Predictably, Simone makes a big production of needing to be helped everywhere she goes, even though the swelling in her knee has disappeared, and despite how she doesn't actually look like she's in much pain. Poor Seth has to follow her around toting her things and letting her lean against him while she pretends to be off balance. Which is probably why he rushes off to the ski slope the second he's out of class Monday and skips Calculus to go straight there on Tuesday.
Also predictably, Warren is back to staring at me from afar. That bothers me a lot more than Simone's behavior.
He's the teacher's assistant in my camouflage and flight class, just like in tracking, but this instructor chooses to let me struggle behind the freshmen in peace, without inflicting Warren with the odious task of tutoring me. That leaves him free to alternate at will between ignoring me and glaring at me without having to bother with pretending to be civil.
Yet... Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I can swear I see him smiling at me, laughing when I'm silly and nodding in approval when I get something right. But he always stops before I can focus on him. Always.
He would probably frown at my senselessness if he saw me now, standing at the top of my first blue slope on Thursday afternoon. Or at the top of the slope that would be my first blue if I were actually good enough to survive going down it, I should say. I could have sworn I was ready to move on to tackle intermediates, but I didn't realize how steep they are.
Clearly, my fantastic ski instructor was off her rocker to suggest I should come up here. I'll have to tell her after I walk down.
“Need help, kit?” Seth glides to a rest beside me and gives me a heart-stopping grin.
I stifle a sigh. Not only am I standing here like a nitwit, but here is between a lift and the slopes my friends do. Like I wasn't humiliated enough without people I know seeing me. “Yeah,” I mutter. “Is there a green way down?”
“Green?” He shakes his head. “No, not from here. But that's an easy blue.”
“Which is not the same thing as being an easy slope.” I twist around, looking for my binding release.
“What are you doing?” Squinting at me, he looks absolutely bewildered.
“What do you think?” I roll my eyes. “I'm taking my skis off so I can walk down this stupid cliff.”
He laughs, and suddenly, I like him a lot less than I usually do. “You can do this slope. I bet you could even do it with your eyes closed.”
Yeah, right. I can't even manage to get my stupid foot out of my stupid binding.
“You can follow me. Go where I go. You'll be fine.”
Biting my lip in consideration, I stop messing with my ski. It'd be embarrassing to have to walk down. Not to mention the fact it will be tiring and painful and will take a very long time. I'm already half frozen; can I even handle staying out here long enough to trek to the base?
“Trust me, kit.”
I look into the most wonderful eyes in the world and feel myself nod.
Seth grins. “Great.”
Glancing at the slope, he turns around and creeps towards the lip.
“What are you doing?” it's my turn to ask.
Slowly, he slides downhill for a few feet. “Showing you the way to the kiddie slopes.”
“Backwards?”
The laugh is gentle. “Don't worry about me, worry about you.” He pauses. “No, don't worry about you either. Just keep your eyes on me, and you'll go where I go, alright?”
Lovely. I'm stuck on the side of a mountain, freezing to death, with a madman. “Sure,” I grumble.
Locking my eyes onto his, I hope he's not overconfident in me.
His eyes move further away and with a yip of dismay, I dig my poles into the snow to push off after him.
“It's alright,” he calls up, starting a wide turn.
I watch his eyes... And I turn!
He leads me in a lazy snake downhill, taking up the whole slope with a traverse pattern that keeps our speed slower than what I would do on an easier slope.
“See?” He reaches an arm around my waist when I pass him at the very bottom. “I told you so.”
“You did,” I admit, my heart racing from either the thrill of getting down or from being held. The difficulty I'm having breathing is almost certainly all Seth's fault.
His eyes are very close to me now. Very, very close.
“Go again?” he asks, his tone light, but his expression seeming to hold the promise of something that isn't at all related to skiing.
“Sure,” I whisper.
The wind hits me when he pulls away, but I'm strangely warm despite it. Even sitting on the lift fails to chill me, not with Seth so close beside me. Our bodies almost, though not quite, touch. The gap between us seems to thrum with energy.
