Three Nights

You don’t get to buy my life quiet.

It sat in the room after she’d said it. Cade stood at the window with the mortuary receipt crushed in his fist and the envelope at his feet and the fire going on the hearth his father had built, and he let it sit, because she was right, and because the mark in his shoulder had gone hot the second she’d said kept and hadn’t come down.

She’s right, his wolf said. Not gently. You did the thing. The hand on the shoulder. Wisdom, for the feed.

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

She’d taken one step in. She stood there in her coat with her fists at her sides and her chin up and her face gone white the way it went when she was past crying, and she was breathing like she’d run the stairs. He could smell her from here. Burnt coffee — the two-day pot, she’d been in the lobby, she’d stood in it. Wet gravel. The passes, faintly, from Kerensa’s cab. And under all of it, hot and close and rising off her skin like heat off a stove, the thing that had been on the stairs of a motel two mornings ago and that Jory had smelled from the highway with the windows up.

She was angry. She was so angry the room had it. And she wanted him, and he could smell that too, and the two of them were coming off her in the same breath with no line between.

“You’ve got nothing to say,” she said.

“I’ve got a lot to say. You don’t want any of it yet.”

“Try me.”

“I read the ledger because it was open and I read everything that’s open. I’ve done that my whole life. It’s how I stayed alive on a mountain with forty wolves who’d have taken the ridge off my father if they’d smelled him blink.” He set the crushed receipt down on the sill. He did it carefully, the way he’d set a coffee pot down on a hot plate once. “I saw the number and it went in and it didn’t come out. I’m not sorry I know it. I’m sorry I went behind you. I’m sorry I said Dillon. I said it to Nance and Loveday went still and I saw her go still and I knew what I’d said, and I got in the truck anyway.” His jaw worked. “That’s the truth. You want to hit me for it, hit me.”

“I don’t want to hit you.”

“Then what do you want.”

She came across the room.

She did it fast. Not the way she’d come around a desk to make him sit — faster than that, four strides on the old boards with her boots loud and her coat swinging open, and he had time to think she’s going to hit me after all and time to decide not to move, and then she had both hands flat on his chest and she pushed.

He went back. He hadn’t braced. He was a wolf and an alpha and he’d stood on a cattle guard that morning and told a man with eleven dogs no without his heart changing speed, and a woman five-foot-four with grease in her knuckle-creases put her hands on him and he went back two steps and hit the door of his own den with his shoulders.

The latch rattled. The box on the mantel jumped.

She came after him. She didn’t stop when he stopped — she came right up into the space where he’d been, until her hands were still on his chest and her body was against his and the wood was at his back and there was nowhere on earth to go, and she looked up at him with the fight still in her face, all of it, every word she’d thrown at him still in her mouth.

“I want you to stop deciding,” she said.

And kissed him.

It wasn’t like the lobby. Nothing about it was like the lobby. He’d gone slow in the lobby — he’d made himself, he’d wanted to know it, he’d held her head like something he meant to remember. She didn’t give him room for that. Her mouth came up hard and open and there was anger in it, he could taste it, sharp under the coffee, and her hands had gone from flat on his chest to fisted in the front of his shirt so the cotton pulled at the back of his neck, and she kissed him like she was still shouting. Like the sentence hadn’t ended and this was the rest of it. His head hit the door. He didn’t care. He got one hand up and it went into her hair at the nape where it was still damp from the wet air outside and he held on, not to steer, to stay standing, and his other hand found the frame beside his hip and gripped it until he felt the old wood complain.

She bit his lip. Not hard. The chipped tooth. He made a sound he’d never made in his life.

Yes, said his wolf. That. Yes. All of it.

He pushed off the door.

Not away — into her. One step, so that they turned, so that it was her back against the wood now and his weight against her and her hands still in his shirt, and she made a noise that was half a no and half something else and didn’t let go. He kissed her the way she’d kissed him. Angry. Because he was — at her, for the envelope and kept and being right; at himself; at a stone two miles up a road that had put a hand on his shoulder every day for two years and had never once, not once, told him what it wanted him to do. He put all of that into her mouth and she took it and gave it back, and the door shook in its frame behind her shoulders, and the fire threw both of them huge and moving up the wall over his father’s bed.

