CHAPTER SIX

WHISPERS AND WORRIES

The hammock in Chris's backyard had always been Carly's favorite throne. She'd claimed it the summer they started dating, draping herself across the woven ropes with the territorial certainty of someone who had never been made to feel unwelcome anywhere. Now, she swayed gently, her bare feet pushing off the oak tree, while Anna sat rigid in the Adirondack chair ten feet away, pretending to be fascinated by a chipped nail.

Chris stood at the grill, spatula in hand, his back to them both. Smoke curled around his shoulders, carrying the scent of char and hickory, but Anna could smell something beneath it, that storm-and-pine musk that seemed to thicken in the air whenever she was near him.

"Earth to Chris," Carly called out. "Those burgers are going to be fossils if you don't flip them."

He startled, the spatula clattering against the grate. "Right. Sorry."

"That's the third time you've checked out in an hour." Carly's voice held its usual teasing lilt, but Anna heard the wire of worry beneath it. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were bored of us."

"Never." Chris flipped the burgers with mechanical precision. "Just distracted."

"Distracted by what?" Carly pushed herself upright, the hammock rocking violently. She hopped down, padding across the grass to wrap her arms around Chris's waist from behind, resting her chin between his shoulder blades. "Tell me. I'm excellent at solving distractions."

Anna looked away. The grass had gone brown at the edges. She counted the dandelions near her feet.

"Work stuff," Chris said. "The Johnson place needs a new roof before fall."

"Roofs are boring." Carly tightened her grip. "Look at me."

"I am looking at you, Car."

"Not like you used to." She said it softly, almost playfully, but the words landed like stones. "You used to look at me like I was the only thing worth seeing. Now you look at me like you're checking a box."

Chris turned in her arms, finally, setting the spatula on the grill's side shelf. He cupped Carly's face in his hands, his thumbs brushing her cheekbones with practiced tenderness. "Hey. You're my girl. You know that."

"I know." But Carly's smile didn't reach her eyes. She glanced over her shoulder, just a flicker, a fraction of a second, toward Anna.

Anna felt the look like a physical weight. She dropped her gaze to her hands, knotted together in her lap.

"Anna," Carly said, her voice careful, constructed out of too-bright plastic, "did Chris tell you about the time he tried to build me a bookshelf?"

"Hmm?" Anna looked up, her throat dry. "No. I don't think so."

"It was a disaster. Nails everywhere. He measured in centimeters instead of inches because he was 'tired.'" Carly laughed, but her eyes were on Chris, watching his reaction. "He was so determined to do it himself. Wouldn't let anyone help. That's my Chris. Stubborn to a fault."

"Sounds like him," Anna managed.

"Isn't it funny," Carly continued, turning back to face Chris but speaking loud enough for the yard to hear, "how some things you just can't force? Like bookshelves. Or feelings. If it's not fitting, no amount of hammering makes it right."

The silence that followed was heavy, humid with implication. Chris's jaw tightened, a muscle leaping beneath his skin.

"The burgers are done," he said roughly.

They ate at the picnic table, the wooden slats warm from the sun. Carly chattered about the daycare's upcoming field trip to the petting zoo, about her mother's new diet, about the absolutely unforgivable price of gas. Chris responded in monosyllables. Anna pushed her food around her plate, each bite tasting of sawdust and guilt.

Once, when Carly got up to refill her lemonade, Anna felt Chris's eyes on her. She didn't look up. She didn't need to. She could feel the heat of his gaze like sunlight through glass, tracking the line of her throat, the curve of her shoulder. It was hungry. It was helpless. It was everything they couldn't say.

"Chris?" Carly stood in the doorway, pitcher in hand, her face half in shadow. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing." He looked down at his plate so fast his fork rattled. "Just thinking."

"About roofs?"

"About you," he lied.

Carly didn't smile. She stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching them both, and Anna saw something shift in her best friend's expression, a subtle rearranging of features, like furniture being moved to block a draft. Carly had always been perceptive. Now, she was reading a language Anna had hoped was written in invisible ink.

"Anna," Carly said, setting the pitcher down with deliberate care, "are you free tomorrow? We could go to the mall in the city. Just us girls."

"I…" Anna's heart stuttered. "I can't. I signed up for a summer course. Online. It starts tomorrow."

Carly blinked. "Summer school? Since when?"

"Since I realized I need the credit to graduate on time." The lie came out smooth, rehearsed, sour on Anna's tongue. "It's just Intro to Sociology. Three weeks. I'm sorry, I meant to tell you."

"Three weeks." Carly sat back down, her movements stiff. "That's... sudden."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"It's fine." Carly's voice was too high. "We can work around it. Right, Chris?"

Chris was staring at Anna, his expression unreadable. "Right," he said quietly.

