The Mane Squeeze (6 page)

G
wen sat on the top stair of the porch, her elbows resting on her knees, her chin resting in the palm of her hands. She stared off into the woods.

She stared and she sulked. She hated when she sulked.

As it grew later, finally drawing to a close this hellish day, Blayne sat down beside her, resting her elbows on her knees, her chin in the palm of her hands. She stayed silent a good five minutes, which for Blayne was pretty much a record.

“What’s wrong?” Blayne finally asked.

“Nothing,” Gwen answered. “I’m just sitting here. Staring.” Maybe hoping a bear would wander out of the woods to say “hi and I’m sorry I broke my promise.”

“How’s the leg?”

“Healing.” Although it did feel like rats were inside her calf, tearing the flesh apart with their teeth and then sewing it back together with a giant needle and some thread.

“Hurts like a bitch, huh?”

“I haven’t started screaming yet, have I?”

“You have a point.” Blayne took a deep, satisfied breath. “It’s really beautiful here, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Beautiful house,” she sighed. “Great weather.”

“Yep and yep.”

“And that grizzly—”

“
Left me!
” Gwen screamed out, startling the birds from the trees.

Lock brushed the attacking bees off his face and dug into the hive again, pulling out the honeycomb. He shook off the clinging bees and broke off a piece. Ric sat down against a tree opposite from Lock that was close enough so they didn’t have to scream at each other, but far enough away to help Ric avoid the rampaging bees.

Once he seemed comfortable, he observed, “You’ve stripped the trees of their bark quite nicely.”

“Yeah,” Lock mumbled around the honeycomb. “Sorry about that.”

Ric shrugged. “My father had them imported from Japan for a tidy seven-figure sum, had them featured in that
Vanity Fair
article on him and the Van Holtz dynasty, and got an award from the Tree Rescue Foundation for his efforts to resurrect nearly extinct trees—but I’m sure he won’t be too upset.”

Lock winced. “Now I feel bad.”

“Don’t,” Ric said good-naturedly. “Now—” Ric cringed when Lock bit into a honeycomb and spit out a bee he’d started to chew on “—Adelle is going to make her honey-glazed chicken. Unless you’re all honeyed out.”

Lock stared at his friend, and Ric nodded. “As I thought. So dinner is set. But before we go back, perhaps you can fill me in on why you’re sitting out here, tearing the bark off trees and abusing bees.”

Ric cringed again when Lock spit out another bee.

“What?” Lock demanded, tired of being judged for his eating habits. “Would you prefer I eat them?”

“No, no. You keep doing whatever it is you enjoy doing. No matter how vile.”

Lock stared down at the remnants of the hive and admitted what was bothering him. Something that even honey wasn’t curing. “I should never have left her.”

“Did you have a choice?”

“If I wanted to fight a polar.”

“Weren’t you the one who told me that when it comes to bears—bigger wins?”

“Yeah.” And Toots was definitely bigger. “But I promised her I wouldn’t leave her. I guess I just feel like I let her down by not being there when she woke up fully.”

“Okay, so maybe you did let her down a little. But I’m sure when she calls, you can explain—”

“Calls?”

“To thank you, of course. It’s proper etiquette to send a thank-you note or call after someone saves you from a violent Pack, Pride, or Clan attack.”

“I’m sensing she didn’t get much shifter etiquette training in Philly. Or, now that I think about it,
any
etiquette training in Philly.”

“But you did give her your number? Or you got hers?”

Lock stared at his friend. “My number?”

“You didn’t give her your phone number?”

“She was wounded. It didn’t occur to me.” When Ric sighed, his disappointment clear, Lock threw in, “And I’m sure that cat wouldn’t have let me leave anything for her anyway.”

“What did the cat look like?”

“I don’t know. He was a little thing. Tiny. Lion…I think. You know, the breed with all the hair.”

“Tiny. Right. The world is filled with tiny lion males. And the only
tiny
lion I know of this close to my territory is Brendon Shaw. And, if I remember what you told me correctly, he’s the one you beat up at Jess Ward’s wedding. Something I’m sure he did not forget since last you two met.”

“He didn’t. But I didn’t beat him up,” Lock quickly added. “I…I simply threw him five…or maybe it was fifty feet into a tree.”

The two friends gazed at each other for a long moment.

Finally, Lock shrugged. “That does make it all kind of awkward, doesn’t it?”

And that’s when Ric started laughing.

“You don’t want to talk about the bear?” Blayne asked.

“No.”

“But you just yelled about him. So maybe we need to discuss—”

“No.”

“Okay.” The sun began to slowly set and that’s when Blayne abruptly turned to Gwen and spewed out in one, never-ending sentence, “My father wants to retire and he wants me to take over his business and I’m moving to New York and I want you to move with me so we can be partners and run the business together, preferably in Manhattan rather than Queens, because you’re my best friend and I love you and it’ll be great!”

Gwen continued to watch the sun go down behind some trees. “Only you, Blayne,” she said calmly, “would spit out life-changing decisions like bullets from a tommy gun.”

“Is that a yes?” Blayne asked, with that hopeful eagerness that never seemed to die a humane death.

“No. That’s not a yes. And what makes you think you need a partner to run your dad’s business? You’re smart, Blayne, no matter what Sister Mary Rose told you. You’ll be fine.”

“In business terms, I’m a big-picture thinker. I have big plans for this business. But details, Gwenie, are not my friends.
You’re
the one who handles details beautifully. To sort of quote my dad, I’m the fuck-up with big ideas and you’re the stabilizer.”

Gwen chuckled. “You’re not a fuck-up.”

