Seduction (The Journal of the Wolves of Spruce Hollow) (2 page)

Roan had held a place in my heart more important than anyone else ever had. He was the first “big person” that I’d ever trusted after both my biological parents had died and I loved him with my whole heart. His leaving Spruce Hollow had nearly destroyed me and it had smashed and broken my fragile heart into a million tiny pieces.
 

Once upon a time, Roan had promised that he’d never leave me. But apparently he was a lying asshole. He’d even written it to me once, in a note that he’d left on his pillow the day after he caught me sneaking home from the first and only Dam party that I’d ever gone to.
 

God, I still had that damn note, tucked away in a box in the back of my closet. I’d held on to it all these years and for some reason I’d never been able to throw it out, no matter how much anger and sadness that I’d harbored towards him.
 

Over the years, I’d looked at that tearstained, wrinkled piece of paper a million times, my fingers tracing the words in his bold penmanship: “
and for the record, I would never abandon you…ever”.
 

And I believed him. Oh god, how I’d believed him. I had always believed Roan. Every word that came out of his mouth was like gospel to me. I mean,
why would he lie to me?
He was “my” adult and there was no one out there who was more important than that.
 

But he had lied.
 

Every stupid word that had come out of his stupid mouth was a stupid lie. He had abandoned me like the calloused monster he truly was and the last time that I’d ever laid eyes on him had been the New Years Eve that he’d returned home from the training camp.

That was five years ago and yet here I was again, completely engulfed in the black pit of despair. Sometimes I wondered if I’d ever really managed to get out of the pit or was it that I sometimes forgot to keep struggling and the darkness swallowed me whole?
 

Being abandoned by my adoptive mother, Valerie, due to death, was one thing. Her reasons for leaving me were far beyond her control. Cancer had taken my mother away, kicking and screaming the entire way. She had been a brave fighter. It was a completely different matter entirely.
 

But Roan’s abrupt departure had been a choice, one that I would never forgive him for, for as long as I lived.
 

Chapter 2

~Aspen~

As I walked through the empty house, I picked up various items, and relived the memories associated with each item as I held it.
My mother’s supple leather gloves.
I gave them to her for Christmas when I was a kid and she’d worn them every single winter since, even though the fingers had long since started to wear.
The blue and white patchwork quilt draped over the back of the couch
. My mother had received it as a gift from a pack member when she got married.
My high school diploma held to the fridge by a purple flower magnet.
God, my mother had been so proud the day that I’d graduated. She’d said that it was a “milestone”.
 

Little did she know I would pick up and move as far away from Spruce Hollow as I possibly could after my high school graduation.

Before the ink was even dry on my diploma, I took off and landed in Springbay, where I’d traded in the woods and streams for wide open sandy beaches and sun. Part of me felt guilty that I wasn’t around for my mother while she was still healthy but I guess that I just wanted to be far, far away from anything that remotely reminded me of Roan, the pack or Spruce Hollow. And Springbay pretty much fit the bill on all counts.
 

My hope was that moving away from the pack would give me some perspective on the situation with Roan and allow me to finally heal from the anger and betrayal that consumed me daily. But in reality, all changing locations had done was given me a honeyed glow and a killer body from jogging on the beach every morning.
 

I was still no closer to letting go of Roan’s abandonment today than I was the day that I’d left Spruce Hollow.
 

That being said, I still liked the life I’d built for myself in Springbay and had no intentions of leaving. It was a college town, so there were a lot of young people around most of the year. And because of that, the town had youthfulness and an energy about it.
 

My favorite part though, was the powdered sand beaches that seemed to stretch out for miles in every direction. It was a popular place to go hang out and the beaches were frequently littered with attractive young men and women working on their tans or surfing. People seemed a lot happier in Springbay than what I had observed in Spruce Hollow. The people were more free and open with one another. There were no secrets to hide.

And no secrets meant that there were no Weres living there. I’d made sure of that fact well in advance. Before I’d made my mad dash for freedom, I’d pumped any Were that would still talk to me after Roan’s departure for information about Were packs all over the country.
 

However, the only Weres that ever spoke to me anymore were my mother, Caver, Griff and my grandparents.
 

And even Caver and Griff had been kind of weird towards me when Roan first left town.
 

I remembered how I would drop in to the auto body shop after school, like I had every single school day since I was a kid, and try to talk to them. But they just kept working and would blatantly ignore me until I would give up and leave.
 

It made me feel so empty inside because they were all that I’d had left of Roan.
 

Everything all came to a head one day, about four months after Roan had left town. Caver and Griff had unexpectedly stopped by my mother’s house while I was out visiting Sorcha. But unbeknownst to them, her mom was driving me home early because she’d wanted Sorcha to help her sister muck out the horses stalls. As I got out of the car, I was shocked to see a familiar truck parked in the driveway and my heart leapt into my throat.
 

Roan’s black truck was backed into the driveway with the tailgate down!
 

Excited and full of nervous energy, I sprinted across the lawn and ran into the house calling Roan’s name. Trembling from head to toe, I met Griff coming down the front stairs, carrying a big box of Roan’s things.

“Hey Griff, what are you doing here?” I asked as I anxiously eyed a couple of Roan’s possessions peeking out over the top of the box.

“Umm, Aspen, hey. I thought you were supposed to be at Sorcha’s today?” he said as he looked around uncomfortably.

“Yeah, I was but her mom decided to bring me home early. What’s in the box?”

