Intertwined

“Mary Ann.” There was a bite to his tone he’d never used with her before. He stopped in front of her. “What are you doing here? With me, I mean.”

Whatever had happened to him, he hadn’t changed physically. He was just as tall, just as adorable with his black-dyed hair and swirling eyes. No cuts, no bruises.

“I want to know what happened yesterday,” she said.

He uttered a nervous laugh. “What do you mean? Someone’s dog escaped and scared you. I shooed it away and went home.”

Liar! “That’s not what happened, and you know it.”

“It is,” he insisted. “Your fear has just distorted your memory.”

No. No, no. He wasn’t going to convince her the entire thing had been a mind-trick brought on by the intensity of her emotions. She’d spent too much time replaying the scene through her head last night. Too much time wondering about that wolf.

“Tell me what happened, Aden. Please.”

For a moment, he didn’t speak. Then he sighed. “Just let it go, Mary Ann.”

“No! One thing you’ll learn about me, Aden. I’m stubborn to a fault. You’ll give me the answers I want or I’ll get them another way.” Not that she knew what that other way would be, but still.

“Fine.” His stare was penetrating as he gave her his full attention. “What do you think happened?”

Going to play that game, was he? Let her voice her version of events so he could tailor his own recounting to either fit or discredit hers. Her dad had used a similar technique on her many times, like the day he’d given her the sex talk. Tell me what you know, he’d said, and then blushed when she had.

“Look, I haven’t told anyone what I witnessed.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “And I won’t. It’s our secret, yours and mine. But you have to tell me what’s going on. I’m in the middle of something I’m completely clueless about, seeing things I once thought were impossible.” She was babbling, she knew she was, but couldn’t stop. “I don’t know what to do or how to protect myself. Actually, I don’t know what I need to protect myself from or if I even need to be worried.”

His gaze flicked pointedly to the school. “Maybe now isn’t the best time to discuss this. We’ll be late to first period.”

“Let’s ditch.” She’d never uttered those words before and had never thought to do so. In fact, in the past, when she’d even considered them, she’d gotten sick. Now, all she wanted to do was talk to Aden. Nothing else mattered. “We can go to my house, my dad’s at work. We’ll have privacy for the rest of the day.”

For a moment, his expression was so tortured she had to glance at his nails to make sure pins hadn’t been shoved underneath them. “I can’t,” he said. “If I ditch a single day, I’m—okay, look, I have a confession to make. I do live at the D and M Ranch and if I ditch, I’ll be kicked out. I don’t want to be kicked out. Besides, this is my first day. My teachers are expecting me.”

A dejected breath left her. “Then we won’t ditch. But we will talk.” Please, please, please.

He nodded reluctantly. “Come on. Walk me to school. We’ll talk along the way. Just be careful what you say, okay? You never know who, or what, is lurking nearby.”

Though she wanted to stay right where she was to prevent their conversation from ending before she was ready, she pivoted and they ambled toward the school side by side. Thankfully, they had a while yet until they reached the masses blithely going about their day. As she once had, she thought.

“You don’t have to start at the beginning or anything like that. Just tell me something,” she pleaded.

There was a heavy pause. Another sigh. “What if I told you there was an entire world out there you had no idea existed? A world of—” he gulped “—vampires and werewolves, and people with unexplainable abilities?”

A whole new world, the wolf had told her. “I–I would believe you.” But she didn’t want to. She wanted to deny it. Despite everything she’d witnessed, despite the fact that he was saying exactly what she’d expected him to say, denial was her first instinct. The thought of bloodsuckers and shape-shifters was abhorrent. The people with unexplainable abilities she didn’t yet understand—but she would. She was determined.

“And what if I told you there was a boy who was somehow a magnet for those things, drawing them closer and closer to him? A boy with strange powers of his own?”

She licked her lips. “Can this boy disappear in the blink of an eye?”

He shook his head, a single jerky motion.

“But I saw—”

“Not disappear,” he said, stopping her. “You saw him possess someone else’s body.”

Dear God. Aden could possess other people’s bodies. Just step inside them as if they were an elevator and he needed a ride. She shuddered, fighting the urge to dart away so he couldn’t do such a thing to her.

He’d ground to a halt, she realized, no longer seeing him at her side. She whipped around. He was regarding her with that tortured expression again, this one mixed with fear and dread. He expected her to run screaming from him.

She might have done so, had she continued to think about him possessing her. This was just so much to take in. Too much, probably, for a girl who had always relied on science to explain the unknown. He didn’t deserve that sort of treatment, though. He was giving her what she wanted, what she’d demanded. What he hadn’t—and clearly still didn’t—want to give.

He must live with a constant fear of discovery, afraid of what people would do to him if they knew. Such stress would have destroyed the bravest of men, and that he was standing there, unmoving, expectant, waiting, proved the depth of his strength. That he’d told her anything at all proved the depth of his friendship.

She softened her expression as she closed the distance between them. Beads of sweat glistened from his forehead, a testament to his nervousness. I will not fear him. I will not fear him, she mentally chanted. Without warning him, she wrapped her arms around his waist, giving him the hug she’d wanted to give him since the moment she’d seen him.

At first, he remained stiff, unyielding, then his own arms encircled her tentatively. They stayed like that for several minutes, lost in the moment. As he held her, any lingering qualms she’d harbored vanished. Yesterday he had protected her from the werewolf. He didn’t want to hurt her.

He was the one to pull away, as if he didn’t trust himself to continue. His expression was blank but his eyes…oh, his eyes. They were brown this time. What did the change mean? She had so much to learn about him.

“So tell me. Is possessing bodies all this boy can do?” she asked softly.

Another shake of his head.

So there was more. Surprisingly, the fear did not return. “What else?”

He tangled his fingers through his hair, and a thick black lock tumbled to his forehead. “Mary Ann, what do you think the chances are that this make-believe boy who can do things others can’t has spent most of his life shuffled from one mental institution to another?”

Mental institutions? Poor, sweet Aden. She might be young, but she’d seen how intolerant people could be of those who were different. Look how Tucker had treated Shannon because of his stutter. And a stutter was nothing compared to what Aden could do!

“I think there’s a very good chance, but that wouldn’t make me like him any less.”

He gazed down at his feet, hiding his disbelief. A moment passed. He sighed, grabbed her hand, and spun her around, tugging her toward the school. “How can you accept this so easily?”

“Easily?” She barked out a laugh completely devoid of humor. “I agonized over this all night. Did I—” They were pretending to speak of other people, she reminded herself. “Could a girl actually hear a werewolf speaking inside her head? And if she didn’t, was she crazy? Did she truly see a boy disappear? And if she didn’t, was she crazy? She either had to accept what she’d seen or admit she was, you guessed it, crazy.”

His grip tightened. Warm and strong. Comforting. Comfort she needed as much as he did, she realized.

“What about the wolf?” she asked. “What happened to him?”

“Last time I saw him, he was alive.” There was a wealth of guilt in his tone.

Why the guilt?

“Did he tell you anything?” she asked. “Mention why he was following me?”