Page 74 of Winter’s Teeth

“Whoa, should I be jealous?”

The feminine voice snapped me back to reality. Instinctively, I let go of Corbin, slinking back to Fox’s side like a protective street cat. One wrong move from this stranger, and I would start gouging out eyes. Corbin style.

A young woman who had to be around my age trailed out of the woods. Her button nose with a ring piercing wrinkled at the mud that splashed up her ankle boots, but the grimace melted away, replaced by a mischievous smile as soon as she reached Corbin’s side.

“Shira, I told you to stay back,” Corbin started.

The girl, Shira, rolled her eyes to the sky. “Like I was gonna stay in the car this whole time. Besides, I could tell you were trying to downplay it. Fox and his friend are in serious danger, aren’t they? Meaning you are too.” She stabbed him in the chest with a solid finger poke. “If you’re in trouble, so am I. Where you go, I go.”

It clicked for me then. Shira was Corbin’s girlfriend. The normal one, like me, who didn’t want in on any of this and just wanted to pull out with the people who mattered.

“You... You’re the girlfriend,” I sputtered like a dolt. Only a few hours away from dawn, I hadn’t slept a wink, and it had been one harrowing event after the other since I got here. The gating mechanism I usually had was completely shot, and I couldn’t control anything that came out of my mouth.

“Yeah,” Shira drawled, her dark brows knitting together. “And you’re the chick who likes tormenting Fox.”

“Shira,” Corbin warned in a low voice.

She added with a smirk, “To save your sister of course. I’m all for tormenting Fox in the process. He needs someone to kick him in the ass from time to time.”

“You and Corbin do that enough,” Fox grunted, finally making his presence known. “Can we get out of here? I need to change, and we need a new game plan.”

***

I WAS IN LOVE WITH Shira. Without a doubt, hands down. If Corbin wasn’t in the picture, I’d be keeping her all to myself.

Back at the car, which was hers since Corbin’s messed up family didn’t let him get his own car, she popped the trunk to pull out spare clothes for Fox. All of which were made for women. She thrusted a purple, shaggy sweater into his chest, insisting it was all she had and the only thing that would fit.

Fox pointed to a manlier steel blue sweater peeking out of a bag. “What about—”

Shira slammed the trunk shut. “It’s all I’ve got for you. Sorry, bud.”

Corbin chuckled in the front passenger seat. “You just want to see him in something floral, don’t you.”

“Shut up,” Shira whisper-yelled as she threw herself in the front seat.

As Fox unfurled the sweater, sure enough, embroidered flowers in every color of the rainbow appeared. It took everything in me not to burst out laughing. I slapped a hand over my mouth to stop the sounds from escaping, but the damage was already done.

Fox looked at me like a kicked animal. Like he couldn’t believe I would betray him this way. He’d just had his head in the creek while his cousins tried to drown him, and this was how we were treating him?

“For what it’s worth, you look hot in anything,” I said, trying to smooth things over. It was completely true. He could wear a hot pink onesie, and I would still want to kiss him. Maybe that said more about my mental state than anything, but the fact remained.

As soon as the car started up, Shira’s music blasted out of the speakers. After the night I had, something about Japanese rock music at full volume just seemed right. Like the perfect wrap up to the insanity that was my life. It made me love Shira even more.

Corbin turned it down, earning a click of Shira’s tongue. Then he turned half around to peer into the backseat. “Okay, so we should probably come up with a plan. Nice sweater.”

Fox raised his middle finger, and I fought back more delirious giggles.

After a few deep breaths, I asked, “Can we go back to the main cabin? My friends are there.”

“What?” Shira screeched. She whipped around jerkily. “You brought people here?”

I pressed myself into the seatback, the guilt I’d been holding at bay beginning to consume me. “I... I didn’t know... I didn’t...”

Fox finished for me, “She didn’t know what was going on at the time, and I’m pretty sure her friends turned up unannounced on her.”

Yeah. That. That exactly. I still felt guilty though, because if anything happened to them while I was gone, I would never forgive myself for telling them what was going on in the first place. For letting them stay. I should have shouted and raved at them until they drove away cursing my name, but I hadn’t had the strength for that.

If I got them killed now because of it... Eyes shut, teeth digging into my lower lip, I fought off a wave of extreme regret.