity—was cut, like fate was taking scissors to his heartstrings. Yet, it didn't hurt; he found he was still firmly planted on the ground as a new, stronger cord tied itself around Emily.
I saw the change in his eyes then and hadn't recognized it. His face had recoiled in disgust, and he ran the other way. Later, I imagined a tail between his legs. The pack mind bore no secrets. I knew the imprint made him angry—at himself, the world, and everything nearby—but never with Emily. All his memories were incredibly frustrating, his thoughts excessively self-loathing.
After experiencing it for myself, I understood. It's like the air shimmered for a moment, and nothing was the same anymore. I knew it the moment it happened. Sam had no one in the beginning, only the elders, who solemnly informed him of his situation. My father had been spitting mad.
I remembered him coming home that day. He said it was Billy being a dick; I'd been wrong to immediately believe him, though Billy was known for being a dick sometimes.
When I caught myself feeling sorry for Sam, I pushed my feet faster against the dirt, remembering how Emily had looked in the hospital; hooked up to tubes and wires, the constant beeping, and the bandages soaked with blood on her face. I refused to think of how he blubbered and wept over the phone, lasting forty-five minutes before he finally gave in and managed to spit it out.
There was a reason none of the boys gave Sam shit for being in love with Emily. But that didn't explain why they gave me shit for being mad about it.
None of it mattered now. The memories I'd been chasing down came racing up in a tremendous thundering herd, so I ran with them to the end of the lane, where a faded-white mailbox reading "Ashwood" in crumbling black letters waited at the end of a muddy driveway.
At the end of the driveway was a faded yellow farmhouse with a red barn leaning a couple of acres behind it. There were pines planted like sentinels around the house to protect them when the wind got too strong on the flat, open plain. The farmland was beautiful so long as you didn't have to run over it. Ruts, potholes, rabbit warrens, and stones were all hidden in the partially grown meadow grass.
My legs moved robotically up the stairs of a faded, white-washed porch. I stopped a foot from the screen door, trying to find a doorbell, only to be disappointed.
I was sweating bullets. My heart pounded in my ears. My breath came in quickly and went out with a whoosh. I wasn't sure how long I stood there. Long enough for my mind to start dreaming up outlandish scenarios; for half a second, I wondered if this was some sex-trafficking scam, then laughed because I'd always wanted the chance to rip out a pimp's throat.
With that comforting thought, I lifted my fist and knocked against the door's siding.
I should've expected my problems to be waiting for me.
Noah answered the door. He had changed into an orange t-shirt and dirty denim jeans. He flashed a goofy, crooked, dimpled grin that left me weak in the knees.
"What can I do for you, ma'am?" He asked, blinking, readjusting his feet.
Could he feel how the earth tilted when we were together, too? Or was it just wishful thinking? I could've sworn he was leaning closer. I found myself leaning on the toes of my feet as my grip tightened around the basket handle.
I took a deep breath to steady myself, got a strong whiff of his heady scent—pine sap, moss, with something sweet, like maraschino cherries—and stumbled forward.
"Woah, there," he said, placing a hand on my shoulder and sending a flurry of sparks down my spine. "You good there?"
"Yeah," I breathed, then looked down to avoid his eyes. "Um, Mel sent me to give these to you—to your family, I mean. Not just you." I blushed.
"We don't have to tell them that." He winked. "I'll take those off your hands. You staying for dinner?"
I blinked. "I'm not sure I'm invited."
"But you brought cookies!" He exclaimed, grabbing my wrist and rolling his eyes at my shocked expression. "C'mon, Mama wouldn't let you go home without eating something. I mean, you're no wider than a four-by-four," he teased.
I blinked again, surprised by his charm. For a moment, I was jealous of all the girls he'd smiled at before; they were undoubtedly more human, more beautiful, and more appropriate for someone as charmingly human as him.
His smile fell into a concerned frown when I didn't answer and kept staring at him with a dazed expression. His grip on my wrist tightened like he was getting ready to catch me if I fell.
