I had no reply.
He rose from the bed and said, “Now put your gloves on and meet me downstairs.”
Before he left, I replied, “If we do plan on fighting him, I hope you know there’s a good chance one of us doesn’t walk away alive.”
“I know,” he said. There was regret in his voice, but acceptance as well. “Anyone who’s not cool with that can leave. But I’m going tonight.”
“So am I.”
“Then we can end this. For good.”
Max was about to walk out the door when I stopped him. “Hey, Max,” I called out. “No matter what happens tonight, win or lose, we both know I can’t be in Cora’s life. I’m not normal. It’d never work. I know you already do, but please take care of her. Make sure she’s happy. Make sure she’s always safe.”
“There’s genuinely nothing more on this earth that I want.”
I smiled to myself. “You know, you’re not exactly the type I imagined my dweeb of a cousin ending up with.”
“Is that an insult or a compliment?”
“Well, an insult to her. I thought she’d get with some band geek, not a…”
“A what? An asshole?”
“No. A good man.” I closed my eyes and reflected. “You’re the kind of man I wished my ex-husband was. Protective, honest, willing to lay their life down for me. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone like that in my life.”
Max nonchalantly shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know, I can think of one person.”
At first, I thought he meant Cora, but the raised brow and the playful smile told me otherwise. My cheeks warmed up and I chuckled. “Dana… You noticed.”
“I can be pretty dense about a lot of things, but I’m not dead. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“I’m not gonna shove my nose where it doesn’t belong, but she’s a good kid. And you mean a lot to her, so…you can’t exactly say you’ve never had someone like that in your life.”
“Even if that were something I…” I stopped myself. “She deserves better than a dead girl.”
“Something tells me she’d disagree.” He cocked his head to the side and took one step backward into the hallway. It’s when I saw that Dana had been standing right around the corner the entire time.
Dana remained in the doorway, leaning her cheek against the wood and essentially hugging the wall. “I wasn’t trying to listen in,” she said. “I came to talk and saw you had company.”
We were alone for the first time after our kiss. I didn’t know how to bring it up.
“So, why’d you storm off like that?” I asked.
“You’ll have to forgive me, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen to you talk about killing yourself. Again.”
“You shouldn’t have tried to stop me.”
“Someone needed to. I’m glad Cora and Max were able to.”
“Are you? Because now she’s gone.”
Dana’s head lowered. “I’m sorry. Cora doesn’t deserve this.”
“She doesn’t.”
“And neither do you.”
I didn’t know how else to address it, so I just blurted it out. “Why did you kiss me?” I asked.
Her skin flushed. “Is it really that surprising?”
Suddenly, it was hard to make eye contact. My heart raced as I remembered the kiss, and us talking about it so openly made me feel lightheaded. I licked my dry mouth and answered, “Yes.”
“I thought…you...I mean…”
She was stammering. She was going to take it back. I suddenly didn’t want her to.
What was happening to me?
I thought I was ready to talk about the kiss, to tell her I had no interest in her and for her to find someone else, but I felt even more confused by my own emotions hearing her speak. I wasn’t as firm on my feelings as I thought I was.
I needed to take the attention away from it.
I said, “Max thinks he can save me, like you do.”
The sadness in her eyes lifted a little. “Let him,” she said, taking a few steps closer into the hotel room.
“It’s not that easy.”
“Why does it have to be hard? There are five of us, and three of them. We outnumber them!”
“A mass crowd outnumbers a police force, too. But they have guns and the people don’t. Master, Veronica, Molly, they’re the ones with the guns. We have nothing.”
“We have two werewolves who can change anytime they want to. Max and Daggett can fight them.”
I shook my head. “You only want to save me because you think there’s something between us.”
Dana paused. “Think?”
“I’m a wreck, and I think you want to take care of me because no one else ever did.”
“What I’m feeling isn’t pity.”
I climbed off the bed and began to pace. “I’m not even a good person. Once the freshness of what I am wears off, you’ll grow tired of me. They always do. I’m pretty, but I’m dumb. I’m fun, but there’s no depth. Did I ever tell you why my husband and I got a divorce?” She said nothing, and waited a few steps from the door for me to tell the story. It would be a short one. “He left me for another woman because he didn’t enjoy me anymore. He didn’t think I could keep up with the conversation or that I was smart enough for him.”
Dana softly scoffed. “He let someone like you go. He’s not the smart one.”
She insulted my husband while complimenting me. I almost smiled.
Nothing I said seemed to scare her off. I spent my entire marriage walking on eggshells, trying to be