She pulled back. An inch. Breathing.

“That’s not an answer—”

“No.”

“You don’t get to kiss me instead of—”

“You kissed me.”

“I know what I—” Her hands came out of his shirt and went to his face, both of them, and held his jaw the way she had in the lobby, only harder, her thumbs pressing into the beard. Her eyes were wet and furious and about six inches from his. “I’m not done being angry.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to be angry about that money for years—”

“I know.”

“Then why are you—” She stopped. He watched her hear herself. He watched her look at his mouth, and at her own hands on his face, and understand that she’d backed a wolf into a door and put her tongue in his mouth and was now asking him why. Something in her face broke open and went furious in a new direction, and she said, “Damn it,” very quietly, and pulled his head down.

The second kiss was worse. Better. He didn’t know the word. It was slower than the first only because they were both out of breath, and it went on longer, and somewhere in the middle of it her coat came off her shoulders and hit the floor and he didn’t know which of them had done that. Her back arched off the door. His hand had left the frame and found her waist under the flannel, over the T-shirt, and he could feel her breathing through both — fast, ragged, matching his for once, and he thought not the hearts, the breath, that’ll do — and she made that sound against his mouth again, the small one, the one he’d first heard over a burnt pot, and his wolf lifted its head and looked at the join of her neck and shoulder where the silver chain went under her collar.

There.

He felt his teeth want it. Not the way they’d wanted it in the lobby — that had been a wolf pulling at a rope. This was a wolf that knew exactly where the rope went and had stopped pulling, and was just looking. Patient. Sure. Waiting to be told.

Her hand came off his face and went to the side of her own neck.

She put her palm flat over it. Over the place. Right where his eyes had gone and his mouth wanted, and she held it there, and looked at him with her chest going and her lips swollen and the anger still in her eyes — but under the anger, something that had decided.

“I know where they want to go,” she said.

He didn’t pretend. “Yes.”

“Kerensa told me what it does. The bite. She said it doesn’t undo.” Her palm pressed. “Not tonight.”

“I wasn’t—”

“I know you weren’t. I felt you not. I’ve been feeling you not since the lobby, Cade, I can feel you hold it back right now like a — like a man holding a door in a wind.” Her voice dropped. “That’s not why I’m saying it. I’m saying it because it’s mine to say. Not the stone’s. Not yours. You hold it back for the mountain — fine. I’m holding it back for me. Until I know what I’m saying yes to. Until you’ve told me about my mother and I’ve stood on that step with my eyes open. Then we’ll see where your teeth go.”

He looked at her.

Ours, his wolf said, and it wasn’t a demand. It was closer to awe.

“All right,” he said.

“All right?”

“You said it. It’s said.” He put his forehead against hers. The fire ticked. He could feel the pulse in her temple against his and her hand still flat over her own throat, and he thought he had never in thirty-four years wanted anything as badly as he wanted the thing she’d just told him he couldn’t have, and had never once been so glad to be told. “The rest of me’s still here.”

Her hand came off her neck.

It went down. Not to his face this time — to his chest, over his heart the way it had in the lobby, and then lower, flat on his stomach through the shirt, and lower, and he felt her fingers find the leather of his belt and stop there. Rest there. Her knuckles against the buckle.

“Tessa.”

“I’m still angry.”

“I know you are.”

“I’m going to be angry while—”

“Then be angry.” His own hand had gone to the hem of her flannel where it hung open over the T-shirt, and under that, to the hem of the T-shirt itself, and his fingers went under it and found the skin of her side above her jeans — warm, so warm, the small of her back where the muscle ran — and she shivered from her scalp to her boots and did not move his hand. “I’ve had two years of a mountain that won’t tell me what it wants and two weeks of a stone I can’t argue with, and you’re the only thing in either that’s ever just said. Be angry. Say it. I’ll take it standing up. I’ll take it on the floor. I don’t care. I want—”

The door shook.

Not the frame. The door. Three hits with the side of a fist on the far side of the wood six inches from Tessa’s head, so hard the latch rattled and the box on the mantel jumped again, and Cade’s whole body went from what it had been to what it was on the fire road in the space of a breath. His hand came out from under her shirt. His other went to the door beside her head, flat, holding it shut.