But the word sounded like a wound.

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

Anna kept her distance for four days.

She declined the lake. She declined the movies. She declined iced coffee runs and thrift store browsing and every other offering Carly extended with increasingly desperate cheerfulness. She stayed in her bedroom with her laptop open to a blank document, the cursor blinking accusingly while she stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about Chris's hands, or his perfect jaw line or his beautiful lips or those eyes that flared up during the backfire.

On the fifth morning, Carly showed up unannounced.

Anna heard the doorbell, then her mother's voice, then footsteps on the stairs. She had just enough time to sit up and arrange her laptop on her knees before Carly pushed through the door without knocking, a privilege earned over thirteen years of friendship.

"Okay," Carly said. She was wearing her favorite yellow sundress, the one that made her look like summer itself, but her face was pale, her eyes red-rimmed. "What did I do?"

Anna's stomach dropped. "Nothing. Carly, you didn't do anything…"

"Then why are you avoiding me?" Carly closed the door behind her and leaned against it, her arms crossed. Her lower lip trembled, but she held her chin high. "Five texts. Seven calls. You've cancelled on me six times in six days. And don't give me that summer class bullshit, Anna. I checked the community college website. Registration closed in May."

The air left Anna's lungs. She closed her laptop, setting it aside with hands that shook.

"I can explain Carl…"

"Then explain." Carly's voice cracked. "Because I'm standing here feeling like I lost my best friend and I don't even know why. Is it Chris? Did he say something? Did he do something? Because if he hurt you, I'd…"

"No!" The denial came too fast, too fierce. Anna saw Carly flinch. "No, Chris didn't do anything. It's not him. It's me."

"What's wrong with you? What's up with you Anna?"

Anna pressed her palms against her eyes. The room smelled like lavender and old books, childhood and safety, and she wanted to disappear into it. "I'm just... overwhelmed. Being home is harder than I thought. I feel like I don't fit here anymore, and I didn't want to drag you down with my weird mood swings. That's all."

"That's all." Carly didn't sound convinced. She crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under her weight. When she spoke again, her voice was gentler, stripped of its armor. "Anna. Look at me."

Anna dropped her hands. Carly's eyes were wet, her mascara slightly smudged, and the sight of her best friend's face, the face of the girl who'd held her hand through her grandmother's funeral, who'd danced with her in the rain at prom, who'd written her letters every week freshman year, felt like a knife between Anna's ribs.

"Something's wrong," Carly said. "I can feel it. Ever since you came home, there's been this... wall. And Chris is acting weird too. He doesn't look at me the same. He looks past me. At you."

Anna's heart seized. "Carly… I…"

"I'm not stupid." Carly laughed, wet and broken. "I saw him that day on Main Street. I saw how he looked at you at the bonfire. And I'm trying to tell myself it's nothing, that I'm being paranoid, but then you pull away from me and I think..." She stopped, pressing her lips together. "I think I'm losing both of you. And I don't know why."

The confession hung in the air, fragile and devastating. Anna wanted to reach out, to pull Carly into her arms and cry and confess everything, the touch at the lake, the current between them, the dreams that left her gasping in the dark. She wanted to beg for forgiveness, to promise she'd never look at him again, to swear on their blood oath that she would rather cut out her own heart than hurt her best friend.

Instead, she lied.

"You're not losing me," Anna said, her voice steady as steel, hollow as a drum. "I promise. I'm just adjusting. Being at college changed me, and I'm trying to figure out who I am here. That's all. Chris is your boyfriend, Carly. He adores you. Anyone can see that."

"Can they?" Carly whispered.

"Yes of course, they can. You both are…" She winced at the word coming out sharply “Perfect… for each other” Anna forced a smile, stretching her face until it ached. "I'm just being a weirdo. Give me another week to settle in, okay? Then we'll do everything. The mall, the lake, whatever you want. I promise."

Carly studied her for a long moment, searching for cracks in the facade. Finally, she reached out and took Anna's hand, squeezing hard enough to hurt.

"One week," Carly said. "But Anna? If something's going on, if there's something you're not telling me, I need you to say it. Now. Before it becomes something we can't fix."

The temptation was a physical pressure, a hand around Anna's throat. She swallowed it down.

"There's nothing, I promise Carl" she said.

Carly nodded, slow and uncertain, and let go of her hand. She stood, smoothing her dress, moving toward the door. She paused with her hand on the knob.

"I love you, you know," Carly said without turning around. "You're the sister I chose. Please don't make me regret that."

Then she was gone, her footsteps fading down the stairs, and Anna buried her face in her pillow and screamed until her throat was raw.