"Why don't you come in and sit down?" He offered, his words slow and calm, like warm milk and honey flowing from his mouth. I wanted to taste them on my tongue. (*gasp* Leah!)
I let him pull me inside. I didn't have the strength to fight him, nor the desire. Inside, it smelled like simmering meat and fresh green beans and garlic; I could hear distant voices buzzing in all different directions, feet pounding against the upper floors; distantly, a baby was cooing.
"Mel just said to drop them off," I argued without feeling; this was a half-truth, and it wasn't like Mel was likely to wait up for me after the blue-moon gumbo fiasco.
"Is that who sent you by?" Noah asked, looking at me with a curious expression. "I thought you brought these over just to be a good Christian."
He chuckled, and I couldn't help but laugh with him, though it sounded more like hyperventilating. The sound of his laugh was endearing; I let him pull my wrist through the dark front hallway and into the center of the house.
The kitchen was flooded with light. The window—tucked into the corner above the sink—was open and overflowing with flowerpots and crawling vines winding around the edge of the windowsill. Next to a row of counters were two sliding glass doors, one open to let the afternoon sunshine beat on the wooden table across from the fridge. A woman with frizzy gray hair was by the door, watering a large clay pot with a vine of tomatoes standing in it.
"Mama!" Noah called to her. "We got company!"
The woman's hand faltered. Her neck shot up and around so quickly I almost doubted the deep wrinkles set in her brown, weathered face.
I glanced at Noah, my entire face scrunched up in confusion except my eyes; my eyes stayed steady and focused on his. I felt the pressure in the room drop. My heart skipped a beat, and then I remembered why I'd paused.
"She is your mom?" I asked.
Noah laughed and stepped closer, his hand still wrapped around my wrist, creeping lower. "Everyone calls her that. You're technically my great-aunt, right?" He tore his eyes away from mine, returning the bariatric pressure to normal, but my heart was still beating like a hummingbird's wings.
Mama wore an old pair of worn jeans and a button-down plaid shirt like a king would wear battle armor. She kept most of her white, wispy hair out of her face in a bun at the nape of her neck, but much of it had fallen out in tight curls framing her face. She seemed to dissect me with a quick once-over.
At that moment, I wondered what she saw. Later, she told me she saw a dazed, wavering waif of a girl, and her maternal instincts kicked in. At that moment, Mama felt a familiar tug at her heart, and she was filled with the love she had given all her children—blood or not—as they grew. I wouldn't have believed her if she'd told me that then.
"What'd the cat drag in this time?" Mama cried in a high, lilting voice that sounded like crumbling wet sand between my fingers.
"Mel Peter sent her girl by with cookies for me," Noah explained, holding up the basket and letting go of my wrist.
"Did she?" Mama wondered, her eyes resting on me.
"They're for everybody," I corrected, ignoring Noah as he drew a chair from the table and gestured at it like he thought I might fall into it.
"I thought we agreed that was a secret," he grumbled, placing the basket in the center of the table.
I sat down, not feeling quite in control of the action. I was on autopilot, relying on ingrained phrases and rhythms from when I used to talk with more than two humans regularly.
Somehow, Noah seemed to realize this. Don't ask me how I knew. Maybe it was how my eyes had fixed on him, darting back and forth as he paced around the kitchen, grabbing glasses and opening cupboards. Maybe it was the feral snap of my teeth when the cupboard door clanged closed, and I jumped like I'd seen a snake in the grass.
Mama smiled up at me from over her pot of stew. "You stayin' for dinner?"
"Dinner?" I echoed.
My stomach churned with a ravenous groan. I fought the impulse to lick my lips with a Herculean effort. I looked at the clock hammered into the wall over the stove. It was a shiny calico cat with eyes ticking back and forth to mark the seconds. On the cat's belly was the face of the clock, the little hand pointed at the two and the long one at the six.
