Shane asked a lot of questions, which felt odd at first, but then she realized that he was nervous, just as nervous as she was, and that was all right. He wanted to make her happy.
He did make her happy.
Despite what Eve had told her, the pain still came as a shock, leaping in an electric current through her entire body. If Shane hadn’t held her and helped her through it, Claire didn’t know how she would have felt about it later . . . but he did, and it got better.
And then it was all right.
And then it was amazing. She cried a little, and she didn’t even know why, except that the emotions were just too big for her. Too overwhelming.
“It’s different,” Claire whispered to him in the dark, as they lay there wrapped up together, warm and content. “It’s different from what I thought.”
“Different how?” He sounded suddenly worried. Claire kissed him.
“Good different. Different like it means something. Like right now—it doesn’t feel like we’re naked at all, does it?” She didn’t know why she said that, but it was true; she didn’t feel exposed with him. Just . . . accepted. “I’m not afraid with you. You know what I mean?”
He made a lazy uh-huh sound that meant he might possibly not be listening. “So it was okay.”
“Okay?” She rose up on one elbow to look down on him. “Is this you fishing for compliments on your hotness?”
“Why? Did I catch one?”
“Idiot.” She flopped back down and cuddled up against him. His hand caressed the small of her back in tiny circles. “I won’t lie to you: that was intense. And it hurt. But . . . yeah. It was . . . amazing.”
“I hate that it hurt,” he said. “Next time—”
“I know. It wasn’t so bad, though. Don’t worry.” The warm cushion of his arm under her head felt like the best pillow in the world. “I feel different. Do I look different?”
Shane brushed hair back from her face. “It’s pretty dark in here, but yeah, I can see it.”
She felt her eyes widen. “You can?”
“Sure.” He traced a finger over her forehead. “Claire is not a virgin. Says so right there.”
She felt her cheeks and forehead heat up, and smacked his arm. “You are awful.”
“Ah, the truth comes out.”
“Seriously. I just feel . . . I do feel different. I feel like I’m someone else than I was before. You know?”
“Yeah,” he said somberly. “I know. But I feel like that every day I wake up in Morganville.”
She kissed him, and tasted the sadness in him. His sigh seemed to come all the way from his toes. “God, I needed you,” he murmured. “I can’t even tell you how many times I thought about this. The funny thing is, I don’t need you any less now. I think I need you more.”
That, Claire thought, was a pretty good definition of love: needing someone even after you got what you thought you wanted.
After a long moment, he said, “Your dad is going to kill me. And he’s probably got a right to.”
She hadn’t thought about her parents, but now it flooded in with a vengeance. This was going to get messy. And complicated. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered, and spread her hand out over his chest. He put his own hand over hers. “We’ll be okay.”
They fell asleep in each other’s arms, and woke up late in the morning to the sound of birds.
Not grackles.
Songbirds.
8
“You are so busted,” Eve said, as Claire, fresh from a shower, ran down the steps shouldering her book bag.
Eve was sitting at the dining table, sipping a Coke and reading a Cosmo article with great concentration. She was wearing pink today—or, as Eve liked to call it, Ironic Pink. Pink shirt with poison skull and bones logo. Matching pink pedal-pushers with skulls embossed at the hems. Little pink skull hair ties on her pigtails, which stood out from her head aggressively, daring someone to mock them.
“Excuse me?” Claire kept moving. Eve barely glanced up from the article.
“Don’t even try,” she said. “I know that look.”
“What look?” Claire shoved open the kitchen door.
“The now-I-am-a-woman look. Oh God, don’t tell me, please, because then I have to feel guilty that you’re seventeen and I should have been more of a den mom, right?” Claire couldn’t think of anything to say. Eve sighed. “He’d better have been a good, sweet boy to you, or I swear, I’ll kick his ass from here to—Hey, is that Shane’s shirt?”
It was. “No.” Claire hurried into the kitchen.
Michael was standing at the coffeepot, pushing buttons. He looked over at her and raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t say anything.
“What?” she demanded, and dumped her book bag on the table as she poured herself a glass of orange juice. “Do I owe back rent?”
“We’ve got some things to talk about other than the rent.”
“Like what?” She kept her stare focused on her OJ.“Like how far you’re going to take this whole undercover-cop thing with Bishop, and whether or not you’re going to get yourself killed? Because I’m wondering, Michael.”
He took in a deep breath and ran his hands through his curly golden hair as if he wanted to rip a handful out in frustration. The cut on his hand, Claire noticed, was neatly healed without any trace of a scar. “I can’t tell you anything else. I already took a huge risk telling you what I did, understand?”
“And did I rat you out? No. Because according to Patience Goldman, this”—she yanked back her sleeve and showed him the tattoo, which was barely a shadow now under her skin, and hardly moving at all—“this thing is running out of juice. I don’t think he’s noticed yet, but he probably will soon.”
“That’s why I told you to stay away from him.”
“Not like I came on my own! Theo . . . ” It struck her hard that she hadn’t even asked, and she felt all of her good vibes of the morning flee in horror. “Oh God. Theo and his family—”
“They’re okay,” Michael said. “They were taken to a holding cell. I checked on them, and I told Sam. He’ll get word to Amelie.”
“That’ll do a lot of good.”
Michael glanced up at her as he poured his coffee. “You seem different today.”
She was struck speechless, and she felt a blush burn its crimson onto her face. Michael’s eyebrows rose, slowly, but he didn’t say anything.
“Okay, that’s . . . not what I meant. And don’t ever play poker.” He gave her a half smile to show her he wasn’t going to harass her about it. Yet. “You moving back in?”
“I don’t know.” She swallowed and tried to get her racing heartbeat under control. “I need to talk to my parents. They’re really . . . I’m just scared for them, that’s all. I thought that maybe if I stayed with them, it would make things better, but I think it’s made it worse. I wish I could just get them out of Morganville. Somehow.”
“You can,” said a voice from the kitchen doorway. It was—of all people!—Hannah Moses, looking tall, lean, and extremely dangerous in her Morganville police uniform, loaded down with a gun, riot baton, pepper spray, handcuffs, and who knew what else. Hannah was one of those women who would command attention no matter what she was wearing, but when she put on the full display, it was no contest at all. “Mind if I come in?”
“I think you’re already in,” Michael said, and gestured to the kitchen table. “Want some coffee to go with that breaking and entering?”
“It’s not breaking and entering with a badge, especially if someone lets you in.”
“And that would be . . . ?”
“Eve. Actually, I’ll have some orange juice, if you’ve got more,” Hannah said. “All coffeed out. I’ve been patrolling all night.” She did look tired, as she settled in a chair and stretched her legs out, although tired for Hannah just looked slightly less focused. She was wearing her cornrowed hair back in a complicated knot at the nape of her neck; having it away from her face emphasized the scar she’d gotten in Afghanistan, a seam that ran from her left temple over to her nose. On some women it might have been disfiguring. On Hannah, it was kind of a terrifying beauty mark. “It’s getting nasty out there.”