Riding a lift has never been half this interesting before.
We take the slope he found me on another three times before heading into the coffee shop. The first time, he lets me gaze into his eyes again, but the other two he actually forces me to go first. He says some helpful things though, and I have more fun than I have any other day I've skied here.
No one bothers us while we sip coffee together. And even more luckily when Seth offers me a ride back down, no leopards appear to steal my seat. I thank him before hitting the shower back at school. I wash as quickly as I can, eager to head to dinner. But as I'm debating if I'm brave enough to try to sit with Seth or not, my landline rings.
“Hello?” I answer, confused. I just talked to my dad last night, and no one else has called me since I've been here. Possibly because I didn't bother giving anyone else the number.
“Michaela!” comes a hysterical sob.
Shoulders slumping, I resign myself to the possibility of missing dinner. “Hey, Mom. What's wrong?”
“It's Grandma.”
For a half a second, I think my grandmother is dead. It doesn't upset me half as much as I feel it should.
But then my mom goes on, “She's threatening not to come if we have an open bar!”
Oh, good grief. Another wedding crisis. I sit in my desk chair and pull my feet up onto the seat. “Why?”
“She says it will just encourage people to drink,” Mom whimpers.
Um... Isn't that the point of having an open bar?
“She says alcohol is sinful,” Mom goes on. “And I'd be playing into the devil's hands.”
“That sounds like Grandma.” I can't say I'm surprised either. Every time I see her, she tries to give me a new pamphlet about how my entire generation is evil. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy she has a religion that makes her happy. I just wish she'd stop using it to make everyone else miserable.
“I knew she wouldn't approve. But not coming at all?” She sobs. “And Chaz says there's no way he's giving in to her.”
Mark it down in the record books, I seem to be agreeing with my future step-dad on something. “It's your wedding, Mom. And Chaz's. It's not hers.”
“But I want her there!” Mom whines.
“I know.” Closing me eyes, I take a deep breath. “She's probably bluffing. Like when she swore to cut you off if you got divorced.”
Which is when I stopped talking to the old bat. I wasn't happy about the break-up either, but Mom didn't deserve to be treated like that by her own mother. By Dad, sure. But not by her mom.
“Maybe...” She doesn't sound like she believes me, but I can't hear her crying anymore.
“You really think she's going to give up the chance to feel all superior to Chaz's family?” I ask.
Mom laughs. “True.”
“And now she can tell all her friends how awful her daughter's fiancé is because he's willing to let his friends drink Scotch.”
“She'll enjoy that...”
At least we're able to laugh about it.
“Michaela?” The timidity in Mom's voice makes me nervous. “Do you think you could ask your dad to talk to her? She's always listened to him.”
“Mom...” Does she not see how awkward that would be for me? Does she actually expect me to call Dad up and ask him to smooth over the wedding arrangements of a woman whom I'm pretty sure he's still in love with? Does she just not realize how he feels, or is she really that insensitive?
“Please?”
“No, Mom.” I feel bad about it, but if I have to chose which parent's emotions to be worried about, I'm siding with my dad. “Leave Daddy out of it.”
“Alright. I have to go.”
And just like that, I'm dismissed.
My appetite gone, I curl up in bed with Leo and my English assignment. Nothing will put a person to sleep faster than depression and Dickens.
Mom might not need me if I'm not actively helping her, but my new friends here do. The Foxes have me cheered up within the first minutes of breakfast. The happy mood sticks until I make it to hunting and find myself alone with Warren again.
“I saw you with Seth yesterday.”
“And?” I follow him through the forest. He's supposed to be finding tracks for me to look at, but he doesn't seem to be paying much attention to the ground.
“He's not a trained instructor, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.” Chuckling softly, I dunk under a branch. “I kind of got in over my head, and he helped me out.” I shrug. “Then he hung around to help me out some more.”
