I shook my head, but was truly confused where this was heading until she punched some buttons on the console. After a few seconds the pop music, which had been pouring through the speakers, ceased and a trilling filled the car.

He answered on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Chuck! How are you feeling?” To my knowledge Talley never called Charlie Chuck. In fact, as far as I knew, I was the only person given that honor.

“Talley?” He sounded weak. Not zombified or sad, just not strong. Like maybe he wasn’t really used to talking and needed a nap.

“Yep. It’s me. Jase and I decided to head into Eastern Kentucky for the weekend. He needed some air, and I wanted to look for bears.”

Bears…?

“Did you find one?”

“Two actually.”

There was a rush of air over the speakers and when Charlie spoke his voice was clenched. “And how were they?”

“Good.” Talley spared me a glance which I really wished she wouldn't do since she was navigating an overly curvy road. “Really good. A little tired and cranky, but they’re bears. They’re supposed to be tired and cranky, right?”

“Cranky is exactly how I like my bears.”

With considerable effort, I swallowed my giggle.

“Speaking of cranky bears,” Talley said, “how is your therapy going? You’re not still giving the physical therapists a hard time, are you?”

Charlie was giving the physical therapists a hard time? That didn’t sound like Charlie. Jase? Yes. I’ve actually seen him go head-to-head with a trainer over a basketball injury, but Charlie is usually more laid back.

“I’m not giving them a hard time. I just don’t understand why we can’t go ahead and increase what I’m doing if I’m ready. Anyway, they should want to push me harder. The sooner I can walk, the sooner I can go home and get out of their hair.”

I gasped before I realized what I was doing, causing Talley to shoot me a shut-the-heck-up look.

“Well, surely someone is there to keep you in line,” she said, more for my benefit I think than Charlie’s.

“Yes, Mama Talley. Bob and Cory have been very good babysitters in your absence.” It sounded patronizing and sarcastic, but both Talley and I knew he secretly loved Talley’s overprotective, Mother Hen-like tendencies. “Actually, Cory is waving hello to you right now.”

If Cory the Canadian, an Alpha Pack Taxiarho, was still around, either Liam was right about that whole Charlie-is-beloved-by-the-Alpha-Pack thing, or he was being treated to the same around-the-clock attention I enjoyed back in July. If it was the second, I wondered how they kept the gun trained on Charlie’s head without the nurses and doctors saying anything.

“Hey, Tal. You remember that girl who quit high school and became a truck stop waitress? I think her name was Flo?” Talley raised her eyebrows at me, and I nodded. Leave it to Charlie to remember a random rant from a year ago. “If you see her, tell her I miss her. A lot. Is she still living with that guy?”

“I don’t think they’re getting along too well, but yeah, they’re still together.”

“Tell Flo to lay off him. He’s a good guy. He’ll take care of her.”

He’ll forget to tell her that her brother didn’t really betray her and let her walk around with a shattered heart for no good reason. That’s what he will do. Not a good guy. Not someone I want to take care of me.

Talley must have been able to see my thoughts etched across my face. “You know, I can imagine what Flo would say to that. I can’t tell you though, because I think it would involve a lot of cuss words.”

Charlie laughed and it was one of the single most beautiful sounds in the whole world. “I’m sure it would. But she needs to believe me on this one. I know what I’m talking about, and she should trust him, one hundred percent.”

I shook my head in denial, but Talley said, “I’ll tell her.”

There was some commotion in the background, an IV pole beeping and a female voice.

“I’ve got to go, but thanks, Tal. Thanks for calling me.”

“Get some rest, Charlie.”

“I love you.”

Her hand reached out and grabbed mine. “Love you, too.”

Then the connection was cut, and I burst into tears.

Chapter 9

“It’s not that bad,” Talley said, her fingers trying to fluff out my natural hair in vain. “It’s pixie-like.”

“Remember Thomas Bardwell? That weird kid who was only around for the third and fourth grade?”

“The guy who told us he had to move to Timber because a dragon ate his other house?”

“Yeah.” He was also the kid who got a piece of corn stuck up his nose and didn’t tell anyone for three months. “I have his haircut.”

Talley chuckled, throwing her arms around me for the tenth time in thirty minutes. “I’ve missed you so much,” she said for the twentieth time.

“I’ve missed you, too,” I told the top of her shiny black hair. “It’s been lonely.”

We were sitting on the porch swing of an old clapboard house watching the boys as they did something underneath the hood of our car. The place belonged to Talley’s Aunt Della, her mother’s non-Seeing sister, who was at a bluegrass festival in Virginia. Talley assured us her father’s pack wouldn’t come around due to some bad blood and hurt feelings, and Liam decided it was remote enough for us to stay the night. The house was located in a literal hole in the ground, accessible only by driving to the end of the world and hanging a right onto a single-lane serpentine road whose pavement had more cracks and chunks missing than could possibly be considered safe. The driveway was all but hidden and cut down at such an angle I may have left fingerprints in the dashboard of the CRV Talley was driving. The house itself looked like something out of a Depression era picture on the outside and a ceramic doll museum on the inside.

That’s right. Ceramic dolls. Hundreds of them staring at you from every available surface.

There was a reason Talley and I chose to sit on the porch instead of inside on the couch.

“I really should do the selfless thing and leave, but I can’t seem to make myself do it,” I said. Even though the house was seriously isolated and Talley assured me no one other than her trusted Aunt Della would ever know we were there, I kept thinking about what would happen if someone found Jase and Talley with me. I was a dangerous person to be around.