"It's only two thirty," I said to cover the roar of my stomach.
"That's when we eat on Sunday," Noah explained. "Mama and Aunt Di make a feast out of it."
I almost laughed, picturing the "feasts" of food Emily made daily for the pack. I could probably eat them out of house and home in one night.
"Is it really two-thirty already?" Mama narrowed her eyes at the clock, then shuffled over to the counter and dropped her watering can in the sink.
"Noah, you ring the bell and call in the boys while I help Miss..." Mama trailed off, peering at me over her shoulder with a raised eyebrow.
"Leah," I managed to choke out.
The older woman whisked me through the door into a dining room with a table nearly as long as I was tall. It was in the middle of the house, the very center, with all the walls knocked out and just four pillars holding up the roof. All the other rooms were visible from where they ate. Besides a small archway was a staircase, and on either side were rooms full of busy chatter and life. Two girls giggled over a magazine while two boys with squeaky voices amused themselves by bashing the shit out of each other. I even caught sight of Buck as he stepped in to tear them apart.
"You need some of my famous sweet tea," Mama declared, plopping me down in a seat next to the end of the table. "And there's some extra cornbread leftover from last night."
Just then, Noah came bounding in through the kitchen door, followed closely by two gangly teenage boys. I didn't look at them much. I watched as Noah tussled the shorter ones' mouse-brown hair. I saw him slap the taller one, with about five—six, he corrected later, though I couldn't see the last one—dark hairs on his chin.
They were laughing about something I'd missed, but the two younger boys' faces dropped in shock when they saw me.
Noah grabbed their jaws. "You're hanging slack, boys. You'll catch bugs if you stay like that," he said with a smirk, his eyes darting over to me. "These are my cousins, Jonah and Elijah."
"Which one's which?" I asked.
The smaller one raised his hand like he was in class. "I'm Jonah, and if I may, ma'am, you are one mighty tall gal—"
Noah interrupted him with a well-aimed slap in the middle of his back. The boy stumbled forward but recovered his balance, looking up at me with bright red cheeks.
I turned my narrowed eyes to the taller one. His hair was black and cropped close to his head but still managed to stick out every which way.
"You're Elijah?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes, ma'am," he stammered, eyes darting to Noah. "Right?"
Noah slapped his palm to his face. "Yes," he sighed. "Yes, your name is Elijah. We just call you Eli," he muttered into his hand.
"He's not very smart," Jonah announced, sitting opposite me at the table. He was quickly pushed over by Elijah, who was then subsequently shoved down the bench until Noah was sitting across from me.
"They're both pretty dumb," he said as if to explain.
"Got it." I nodded.
Buck came stomping over to the table carrying two young boys by the scruff of their necks in each of his hands. He plopped them at the other end of the bench I sat on and groaned as he fell into the chair at the end of the table.
"You boys are getting too big for me," Buck moaned, dramatically flinging his arm against his chest. "Only thing that can revive me is some of Mama's cooking. Hey, Diana—"
A woman with auburn hair turned her head around the corner and shouted, "Almost ready! Girls, help me get these plates out to the table."
Diana Ashwood was—to quote Paul—a MILF. She had bright brown eyes and burnt, freckled skin. On her hip was what appeared to be a screaming toddler, but I couldn't be sure. It kept squirming. She carried a stack of plates in her other hand and deposited them on the table, which the younger boys began to distribute to the table.
Two girls followed behind her. The taller one was the spitting image of her mother, only a few feet shorter and with a different nose. The smaller one was maybe in preschool. I was terrible at guessing ages, but she didn't seem to have complete control over her legs yet.
"Hey, there's an extra head," Buck noted with surprise.
"Oh, Mama didn't tell you?" Diana rolled her eyes. "Noah brought home a friend for dinner."
"She brought cookies," Noah cried over the chaos erupting all over the table as Mama came in with the food.
"Jack sent her over," Mama announced, and the room fell silent.
