Page 102 of Call Off the Dark

Helen ended up in the bedroom, pacing furiously. She wished she’d stormed away in the other direction, out the front door instead of back here, even if it meant being outside with the wolves. Now she was marooned in the bedroom.

Or was she? She stopped pacing.

No, she wasn’t. Not if she didn’t want to be. She could march out to the kitchen and snatch the keys to Wade’s truck from the hook by the door and drive herself into town. In fact, she could keep driving through the night until she arrived in the city.

Seattle. It sounded like a foreign land now, a place where she no longer spoke the language. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

Helen looked down and sighed, and that’s when she saw that the bandage she’d wrapped around her shin was beginning to show red. The cut was bleeding through again.

She went into the hallway, intending to clean up in the bathroom, but stopped short as Isaac exited the guest bedroom.

“Don’t be mad,” he said quietly.

“I’m not mad.” Her voice came out clipped.

He gave her a look that said he knew better. “You said you didn’t want to go anywhere with Wade.”

She looked away. Yes, she had said that, but Isaac had also known how badly she wanted to call her mother and how long it had been since she’d been to town.

Isaac drew closer to her. “And honestly, the thought of the three of us going into town together, spending that time alone in the truck . . .” He trailed off and gave her the pained expression of a remorseful man.

Helen wasn’t sure she believed him. His confession felt like lines from a stage play he’d rehearsed. “You didn’t seem to feel so bad last night.”

“Neither did you.”

“You have no idea how I feel.”

Isaac took a step closer. “So tell me.”

The slight movement of air between them electrified her, and the angry feeling was replaced instantly with the desire to reach for him. Instead, she stepped back and was met with the wall.

He closed in and put his hands on her waist. Helen could hear Wade turn on the faucet in the kitchen.

“Do you regret last night?” Isaac whispered.

Helen didn’t answer for a long time, until finally she shook her head no.

Isaac reached up and twisted a strand of her hair around his finger, twirling and twirling until it was tight. Then he tugged, sending a spark of pain to her scalp, and she gasped a little. Then she stopped breathing altogether.

He smiled at her reaction, and she learned a thing or two about him in that moment.

Helen heard a kitchen chair scrape on the kitchen floor. She needed to end this exchange. She cleared her throat and said, “I’m bleeding.”

Isaac’s smile deepened. “That’s okay, Helen. I don’t mind. Having your blood on me would turn me on.”

It took her a second to comprehend his misunderstanding. “Not that kind of bleeding,” Helen said, and she watched him blink slowly. “My shin.”

He looked down, and the self-satisfied smile on his face changed to an amused one. “Oh, I see,” he said. He looked up and his eyes were dancing. “Either way.”

“Helen!” Wade shouted.

Helen shoved Isaac back and stepped away from the wall, expecting to see Wade at the end of the hall, but he wasn’t there. His voice had carried from the kitchen.

Without looking at Isaac again, she hurried to the kitchen and found that Wade had unpacked the groceries from the bags but left everything on the counter instead of putting things away.

Wade gestured at the food. “I don’t know what you want to make.”

Still a little breathless, she moved past him and began rummaging through the food, for once grateful to be making dinner, grateful for the distraction.