I was almost out the door when she caught me.

​

“Claire, you’re not leaving now, are you? Quil’s on his way over.”

​

“Right Mom, that’s exactly why I’m leaving.” I’d heard her on the phone. Conspiring.

​

“Maybe if you considered his perspective, you’d realize how unfair you’re being.”

​

“I’m being unfair?” I shot back. “How is it that he gets to tell me how to live my life but when all I want is for him to mind his own business, I’m the one who’s being unfair?” I was being unnecessarily snide with my mother, and I felt a little guilty about it, but I didn’t like that she had been taking his side. His side. When did there get to be sides? I knew the answer to that: as soon as I started dating Joseph.

​

“I’m heading down to the beach,” I hollered as I let the door shut behind me. That was fair. I got to stalk away and burn off some of my anger-laced energy, and Quil could come and find me if he really wanted to.

​

I had to admit that a part of me wanted him to. As ticked off as I was about his behavior over Joseph, there was something about it that made me feel kind of good. It’s like he was jealous. Jealous about what, I didn’t know. At various times in my life, he’d been my favorite babysitter, a substitute big brother, and a best friend. Jealousy didn’t quite fit with that picture, but it made me secretly smile when I thought about it. Maybe it’s because none of the Quileute boys who lived in this tiny reservation town had ever noticed that I existed. But now, finally – finally – a guy was paying attention to me. An outsider guy. A guy I even liked back. If that made big, dense Quil take notice then all the better. Even if it did make him squirm.

Okay. That wasn’t fair. Quil had never been anything but completely devoted to me. I knew without a doubt he would throw himself in front of a bus if it would save my life. He was always there for me, and I could tell him anything. Well, almost anything. It had always kind of felt like he belonged to me. Until Joseph. Now it seemed like Quil thought I belonged to him. The weird thing is, until I’d met Joseph, that wouldn’t have bothered me in the least.

​

“Hey,” he said when he was just a few feet behind me. Like all of his werewolf ‘brothers’ he moved as silently as a cat – which was kind of ironic given how much time he spent as a huge dog. It hardly startled me anymore, but I’d been particularly engrossed in my thoughts just then.

​

“Hey,” I said back, trying not to look like he had just given me a near-fatal arrhythmia with his stealth appearance. I wasn’t successful.

​

“Sorry,” he said out of habit. He looked sheepishly to the ground like he always did when he thought he’d upset me. As if he had any reason to be intimidated by me. He towered over me at six feet tall and, like all the guys in the pack, he had the body of a weightlifter. At least the parts of his body that I could see – which was most of it. All of the wolf guys tried to wear as little clothing as possible. I guess I could understand that, since they ran body temperatures of a hundred and nine. Today he had on the usual pair of cut-off sweats.

​

We were on ‘our’ section of beach. A sheltered cove where we’d spent countless hours running, laughing, and just goofing around. I’d never felt like La Push had a lot of redeeming qualities, but its beaches were definitely up there. None of the beaches in Washington state draw a lot of tourists – too cold and overcast – so they are never overrun with people. At least not like the coastal areas in sunnier parts of the nation. But the beaches of La Push were particularly secluded, especially from people who weren’t members of the tribe. Although, there was something to do with currents or wave patterns that did make La Push’s beaches attractive to the odd surfer or two. But it was vacant at the moment, except for the two of us. In all the time we’d hung out here, I’d never felt this tense. I’d never felt this tense with Quil, period.

“I know what you’re here to say, so you can save your breath,” I said. Might as well get it out in the open. “I’m going out with Joseph no matter how hard you try to persuade me not to. In fact, the harder you try to persuade me, the more I want to see him. I’m thinking about calling him up right now.” I would have pulled out my cell phone to back up my threat, but I hadn’t brought it with me. Not that I would ever work up the nerve to actually call him. I didn’t even have his cell number, but I wasn’t about to admit that. “What exactly do you have against him anyway? Is it because he’s not Quileute? Is it because he’s a couple years older than me? Does he have some criminal record you’ve dug up that you haven’t shared with me?”

​

Quil smiled at that one. I knew he would, but it didn’t seem to make him feel better.

​

“I don’t have anything against him,” Quil said before looking back at the ground. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt is all.”

​

“Quil, you can’t protect me from everything. Besides, a person can’t live their life avoiding anything that might possibly hurt them. Unless they don’t want to ever experience anything worth experiencing.” When he still wouldn’t meet my eyes, it occurred to me that there was something he wasn’t telling me. Something personal. Painful. Maybe even romantic?

​

“Is that why you never date, Quil? Did someone break your heart?”

​

Quil sighed. “Not yet,” he answered with a grim smile. Then I saw something in his face I’d never seen before. Was it vulnerability? I couldn’t reconcile that with the cool, nonchalant Quil I knew. The guy who could phase into an enormous chocolate-brown wolf without any effort so he could patrol the forest for vampires.

​

“Then why don’t you date? You should, you know. Maybe then you could cut me some slack.”

​

He just shrugged his shoulders in reply. What was it with him lately? This was not the Quil I’d known all my life. Maybe it was a wolf thing I’d never noticed before. Maybe they all went through some period of melancholy or something. Like they were in tune with the moon cycles.

​

“Don’t tell me you’re waiting for the right person to come along.”

​

“Something like that,” he replied, his eyes now focused far beyond me to where the sea disappeared under the horizon.

“Well, you shouldn’t wait around. That’s crazy. Obviously, she’s not here in La Push.” Everyone knew everyone in the tiny reservation town where I’d grown up. “Maybe it’s time to go out and start looking for her.”

