Page 26 of Welcome to Blackbird Hollow
Movement stirs in the bed next to me, and my heart races into my throat. Beneath the old, handmade quilt, I’m fully dressed, but in someone else’s clothes: a football jersey with an unfamiliar mascot and soft, wash-worn sweatpants. A faint memory trickles into my mind, something about stairs andThe Goonies, my face pressed into Wyatt Hayes’s chest, the smell of him indescribably wonderful.
I don’t think a man with a jawline likethatand such easy, worn-in confidence has much interest in the strange drunk girl at his sister’s kitchen table, but I admit that hope still pounds in the hollow of my throat as I gather myself and roll over slowly.
A long tail thumps happily on the top of the quilt as Fern greets me with an excited yip. “Hey, girl,” I murmur, stroking thetop of her head as she gives me several kisses. “You know, you’re so big, I almost thought you were your dad for a second.”
I regret the words the second they leave my mouth. My face reddens as I consider what Wyatt’s long, lean body might feel like tucked into bed next to mine. What kind of weird, old-timey greeting he’d offer in the morning. What his brown eyes would look like in the misty light.
As if she can read my thoughts, Fern pulls away and cants her head to one side, looking at me with what I can only describe as canine judgment.
“Sorry,” I tell her, reaching out and giving the huge, wolfish dog a hug before I think better of it. I’m lucky she’s decided I’m alright, because I feel her relax into me, placing her chin on my shoulder. “Thanks for cuddling with me. I always wanted a dog.”
Fern decides that the best course of action in this tender moment is to turn her head and shove her damp nose into my ear. I cry out her name with a laugh and push her away. With a low, playful bark, she leaps off the bed and trots toward the door, turning to look at me expectantly.
“Alright, alright,” I murmur, pushing my hair out of my eyes. My head is gonna hurt so much worse when I stand. Slowly, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and pull myself up, hoping all the while that my hangover is a mild one.
Because the Wild Hunt is cominghere. Hikers are missing. Hellhounds stalk the woods. And I’m in the thick of it, hiding from Sector and running toward the truth. I have shit to do. I cannot be stopped by a blistering hangover, nor a raging crush.
I shuffle across the creaking hardwoods and pull the bedroom door open all the way, discovering two things in quick succession: the full force of daylight sending my headache into a screeching crescendo, and Wyatt Hayes standing at the top of the stairs, wearing jeans and a fitted white t-shirt.
Perhaps Iwillbe stopped by the hangover and the crush if they gang up on me like this.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, as ifhe’s the random outsider who showed up yesterday. “Fallon forgot to wipe Fern’s paws when she came in. Got mud all over my shirt. Wanted to see if I had anything in my old dresser.”
My mouth goes dry. The hangover drives nails into my eyeballs. “But her feet are clean,” is all I can say, my words coming out stilted and uneven.
“Sure are.” He smiles at me, one of those damn eyebrows lifting. “Wouldn’t let her get in bed with you all muddy. My shirt was a necessary sacrifice.”
I shove Wyatt Hayes saying the words “in bed with you” out of my mind before they can sink into memory and come barreling into my thoughts at the worst time possible. “Well, then the least I can do is permit you into your own room for a spare shirt, sir,” I reply, doing a weird bow and scuttling away from his door.
I want to die. But he just laughs, all autumn sunshine and crystal-clear creek water. “You have my thanks, milady,” he replies in a funny accent, striding past me.
I hold my breath, waiting for him to cross the threshold.
“Oh,” he says, turning toward me, his muscular shoulder resting on the doorjamb. “Not sure if you saw, but your bags are at the foot of the bed. In case you want to get changed.”
I blink, struggling to keep up. Hangovers at twenty-nine are a whole different beast than at twenty-one. “Sorry,” I manage, realizing distantly that I’m turning red. I gesture to his borrowed clothes on my frame. “Your sister said it was fine?—”
“’Course it’s fine,” he replies with something that seems like panic, of all things—though I must be wrong. Just because itfeelslike I’ve known him for years doesn’t mean I can read him like a book. “Just thought you’d be wanting your own clothes.”
And then he slips into the room I slept in, leaving the door cracked only a few inches. I hear a drawer pull out, antique wood scraping, before I realize I’m standing there like an absolute weirdo.
“Fern,” I say to the wolfdog, who’s sitting at the top of the stairs, almost like she’s waiting for me. “Could you please take me to the coffee?”
With the help of ibuprofen,sunglasses borrowed from Fallon, and a giant mug of coffee, I’m dressed and pulling myself into the passenger seat of Wyatt’s pickup truck at a respectable hour.
“Not quite there yet, huh?” he asks as he slides into the driver’s seat, gesturing toward the still-wrapped burrito sitting in my lap. He’d swung by the diner instead of “subjecting anyone to Fallon’s piss-poor breakfast fare.”
“Nope,” I reply in a croak, remembering what the smell of scrambled egg, peppers, and cheese did to me just a few minutes ago when Wyatt unwrapped his own breakfast. “Not yet.”
“Want me to put it in the back? I have a cooler,” he offers, turning the key in the ignition.
“No,” I say, curling over the burrito. “It’s mine. Myprecious.”
He laughs, putting his arm on the back of my seat as he reverses out of the driveway. “Easy there, Gollum,” he replies, shifting into drive.
Fern settles into the space between us, which is admittedly not large enough for what is essentially a wolf. But she’s very polite about not nosing into my burrito or begging. Granted, Wyatt already told me she couldn’t have any more “people food”—apparently, in my drunken stupor, I’d given her some icecream the night before. In my defense, she is very cute, which weakens my ability to say no.
I swallow, glancing over at Wyatt. I could’ve stayed at Fallon’s, slept off more of the hangover. But he asked me to come with him to the town hall, where the local coven of witches is preparing for the arrival of the Wild Hunt. I mean, how the fuck does anyone say no to an invitation like that? As an academic, these kinds of primary sources are positively irresistible.
