CHAPTER FOUR

A GLIMPSE BEHIND THE VEIL

The afternoon had started out innocent enough. Carly had dragged them to Millbrook's annual summer garage sale crawl, a tradition she took with the seriousness of a religious pilgrimage. They'd sifted through Mrs. Patterson's collection of ceramic cats, debated the merits of a vintage record player at the Hendersons', and eaten their weight in lemonade cookies from the church bake sale table. 

By three o'clock, the heat had wrapped itself around the town like a wool blanket, and Anna's hair clung to the back of her neck in damp curls.

"We're almost done," Carly promised, fanning herself with a rolled-up newspaper she'd bought for fifty cents. "I just need to pick up the dry cleaning for my mom. She'll murder me if I forget her sundress again."

They were standing in the gravel lot outside Chris's truck, the vehicle ticking as it cooled. Anna had just opened the passenger door, grateful for the blast of oven-hot air that meant soon, air conditioning, when Carly's phone chirped.

"Oh no." Carly stared at the screen. "It's the daycare. They need me to come sign something for my schedule next week. It's the new manager, he won't let Mom fax it."

"Go," Chris said, leaning against the driver's side door. He wore a white t-shirt that had gone translucent with sweat at the shoulders, and his hair stuck up in wild, sun-bleached tufts. "I'll wait with Anna."

"I can just go with her..." Anna started.

"Don't be silly," Carly said, already backing away, keys jingling. "It's five minutes down the street. I'll be right back. Chris, don't let her buy any more ugly salt shakers."

"I make no promises," Chris called after her.

Then Carly was gone, her sandaled feet kicking up dust, and Anna was left standing on the passenger side of the truck with the door open between them like a shield.

The silence that descended was immediate and total, Anna felt it once more, thick and piercing into right into her soul.

It wasn't the comfortable silence of old friends, or even the awkward silence of strangers. It was thick, humid and heavy, pressing against Anna's eardrums. She could hear Chris breathing, could hear the rustle of his shirt as he shifted his weight against the truck. She stared at the floor mat, at a faded stain that looked like coffee, and tried to remember how to be a normal person.

"You bought a lot of records," Chris said finally.

"Franklin collects them." Anna busied herself adjusting the seatbelt that didn't need adjusting. "I thought he'd appreciate the jazz ones."

"He's the friend who serenaded the girl?"

"That's the one."

Chris laughed, a low sound that vibrated through the truck bed and into Anna's sternum. "College sounds like chaos."

"It was. It is." She straightened, closing the passenger door and moving to lean against the truck beside him, leaving a careful two feet of space. The metal was hot through her thin cotton shirt. "Carly said you didn't go."

"Couldn't afford it. And my dad needed help with the property." Chris's arms were crossed, his gaze fixed on the horizon where the heat made the asphalt shimmer like water. "I take classes online sometimes. Business management, mostly, just boring stuff."

"Nothing about you seems boring."

The words slipped out before she could catch them. Anna felt her face flame and turned away, pretending to be fascinated by a pair of sparrows fighting over a french fry near the dry cleaner's door.

Chris went very still.

"Anna?..."

"Don't." She wrapped her arms around herself, though the heat was suffocating. "I know. Okay? I know."

"You don't know anything."

His voice had dropped, roughened, and when she glanced at him, his eyes were different. The amber had gone dark, pupils blown wide despite the blinding sun. He was looking at her the way he had at the lake, like she was the only thing in the world worth seeing.

"I know I'm not supposed to feel...." She stopped, the admission too dangerous to finish. "I'm your girlfriend's best friend. I've known Carly since we were in pigtails. I would never..."

"I would never either," Chris said, but the words sounded torn out of him. "That's what makes this so... awkward"

He pushed off the truck, turning toward her, and his hand brushed her bare arm as he moved.

It wasn't even a touch, really. Just the accidental skim of knuckles against skin. But Anna felt it detonate inside her, a spark so intense her vision whited out at the edges, her knees buckling. She grabbed the truck's side mirror to stay upright, gasping.

Pine, Earth, Musk and smoke and something wild.

The scent flooded her nose, so vivid she could taste it. For a heartbeat, she wasn't in a gravel parking lot in Millbrook. She was in a forest at night, moonlight filtering through ancient trees, and something large and magnificent was watching her from the shadows. Something that knew her name.

"Anna!" Chris jerked his hand back like she'd burned him. He stumbled backward, his back hitting the truck hard enough to rock it on its suspension. His chest heaved, his hands shaking at his sides.

Anna pressed her palm against her arm where he'd touched her. The skin was hot, almost feverish, and she could still feel the phantom pressure of his fingers, the echo of that impossible current.

"What was that?" she whispered.

Chris's face had gone ashen beneath his tan. He looked troubled, no, terrified. His eyes darted away from hers, toward the street, toward anywhere but her face.

"Static," he muttered. "Sorry. I shouldn't have... I need some air."

He walked away before she could respond, moving toward the shade of the hardware store awning, his shoulders hunched, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. Anna watched him go, her heart hammering against her ribs, her arm still burning.

Static didn't make you see forests. Static didn't make you want to chase someone into the dark.

She stayed by the truck, shaking, until Carly's car pulled back into the lot five minutes later, cheerful and oblivious, carrying a dress bag and a bottle of sparkling water.

"All done!" Carly called out. "Chris, baby, come on! Let's get ice cream before we melt."