“Alpha.”

Jory.

Tessa had gone rigid against the wood. Her hand was still at his belt. Her eyes had gone to the door an inch from her ear and come back to his face, and he watched her decide not to move, and felt his own heart go like a drum.

“I’m here,” he said. His voice came out of a place he barely recognized.

“I can tell you’re—” Jory stopped. Cade heard him breathe on the far side of the wood. Heard him smell it — the room, the two of them, the door with a woman’s back against it — and heard him decide, the way Jory decided everything, to say it anyway in the old cadence. “The elders have met. Loveday, Hal, Nance. They’ve set the day for the pack’s answer. I’m to tell you to your face and I’m telling you.”

“Then tell me.”

“The dark of the moon. Sunday. At dusk, on the step, under the stone.” A pause. “Three nights.”

Three nights.

He’d known it would be the dark. He’d said it himself. He’d known it the way he’d known his side would close. And it went through him anyway like cold water, standing with his hand flat on his own door and a woman’s knuckles against his belt buckle and his beta on the far side of an inch of oak, and the mark in his shoulder went up like a coal somebody had breathed on.

He felt Tessa feel it. Her hand came off his belt and went to her collarbone.

“I heard you,” Cade said.

“Kerensa’s to be told separately. Loveday’s doing it. She’s on the step now.” Another pause. Longer. “Cade.”

“What.”

“Whatever you’re doing in there. You’ve got till Sunday to make it into something you can say out loud in front of thirty-one wolves and a stone. That’s all. That’s the whole of what I came up here to—” He stopped. The boards creaked. “Hell. Three nights.”

The boots went away down the runner.

Cade stood with his hand on the door and listened to them go. Down the stairs. The front door. Then nothing but the fire and the creek under the house and Tessa breathing against him with her hand pressed flat over the coal she couldn’t see.

“Sunday,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Three nights.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re supposed to have made this into something you can say.” Her hand came off her throat. It came back down, slowly, the way it had before — chest, stomach, and then her fingers were at the leather of his belt again, and this time they didn’t rest there. They found the buckle. “Is that what he said.”

“That’s what he said.”

“Then say it.”

“Tessa—”

“You said I was the only thing on this mountain that ever just said. So say it.” Her eyes came up to his. Tea-colored. Flecked. Furious and wet and absolutely certain, the way they’d been in a lobby door with a fire extinguisher in her hand. “Not the word. Not your mother’s word or mine. What you want. Right now. In this room. Out loud.”

Easiest thing you’ve ever been asked, his wolf said. Again.

“You,” Cade said. “This. Not in three nights. Now. I want your hands where they are and I want that shirt on the floor with the coat and I want to stop standing here holding a door shut like it’s going to save anything.” His hand had gone back under the hem of her T-shirt on its own. The skin of her side. The heat of her. “I want three nights of you before that step, and I want them awake. Not kept. Not quiet. I want to hear every angry thing you’ve got, and I want it in this bed that was my father’s, because he never once in forty years had anything in it that he wanted, and I—” His voice went. “I want you to stop asking me if it’s an answer. It’s not an answer. It’s just true.”

The buckle came open under her fingers.

He got the flannel off her shoulders. It went the way of the coat. She had the T-shirt in both fists at the hem and he put his hands over hers there and for one second they just stood, forehead to forehead against his father’s door, both of them shaking, breathing the same air.

“I’m still angry,” she said again, very low.

“Good,” Cade said, and lifted the shirt.

---

The fire was down to a red bed when he opened his eyes.

Not out. His father’s hearth had never once been out in Cade’s lifetime, and he’d gotten up sometime in the dark and put a log on it without fully waking, and it had caught and burned down and now it was a low orange glow that put the room in shapes and nothing more. The window over the mountain was black. There was no moon in it. There wouldn’t be one for three nights.

She was awake.

He knew it before he turned his head. He’d have known it in the lobby, in the truck, at the cattle guard — she was lying on her back beside him with her eyes open and her breathing too even to be sleep, and she’d been that way for a while. He could feel her thinking. Not the words. The weight of it. Like a woman counting a drawer that wouldn’t come out right.

