Wildfire

Chapter 6

6. Wake

When I finally peeled my eyes open the next morning, sunlight was streaming through a crack in the curtains and the alarm clock on the nightstand blinked, 7:34 a.m.

For a moment, all I could do was moan softly and press the heels of my palms into my eyes, willing my headache to subside. I was exhausted – both physically and mentally – despite the hours of sleep that I'd stolen before my nightmare and after, and a part of me just wanted to lie here forever, wrapped up in warmth and the smell of earthy boy.

Another part of me, however, was still freaking the hell out.

Everything, from the shooting to Diego suggesting that I sleep in his bed, crashed through my brain in high definition. As tempting as it was to pass off the latter half of the night as a very weird and arousing dream, the faint throb of pain along the length of my neck told me otherwise.

I brushed the tips of my fingers over the angry, slightly raised skin and exhaled slowly.

"Paige, I'm a werewolf."

The words reverberated around my head and in the cold light of morning, I struggled to make sense of them. When I was thirteen, I had stumbled across a late-night documentary about the wives of serial killers. When the interviewer asked one woman how she could love a man who mutilated the bodies of his victims and strung them up like trophies in his garage, she simply replied, "I don't go inside the garage."

In a strange and demented way, I realized I could empathize with her. I was aware of Diego's superhuman healing capabilities, his superior sense of smell, and his hearing, but I'd never seen him... change. My sanity had begun to hinge on that tiny fact; as long as I didn't see him running around as some sort of furry animal, I could ignore the other anomalies.

I'd always been good at avoiding unpleasant things.

I heaved off the covers with a sigh and climbed out of the bed. I made up the bed as quickly as I could; the polite, irrational part of my brain reasoned that it would be rude not to repay him in kind after he'd let me sleep in his bed. I sincerely doubted I was comfortable enough to try out his version of favour repayments.

I padded down the hallway, my footsteps slowing as I approached the door to the living room.

I could hear the sound of soft, even snores emanating from the room, and when I peeked my head around the corner, my heart fluttered uneasily in my chest.

Diego was sprawled out across the sofa, one arm flung over his face and the other dangling off the side of the sofa. There was a thin, threadbare quilt covering the lower half of his body, but he'd obviously tried to kick it off at some point during the night. His chest rose and fell periodically, in tune with his snoring.

The whole wolf-thing makes so much sense, I found myself thinking as I tiptoed inside. A guy that good-looking has to have some sort of damage. At least he's into girls...

I rolled my eyes.

Diego must have put our clothes into the tumble dryer at some point during the night. When I pulled out my clothes, they were stain-free and almost warm, like they hadn't been resting there long. With one eye on the sofa, my ears peeled for any sort of change in Diego's snores, I quickly stripped off the clothes he'd given me last night and changed into my own. The fact that my sweater had survived the blood-soaking was a small miracle; the thought of facing the cold outside with only my coat for warmth was not welcome thought.

I folded Diego's t-shirt and boxers and left them on the countertop.

It felt... wrong, just leaving the apartment, but the thought of conversing with him in the daylight felt worse. I didn't think I could handle having a mundane conversation with him when all my brain would be thinking about was what would happen if he spontaneously changed, and what colour his fur was, and if he barked, and –