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

The old barn sat at the back of the Whitmore property, half-sunk into the earth, its weathered boards silvered by decades of sun and rain. Inside, it smelled of motor oil and hay and the particular dust that came from forgotten things. Chris's father stood at the workbench, sharpening an axe with methodical strokes, the rhythmic shhh-shhh of stone against steel the only sound in the dim space.

Chris lingered in the doorway, his hands shoved in his jacket pockets, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.

"You're letting the mosquitoes in," his father said without looking up. He was a broad man, built like the oak trees that surrounded the property, his hair the same wheat-gold as Chris's but threaded heavily with gray. "Either come in or go out. Standing there makes you look like a ghost."

Chris stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind him. The darkness was immediate, comforting, the high windows filtering the afternoon into thin strips of amber light.

"You knew I was coming," Chris said. It wasn't a question.

His father set down the axe and turned, wiping his hands on a rag. His eyes, the same deep amber as Chris's, the same heavy brows, assessed his son with the unerring instinct of a man who had read silence for twenty years.

"I smelled you from the house," his father said. "You reek of conflict. Sit down before you fall down."

There was a stool near the bench. Chris sat, his knees weak, his hands still shaking. He stared at the dirt floor, at the patterns of light and shadow, and tried to find the words he'd rehearsed on the drive over. They'd evaporated.

"She's back," Chris finally said.

"I know."

"How do you know?"

His father leaned against the bench, crossing his arms. "Because you look like I did thirty years ago. Like someone reached inside your chest and rearranged your organs."

Chris looked up sharply. "You felt this? Before Mom?"

"Before your mother, yes." His father's voice was gravel, rough and unyielding. "With Elena Marsh. Do you remember her?"

"Vaguely." The name rang a distant bell, a woman who'd moved away when Chris was small, someone his mother never mentioned.

"She was my best friend's girl." The admission came without inflection, but Chris saw the way his father's jaw tightened. "The moment I smelled her, I knew. The bond doesn't care about rings or promises, Chris. It cares about blood. About truth."

Chris stood up so fast the stool scraped against the dirt. "I don't want this. I don't want her. I want Carly."

"Do you?" His father didn't move, his gaze steady as stone. "Then why are you here?"

"Because I can't…" Chris broke off, pacing to the window, pressing his forehead against the cool glass. "I can't stop looking at her. I can't stop smelling her. She's everywhere, Dad. In the air, in my clothes, in my head when I try to sleep. I touched her arm last week and I saw… I saw things. Forests. The moon. Her running, and me chasing, and it felt like.." He stopped, his breath hitching. "It felt like coming home. And Carly is my home. Carly is the one I chose."

"The bond doesn't negate choice," his father said quietly. "But it complicates it."

"How do I stop it?"

"You don't."

Chris turned, his eyes burning. "There has to be a way. I'm not an animal. I can control my instincts. I can choose Carly."

"Can you?" His father pushed off the bench and crossed the barn, stopping an arm's length away. Up close, Chris could see the lines around his eyes, the map of a life lived in the shadow of difficult choices. "When the backfire went off on Main Street, who did you protect?"

The question was a blow. Chris felt the blood drain from his face.

"I didn't think," he whispered. "I just moved."

"Instinct," his father said. "The wolf doesn't ask permission, son. It recognizes its mate before the man has time to lie."

"And if I fight it?"

His father was silent for a long moment. Outside, a crow called from the treeline, harsh and lonely.

"Then you'll spend your life fighting yourself," he said finally. "And you'll hurt them both far worse than if you'd been honest from the start."

Chris's knees buckled. He sank back onto the stool, his head in his hands, the weight of his father's words pressing down like a stone slab. He thought of Carly's smile, her laughter, the easy love she'd given him without reservation. He thought of Anna's eyes in the firelight, the way she'd looked at him in the parking lot, terrified, hungry, his in a way that predated choice.

"I can't hurt Carly," he said, the words muffled against his palms.

"Then you're already choosing."

"But choosing what?"

His father placed a heavy hand on Chris's shoulder, the grip firm and grounding.

"That's the question you'll have to answer," he said. "And soon. Because the bond doesn't stay hidden forever, Chris. The full moon is in nine days. If she's your true mate, the pull will become undeniable. For both of you."

Chris looked up, his vision blurred. "What happens then?"

His father's eyes were sad, sadder than Chris had ever seen them, swimming with memories of a young man who'd stood in this same barn, wrestling with the same impossible choice.

"Then you either claim her," his father said, "or you spend the rest of your life knowing you let your other half walk away. And trust me, son living with half a soul is worse than any broken heart."

Chris sat in the darkening barn long after his father left, listening to the axe-sharpening stone tick as it cooled, feeling the wolf inside him pace and howl and wait.

Nine days.

Nine days until the truth tore him apart.