Autumn (15 page)

Weren’t bad boys supposed to be appealing? If rumor had it Cooper was no good, why didn’t that make him
more
popular?

“Excuse me,” she told Archer. “Thanks again for the beer.” He’d gotten closer while they’d been talking and was near enough he might have touched her. She took a step away.

“Sure. Don’t be a stranger.”

She didn’t reply, making a beeline across the clearing, out of the warm circle of light from the fire, and into the dark ring around the edge. Cooper watched her the whole way, his eyes unreadable in the shadows. When she was standing in front of him, he finally smiled.

“Making friends?” His voice was tight, like it hurt him to ask her that.

“People are nice.” She repeated the words she’d used with Archer.

“Be careful around him.”

“I’ve been told the same about you.”

This time he didn’t force a smile, he just nodded. “You were.”

“If I made the same snap judgments about Archer other people make about you, that would be pretty shitty of me, don’t you think?”

Cooper seemed to contemplate this, then nodded. “I guess I didn’t look at it that way.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong.” Archer
did
make her nervous, after all. “But people were wrong about you, and I’m glad I didn’t listen. I think I’ll stick to making personality calls about people on my own.” She gave him a smile so he’d know she wasn’t trying to make him feel bad, then a surge of boldness made her ask, “Out of curiosity, are you asking me to steer clear of Archer because you’re jealous?”

Cooper sputtered. “Jealous?”

“Yeah.”

“Of Archer?”

Answering a question with a question. Classic deflection. Her mom used to call her dad out on it all the time, especially when he’d been busted eating food he wasn’t supposed to. “Cookies, what cookies?” he’d ask, the front of his shirt bearing the telltale evidence of chocolate chip crumbs.

There were no crumbs on Cooper, but the way he was dodging her question made her think she was right to assume he
did
like her. The thought buoyed her, making her feel giddy and weightless.

“Should I be jealous?” he asked.

“Only if you want all the high-fives he’s getting. He’s nice enough, but he’s not my type.”

Back in California, Archer would have been her
exact
type. In fact he bore a remarkable resemblance to the last crush she’d had—tall, blond, athletic—but things had changed.

“What’s your type?” A grin settled over his lips.

“Tall. Handsome. Obnoxiously incapable of answering questions. Prone to spacing out in chemistry class. Preferably drives an ugly truck.”

“My truck isn’t ugly.”

“Man, you’re full of yourself. Out of that whole list the thing you latched on to was
ugly truck
?” Lou laughed and took a sip of her beer, still not sure if she was ever going to
like
the taste of it. She could never drink more than one, and afterwards her teeth felt like they were coated in little beer sweaters.

“I know I’m handsome,” he replied, preening. “My mom tells me so all the time.”

“You are.”

“So are you saying you like me, Lou?”

“Are you admitting you were jealous?”

“Maybe a little.”

“Then
maybe a little
right back at you.” She was proud of herself for remaining quick-witted and flirty when inside all she wanted to do was jump up and down and tell him how
much
she liked him. She wanted him to scoop her up in a big hug so she could see if he smelled as good as he seemed to across their stools in chemistry.

She wanted… She wanted… She
wanted
.

But his flirty expression vanished. “Come for a walk with me.”

Oh
. “Okay.”

What did it mean? What was this Texas-code for? She was sure he didn’t just want to walk, but she didn’t know what he was expecting to
get
out of this little jaunt. A stolen kiss? Something…else?

She liked him, but she hoped he wasn’t going to make her regret that. Cooper didn’t seem like the kind of guy to push. He’d been a perfect gentleman with her whenever they were alone. But in the back of her mind was that nagging warning everyone had offered her.

He’s bad news.

Did they all know something they weren’t telling her? Was there a secret in Cooper’s past that made everyone warn her off him? A sudden thrill of fear shuddered through her, and though she continued to follow him, she wondered if she wasn’t a lamb being led to the slaughter.

He walked into the trees, leading her farther and farther from the party until the revelry was nothing more than white noise in the background and they couldn’t see the light of the fire. In the darkness, alone with him and out of earshot, she wondered if she hadn’t made a terrible mistake.