​

Quil gave me the strangest look. Part confusion, part pain. Real, tangible pain, like I’d suggested he start kicking puppies for a hobby. It actually occurred to me that he was trying to guilt-trip me, but I was not about to let that work. This was about my life as much as his. But then he said something that surprised me.

​

“I know who I want to spend my life with.” He said it with certainty but also with a kind of sorrow I’d never seen in him.

“So, what’s the problem?”

​

Quil paused and took a breath then he looked back out into the Pacific. “She’s sort of seeing someone else.”

“Quil, I’m so sorry!”

​

He gave a little laugh – not a happy laugh, but one that sounded incredulous. Like I couldn’t possibly have meant what I just said. “I am sorry Quil. I hate to see you so sad.” That didn’t seem to make him feel any better. Maybe what he needed was some prompting.

​

“Have you ever told her how you feel?” His eyes met mine, but he clearly had no response. “You need to tell her how you feel.” Again, no reply. We’d never talked about anything so grown-up before. Maybe that’s what was hard for him. But I didn’t want to drop it. Romance, love, finding the people we were going to spend the rest of our lives with – these were important to both of us. And if our friendship couldn’t mature to handle these kinds of subjects, then maybe it wasn’t much of a friendship anymore. I hated to think that could be possible, so I continued to push it.

​

“Really, Quil. You can’t just let her slip away from you. If you really care about her, you need to tell her. In fact, she has a right to know. Maybe she’s not really that into this guy she’s dating. She might have feelings for you too. You’ll never know if you don’t tell her.”

​

Still, nothing from Quil. There was something he wasn’t telling me. Maybe he didn’t want to, although that would be a first. Or maybe I’d made a stupid assumption.

​

“Or, tell him, um, if that’s the case,” I said in what I hoped was a nonchalant manner.

​

He looked into my eyes. “She is definitely female.”

​

Right. He had said she was seeing someone else.

​

He looked at the ground and took a breath. “I’ve always thought she knows how I feel about her.”

​

“You can’t assume that Quil. You need to tell her.”

​

“It’s not that simple, Claire.” Quil was never this vague. It was such odd behavior from him that it was starting to worry me. Maybe our friendship was on shakier ground than I thought.

​

“So, what’s so complicated about it?”

​

“It has to do with imprinting, so it’s not really something that can be fixed. Not in the usual way.”

​

“Oh yeah, imprinting. I’d forgotten about that.” It was a werewolf thing. Imprinting happened when the guys discovered the one person they couldn’t live without. It seemed to take place randomly, unexpectedly, but the effect was immediate. One look, and bam! Hooked for life. Only the guys imprinted, but I’d never heard of a woman who didn’t react with anything but complete and happy acceptance.

​

“You don’t know,” he said with the kind of finality that meant this conversation was over for him.

​

He wasn’t looking for a response, but I gave him one anyway. “Of course I don’t know! It’s a werewolf thing.”

​

“Right.” He paused. “Look, I’ll see you later,” he finally said. Then he turned and walked away. I watched him for a while. He walked slowly, even ploddingly. I’d never seen Quil move like this before, like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. At least now I had a clue as to what was bugging him, but it didn’t seem like he wanted any advice from me about it. Not that I had any experience in the romance department. But I was hoping tonight would change that.

As worried as I was for Quil, I had other matters on my mind. Namely, what the heck was I going to wear tonight? This was a dinner-and-a-movie date, which made me crazy nervous, and it meant wearing something nice while still looking casual, which was nearly impossible to do given the scarcity of anything resembling ‘cool’ in my wardrobe. Tonight was a step up from the two very casual sort of hang-out dates I’d had with Joseph. It signaled a new seriousness. I really hoped that tonight would lead to more physical contact. So far he’d only held my hand. I wouldn’t even admit to myself how much I wanted him to kiss me this time. I was sweet seventeen, for heaven’s sake, and never been kissed. It was humiliating. Or it would be if I’d ever admitted it to anyone.

​

Joseph’s appearance in my life had come as a surprise. I had pretty much given up on boys by then. I was still hoping that if I went away to college next year, I could leave my unlucky-in-love mojo behind me. Plus, college guys were more varied and my selection here in La Push had always been extremely limited. Not that I wouldn’t have gone out with pretty much any Quileute guy who had asked me. But not one of them ever had.

​

A part of me had always wondered if the Quileute guys stayed away from me because I’m actually a member of the Makah Tribe – as are my mother and older sister. But we’d moved to La Push when I was so young that I didn’t even remember living in Neah Bay. To me that little town was just a place where we visited relatives for the holidays. My dad – who was actually my stepdad, but the only father I’d ever known – was Quileute and my little brother was a mixture of both. It had never mattered to me that I’m not Quileute, but I’d always had this sense that I didn’t quite belong around the other kids at school. I was the oddball. The wallflower.

​

Meeting Joseph had changed that. I’d been working for the summer at La Push’s only grocery store – more like a convenience store with produce, actually – when Carl, who’d been delivering our beverages for forever, had a heart attack and had to retire. The first time Joseph showed up in Carl’s place I made an idiot of myself. He was so cute. Not to mention so not middle aged like most of our delivery guys. I just stared at him for a while, which made him grin. Even after my embarrassing display of naked lust, he seemed to like me. Or maybe that was why he liked me. Either way, he got friendlier week after week as he came by to stock our cooler. And eventually I was able to not only carry on a coherent conversation with him – I even seemed capable of flirting! This was something I’d never had any chance to practice, let alone have success at, so I was totally blown away when it didn’t repulse him. And now that the summer was winding down – and I’d made sure he knew I wouldn’t still be working in the store when school started – he began asking me out. My life was finally about to begin.

​

Read Chapter 2