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“I don’t want to be loved just because I smell right.”
“Well, you do smell fantastic. And I do love you,” he promised me. “Not because you smell right. I love you because you’re funny and smart, and you don’t know the meaning of the word ‘quit.’ ‘Common sense’ and ‘self-preservation’ are also terms I would like you to look up. I love you because you’re stubborn and insanely smart and willing to get into fistfights with strippers to help someone out. I love you because you’re so much stronger than you think you are. I love that you can only eat waffles if there is an equal amount of butter and syrup in each square. I love the way you can only sleep if you have a toe sticking out from under the blanket. I hate that you feel like you can’t trust me, but I understand that I’m the one who made you feel that way.”
“Well, that’s awfully generous of you,” I grumbled.
“Don’t you have anything you would like to say to me?”
“Not that you would want to hear,” I retorted. I hated the hurt expression that crossed his face, but I wasn’t willing to try to make Caleb feel better or tell him that I loved him. Wanting to hurt him in some way felt like a reasonable thing.
Caleb reached up to touch my shoulder. I moved away, which seemed to deflate him. He slumped against the side of the bed. “So what now?”
“I need time to think,” I told him. “I have a whole other life set up for me. I’m not sure where. That’s why I had to come to Anchorage, to get the papers and money I needed to get started.”
If it was possible, Caleb went even paler. “Tina, no.”
“I’m not saying that I’m definitely going to take it. I just need some time to think about everything.”
“Everything?”
“Your lies. My lies. Glenn. The werewolf factor. Everything. I can only deal with so much.”
“OK.” He nodded slowly and got to his feet. I stood, wanting to keep us on the same level. He turned to the closet and threw on a shirt. I watched as he moved around the room, collecting his laptop, toiletries, and clothes. It only took him a few minutes.
A strange sense of desperation came over me as he slid into his coat. Don’t let him go, you idiot! a little voice in my head commanded. Stop him. Go with him. Something! Don’t just stand there! Instead, I stood stone-faced by the bed.
“I’m going back to the valley,” he said. “You stay here in this hotel under your assumed name for the next week. When no one shows up looking for you in that time, you’ll know that I’m on your side. When no one shows up, I will find a way to get you back to the valley. Hell, Suds will probably come pick you up. I’d rather it be me, but I figure that would interfere with your ‘space’ thing.”
I nodded slowly. It was a fair plan. It gave me an out. But that didn’t mean I was happy to see him leave. He went to the safe to retrieve the cash. He counted out a large stack of twenty-dollar bills and put them on the dresser.
“You don’t have to do that,” I protested.
“You’re going to need cash,” he reminded me.
“You don’t have to do that because I already took eight hundred from the stash.”
His eyebrows winged up, and despite the exceedingly crappy situation, I could see the barest hint of a smile quirk the corners of his mouth. “Well, keep that, too. You’ll need it.” He cleared his throat. “If you decide . . . not to join me, will you stay in Alaska?”
“I don’t think I should tell you that.”
“Well, if you run again—”
“Don’t call it running,” I snapped.
Caleb shifted from one foot to the other. “Either way, I’m going to send Schuna a report stating that I’ve come to a dead end with your case. No more leads. No more information to follow. It’s not the first time things haven’t panned out on a case. It won’t make him suspicious.”
I nodded. “I appreciate that.”
He moved closer and bent his head to kiss me. I stepped away, shaking my head.
“I can’t,” I told him, even when my eyes burned and I couldn’t seem to draw a full breath. I stared down at the carpet, unable to look at him.
Without another word, he walked out the door.
For hours, I sat on the bed, staring at the door, sure that Caleb was going to walk right back through it. And I wasn’t sure whether that would be a good thing or not. I flip-flopped on whether to grab my bags and run for the Canadian border. Finally, I pulled all of my belongings together, went downstairs, and rented a new, more reasonably priced room under “Anna Moder” and created a little rabbit den there. I spent the first day curled in the fetal position under the covers, trying to alleviate the ache in my chest. There was a diner next door to the hotel, and I abused its delivery policy terribly, eating huge amounts of room service. I watched movies on HBO until I could no longer stand the sight of Zac Efron. (It didn’t take long.) And I took daily pregnancy tests, all of which were negative.
I didn’t stray far from home base. When I decided it was time for professional follicle intervention, I went to the salon on the ground floor of the hotel, where the poor stylists clucked over the damage I’d done over the years with repeated dye jobs. I got a deep-conditioning treatment and new, sassy layers while my toes were painted a frosty cotton-candy pink. I went to the hotel boutique and shopped for clothes that (1) weren’t secondhand and (2) weren’t ordered over the Internet, which was a novelty. I wore makeup—real cosmetics, not just flavored ChapStick—for the first time in years.
I will admit, I indulged. I dropped my guard and made silly, selfish decisions. I knew I needed to move beyond my physical needs and constant fretting over the immediate future. I had to look at the big picture. I was stalling like hell from picking up Red-burn’s packet. It was the polar opposite of self-preservation, but I needed this time to process thoughts such as Caleb, you jackassed, half-wit jerk-face, I would dearly love to tap-dance on your testicles. I needed some control over my life. I needed to find my footing and make choices based on preference instead of panic. For so long, I’d based my clothes, my meals, my appearance, on what was available to me. It took some field testing before I remembered how I preferred my jeans cut or which kind of lip gloss I liked best. (Skinny jeans and a violet-pink shade ironically called “Lupine.”)>Something about the way the lie rolled off his tongue so easily had me reaching into my bag again. He snatched the bag out of my hands and threw it toward the hallway door. I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re going to sit there and pretend that you haven’t known exactly who I am from the minute we met? I saw the e-mails from Schuna, Caleb! I know you’ve been working on the ‘Bishop case’ for months.”