A grunt is all the response I expect to get, and the only one I do receive for about two minutes. Then Warren suddenly asks, “You ever tried boarding?”
Stumbling a little, I answer hesitantly, “No. I've never gotten around to it.”
My guide stops and looks down at me, his eyes unreadable. “Would you like to?”
Would I like to snowboard? “Sure.”
He blinks ever so slowly. “Now?”
“Now?” I repeat, startled. “We're in the middle of class.”
Looking around, Warren raises his eyebrows meaningfully.
No one's going to notice if we take off now. There's no one to see us. And if they do notice, no one's going to worry. It's not like Warren is going to get lost in his home territory.
Still... Do I really want to leave with Warren? I can't even tell if he's being Nice Warren or not.
On the other hand, I'm already alone with the guy and pretty far away from the others. So... “Yeah, alright.”
My stomach rolls at the boldness, but the grin Warren gives me more than makes up for any discomfort.
Although two hours and uncountable falls later, I'm seriously second-guessing how much discomfort that grin was worth. Particularly as Warren keeps bouncing between his nice mode, which I am growing rather fond of, and his freaky mode, of which I am not in the least bit appreciative. The wolf needs medication.
“What are you so scared of?” he asks.
Squinting at him, I accept his hand to get up. “What do you mean?”
He pulls me to my feet, then waves at the slope. “You get scared, you panic, and you fall. Why?”
Um... I stare at him. “Because I'm careening out of control?”
An eyebrow goes up and the rest of his face scrunches in disbelief. “Careening down the bunny slope?”
“Beginners' Area,” I correct, feeling a sulk come on.
“Michaela, you're a were.” His tone is steady, but his eyes are reasonably kind. “If you break your neck, it will hurt for a few days. If you gripe enough, you can probably make people carry your books for you. You're not going to die on anything groomed.”
Nice not to die. But extreme pain doesn't sound fun either. “I don't have the full benefits package yet.”
Warren rolls his eyes. “You're on the bunny slope, Michaela!”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
He was all puffed up to escalate our argument, but he slumps in confusion at the question. “What?”
“Everyone else calls me Mike. My mom is the only person who has ever called me Michaela.”
I leave out the fact people also tend to do it when they're angry. It would be too easy, and typical, of him just to say he's always angry with me.
Shifting uncomfortably and keeping his eyes on the snow, Warren shrugs. “If I agree to call you Mike, will try a real slope?”
“A green one?”
A soft laugh shifts the mood again. “Your pick even.”
I stick my hand out. “Deal.”
He shakes the hand, then holds onto it so he can start my motion toward the lift, letting go once I get going, but then grabbing me again when I threaten to fall at the lift loading area.
How can it be so hard to stop a snowboard? Only one foot is attached to it when you're not going downhill, so the other can go wherever it wants. It should be a snap to stop. It is for everyone who isn't me.
“You're over-thinking your balance,” Warren explains, even though I don't ask him about it. He helps me get on the lift, pulling down the little bar even though he made fun of me wanting the one on the last lift. Most humans don't bother pulling down the safety bar, let alone super-healing weres. “You need to start listening to your instincts.”
“My instincts tell me to go home,” I mutter gloomily, making him laugh for some reason.
We go the rest of the way up without speaking, and Warren follows me quietly to the slope I picked out. He doesn't say anything until after I've spent at least a minute surveying the thing in dismay.
“Go.” The command is amused, but firm.
Looking down the slope, I hear myself whimper.
“You ski this slope,” he points out with annoying calm.
“I'm not on skis!” I protest. “This isn't the same.”
Letting out a hefty sigh, Warren shakes his head. “You can walk if you'd rather.”
My eyes narrow at him. “You're not qualified to teach this, are you?”
“I never said I was.” He flashes me a smile. It's not as good as the grin that got me here, but it does make me shiver less. He gives me a gentle look. “If you go first, I can help you up when you fall. If you come behind me, you'll be on your own.”
I puff up. “You mean if I fall.”
“No.” He grins. “I mean when you fall.”