“You’re awake,” he said anyway.

“So are you.”

“I put a log on.”

“I know. I felt you get up.” She didn’t turn her head either. They lay there side by side in his father’s bed looking at the ceiling like two people at the bottom of a boat. “You went to the mantel first. You stood there. Then the fire.”

He didn’t answer. He’d stood at the mantel. He’d put his hand flat on the lid of the box with the ring in it, the box he hadn’t opened in two years, and he’d stood there in the dark with the mark burning low in his shoulder and thought about a man who’d slept in this bed for forty years and gone into the fire with a name in his mouth, and he’d thought: not three nights. Not this time. And then he’d put the log on.

“You’re paying for those too,” Tessa said.

“What.”

“The sheets. You bled on the leg again. I can feel it. It’s on my side.”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it — it came up out of his chest in the dark short and rough and real, the second time in two weeks, and he felt her feel it go through the mattress, and felt her decide not to smile, and fail.

“Add it to the ledger,” he said.

“I’m going to. Under parts.” She was quiet a moment. “Cade.”

“Here.”

“It’s Sunday.”

“Yes.”

“Three nights. And then thirty-one wolves on a step and a stone that says you can’t.” Her voice had gone very flat and very steady, the way it went when she was holding something. “And I’m still not going to know about my mother unless you tell me, because Loveday won’t, she said so, she said it’s sworn on your mark and she’d sooner die. So I’m going to say this once, in the dark, and then I’m going to go to sleep, because I have been awake for two days.” She turned her head. He felt her look at him. “You don’t get to stand on that step Sunday with that in your mouth and me at your side not knowing. I won’t stand there quiet. I’m not kept. If you haven’t said it by Saturday night, I’ll walk down that road myself before dusk and you can say your law to Kerensa Trevithick with nobody’s name stuck in it. That’s not a threat. That’s just the arithmetic.”

He lay there.

The fire ticked. Below them, faint, he heard the dog shift against the outside of the door — he’d been there when Jory came and he’d been there since, and Jory had stepped over him going and coming without a word — and he heard the creek under the house, and the wind, and nothing else. No howl. The pack had gone quiet after the step. They’d be quiet till Sunday.

“Tomorrow,” Cade said.

“You said that in a girl’s bed with a candle out.”

“I know I did. A truck came into your lot.” He turned his head and looked at her, and in the red light her face was all planes and no softness and the chipped tooth showed where her mouth had come open, and he thought that he had never been so certain of anything. “Nothing’s coming into the lot tomorrow. We’re not in the lot. We’re two miles up a road behind a chained gate on a mountain that just told a man with eleven dogs to go north, and in the morning I’m going to walk you down to the council room and pull up a board in the floor and show you where it came from. And then I’m going to tell you the one thing Loveday knows and the one thing I’ve worked out, and I’m going to tell you the twenty things neither of us knows, because that’s most of it. And you’re going to be angry about that too.”

“Probably.”

“Good.”

She looked at him a moment longer. Then she turned onto her side, away from him, toward the black window and the mountain, and he understood that was the end of it — that she’d said her arithmetic and heard his and was done — and he put his arm over her the way he had in the narrow bed and felt her take it.

Her heart was going under his palm. Slow. Heavy.

His was going against her back. Faster.

Still not the same. He’d thought — he hadn’t let himself finish the thought, but he’d thought it, somewhere between the door and the floor and the bed — that tonight they might. That two people who’d been that angry and that close in the same six feet of air for that long might come out the other side of it in step. They hadn’t. Two drums through a wall. But the wall was thinner. He could hear hers now the way he’d heard the pack’s howl through stone — not as sound. As something with edges.

“They still don’t match,” she said into the pillow, half gone.

“No.”

“Kerensa said her mother threw a rock.”

“I know.”

“I threw an envelope.” Her breathing had started to go long. “That’s not the same.”

“It hit harder,” Cade said.

She was asleep.

He lay with his hand over her heart and his own going behind it and the mark in his shoulder burning low and steady in the dark of a room his father had never once wanted anything in, and counted the nights the way she counted a drawer.

Three.

---