The phone brought Hannah out of a deep sleep. The first thing she noticed was that Hunter was not there.
The second thing she noticed was that the clock said five.
She picked up the receiver, and, before she could even say hello, her mother said, “Hannah, he moved his eyelids.”
“Dad?”
“Yes! Last night. Right after ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.’ It was very late or I would have called you, but this morning I said to myself, This is the kind of news that can’t wait.”
“Mom, slow down. Take a deep breath…now, tell me everything from the beginning.”
Her mother told her about putting the music box on his pillow and sitting up all night in case Michael woke up.
“What does the doctor say?”
“He’s cautiously optimistic.”
“I’ll drive down this afternoon.”
“What about Hunter?”
“I have good news, too. He’s talking.”
“In complete sentences?”
Hannah laughed. “I don’t see what’s so funny about that.”
“Sorry, Mom, I’m not laughing at you. I’m just happy, that’s all. He’s very articulate. Remember, he has a brain that would be the envy of Einstein.”
“I’m happy for you, darling, but I don’t want you to come.”
“Why not? Hunter will be fine here alone for a few hours. I have to start doing it sometime, and it might as well be now.”
“I know this is going to sound selfish, but I don’t want any of my children here.”
“If you’re trying to protect us because you think it might be a false alarm, forget it, Mom.”
“I told Daniel not to come, too. And I’m going to tell Emily the same thing… Hannah, I want to be alone with him when he wakes up.”
A few weeks ago Hannah would have argued, but that was before she’d met Hunter. Now she understood her mother’s reasoning. A heart-connection such as her parents’ was a beautiful, private thing, almost sacred. Their reunion should not be shared.
“I understand, Mom. Call me the minute Dad wakes up, no matter what time it is.”
As soon as Hannah hung up, she grabbed her robe and went in search of Hunter. He was on the front porch curled in a wool blanket asleep on the floor.
She started tiptoeing across the porch, but the minute her foot hit the planks his eyes flew open.
“I didn’t mean to wake you up.” She knelt beside him, and he pulled her into the cocoon of blanket.
“Did you really think you could sneak up on me?”
She laughed. “Silly, wasn’t it?”
“You’re never silly, Hannah.”
“Hunter…you miss Denali, don’t you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Is that why you’re sleeping out here?”
“Sometimes I feel trapped inside. Besides, luxury is making me soft.”
“Not that I’ve noticed.”
Laughing, he slid his hands under her robe and traced a line of fire down her inner thighs. Heat licked along her skin and she melted. It amazed her that one touch from him could do that.
There were plans to make, things to say. She couldn’t keep getting sidetracked.
“We have to talk,” she said.
“We will.” He shifted, then caught her taut nipple between his teeth and began a gentle tugging.
“We really have to talk.”
“Go ahead, I’m listening.”
His tongue flicked in hot little circles, and even as she said, “I mean it,” she wove her fingers through his hair and pulled him closer.
“I’m so easy,” she murmured.
“I’m so glad.”
He lifted the blanket over them, and they didn’t come out for a long, long time.
They were in the kitchen finishing breakfast. Hunter chuckled when she gave him a soft dreamy look over the rim of her coffee cup.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’re easy to read.”
“I like to think of myself as inscrutable.”
“You’re not. You never have been. I could read you the first time I ever saw you.”
Hannah was not the blushing kind, and it always surprised and delighted him when she did.
“Anyone could have read me. What I was thinking was perfectly obvious.”
He remembered the firelight on her skin, the crisp cold air and the pull of the moon. He remembered the quickening of his pulse, the rush of passion and the howl that rose in his throat.
Instinctively he’d suppressed it. Instinctively he’d known…what? That she would change his life forever? That life as he knew it would cease?
The prospect both excited and terrified him. He must not let his terror show. The wolves had taught him that. If he could keep the lessons of the wild, he would be all right. He would survive.
But was it enough for him merely to survive? Once he would have said yes. Now he had no answers. Only questions.
“Let’s talk outside,” he said.
She understood that this talk needed to be made in his territory, not hers. She understood that the things they would say would surely end their idyll in the woods and that he needed to be free when he said them and not confined between four walls that sometimes felt like a prison. All these things she knew.
And yet part of her rebelled. Part of her wanted to crawl back under the blanket and lose herself once more in the pleasures of the flesh. The world’s greatest panacea.
She wanted to live in her pink cocoon of love and never come out. Instead she said, “All right,” then took his hand and followed him out the door and through the woods. He didn’t stop until he came to the bluff overlooking the river.
Even then she couldn’t talk about the thing that was on her heart, on her mind. She couldn’t bear to say the word, future. She had to hold onto the present a little longer.
“I think my dad’s waking up.”
“That’s good news, Hannah. Will you go to see him?”
“Not yet.”
“You can go. I won’t leave.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
A breeze lifted her hair and whipped underneath her sweater. Hannah wrapped her arms around herself, but it wasn’t the wind that made it cold: it was the idea of losing Hunter. It wasn’t the simple fact that he no longer held her hand; it was the terrifying realization that she’d almost finished her job and now she had to let him go. She had to give him a chance to claim his birthright and make his own way in the world.
I don’t want to.
The truth whispered through her mind. Of course she didn’t want to, but unless she set him free the teacher/ protector would become the jailer; the safe haven would become a prison.
“I think you are ready to face society,” she said.
“I know.”
“I don’t plan to toss you out and see if you sink or swim. I thought I would introduce you to my family first, do a sort of test run.”
“And if I pass the test?”
“For starters I think we should look up the Wolfes and announce that you are alive…before we notify the news media.”
“I think that’s a sound plan.”
“Good.”
They both faced the river. Why didn’t he look at her? Why didn’t he touch her?
“You said we. Does that mean you’ll be with me when I announce that I didn’t die in the plane crash that killed my parents?”
Hannah crammed her hands in her pockets. “I’ll be there.”
“For how long?”
Finally he turned, and she could no more resist the pull of his gaze than she could resist him.
“For as long a you want me.…”
The silence stretched for miles, and then he pulled her into his arms.
“I want you, Hannah.”