need to do more work. I need paper,” Cole said, turning toward me. “I need …” He broke off, his temporary high slowly unwinding. It felt anti-climactic, coming out here for a scientific reveal that was only half-baked, one I couldn’t understand. And being in the clinic after dark was reminding me of when Grace and I had brought Jack here. It was bringing back all that failure and loss and pretty much making me want to curl up on my bed back at home.
“Food,” I suggested. “Sleep. That’s what I need. To get the hell out of here.”
Cole frowned at me, as if I’d suggested “ducks” and “yoga.”
I stood up and faced him. “Unlike those of you with raging wolf infections inside them, I have school in the morning, especially since I skipped today to be here.”
“Why are you pissed?”
“I’m not pissed,” I said. “I’m tired. I just want to go home, I guess.” The idea of going home didn’t sound that great, either, though.
“You’re pissed,” he said. “I’m almost there, Isabel. I’ve almost got something. I think I — I’m really close. I need to talk to Sam. If I can get him to talk to me.”
And then he was just a tired, good-looking guy, not a rock star with tens of thousands of fans who wondered where he was or a genius with a brain so big that it rebelled against being used and tried to invent ways to hurt itself instead.
Looking at him looking like that, I felt like I needed something from him, or somebody, and that probably meant that he also needed something from me, or somebody, but the revelation was like looking at spots on a slide. Knowing that it meant something to somebody wasn’t the same as it meaning something to you.
And then I heard a familiar sound — the crack of the lock on the door at the end of the hall as the dead bolt unlocked. Someone else was here.
“Shit, shit, shit!” I hissed. I had two seconds to devise a plan. “Get your stuff and get under the counter!” Cole grabbed his slide and juice and Band-Aid wrapper and I checked to make sure he was pushed underneath the counter before I hit the light to the lab room and slid underneath with him.
The door at the end of the hall opened with a slow series of pops, then clunked heavily shut again. I heard my mother’s irritated sigh, loud and dramatic enough to be heard all the way in the lab room. I hoped her irritation was because she thought someone had left the hall light on.
There was nothing of Cole but the glint of his eyes in the darkness, the light from the hall reflecting on them. There was not a lot of space under the counter, so we were knee to knee, foot crushed on top of foot, impossible to tell whose breath was whose. We were both absolutely silent, listening to my mother’s progress. I heard her heels click into one of the first rooms — probably the reception area. She was there for a several moments, shuffling around. Cole readjusted one of his feet so that my boot wasn’t pressing into his ankle bone. I heard something in his shoulder pop as he moved. He braced one of his arms on the wall behind me. I somehow had a hand between his legs, so I withdrew it.
We waited.
My mother said, very clearly, “Dammit.” She crossed the hall into one of the exam rooms. I heard more paper shuffling. It was black as sleep in the cubby beneath the counter, too dark for my eyes to get used to, and it felt like we had more legs between the two of us than we really ought to. My mother dropped papers; I could hear the whoosh and ticking of them spreading over the floor and tapping into the exam table. She didn’t swear this time, though.
Cole kissed me. I should have told him to stop, to keep still, but I wanted it. I didn’t move from where I was curled up against the wall, just let him kiss me and kiss me again. It was the sort of kiss that would take a long time to recover from. You could take each of our kisses, from the very first moment we’d met, and put them on slides under a microscope, and I was pretty sure what you’d find. Even an expert would see nothing on