"Excuse me?" I asked as she passed by with two steaming trays of food. "Where's the bathroom?" I was feeling nauseous.
She didn't notice my discomfort. "Under the stairs, dear," she replied.
I hyperventilated in the bathroom for a few minutes.
Finally, I crept silently through the hall, listening to the chatter.
"Jonah, hand me that chicken leg—"
"And then Mary said that Kelly told her that Marissa was like—"
"If you don't intend on eating your green beans, you can forget about the chocolate pudding I slaved over this afternoon."
Rusty jumped out from under the table and came bounding over to me, his tail wagging. Now I got a good look at him, I saw he was a scrappy-looking mutt with a long muzzle, one floppy ear, and one pointed ear with a bite taken out of it. He bowed, looking up at me imploringly. Instead of a good brawl—which I instinctively knew he wanted—he settled for a rub between the ears.
With the bravery that comes with having a canine friend at your side, I peeked around the corner of the hallway into the dining room to see whom I was somehow obligated to eat dinner with.
I never did get a look at the other people crowded around the table that night; my eyes rested on Noah, sitting next to Buck, and I was unable to look anywhere else. He must've felt my stare; he gazed up at me, his jaw going slightly slack, letting a green bean fall out of his mouth.
I swallowed the giggle bubbling up in my throat, looking down to hide my blush.
Since when did I giggle? Even in all the hushed chaos of the family dinner around me, I couldn't forget that I was not one of them. I couldn't get too close, not even to my imprint; it would endanger him. He would think I was insane. It was impossible.
But it was nice to pretend.
So, I sat back down in my seat as if I'd been there the whole time. Somehow, I'd managed to get wedged in the seat between Noah and Buck, who both looked at me curiously.
"What did you bring in the basket again?" He asked after a moment, sticking his fork into a mountain of coleslaw.
"Cookies," I explained, taking a heaping scoop of mashed potatoes onto my plate.
"Mel Peter sent her by with 'em," Mama Ashwood cried over the noise of the toddler in her lap, tapping her on the face with its sticky little hand. "You better keep them hands to yourself," she warned.
I dug into the food and was not polite about it. When I came up for air, I realized that all their eyes were watching me, and my spine switched from being hunched over my plate to standing at attention. My cheeks got hot as I took the fork out of my mouth, making a conscious effort to chew my food before swallowing.
The noise and chatter grew again. The multitude of children made me think of home, and a homesick ache bloomed in my chest like a bruise. I swallowed the lump in my throat with another hunk of meat.
Besides Mama and Diana, I spotted two other girls around the table. The older one, whose name I learned was Susanna, was twelve. The younger one was nine and had short, tangled chestnut locks, and she proudly declared her name was Sarah.
There were six boys, not including Buck. The youngest looked about three and had sky-blue eyes like Buck's, and the oldest was Noah, "a man of twenty-one," his aunt, Diana, bragged. Elijah and Jonah were constantly terrorized by the two youngest boys, both short with identical dark brown hair. They told me their names were Ezra and Nate, though I couldn't tell them apart.
Buck turned to give me an appraising look. "Well, you've eaten more than my boys, which is saying something." Buck chuckled. "What's your name again?"
"Leah."
"Are you from the reservation?" Asked one of the twins.
"Ezra!" Diana exclaimed.
"What?" The boy asked.
"No," I answered, emptying the dish of coleslaw onto my plate.
"Where are you from, then?" Asked Susanna, brushing her startling red hair behind her shoulder.
"Yeah, where are you from, then?" Mimicked Sarah, flipping her hair over her own shoulder.
"Quit it!"
"Quit it!"
"Girls!"
"Never can make those girls behave," Buck whispered to me. "Di's always trying, but it's a losing battle if you ask me. The boys are easier. You just have to pull 'em off each other. 'Course, that was when I was younger, and I could still grab two healthy young boys by their collar and pick 'em up off the floor without any effort." He winked over at Noah, who blushed scarlet.
