Page 38 of Welcome to Blackbird Hollow
“So were you,” I say before I can stop myself.
He turns to look at me as we reach the end of the driveway, the truck idling on the dirt road. “Weren’t too bad yourself,” he breathes, his muscular forearm flexing as he grips the wheel tighter.
“Minus the puking,” I reply, because god forbid I be normal and cool. But Wyatt just chuckles, shaking his head as he shifts the truck into drive.
“I nearly passed out the first time I dealt with a redcap,” he tells me, flipping down his visor as we drive into the setting sun. “The smell is what gets you. And you, darlin’, got hit with a double whammy: hellhoundandredcap.”
We’re talking about something undeniably disgusting, but Wyatt Hayes just called me “darlin’,” and that seems to be all my mind is capable of processing. I manage to get out some half-assed response and then launch into a completely unnecessary story about when an undergrad student forgot to put a specimen back in the big freezers, and I arrived at the lab on a sweltering May morning to what I christened “stench-ageddon.” I wonder if the rest of the department still calls it that, still tells stories about it, even though they fucking abandoned me.
I swallow hard, directing my mind back to the present, and as we amble down the hill toward Wyatt’s house, a thought strikesme. “What if it’s not the hellhounds taking the hikers, then?” I ask.
He frowns, considering it. “We don’t have much else in this neck of the woods that would be snatching people without a trace,” he says. I like the way he doesn’t immediately dismiss my idea, just makes me aware of the contradictory evidence.
“Redcaps would leave a crime scene, I’m guessing?” I ask.
“Sure would,” he drawls slowly, like he’s lost in thought. “Worse than the hellhound did today.”
I nod, my mind racing, and turn to look out the window. I catch a view of Blackbird Hollow’s main drag at the bottom of the hills, lights twinkling like fireflies.
My heart swells with a fierce kind of nostalgia for my grandparents’ farm. Hell, I even feel it for that musty little apartment we lived in afterward. We stayed because all the predictions said the entire town would be underwater with just one more big storm, and that made it cheap as hell. Besides, my mom worked at the post office and my dad was the foreman at the only factory in town. Where else were we supposed to go after losing so much? Everything had already fallen apart, and that village by the river was the only place my parents had found where people were trying to put things back together.
Tears cloud my eyes, which is so stupid, but—god, I wish we had found Blackbird Hollow back then. After the last of the Catastrophes swept through, and like nearly everybody else, we had nothing but the clothes on our backs. I wish we’d walked a little farther. Tried a little harder. Spared a thought about the hills to our north, the rolling fields and green orchards. Everybody said these places were dangerous, rough, and that it was better to stay closer to the big cities.
But as we pull up to Fallon’s driveway, the rambling antique house lit from the inside, impossibly cozy against thesurrounding dark, I can’t imagine anything further from the truth.
“I’ve never felt this safe in my entire life,” I find myself saying, pressing my forehead against the cool window. “You’d think that wouldn’t be the case, with the hellhounds and the redcaps. But I do. I’ve never felt as safe as I do in Blackbird Hollow.”
I hear his sharp intake of breath from the other side of the cab, and it should probably make me reconsider, but I don’t.
“Withyou, Wyatt.”
Like a child, I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping I didn’t just absolutely ruin everything. When I hear his door open and then close, my heart shatters a little. It would’ve shattered a hell of a lot more had my own door not been pulled open.
Framed by the last rays of the setting sun, Wyatt stands there, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he devours me with his gaze. “Guess we’re throwing caution to the wind, then,” he breathes. “I like it.”
And then his hands are in my hair, his thumb stroking my jaw. For once in my life, I don’t think, I don’t anticipate, I don’t analyze. I just follow the light, the warmth, reaching for him with both hands just before his mouth crashes into mine.
Chapter 18
Wyatt
Alice Blythe tastes like forgotten memories and hope. She feels like a crackling fire after a snowball fight, and a steaming bath after a long day in the woods. Her arms wind around my neck as she slides out of the truck, her body fit tight against mine. My heart races past my mind, which is screaming for me to slow down.
Just as Alice makes the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard, the screen door slams, and puppy footfalls have us jumping apart. When my head snaps back to look for Fallon, she’s nowhere in sight, but I can hear her cackling in the house.
A low laugh rumbles through me, reminding me that I’ve still got Alice clasped tight to my chest. She sighs, and I want to know everything about the nuance of her breath. Is that a happy noise? A wistful one?
Fern pushes her nose into Alice’s hand, giving her the biggest doggy smile as she sits on my foot. It’s clear she approves of me kissing Alice, and from the sound of laughter in the house, Fallon does too.
As I draw back a touch, I see Alice’s eyes have gone wide and stunned, and I wonder if I got all my signals crossed. What if she meant that she felt safe with me like a big brother?
I take half a step back from her, just to give her a little breathing room. But I’m no chickenshit with lovers. One deep breath, and I ask her outright. “Did I read that wrong? Should I not have kissed you?”
Slowly, her head tilts up, and those big hazel eyes of hers blink twice. She has uncommonly long lashes, and the pink flush in her cheeks makes her prettier than I thought possible. Not that I’ve been thinking about how pretty she is every minute of the day since I met her.
“No,” she says, then seems to realize I asked her two questions. “I mean yes.”
She’s either completely blown away by my kissing skills, or she’s trying to figure out how to file a sexual harassment claim with Hedgerider HR, which we absolutely do not have.