She
was
little, after all. Almost a foot shorter than him. And he played football.

Stop being so stupid,
she scolded herself.
This isn’t some random boy who can’t be trusted. This is Cooper. Cooper is safe. Cooper is
Cooper
.

And with that the fear fled, scattered like grease from a drop of soap.

Her body relaxed, and she reached out her hand to touch his back, fearful she’d lose him in the darkness.

He stopped walking and pivoted to face her. She hadn’t withdrawn her hand, so now she was braced against his chest, looking up at him. His heart throbbed under her palm wildly, like he was as nervous as she was.

He’s going to kiss you,
her brain suggested.

Lou closed her eyes, waiting for it, which was kind of silly since it was so dark she could have kept her eyes open and the result would have been the same.

Cooper stepped closer, his hand on her shoulder, near her neck, fingers catching in her hair. He was practically pressed against her, Lou’s hand sandwiched between them, and their hearts beat in the same frenzied rhythm. The air was cool around them, but in the Cooper-and-Lou bubble it was as hot as midafternoon in July.

Her pulse kicked, thrumming in her ears to further drown out any noise from the party. They were on their own little island out here, removed from the world. Out here they could escape the opinions of everyone else, and nothing mattered except remembering to breathe and hoping this moment could last forever.

“Lou…” he whispered, his face close enough that the words felt warm across her lips. He ran his hands down her bare arms, making a path of goose bumps follow, a response that had nothing to do with being cold.

“Hi,” she replied.

“Hi.”

Cooper rested his forehead against hers, and she leaned into him, dropping her hand so there was nothing between them. She smiled, finding the smell of him to be better than she’d ever imagined. It was laundry detergent, fresh grass, and sunlight. He smelled like all the good parts of their town, and she basked in it, looping her arms around his waist so she could breathe even deeper.

He pushed her hair back off her shoulders and ran his thumbs down each side of her neck, teasing the fine hairs.

Just when she thought he might toy with her forever but never actually kiss her, his lips grazed hers. She jolted, like being shocked by static, but the kiss was perfect. His mouth was hot and tasted like peppermint gum, and when he pulled her tight against him, she felt sure she would kiss him like this forever and not care if they turned to dust in the woods, as long as she died feeling this good.

When he broke away, she let out an airy
oh
, and he pressed a kiss to the tip of her nose.

“I had to do that,” he said.

“I’m glad you did,” she replied, amazed her mouth was able to form full words.

“I wanted to do it at least once. In case I didn’t get the chance again.”

“What do you…?” Her voice trailed off when she looked over his shoulder, all words frozen on her lips when she saw the glint of eyes low to the ground.

It materialized out of the shadows like it was made from the night, and when Cooper turned, he didn’t seem surprised to see the coyote standing there.

“Lou. I want you to meet my brother.”

Chapter Nineteen

He gave her a million mental bonus points for not screaming and running back to the party.

Her hand fisted in his T-shirt, and she stepped in the opposite direction of the coyote, but she didn’t run. She
did
stare up at him like he’d spoken in a foreign language, but he could work around that. He knew confessing wouldn’t be easy, so he’d take what he could get.

“Do you want to sit down?” He eased her towards a fallen tree. She let him guide her, but her attention was locked on Jer. Her whole body trembled. “He’s not going to hurt you.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I know.”

She sat on the tree, holding tightly to his arm as if he might run off and leave her alone.

Jer padded into the small clearing and eyed them both like he wanted to bolt.

“Don’t get shy now,” Cooper scolded him. “I know you’ve been watching her.”

Jer huffed, a snorting sound somewhere between a sneeze and a growl. Cooper couldn’t be positive, but he thought the animal rolled its eyes. Instead of bolting, Jer sat back on his haunches and yawned, his pink tongue lolling. At least he was playing up the harmless aspect Cooper was trying to pitch to Lou.

“Cooper?” She clutched at him, her hand still on the sleeve of his shirt.

“Yeah?”

“What do you mean,
your brother
?”

