“After Nate Carver, I swore I’d never be defenseless in this form ever again,” I answered and his laughter stopped. “I took a self-defense course at the YMCA in Boston.”
I turned around so I could look at him and the guilt on his face made me wince.
“Came in handy, didn’t it?” I tried to make him smile, but he was having none of it.
* * * *
We left shortly after. People spilled out of the castle and down the steps to follow us to the car, most of them reaching out to touch me and tell me how bad ass I was. I wished they’d all drop dead.
“Are you mad?” I asked after fifteen straight minutes of silence as we headed back to Dublin. The rain beat down in a steady rhythm—ticking against the roof and windshield until I wanted to scream. Late afternoon traffic clogged the road. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to driving on the wrong side.
Murphy gave me a glance, as if inviting me to clarify.
“That I took a self-defense class?” I said. “You haven’t said one word since I told you I did.”
Murphy’s mouth thinned. “I’m angry you felt you had to. Angry I wasn’t there to beat the shit out of Nate Carver myself. Angry I didn’t listen when you insisted Bethany hadn’t hitched to an abortion clinic. I’m angry about a lot of things, Stanzie.”
I scrunched down in the seat and tried to make myself as small as possible.
“Did you really think for one minute I’d let your wolf face the pack alone today?” He flung me a look of betrayal. His fingers were so tight around the steering wheel they were bleached bone white.
“No. Your wolf’s always been there for mine,” I whispered.
“My wolf,” he ground out. “But not me. Not in this form. I’m never there for you when you need me, am I?”
I swallowed and tasted blood. My jaw ached like a bitch.
“Answer me,” he said with a snarl.
“What am I supposed to say? You did what you thought was best. Your intentions are always—”
“Don’t give me any crap about my intentions. You think I’m not there for you. You think I won’t be when you need me.” He slammed his palm into the steering wheel and I winced. I was petrified we’d crash.
“Tell me what you think, Stanzie!” Murphy struck the wheel again.
“I think you’d better calm down before you wreck us.” I dug my fingers into the upholstery of the seat.
“Don’t be so fucking paranoid,” he suggested, but didn’t yell or slam the wheel again.
“Look, all I did was take one class. One six-week class so if I ever got cornered again by someone bigger than me, I wouldn’t need my wolf to get me out of there.” A sob hitched in my chest. “Is that so bad?”
“I never should have left you alone that day. You could’ve made those calls from the car with me. I’m so, so sorry, Stanzie.” He took a deep breath, fighting for control.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “I’m the one who ran off without a cell phone, without telling Jossie where I was going. And, anyway, it’s over. The bad guy’s dead. Didn’t you hear Alannah? My wolf ripped his throat out.”
Murphy winced. “You handled yourself well today.”
“Bullshit. I let her goad me into a fight.”
“And she respects you a hell of lot more now than she ever did. You won’t hear her mouth flapping anymore.”
“Oh joy.” I stared out at the wet Irish countryside. It was an alien landscape far from home.
“We brawl in this pack,” Murphy told me. “I thought you knew that.”
“I may be a member, but I don’t like settling disagreements with my fists. And I don’t like it when other people do it, either.”
“There hasn’t been a good fight in this pack in months.” Murphy gave a small laugh. “You were in the last one too, as I recall.”
“You weren’t there.” I could have slapped myself. His smile dried up and his mouth got small and tense.
“That’s becoming a running theme with me, isn’t it?” he asked.
“I only meant you didn’t see it. I wasn’t in the fight, I just brought an end to it. Paddy and Declan were the ones fighting.”
I remembered the rage that had ripped through me when I’d seen Paddy’s throat dripping blood from the piece of glass Declan Byrne clutched in his cheating hands. If there was one thing I hated worse than a fist fight, it was a fight where one person fought dirty and used a weapon when the other person had nothing.
“He would have had a scar on his face after that fight,” I whispered. If he’d lived.
“I really don’t want to talk about him, Stanzie.” Murphy looked ready to bail out of the speeding car.
I knuckled a tear from the corner of my eye. Of course not. I wasn’t Fee or anyone else in the goddamn pack. He was probably sick of talking about Paddy. But who did I have to talk about him with? Why did I always have to keep my grief to myself? I guessed I should be used to it. I’d done it when Grey and Elena died, so why should Paddy be any different?
“I thought the pack bond was supposed to make things better,” I said bitterly.
“It’s not a fucking cure, Stanzie.” Exasperated, Murphy drove a hand through his hair.
Something inside me snapped. “Maybe if somebody would bother to tell me what the fuck it is instead of what it isn’t, I wouldn’t make stupid assumptions like that, would I? It won’t control you, Stanzie. It won’t fuck you up. It won’t hurt your wolf. It won’t make you feel better about the mess of your life and it won’t cure a damn thing. What the fuck good is it then?” I drove my fist into the side window and welcomed the wallop of pain.
“I’m sorry your life is such a mess. That’s what you get for coming here. I tried to keep you out of it, but no, you had to come chasing after me,” Murphy snarled.
“Yeah, just another example of how you protect me by abandoning me like garbage. I love how you get to decide how my life is going to go. Because yours is so fucking great, everyone wants to be you, don’t they?” I snorted.
“You want to be abandoned? You want to be left on the side of the road like garbage?” Murphy twisted the wheel and the car slid across two lanes to the shoulder while cars already in those lanes blared their horns.
I wrapped my arms around my head and stopped breathing—waiting for the accident. I’d go out the same way Grey and Elena had. And this crash would be my fault too.
I didn’t want to live if Murphy didn’t. Fate could not be so cruel as to kill Murphy and leave me alive. Not again.
Murphy’s harsh breathing and the relentless pound of the rain gradually alerted me to the fact we weren’t moving and we hadn’t crashed. Not even close.
Billy Idol’s White Wedding played in my head. Elena’s scream choked off. The wet snap of her neck. Grey reaching out to me as he was sucked out the yawning door. The Mustang flipping over the guard rail, sheering off the top of the small tree. Crash, the shriek of tortured metal, the deafening silence when it was over.
When I could look at him, Murphy was slumped over the wheel, forehead braced against it, fingers white knuckled around the steering column. His heart was as loud as his breathing.
I found the door handle and yanked on it. The damn door wouldn’t open at first, until I remembered it was locked. The roar of the rain