Page 63 of A Pack for the Wedding
Beth shifts against me, still trembling.
"I can smell you," she says, her voice small, muffled against my chest. "All three of you. Like that night at the clearing, except—more. And it's—" Her voice splinters. "My god."
"Beth." My voice comes out rough. I tilt her chin up so I can see her face, and her eyes are wet, wide and terrified, and something in my chest folds in half. "I can smell you too... all of you."
"That means we're—" Knox starts, his voice shaking.
Arthur pulls back just enough to look at me over Beth's shoulder. His pupils are blown.
"Scent matches," he finishes, barely a whisper. Then louder: "We're scent matches. All four of us."
The statement sits in the center of my brain, enormous, immovable.
I have never been good with words. Knox has the words. Arthur has the charisma. I have the thing where I feel everything at full volume and express approximately none of it, probably because my father communicated through nods and my mother through silence, and I learned early that if you feel something big enough to split you open, you swallow it. You press your tongue to the roof of your mouth and you wait for it to pass, and eventually your body gets the message.
But right now, the honeysuckle is burning through every circuit my brain's built over the years.
And I'm scared. More scared than I've ever been. But...
"Hey," I manage, pulling back just enough to see her face. I cup her jaw and run my thumb along her cheekbone. "Everything will be okay. This is a good th—"
"Guys," she cuts in, her voice trembling. "I need to tell you something."
20
Beth
Mason's truck is idling at the curb when I push through the clinic doors.
Arthur's behind the wheel, one arm draped over it, grinning at me through the open passenger window.
"You look like you just got a grade back," he says.
"C-minus." I climb in. The vinyl is cracked along the seat edge and warm from the sun. I buckle my seat belt and press the side of my face against the headrest. "So Mason really let you borrow his truck, huh?"
"This took precedence over his remodeling job." He says it simply, like the idea of not being here didn't cross his mind. "Plus, a co-contractor could pick him up this morning."
Arthur pulls out of the lot and the clinic shrinks in the side mirror. I still can't believe I had to close the shop for this. But then again, this might not matter for much longer anyway.
"So," Arthur says. He drums his fingers on the wheel. "What'd the doc say?"
I twist my hair over one shoulder. "I have a rare condition called an omega stress haze. Chronic stress suppresses my scent, like a dimmer switch."
He tilts his head, eyes on the road. "Huh. Never heard of it."
"It's apparently, and I quote, 'quite uncommon,'" I say.
He glances over. "But then how come—"
"How come my scent broke through?" I cut in. "Well, the doctor's best guess is that it happened in both instances where I felt truly safe...home." I turn the words over in my mouth. "And she thinks alcohol probably helped too."
A pothole. The truck rattles.
"She asked if anything traumatic happened to me recently." I look out the passenger window. "Since my fiancé left me a few months before our wedding, I guess that qualifies."
Arthur takes the turn onto the main road. The valley opens up on our left.
"So how does it go away?" he asks, serious.
