Cry Wolf (Wolves of Angels Rest #7)(17)

They didn’t move for awhile, just waited, lip to lip, breathing each other and the night. Remembering it, Willow still tasted the innocence, the waning of the gentle spring with the lusty heat of a Georgia summer yet to come.

After a bit, Daniel had gotten up and pulled her to her feet. “Okay. You caught me. Now I get to be the hunter.”

Which seemed fair enough to her, so she took off running, her always untied sneaker laces flapping, her spine and backside wet from the fragile reeds.

She knew she wasn’t as fast as him, so as soon as they were deep in the woods, she doubled back toward the river. She’d noticed from the start that Danny, fast and strong though he was, liked comic books more than the rough and tumble escapades that ruled their after-school world. And he was particularly hesitant around water. She skidded to a halt in the muck and jumped up onto one of the flatter rocks jutting out into the river. She had kicked out of her sneakers and stripped down to her underpants just as Daniel emerged from the trees.

“Wait,” he said.

“Hunter can’t tell the prey to wait,” she said. “You gotta catch me for real.”

She cannonballed into the water.

The river, so familiar with its flashing trout and cheerful gurgles during the day, was both scarier and more enticing at night. She surfaced to find Daniel pacing frantically on the shore, his hair looking wilder than ever.

“C’mon in,” she called. “The water is freezing cold!”

“Wendy, get out of there.”

“You chicken?” she mocked. “Bock-bock!”

“I’m not a chicken,” he hollered. “I’m a—” He visibly reined himself in. “I’m coming to get you.”

Clad only in his tighty-whities, he waded into the water, gasping as the cold flow reached his undies.

“Better to jump in all at once,” she told him, all worldly-wise. “Doesn’t hurt as much.”

“I don’t know how to swim,” he said through gritted teeth.

“What?” She flailed upright in the water. “Then get out, dummy.”

“A hunter never gives up.”

“If he’s gonna drown he does.” She floated over onto her back, staring up at the stars. “Go on. Go back to the rock.”

When there was no answer, she glanced over. And saw nothing but bubbles.

Shrieking his name, she dove, then dove again, her arms combing the black water.

On her third dive, a hand locked around her wrist and pulled her up.

Danny smirked at her, his wild hair barely tamed by the good soaking. “Gotcha.”

She splashed water at him, too relieved to be angry. They clambered out onto the rock, shivering like crazy.

Even once they were dressed, the spring night was chilly. Daniel wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and her quaking eased.

“I wish you didn’t have to leave,” she said.

“Me too.”

“Maybe you’ll come back next summer.”

“Maybe.”

On their walk back home, when they hopped over the sagging barbed wire fence marking the property, her untied laces tangled in the top wire and the barbs scraped bloody furrows down both her knees. Daniel scratched his palms getting her free and left his smudged, dark fingerprints all over her wounds as he tried to stop the bleeding.

“That ain’t nothing,” she said, grabbing his hands to stop his fretting. “I still got scars from the last time I went shooting bottles.”

He finally settled down. “Geez, bottles can’t even get away.” Then he squeezed her hands. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Well, too bad that wire didn’t feel the same.” She got up, hauling him with her. “C’mon. We can hose off behind the trailer.”

She lifted their joined muddy, bloody hands. “Look, it’s like we’re making a blood oath.”

“I swear I’ll come back and catch you again,” he said with a grin.

“Ha. I swear you better be a better hunter by then.”

They walked the rest of the way hand in hand.

And she’d never seen him again.

Until she picked him out of an alley in the dead of night.

“A very small world,” she murmured.

No wonder she’d been so comfortable with him from the moment he’d walked under the streetlight. He’d been the first boy she ever kissed under the moonlight.

“You two knew each other a couple decades ago and halfway across the country?” Betsy shook her head. “In my world of fake online psychics, we have a technical term for that. We call it…highly unlikely.”

Willow huffed out a laugh. “Actually, it doesn’t surprise me. As many miles as are on that van, sometimes it seems like I’ve never gone anywhere, and I always end up back where I start. I think it’s because I repeat the damn chorus so many times.”

“Plus there was that blood oath,” Daniel said, his voice strangely flat.

He remembered that too? She gave him a little smile, unable to think of him anymore as Daniel. Diesel fit him better, the same way the black T-shirts he seemed to favor now would have drowned the scrawny boy he’d been.

Although for some reason, she could still picture him in a Wolfman tee.

“A blood oath?” Betsy frowned.