I found myself smiling involuntarily.
"Are you staying for dessert?" Diana asked airily as she cleared the table with help from Sarah and Noah. He passed by my chair with an electric fizzle as he brushed against my arm.
"I don't want to intrude," I offered weakly, though my stomach growled, giving me away.
"Of course not," Diana insisted. "You must stay. I made too much pudding, anyway. Could you go get it, Sarah?"
The youngest girl ran into the adjacent kitchen and emerged again thirty seconds later, carrying a large glass bowl of brown pudding in her arms like it was the most sacred object she had ever held. She placed it in the middle of the table while Diana passed out bowls and spoons. I ate more than my share of pudding that night, but Diana seemed overjoyed when I went for fourths.
The dinner crowd dissipated slowly, each child running off to one or another activity until it was just Diana, Buck, Noah, and Mama left sitting at the table. The atmosphere had shifted as the adults dominated the conversation. Diana had moved down a seat on Mama's left, with Buck sitting on her right, directly across from me. The patriarch sat back in his chair with a pipe of tobacco smoldering between his lips.
"You've been through an ordeal, it seems," he observed in a passive tone, taking the pipe out of his mouth and blowing a cloud of smoke into the air.
My eyes darted to him, but I didn't dare reply.
"More than you're willing to say, I suppose." He sighed, letting out another billow of smoke. "Jack told me your situation. I promise I won't ask you no more questions, but you've gotta forgive the younger ones. They aren't masters of discretion, as you can see," he joked.
I tried to smile politely. It felt more like a grimace.
"But you've got a strong hand," Buck noted, eyeing my grip on the fork. "And we could use another one of those around here, especially during these times."
I raised my eyebrows.
Buck leaned forward. "I wanna offer you a job."
"A job?" I asked incredulously.
"Yeah, as a farmhand," he explained. "We have a lot of animals and a good four-hundred acres of crops. We need as much help as we can get," he laughed, and then his face became gravely sober.
"Some cattle have been getting attacked by some sort of... animal." I didn't miss his hesitation. "Jack and I were talking about it. He said you like to run off into the woods at night and go howling at the moon"—my face drained of color—"so I figure you've gotta be scarier than anything else out there. I'm afraid I can't offer you much more than room and board, but if you're stronger than you look and are willing to work, I think we could work something out here." He extended his hand out for me to shake.
I crossed my arms. "You and Jack were talking about it, huh? So, it's all decided." I scoffed and shook my head.
His eyebrows furrowed together. "Jack and Mel Peter have been friends of our family for a long time. He told me you were wild, but he thought you'd be the kind of person who wanted to help friends out. Maybe he was wrong."
My eyes darted over to Noah. He was pretending not to listen by shuffling through a deck of cards. The threat of danger to him, even indirectly, had my heart pumping faster.
"How many cattle have been attacked?" I asked.
Buck's voice was low when he replied. "Twenty."
I tried not to remember how many vampires had come to attack the pack in their undead army. I pretended I didn't still hear the crunch of their bones under my fangs. I didn't look at the fumes of purple smokestacks curling towards the clouds.
"Do you know what did it?" I asked.
Buck's face became hard as stone. "No," he said, dropping the word between us on the table.
When he offered no further explanation, I uncrossed my arms and folded my hands. "Okay," I agreed. "I'll stay here until the danger is gone." And then I'll take the rest of it with me, I added in my head.
Noah was biting his lip and looking down at the table. I wanted to smooth out the worry line between his eyebrows so severely that my arm twitched forward involuntarily. I would make it safe for him here. It was the least I could do after imprinting and putting myself in such proximity to him. Animals were dangerous sometimes, sure, but I was lethal.
"You could sleep in our spare bed," Buck offered.
I stood up quickly, the bench clunking behind my calves.
"I should go now," I said. My voice wavered as my eyes fixed on Noah.
He stared up at me, a flash of betrayal on his face and then confusion. Why was he so disappointed to see me leave? As I fled the room, I heard him hurrying after me.