My teeth grit together.
Why I am letting him goad me like this? It's not as if it's a mark of shame to lose one's balance the first day of snowboarding. In fact, it was pretty darn ambitious to leave the bunny slope, whatever Warren's making out.
“You still have the reflexes of a human,” the wolf commiserates. “It's not your fault you can't balance any better than a drunken monkey. Don't feel bad about it. I'll help you get up when you inevitably sprawl to the ground.”
With a growl and a hop, I start down. Warren's laughter follows tight on my heels.
It is not the world's best run by any stretch of the imagination, but I do manage to get all the way to the bottom before I sprawl onto the snow. And I only do that because I'm not very good at stopping yet, and the area has gotten kind of crowded.
Warren absolutely beams at me.
“Damn you, wolf!” I yell up at him. “You did that on purpose!”
He's grinning as he helps me up. “It worked, didn't it?”
I move to smack his shoulder with a playful sort of swat, but lose my balance. If it wasn't for him lashing out to grab my arm, the same one that was trying to hit him, I would fall.
His hand wraps around my wrist as I lean towards his body.
His scent flows over me.
His eyes, wide and filled with something unnameable, search mine.
He drops my arm, slides down the hill a bit and informs me he needs to go to work.
“Alright,” I mumble, feeling lost.
The board is somehow off of his feet, and he's walking towards the lodge.
Miffed, I bend over to release my boots, knocking myself off balance again and falling face first onto the snow.
“Stay still!”
Out of nowhere, Seth is here, working to free my legs from their board of bondage. “Serves you right for messing with the powers of darkness.”
“What?” I blink stupidly. “Warren?”
“No.” The leopard laughs. “Snowboarding.”
Free of the dark power, I roll over and accept the hand Seth offers to help me to my feet. “Why is it I'm always having to save you?”
Softly, I harrumph with as much dignity as I can muster. “Being grateful for help is different from actually needing rescue.”
Seth smiles. “True. You clearly have no need of me whatsoever.”
“Clearly,” I agree. But I grin immediately afterwards so he'll know I don't mean it.
Bending over, he grabs the board. “Rental?”
“Yeah.” I make a grab for it. “But you don't have to carry it.”
“Already doing it.” Easily dodging my attempt at reclaiming the board, he starts towards the rental shop, leaving me to trudge along behind him.
“So, is Warren planning on taking you back to school, or did he really just abandon you here?” There's something I can't pin down in his voice. Something tense lurking below the easy-going surface. One of those prospects seems to upset him, but I can't tell which one.
“I don't know,” I answer honestly. “He said earlier he'd take me home before he went to work, but then he just stomped off for no reason.”
“He had a reason,” Seth assures me. “Warren always has a reason. It's just usually not a reason a sane person would understand.”
“You know...” I draw out as we walk into the rental building. “I can't really tell if you two like each other or not.”
Seth gives the board to the attendant and comes to sit beside me as I take off the boots. “Well, cats and dogs frequently get along. But deep down, they're cats and dogs.”
Oh. “I hadn't thought of it like that.” I struggle to get the first boots off, so Seth moves in front of me to pull it off. He moves onto the other boot without giving me a chance to fight it.
“That's because you still like to pretend we're human.” He looks steadily up at me. “We aren't human, Mike.”
“We're not our animals either.”
Sadly, his head shakes. “I'm not as sure of that as you are.”
I slip on my sneakers while Seth takes the boots over to the counter. Quietly thanking him, I walk out the door wondering if I have been left up here or not.
“There he is.” Seth jerks his chin to a form lounging moodily on the corner of the lodge closest to the parking lot. “You know, if you'd like to stay longer...”
I give a serene smile. “I've figured out what I morph into, Seth.”
He jerks to complete attention, eyes bright.
“A popsicle.”
It takes about a second for him to realize that was a joke.
Smiling sheepishly, he lets out a sigh. “Go curl up by the fire, you house kitten.”
“Meow!”