“Maybe not. But I don’t want to do this on my own.”

And Gwen knew why. Because Gwen had all the confidence but none of the courage to see her dreams through, while Blayne had all the courage but none of the confidence. In many ways…they were a perfect team to run a business. If only Gwen could walk away from her family. Walk away from Philly. But she couldn’t.

“Why make me a partner, Blayne? In a year you’ll have everything running fine and you’ll resent me taking part of your profits. And I will take part of the profits if I’m a partner.”

Blayne stared down at her feet. They were too small for her size and definitely too small for the She-wolf in her. Some days she could do amazing things with those feet, other days she could barely manage to make it down flights of stairs, escalators, or simply walk from one room to another without falling on her face. “Other than my dad, I don’t have anybody but you, Gwenie. You’re my Pack.”

“A Pack of two? That’s awfully sad.”

“It doesn’t have to be. Not if we do something with it. By myself I can keep the business going. Maybe for the next forty years. But together…we can really do something with it, and enjoy ourselves.”

Gwen was fighting really hard not to get caught up in Blayne’s excitement. She’d done it before, gotten caught up. And that way laid madness…and jail time. Yet the thought of their own business…just the two of them. No Pride or Pack to answer to, no decisions made that were not theirs and theirs alone. “Yeah. Maybe that’s true.”

“I know you’ve got a lot invested in Cally’s business—”

Gwen barely stopped herself from snorting at that one.

“—and that it will be hard to walk away from that—and from your mom. But if you just give me a chance—”

“Stop.” Gwen wanted to rub her calf. Actually, she wanted to shift, rip off the bandage, and lick her calf until the pain went away.

Blayne winced a bit. “Your mom at it again?”

“She wants me running the business.” Roxy’s business. The one Gwen had absolutely no interest in.

“Well…if it’s your business, I guess that’s the same as the two of us…” Her words died off as Gwen let out a bitter laugh.

“I said she wants me
running
the business. Not that she’d
give
me the business. That business belongs to the Pride.”

“You’re part of the Pride.”

“No, Blayne.” Gwen looked her friend in the eyes and said what they’d both known for a very long time but neither had ever said out loud. “I’ll always be an outsider.”

“But they don’t treat you like—”

“They treat me like family. But where they go, what they do as a Pride—I’m never part of that. I never will be part of that.”

Blayne’s jaw clenched in frustration. “That doesn’t seem fair, Gwen.”

“Sweetie, haven’t I taught you there is no fair among predators?”

“Then nothing should be holding you back. You should come with me. Screw ’em all.”

“She’s still my mother, Blayne.”

“And?”

“I can’t leave Roxy on her own. I’m her only daughter.”

“And she’s got a whole Pride watching out for her. A Pride you’re not even a part of.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Yeah, but what? Instead of spending your whole life worrying about family who love you but not enough to give you as much power as the rest of them, maybe you should think about yourself for a change. About what
you
want.”

“Because it’s that easy?”

“No. It’s not that easy. It wasn’t easy for my dad to walk away from his Pack. But he did it anyway. For me. Because they wouldn’t take us both and he wasn’t giving me up. He made choices to benefit me and…”

“And now you need to be there when he needs you.”

“Because of me he doesn’t have anybody else. Your mom can’t make the same claim.”

Blayne put her arm around Gwen’s shoulder and hugged her. She’d always been affectionate, even though Gwen wasn’t. But she was Blayne and she would always do things her own way.

“Just think about it before you say no, okay?”

Lie to her. Tell her what she wants to hear so you
both
can pretend you have a choice
. “Okay.”

After another quick hug, Blayne left her and Gwen sat there. She didn’t know for how long, but the entire time her mind kept jumping back and forth between what her life would be like if she left Philly—from the best possibility to the absolute worst—to what her life would be like if she stayed. And although she loved her mother for never giving her up and making sure the family never turned on her, forcing her out, Gwen couldn’t shake the feeling that her future was not meant to be in Philly. It wasn’t meant to be with the O’Neill Pride. She’d always be an O’Neill, but would her future cubs be raised by the Pride, her life dedicated to the Pride? No. She didn’t see that. She didn’t see that at all.

Eventually, as if she’d somehow summoned her out of sheer will alone, the phone rang, and it was Roxy, checking in with Gwen as she liked to do when they were apart. As her mother rambled about the wonderful spa experience she was having with her sisters and wishing Gwen was there with her, Gwen suddenly heard herself say something she never thought she’d hear.

“Ma?”

“Yeah, baby-girl?”

Gwen closed her eyes, swallowed, and took that step off the ledge, “I’m moving to New York with Blayne.”

Lock tossed aside the empty beehive and scratched at a few of the bee stings on his arms and neck. “Who am I kidding? What am I going to do with a girl like her?”

“We had this talk when we were fourteen. I even brought my brother’s
Hustler
for visual assistance.”

“I don’t mean
that
, you dweeb. You didn’t see this girl. Not so much today, ’cause we were both naked, but at the wedding. She’s high maintenance.”

“I thought you said she was an average Philly girl?”

“Average Philly girl does not automatically translate into easy maintenance. She probably wants a lot of jewelry and a nice car.”

“All of which you can now afford.”

“That’s not the point. I don’t want somebody I have to buy.”

“You don’t even know this woman and already you’re accusing her of being available for purchase?”

“Because it makes me feel better that I’ll never get her!” Lock dropped listlessly against the tree. “She uses that shampoo,” he sighed.

“What shampoo?”

“The one with honey in it.”

Ric’s eyes crossed. “Oh, my God.”