Hemlock 03: Willowgrove Read Free Page B

what we did . . . it felt like some sort of responsibility—like we had to figure out how Sinclair had gotten away with so much and who had helped her. How could any of us really put Thornhill in the past when there were still so many questions?
    I stared down at the small sketch for a moment, and then sent a text to the person who had been standing at my side in front of the monitor that night. Need 2 ask u something.
    My phone vibrated a second later. s’up?
    I rubbed my eyes. Jason’s response had come too quickly for my message to have woken him. I tried not to think about what sort of trouble he might be getting into at 3:00 a.m. on a Friday night in a town overrun by Trackers.
    Both Kyle’s parents and Tess, my cousin and legal guardian, were still having trouble coping with the news that Kyle was a werewolf and that we were both, technically, fugitives. They watched us like they were waiting for the sky to fall. Jason’s parents, on the other hand, were happy just to have him back without a scandal. Once he had assured them that he hadn’t dragged the Sheffield name through the mud or gotten anyone knocked up, it had been business as usual.
    I sent him the picture of the sketch. Does this look familiar?
    No. Y?
    Before I could reply, he sent another text. Gotta go.
    That was it. No explanation. No good-bye.
    Wherever he was and whatever he was doing, I was certain it couldn’t be good.
    Leaving a group like the Trackers wasn’t easy—especially when you had the kind of status and money Jason did. They had gotten their claws into him and they intended to keep things that way. And Jason . . . Jason believed that staying close to them would help keep the rest of us safe—as though he could be a kind of early warning system if someone found out Kyle and Serena were infected or that I was the daughter of a pack leader.
    It was the same at school. He continued to play the part of Tracker and alcoholic screwup to draw attention away from the rest of us. He played it so well that there were times when I had to remind myself that he really had changed. He played it so well that sometimes I suspected even he forgot who and what he was.
    I stowed my phone and then slid back into my sleeping bag. I rolled over and studied Kyle’s shadowed profile. In the morning, we’d drive back to Hemlock and have to face the real world. Trackers. Jason. The fact that Serena still hadn’t recovered from Sinclair’s “cure” and the knowledge that Kyle would soon have to decide whether or not to return to Colorado.
    But morning was still a few hours off.
    I reached for Kyle’s hand, gently lacing my fingers through his.
    For a few hours, if I tried hard enough, I could pretend that everything was fine.
    Amy was still alive, Jason had never joined the Trackers,and Kyle had never become infected. None of us had so much as heard of Thornhill, and Hemlock wasn’t at the epicenter of what could turn into a full-fledged war between wolves and regs.
    Everything— everything —was all right.
    I edged closer to Kyle and rested my head on his shoulder.
    Sometimes, it was better to fall asleep to a comforting lie than to the truth.

2
    I ROLLED MY SHOULDERS AS I LINGERED UNDER THE HOT water. I was about as far from pampered as you could get, but I was a city girl, and my back was complaining about a night spent sleeping in the woods.
    Still, every kink and knotted muscle had been worth it.
    I closed my eyes and remembered the sensation of Kyle’s arms around me and the way his lips had tasted a little like cinnamon. My heart beat a little faster as I turned off the shower and raised my fingertips to the slow smile that stretched across my face. He wanted to stay together. Even if he went back to Colorado, he didn’t want it to be the end of him and me. The end of us.
    “Mac?” My cousin Tess’s voice drifted through the closed bathroom door, jolting me from my thoughts.
    “Yeah?”
    “Your phone’s been blowing up for the past