Page 8 of A Wolfe in the Woods
The truth—that I couldn’t say out loud—was that I was fucking miserable. Miserable at my job, which had gone nowhere in eight years. Miserable in my lingering grief, which I’d never had the time to deal with properly. Miserable in this city, with its hollow people.
“I don’t deserve these,” I lamented quietly, pushing the lilac box onto my coffee table.
Meg glared, and I saw the moment her patience snapped.
“See, this is exactly the problem.Why do you think you don’t you deserve anything nice? You work your ass off.You take care of everyone and everything—except yourself. Why do you put yourself last? It’s like you don’t want be happy…or maybe you don’t know how? I don’t understand. You’re the best person I know but you treat yourself the worst.”
I lowered my head, knowing she was right. I didn’t know how to be happy, didn’t know if I could be anymore.
“Well, I’m not going to let you. I deserve to be happy and you deserve to be happy. And it starts with these cupcakes. So you’d better eat them because I told the baker to use only the best flowers for you, okay?”
I sniffed, torn between either bursting out into exhausted tears or laughing at the image of Meg terrorizing the poor baker, likely hovering over the counter to handpick the edible petals herself.
My best friend took in a deep, centering breath, closing her violet eyes for a brief moment as her ears twitched.
Then…she clapped her hands together in a definitive sound and immediately pulled out her phone, already tapping away. “That’s it,” she muttered.
“What are you doing?” I asked with trepidation.
“You officially have a week off, right?”
She sounded too pleased at the prospect. “Yes…” I said slowly, dragging my affirmative out.
“I’m booking you a vacation,” she said simply. When I started to protest, she cut me off with “Nope, not listening to your excuses…I know just the place. With fresh air and zero cell reception, so your fleabag boss can’t contact you behind his daddy’s back. But you’d better promise me one thing.”
My shoulders sagged. I knew better than to argue with her when she was like this. I knew when I could pick my battles with her. And this? It wasn’t one of those times.
On the coffee table, myCONGRATScupcakes seemed mocking.
“And that is?”
“You stay the entire time. No calls, no emails, no putting out fires. No work. No exceptions. Am I clear?”
Looking around my apartment, I nibbled on my lip as I debated. I wasn’t allowed to go to work for a week anyway. The HR rep who’d tagged along to the ER had told me my badgeprivileges had been rescinded at Eldritch’s insistence to make sure I didn’t sneak back into the office.
Fresh air and zero cell reception sounded wonderful and awful, all at the same time.
Work would be hell when I got back. Then again, it was hell now, so what difference did it make? Maybe a vacation would do me some good. It couldn’t make me feel anyworsethan today at the very least.
“Do I even have a choice?” I asked.
My best friend pretended to deliberate that question. Then said, “Nope.”
“Fine,” I sighed.
Everything she wanted, Megan Banks got, after all.
“Pack your bags, you leave tomorrow. Your trip is booked and your fate is sealed,” she declared, her violet eyes twinkling with a familiar mischief that had warning bells going off in my head. “Consider it less a vacation and more of an escape plan. And do pack light—’cause that baggage isn’t coming back with you.”
CHAPTER 3
BLANCHETTE
Iwas going to kill Megan.
“Perfect,” I grumbled when the directions on my phone cut out for the third time, a swirling circle graying out the screen as it tried and failed to find a signal.
It wouldn’t, I knew from experience. The service along the coast was spotty at best. But a few moments later, I spied a blip of a bar appear on my phone and I immediately swung over on the pitch black highway, hearing the crunch of gravel beneath my tires as I parked in a shallow turnout.
