Page 44 of Bound

Caldwell was stalking the sidewalk when I squealed up to the curb, no doubt composing his latest round of death threats. He scowled when our eyes met, like he had no idea how when he huffed and swept his bangs off to the side, he looked like the lead singer in pretty much every boy band fantasy I’d ever had growing up.

“Where have you been?” he snapped by way of greeting, yanking on his seat belt like I didn’t spend half my waking hours thinking of ways to keep him alive.

“Hello to you, too, sunshine.”

Caldwell growled. Actually growled.

I suppressed the urge to tell him I kind of wanted to kiss him every time he got hot and pouty. There would be no living with him after that. “We both know perfectly well where I was. And can we fight about this later? Two teams have already texted in status updates and we both know if I cause us to lose your birthday scavenger hunt—”

“—which was totally unannounced.”

“Yeah. Sometime we need to sit down and talk about the way your family thrives off chaos.”

In less than an hour we would be sitting down for Caldwell’s official birthday-celebration-slash-war-council, but for the next fifty-one minutes, all thoughts of vampires, plots to destroy our pack and the stress that had been hanging over us for the past year were off the table.

Reaching into the backseat, I pulled out a crumpled paper sack. “Happy birthday, by the way.”

He froze. “You… got me something?”

And suddenly I wanted to throat-punch everyone who’d taught him not to expect things, not to expect to be wanted.

Delicately, he unfolded the edges of the bag, causing greasy, salty steam to fill the interior of the car.

“Cheeseburgers?”

“And fries. This place doesn’t do rings, sorry. But your mint chocolate chip shake is in the drink holder in the backseat.”

Eyes narrowed, Caldwell reached behind the seat to retrieve two shakes, strawberry for me, mint chocolate chip for him, half-melted, just the way he liked it. He stared for a long time at the cartoon dragon scrawled on the paper cup holder. “Explain.”

“Dallas told me about this food truck that just opened up on North Lamar. Said it was the best burger he’d ever eaten and I had to take you there. Sorry. They probably got a little cold on the drive back into town.”

Caldwell was already unwrapping the first sandwich. Passing it to me, he expertly peeled the greasy yellow waxed paper back off the second.

“They didn’t give us ketchup.”

“Okay, except you know we do have like twenty packets right here?”

He recoiled as if I’d smeared his rings with congealed vampire blood. West Caldwell: Fluent in Elvish, control freak, one-ketchup, one-fry purist.

“I’m trying to forget you said that.” He saw the journal that had been sitting beneath the bag and paused. “Is this—?"

“Open it.”

He ran a hand over the dark leather cover, leafing through the pages like they were made of gold. The fresh clean smell of new paper wafted towards me.

“I can’t believe you got me this.”

“I know you usually write on your laptop, but I thought maybe you might like writing by hand, too.”

“Thank you.”

I gestured with my burger as the light turned green. “Sunset is in forty-eight minutes. Where to?”

“Head back out on Highway 29.” He scrolled through his phone. “Photograph your wolf in the most creative place you can think of without getting caught. Automatic disqualification if River has to mind wipe any humans because someone pulls an #OregonPack.”

“You know there’s something seriously wrong with your family, right?”

“Please. This is nothing. You should see Brody and Dallas get into it on karaoke night.” He slurped his milkshake. “So, Austin? What did you find out?”