Chris returned, his smile pasted on, his eyes carefully avoiding Anna's in the rearview mirror. But Anna saw the tremor in his hand as he reached for the gear shift, and she knew with a certainty that settled cold and heavy in her gut, that static was a lie.

******** ******** ******* ******** ********

That night, Anna lay awake until two in the morning.

The house was silent, her parents asleep down the hall, the crickets performing their endless symphony outside her window. But Anna's body felt like a live wire, humming with an energy she couldn't name or discharge.

She closed her eyes, and immediately she was back in the parking lot. Not remembering it, reliving it. The heat of his skin. The way his pupils had blown wide. And that smell... pine and earth and something ancient, rising from him like steam.

The sensation was so vivid that Anna sat up, convinced Chris was standing in her bedroom. But the room was empty, moonlight painting silver rectangles across her quilt. Still, the scent lingered in her nose, phantom and persistent.

You're losing your mind, she told herself, pressing her palms against her eyes until stars burst behind her lids. You've been home a week and you're already inventing supernatural boyfriends. Next you'll be writing his name in your notebook with little hearts.

But when she finally drifted off, she dreamed of eyes that glowed amber in the dark, and a voice that whispered, Mine, against the shell of her ear, lips belonging to a bring she couldn't quite make out marking every inch of her neck with soft kisses.

She woke up gasping, the sheets tangled around her legs, her skin flushed and sensitive. The dream clung to her like cobwebs, and she spent ten minutes in a cold shower trying to scrub the feeling of being seen truly, completely seen from her consciousness.

"It's just the heat," she muttered to her reflection, staring at a girl with dark-circled eyes and kiss-bitten lips she didn't remember biting. "Small-town boredom. You're twenty, not twelve. Get a grip."

******** ******* ******* ******** *********

Monday morning, Anna went into town alone.

She told her mother she needed shampoo and a new phone charger, which was true, but mostly she needed to move, to be around other people, to prove that Chris wasn't the center of the world's gravity. She parked near the square and walked, letting the normalcy of Main Street soothe her.

Henderson's Gas Station was busy for a Monday. Mr. Yates from the hardware store was filling up his truck, and Mrs. Chen was wrestling a bag of ice into her trunk. Anna waved at both, receiving cheerful nods in return. The familiarity steadied her.

Then Chris pulled in.

She knew the sound of his truck before she saw it, the particular diesel growl that seemed to vibrate in her teeth. He parked at pump three, stepping out with sunglasses pushed up into his hair, wearing a faded flannel despite the heat. 

Anna ducked behind the chip display, her heart performing that traitorous stutter, and told herself she was being ridiculous.

But she didn't leave. She watched.

Chris nodded at Mr. Yates. "Sir."

"Chris." Mr. Yates tipped his baseball cap, and Anna frowned. There was something in the older man's posture, a slight straightening, a squaring of his shoulders. Respect, but edged with something else. Caution? "Haven't seen you at the lodge meetings."

"Been busy, sir. Working on the house."

"Right, right." Mr. Yates finished pumping his gas with hurried, jerky movements. "Well. Good to see you. Tell your father I said hello."

"Will do."

Mr. Yates climbed into his truck and left faster than Anna had ever seen him move and she'd seen him spend twenty minutes discussing fertilizer with her father.

Mrs. Chen came out of the convenience store carrying a coffee. She smiled at Anna, then spotted Chris. The smile didn't fade, but it changed, becoming tighter, more formal.

"Christopher," she said.

"Mrs. Chen. How's the restaurant?"

"Good. Good." Mrs. Chen shifted her ice bag to her other hip. "Your mother would be proud. The garden, I mean. I saw the tomatoes from the road. They're... very large this year."

"Thank you, ma'am."

Mrs. Chen nodded, quick and birdlike, and hurried to her car.

Anna watched from behind the salt-and-vinegar chips, her confusion deepening. Mrs. Chen had taught Anna piano for three years and had never once called her anything but "sweetie." And Mr. Yates was a veteran who complained about teenagers and their lack of respect yet he'd called Chris sir?

It wasn't just them.

As Chris moved to pay inside, Jim Keller, who'd been Anna's middle school gym teacher and was known for intimidating everyone stepped out of the way, holding the door. Not a casual gesture. A deliberate yielding, his eyes dropping to Chris's boots before flickering away.

"Keller," Chris said, his voice pitched low.

"Alpha," Keller replied, barely audible.

Anna froze.

Alpha?

She must have misheard. The air conditioning unit above the door was rattling, and Jim Keller had a lisp. He'd probably said Chris or pal or something else entirely. But the way Keller's jaw tightened, the way he didn't meet Chris's gaze...

Chris disappeared inside. When he emerged two minutes later, he didn't look around. He climbed into his truck and drove away, the diesel growl fading down Main Street.

Anna stepped out from behind the chip display, her mind racing. She thought of the way the townspeople acted around him not like he was popular, not like he was merely well-liked. They treated him the way people treated... authority. Legacy. Something inherited and unquestioned.

She thought of his house at the end of the dirt road, surrounded by trees that seemed to guard it. She thought of her father's strange warning, be careful, and the way he'd looked at Chris's name like it tasted bitter. She thought of the scent of pine and earth, of eyes that glowed in dreams, of a touch that felt like destiny.

Anna walked back to her car without buying the shampoo.

She sat behind the wheel, staring at the empty road where Chris's truck had disappeared, and wondered what secrets lay buried in the Whitmore family history and why, suddenly, she was so afraid of digging them up.