“Uh, this? Well, Roan asked us to come and pick up his stuff and put it into storage for him,” Griff said as I continued up the stairs, hoping against hope that Roan was somewhere in the house too.

I couldn’t find him anywhere, of course, but I did find Caver in his room. He was filling up empty cardboard moving boxes with Roan’s things.
 

Apparently when Roan had left town, he’d given his truck to Caver, so that Caver wouldn’t have to drive his motorcycle through the really cold months anymore.

Utterly deflated, I sat on the floor of Roan’s room with my knees pulled into my chest and quietly watched while they threw his stuff into boxes. His room had been preserved exactly as he’d left it because I’d guarded his stuff carefully, comforted by the fantasy that he would soon be back for it.

Watching them cart his stuff out of the house was the first time that I truly realized that Roan wasn’t ever coming back to us and the knowledge hit me like a razor sharp knife to the heart. Overwhelmed by utter despair, I just sat there on the floor and cried into my hands like my heart was broken.
 

Because it was.
 

Caver seemed irritated and on edge by my tears and at one point, he looked directly at me and said in an agitated tone: “Aspen, would you just fucking stop it. Roan’s gone. He’s not coming back. Ever! So get over it!”
 

Which of course made me cry even harder. Caver had been like a brother to me and his caustic remarks had cut deep into a wound that was already bleeding profusely.

“Why are you being so mean to me Caver? Why is
everyone
being so mean to me? What did I do to make everyone hate me so much all of a sudden,” I asked him tearfully.
 

“You don’t get it do you, Aspen? You have no idea. Unbelievable. You know, if I weren’t so pissed off, I might actually find it kind of pitiful,” Caver said as he glared at me, his eyes full of contempt. “Just go away Aspen. Just leave us alone and stop coming by the shop too while you’re at it. It’s annoying as hell and no one wants to talk to you.”

Ouch, way to twist the knife in my heart Caver.

I shot up from my place on the floor and ran from the room, my head down and crying hysterically from his cruel words. Caver obviously didn’t understand that by shoving Roan’s things into a box and taking them away from me, they were essentially taking
everything that I had left of him
. Without knowing it, hey were striping away the one thing that I clung desperately to.
Hope.
 

In my heart, Roan’s clothes and all the things in his room that made it “his” space represented a deep longing and hopefulness that he would soon come back home.

But now his things were being ripped away from me and to top it all off, Caver was now taking his friendship away too by telling me to stay away from the shop?
Why? Haven’t I suffered enough already?

With hysterical tears, blinding my vision, I felt claustrophobic and could barely breath as reality crashed over me.
 

Roan was gone. He had left me and was never coming back
.
He was gone for good.

So, deep in the clutches of a full blown panic attack and overcome by the need to escape I ran for the front door. There was no way that I could share the same physical space with someone as cold and calloused as Caver had been to me.
 

Unfortunately, in my blind dash for freedom, my foot accidentally caught on Roan’s work boots that someone had left sitting at the top of the stairs and I went careening down from the top of the stairs to the landing at the bottom.
 

In my attempt to brace myself, I had flung out my right arm and landed on my outstretched wrist in the process. The force of the fall sent horrible stabbing pains all the way up to my shoulder and Griff and Caver came running while I cradled my limp arm to my body with my left hand and howled in pain.

“Did you leave those goddamn boots there,” Griff yelled at Caver over my loud wailing, “I told you to put them in the truck. Jesus, he is going to fucking
kill
you, you know that? First you run your big mouth off and now
this
? You are a dead man, my friend.”

* * *

My right arm was useless.
 

I couldn’t move it at all and it hung limply at my side as the doctor poked and prodded at it.

“It’s dislocated. How did you say this happened again?” The doctor eyed my two large companions, who were hovering over me on the left side of the gurney.

“She fell down the stairs,” they both said in unison. It almost sounded rehearsed.

“Well, technically, she tripped because
someone
didn’t put the boots in the truck, and then she fell down the stairs,” Griff added helpfully while shooting Caver a “this is all your fault” glance.

“I see. Well, either way, I’ll be back with someone to help me and then we’ll pop that shoulder back in, okay Aspen? Then we’ll do an x-ray on that wrist,” he said as he patted me reassuringly on my good shoulder.
 

The doctor returned shortly with a big, burly orderly and an older, frazzled looking nurse in light blue scrubs. They sat me up on the edge of the gurney and I moaned in pain. As my stomach churned from the discomfort, the nurse pushed on my shoulder blade from behind

I scowled as the orderly grabbed my elbow and forearm in his big, sweaty hands.

“Are you ready?” he asked as his breath fanned out over me in rancid waves.

Fearful of whatever he planned to do with my limp arm, I shook my head and held on to it even tighter. He chuckled as he looked over at Caver and Griff.

“Kids, huh?”

He turned his gaze back to me and whispered conspiratorially. “Look, it’ll only hurt for a minute, then it’ll all be over, I promise,” he said sympathetically as he removed my left handed death grip from my forearm.

The nurse counted down and then the orderly whipped my arm up and away from my body and then pulled it above my head while the doctor pushed. The pain was excruciating and before I could get to the promised “it’ll all be over”, the whole world went black and I passed out cold.
 

The examining room was quiet as we waited for the results of my wrist x-ray. Caver had been unusually subdued after I’d passed out while the medical staff had popped my shoulder back in.
 

He wouldn’t even look at me.