Chapter 7: The Empty Cell

I read it three times.

Is she dead yet?

Rawlins stopped laughing.

He saw my face and started again, louder.

"Well," he said. "Guess not."

"Who's C?" Rhett asked.

"My mama."

Rhett pressed his knee down.

Rawlins's laugh turned into a wheeze.

"I don't know any C," Rawlins gasped. "Phone's stolen."

"Then you won't mind if I keep it."

A pickup truck came around the corner with its high beams on.

Four Magnolia Creek wolves jumped out of the bed.

They put Rawlins in silver chains and threw him in the back.

Rhett picked my phone up from under the truck and handed it to me.

Then he saw my hand.

The rake had torn my palm open across the middle.

"Come on," he said.

We went back to my house.

He sat me at the kitchen table under the yellow light.

He found the first aid kit in the cabinet over the stove without asking where it was.

"How do you know where I keep that?"

"I put it there," he said. "The day you moved in. You were asleep on the couch."

I didn't remember.

I'd slept for almost two days after he brought me across his border.

He cleaned my hand with a wet cloth.

He was still bare to the waist.

There was a long scratch on his shoulder where the gray wolf had caught him.

"You're bleeding too," I said.

"I heal fast."

"Rhett."

"It's nothing."

I took the cloth from him.

I stood up between his knees to reach his shoulder.

I wiped the blood off.

He held very still.

His skin was hot under my hand. Wolves always ran hot.

I could see the muscle in his back jump every time the cloth touched him.

I hadn't touched anyone like this in three years.

I didn't stop when the blood was gone.

I put the cloth down and laid my bare hand flat on his shoulder instead.

He shut his eyes.

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