Wolf's Wife (Monstrous Hearts #1)

Chapter Six

The next morning, Magdalene returned, dark eyes burning with an inner light. Guilt bit at Alice as Magdalene kissed her enthusiastically, and she was surprised by the taste of clove cigarettes. A new thing.

"This place looks even more bumfuck." Magdalene draped herself in the armchair by the lit fireplace, eyeing the bowl of rising dough placed near the hearth. "Looks like you tried to fix it up while you were stuck here."

"I did. How'd things go with Rob and Darby?"

"If you wanted to know, you should've come with me."

Alice felt the old strain settle into her, diminishing her smile into a weak twitch of her lips. "How's writing, then?"

"Mind-blowing. I've filled up half of this since last night." She waved the Moleskine notebook at Alice, flashing that wicked smile Alice remembered so well.

Weight lifted from Alice as she clapped her hands together, rushing over to the chair. "That's amazing!"

Magdalene just smiled again, preening like a cat as Alice ran fingers through her hair.

"Are you going to read some to me tonight? Or should I read to you?" Alice remembered how in the early days of their relationship, while Magdalene was still writing The Chrysalis, Alice would read finished chapters out loud while Magdalene listened, making adjustments in her copy of the manuscript.

"No." Magdalene tucked the journal by her side and lit up a cigarette. "I'm doing things differently. It'll all be different. You'll see. For one thing, we're going to stay here while I work on Vivication — the sequel, I'm working on the actual fucking sequel."

Alice nodded, the hope that something had changed mingling with the fear that it hadn't. But she forced a smile on her face while watching the light from the fire flicker over Magdalene's dreamy face.

She went to bed before Magdalene, the sheets cold around her. Guilt pulsed in her like a growing thing, a malignant tumor feeding on her regret and her rising surety that she had made the wrong decision. Life tried to settle around her as it once had, but the seams no longer fit together neatly. The shape of the outline was no longer her shape.

She tried to make it fit, anyway, when Magdalene came to bed, now smelling like cloves and wine. But Magdalene offered nothing more than another kiss, rolling away and settling into the mattress for nothing more than sleep. Alice blinked, fingers finding Magdalene's shoulder. "Sweetheart?"

"No sex while I'm in the middle of a big scene, remember? It puts more tension in the words when I don't let myself come."

"Oh." Alice did remember. While moving back to her side of the bed, she also remembered it had bothered her much less before than it did now. Or maybe she had been less willing to admit discontent.

As Magdalene's breathing slowed into the rhythm of sleep, Alice stared at the ceiling, fingers tangling together as the darkness seemed to press in all around her.

On the third day of Magdalene's return, Alice noticed cigarette butts beginning to overflow the coffee cans used as ashtrays. The gleam in Magdalene's eyes turned feverish, but she kept writing in her moleskine journal, sitting by a window whenever the sun was allowed to show through the clouds.

That afternoon, Alice started to paint with her half-drunk cup of coffee.

"Not me," said Magdalene, putting on her shades.

The tip of the brush wavered on the paper as Alice hesitated. "No. The wine bottle on the counter."

When Magdalene didn't say anything, Alice kept painting. Later, while serving the lemon chicken piccata she'd made for dinner, Alice found Magdalene looking at the painting.