Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70338 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70338 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
My dad is afraid the wolf is rabid. He keeps calling the Fish and Game Department asking if they’ve killed it yet.
A niggling of guilt runs through me. I’m not afraid of a wolf attack, but if something did happen to me out here on the anniversary of Mom’s death, it would kill my dad and Lincoln.
I sit cross-legged on the edge and pull out a handwritten letter from my mom. She wrote one for each of us, to help us cope after she died. To remind us that she loved us. I reread her words.
Grieve me together. Support each other. When you three are ready, I’d like you to scatter my ashes in the foothills of our Arizona residence–make that a special, sacred place you can commune with me. The land and light always felt magical to me there. Let it be the place you can find me when you need to connect. But know that no matter where you are, I’ll always be with you. Never doubt it.
I do fucking doubt it.
I don’t even know if I believe in the afterlife.
And if I did, would I even be worthy of my mom’s promise? A daughter who couldn’t even cry at her funeral?
I reread her letter, trying to bring something up.
I squeeze my eyes closed. Somewhere, deep beneath the surface, I feel something. A disquiet.
I scrunch up my face as if I’m crying, hoping to bring it to the surface. Like maybe if I fake-cry it will come out.
Nothing.
Fuck.
I’m the worst daughter ever.
It sucks to suck, as Lincoln would say.
I stand and peer over the edge of the cliff. This should scare me.
There’s no biological response to the threat of death. No uptick in the rate of my pulse or breath. No clammy hands.
I lean over the edge.
Still nothing.
For fuck’s sake, what is wrong with me?
I take one foot off the ledge and hold it forward like I’m going to step off a diving board.
In my periphery, I catch a flash of silver. I whirl to find an enormous wolf–the wolf–leaping through the air at me.
I scream as he lands on silent paws in front of me.
My arms pinwheel, but it’s too late, the balance of my weight is tipping over the side of the cliff. I’m falling–
Falling–
The wolf’s mighty jaws snap and catch on the knot of my shirt.
Great. Instead of smashing to my death below, I’m going to be eaten by a wolf.
But no–my shirt tears.
I buckle in half, reaching for the cliff’s edge as my ass plunges below it.
Apparently, I choose being eaten by a wolf over plummeting because my flailing hand reaches for the wolf’s nape, fingers closing on fur.
Fingers closing on…
My feet dangle in the air, but I’m not falling.
I’m suspended over the edge of the cliff, hanging by my arm which is held in a vise-like grip by…
Abe Oakley.
Wait…what?
A shirtless Abe Oakley.
Where did he come from? Did I black out? What in the hell is happening?
And then it all becomes clear.
Because Abe opens his mouth and the torn piece of my shirt flutters from his jaws.
Abe Oakley is a wolf.
He hauls me up over the edge of the cliff, pulling me on top of him, and rolling both of our bodies, so I’m on bottom, and he’s on top.
And that’s when I realize–
Abe is completely naked.
I mean, I guess that makes sense.
The wolf wasn’t clothed. And he definitely was–is–the wolf.
I blink up at him.
I’m not scared, but it’s not because I’m still numb.
On the contrary, for the first time in over a year, I feel everything.
The whisper of the hot breeze on my cheeks. The rapid beating of my heart against Abe’s chest. A sense of exhilaration. Glory, even.
I didn’t die.
I cared about living–I was truly scared there for a moment, but I survived. And it feels wonderful.
The sense of being alive. Of having this incredible experience that can’t be explained. Of…
Wait. Maybe I did die? I died, and this is like some kind of crazy afterlife dream where my subconscious produced a wolf that turns into Abe Oakley.
“Fuck.” Abe’s eyes are round, his gaze darting across my face with dawning horror. He rears back. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Okay, yeah. This seems real. Abe would do this. But, unlike Abe, he’s as freaked out about finding himself naked on top of me as I was about having a wolf trying to bite my midriff.
But no, that’s not what happened.
“You saved me,” I realize. He didn’t bite my flesh, he grabbed my shirt. He was trying to keep me from going over the edge.
Abe scrambles to his feet and stares down at me. His body is more beautiful than Michelangelo’s David, his muscles perfectly honed, his very impressive cock standing at half-mast. His throat works. “Yeah. I…saved you from the wolf.”
I blink. His voice has the timbre of someone trying out a story. Like he’s trying to make me believe he’s not the wolf. To help shape an unexplainable situation into something that fits this reality.