"That's a filthy habit, Buck," Diana scolded her husband as I threw open the screen door.
I could hear the smile in Buck's reply. "No worse than some."
Noah was hot on my heels. I hopped over the porch railing and bolted to one of the many footpaths leading out to the different fields on the farm. The setting sun reached around the branches in shafts of golden light. I ran through a bush with red poison berries and stopped to look over my shoulder.
He was there, of course. As he stopped next to me, he leaned forward and panted with his hands on his knees.
"Geez, you're fast," he huffed. "Where'd you learn to run like that?"
"A long string of bad decisions," I replied, crossing my arms against my chest. "What can I do for you?" I asked, hoping to get whatever it was out of the way so I could scream into my pillow.
"I thought I'd walk you home since there's supposed to be this big bad wolf out there."
I froze. "How do you know if it's a wolf?"
"I-I don't," he stuttered, refusing to look me in the eye and walking forward on the path. "Here, Jack's place is this way."
I didn't follow him immediately, and he didn't look back to check, but I didn't want to run in the other direction for some reason. Finally, I groaned with the effort it took to fight against the pull, gave up, and followed him down the narrow path through the undergrowth.
"So, are you gonna take the job?" He asked over his shoulder as he held a branch out of my way and let me pass.
I stopped in front of him and tried to figure out his angle. He couldn't possibly feel the pull as strongly as I did—he was only human, after all—so why did he want to walk me home? What did he want? Maybe he thought I was easy. Maybe he thought there wouldn't be any witnesses out in the middle of the woods—which, if he were planning on being a creep, would probably result in more damage to his face than mine.
But he didn't seem to want anything but an answer. I nodded and kept walking.
"Is that a yes?"
"On one condition," I amended, a small smile picking up the corners of my lips.
"What's that?"
As someone who had grown up sharing a room with my brother and then sharing a brain with a bunch of teenage boys, I knew my priorities in a crowded house.
"I want a lock on my door. On the inside."
Noah grinned as the sun dipped below the tree line.
"I can make that happen," he promised. "We could really use another able body around here if you pardon my phrasing—I mean—" his eyes darted down and then back up so fast I wasn't sure if he would try something or if he just felt the same aching need I did.
I hadn't kissed anyone since Sam. I wondered how it would feel to kiss Noah, how it would compare, even without the magic of the imprint. When we shared a mind, the boys used to have no idea how I managed not to be horny all the time. I used to tell them that they would know if they had two brain cells to rub together.
Now I wasn't so sure.
Before I did something stupid, I turned on my heel to take another step forward, but he grabbed my wrist. I spun around reflexively, like a shiver of my spine.
"You're not from around here," he stated.
I rolled my eyes. "What gave it away?"
"You see things differently," he continued. "I don't know what it is about you, Leah, but I promise I'll figure it out." At the end, he was grinning so foolishly that I had to laugh.
"What?" He asked in mock resentment. "You think I can't?"
My laughter cut off abruptly. "No," I responded, shaking my head. "I think you can. Which is why I don't want you to try."
He pinched his lips and drew his eyebrows together. "You got skeletons in your closet, hmm?" He rubbed the end of his chin, and his face finally broke into a wide grin the way the sun pokes through a cloudy sky. "That's hot."
I slapped his shoulder lightly, then left my hand there, letting the moments drag on where we were touching until finally, I had to draw away.
"I'll come back," I promised.
"When should I tell Buck you'll be around?" He asked in a low, conspiratorial tone.
"Eventually," I sighed, slipping my wrist out of his grasp. "I need to talk with Mel and Jack."
"Should I wait here?"
I laughed. It sounded rusty even to my ears. "No, thanks. I'm the scariest thing out in the woods at night, remember?" I reminded him.
He laughed, too. A swell of nausea crawled up my throat as he laughed off any danger from me. I quickly ducked into the tall grass with a strangled "Goodbye!"