Awake at Dawn (Shadow Falls #2)(78)

Kylie let go of a big gasp of frustration when the cold of the spirit started to fade. Great! Just another day of being shocked awake at dawn with nothing to show for it. Rolling over, she punched her pillow and felt her mood grow darker by the second.

Oh, it wasn't just a general Monday blues kind of mood, either. Nope, this was more. Tonight was the full moon. Who knew what was going to happen? But the fact she'd awoken in such a piss-poor mood was even more of a sign that she might be werewolf.

Not that morphing into a wolf was the only bad-mood trigger. After finally making up her mind to say yes to going out with Derek, she hadn't had a chance to get him alone and give him her answer. There was also the particular werewolf coming back to the camp today or tomorrow.

Make that two weres coming back. She wasn't exactly looking forward to getting reacquainted with Fredericka. And facing Lucas after the whole dream fiasco? Oh yeah, that was going to be so much fun. Not!

Kylie let out a groan, punched her pillow, and pulled the covers over her head.

Five minutes after Kylie was up, and two minutes after checking and realizing her mom still hadn't sent her the scan of Daniel's obituary, Kylie managed to piss off both Della and Miranda. After they both managed to piss her off. So Kylie made up her mind-she was taking a day off. A complete day off from people. And that included all the supernatural varieties, too. Today, it was just her and her skunk.

Snatching a bottle of soda from the fridge, she scooped up Socks, told her roommates to tell Holiday she was taking a vacation day, and went back into her bedroom where she slammed the door just because she felt like it.

At nine o'clock, Holiday tapped at her bedroom door. "Just checking on you."

"I just want to be alone," Kylie said, hearing the door open, but not moving from the facedown position she'd landed on her bed an hour ago.

"Bad mood?" There was a bunch of meaning to Holiday's question that Kylie didn't want to think about.

"Yeah, a real piss-poor bad mood." Kylie rolled over.

"Okay." Holiday bit down on her lip. "Just remember, I'm here if you need me."

"I know," Kylie said.

At ten o'clock, there was another knock. This time, the knock sounded at her cabin front door.

"Go away," she yelled out.

A minute later, Derek walked into her bedroom without being invited.

That pissed her off even more. Then, she remembered something else that had pissed her off that she hadn't spoken with him about yet.

"Why didn't you tell me about the whole erasing thing?" she blurted out.

He dropped down on her bed. "Burnett kind of said I shouldn't tell everyone."

"Am I everyone?" she asked, and sat up, pulling her knees to her chest.

Whether it was her tone, her question, or if her mood was contagious, she didn't know, but she recognized pissed off when she saw it. And Derek was pissed off. "Maybe if you'd been more accessible to me, instead of worrying that someone might figure out you liked me, we could have spent more time talking."

"I think I've apologized for that." She hugged her shins. "Not that it means you've forgiven me," she said with a touch of sarcasm.

He shook his head. "Okay fine, so maybe I don't have a right to be mad about that."

His inflection on the word that led to her next question. "But you're mad about something, right?"

He frowned. "I shouldn't be." He ran a hand through his hair and looked at her. The deep emotional hurt that Kylie saw in his eyes chased away her own bad mood and she started to worry about him.

"What is it that you shouldn't be mad about?"

He stood up from the bed and paced across the room. "You never lied to me. Not really. And I could see you still had feelings for him. You'd feel guilty and I knew you were probably thinking about him. I knew it, because I felt it. Yet like an idiot, I kept on pursuing you, even when you refused to go out with me."

She shook her head. "You're not making sense."

He stopped walking and let go of a deep breath. Then his beautiful, warm, and still-hurting eyes met her gaze again. "I can only be mad at myself."

"For what?" she asked again, her bad mood trying to move back in.

"But what I can't get over is that you didn't tell me."

"What didn't I tell you?" She felt confused and yet ... not really. She sensed he was talking about Lucas. Not that it really mattered, because she and Lucas were history. She'd made up her mind.

Yeah, there were the dreams. And she felt the guilt creep around her again.

He waved a hand in the air. "You see, this is how you feel half the time I'm with you. Guilty." He shook his head. "Tell me it's not true. Tell me that you haven't been getting letters from him this whole time."

His question bounced around her head. "I ... I never wrote him back."

She wanted to assure Derek that she hadn't done anything wrong. But the truth hit and it hung on like a big mean dog to a bone he considered his own. If he'd been getting letters from some girl who'd kissed him, she would have been jealous. She wouldn't have liked it. Certainly not if he'd been having sexy dreams about her, too.

"Derek," she said softly, "I swear to God, I didn't mean-"