Ah, she’d finally processed that part. He sat beside her, and Jer got bored of watching them so he lay down and put his head on crossed paws. He looked like a pet dog. Cooper was grateful to him for going light on the menace. He knew full well a coyote—however small—could still be terrifying when it bared its teeth.

This would be much easier to explain if Lou wasn’t scared out of her mind.

“You know how I told you my brother Jeremy split?”

“Yeah?”

Cooper pointed to the coyote’s prone form. “He didn’t so much run away, as he…changed.”

“Are you saying your brother is a werewolf?” Lou stared at him, openly incredulous. He couldn’t blame her for being doubtful, especially if she was thinking of this as a weird horror-movie creature feature.

“No. He’s a coyote. He doesn’t change back. He’ll never be human again. This is how he is from now on.”

Cooper wondered how much Jer understood of what they were saying. What part of the animal was still his brother? How much humanity stuck around? Would there come a point his brother vanished entirely, and all that remained was animal instinct?

He didn’t want to imagine a time he had to be afraid of what his brother had become.

“I don’t understand.”

How could she? He’d barely been able to grasp the truth of it, and he’d had over a year to process things. Maybe it was because he’d seen Jer go through it and knew what was in store for him, but he had come to a certain weird peace with the whole thing. You can’t fight inevitability. It was like trying to challenge gravity.

The world kept right on spinning, whether you wanted it to or not.

Cooper took Lou’s hand into his lap and gave her a squeeze, hoping to offer her a bit of comfort before he dropped his next bomb.

“There’s something wrong with the men in my family. Just the men. When a male in the Reynolds family turns eighteen, something happens to him, and he ends up like…that.”

“Is that what happened to your dad?”

Cooper shook his head, though he could understand her confusion, given the vanishing act his dad had pulled. “No, my dad was a Charles, not a Reynolds.”

“You have your mom’s last name?”

“Yeah, it’s a weird thing in the Reynolds family. For generations the women have kept their names. My mom was actually a pretty rare case since she got married at all. Apparently Reynolds women aren’t considered very eligible as wives.”

The hatred towards his family wasn’t new to this generation. Years and years of residents had hated them. Though his mother’s negative reaction to Lou’s family was a new twist.

“So…I’m sorry, Cooper, I really have no idea what’s happening.”

“I wish I could explain it better. My mom didn’t believe it either, she thought it was all a family urban legend when her mom told her she shouldn’t get married. Warned her
never
to have kids. She said the family was cursed, but my mom thought her uncles had just split. She didn’t have a brother, but my grandma knew the score. She must have seen it happen to her own brothers. To her nephews. I don’t know.”

Lou’s hand was cold in his, but she didn’t let go. Finally she stopped staring at Jer and looked at him instead.

“So when this happened…”

“My grandma was still alive when Jer turned. I think if she hadn’t been, my mom would have gone crazy. I mean, who wouldn’t when there oldest son wakes up one morning on four legs, covered in fur?”

“Is it a disease?”

He could see her trying to mentally Google any kind of illness that resulted in a human being turning into a coyote.
Good luck with that.
They’d done their research. There was no logical answer to Jer’s condition. The only explanation had to be supernatural, but that kind of answer was even harder to accept.

His brother had turned into an animal.

How do you find any logic in that?

“It’s not a disease. It’s something else. Something we don’t understand.”

“What did you grandma say?”

“She told my mom it was a curse.”

“A
curse
?” Her voice rose to a much higher pitch, and he wasn’t sure if it was because of fear or because she was now convinced he was insane. A few minutes earlier they’d been sharing a perfect, beautiful moment, and now he was just hoping she wouldn’t run for the hills and tell everyone he was a maniac who believed in magic.

“I’m going to tell you what my grandmother told us, and I don’t want you to accept it as gospel, because I honestly don’t
know
the truth. There aren’t any other Reynolds left for me to ask, and my grandma is dead now. All I know is this is real.” He pointed to Jer again. “That
is
my brother, and the only answer anyone had for what happened to him is what I’m about to tell you, okay?”