Moon Dance (31 page)

“
How do you think they found
us?” Cole was shoving phones and clothes back into his
backpack.

Dana yanked a shirt over her
head. “I don’t know, Cole. They’re trackers. They followed our
scent.”

“
We were in a fucking car.”
Cole slung the backpack over his shoulder. “You can’t track the
scent of a car.”

She stepped over the bodies
of the SF workers. “Well, maybe the guy that checked us into the
hotel did recognize us.”

“
Maybe.” Cole ran a hand
over his hair. “We need to find someplace we can lie
low.”

“
Okay.” She picked up her
own backpack. “Well, where were you living before? They never found
you there.”

“
Yes, they did. That’s how
they captured me. That’s how all this shit got started.”

“
Oh.” She bit her
lip.

He looked up at her. “No, I
think I know where we can go.” He held out his hand to her. “Come
on.”

She put her hand in his.

He tugged her close, kissing
her hard. “Sorry we got interrupted,” he whispered.

She shoved him. “You know
what? Do me a favor? The next time people walk in on us while we’re
having sex, can you not be a dick?”

He laughed. “Are you
listening to yourself? The
next
time
people walk in on us? You think it’s
going to be a running thing?”

She gritted her teeth.
“Sometimes, I just really, really…”

“
Hate me?”

She sighed.

He kissed her again.

She let him.

* * *

Cole lounged in the
passenger seat of the car. He
’d driven for
hours, and then Dana had offered to take over. Glad of the rest,
he’d surrendered the keys. But now that he wasn’t driving, he had
nothing to concentrate on, and he was stuck here with his own
thoughts.

He considered striking up a
conversation with Dana, but he wasn’t sure what to talk to her
about. He knew that they didn’t really agree philosophically, and
that was pretty much the only thing he ever made small talk about.
Well… that is to say that he didn’t really make small talk.
Recently, he hadn’t been doing much talking at all.

He realized that he and Dana
didn’t talk much. Sure, they talked, but it wasn’t friendly talk.
But then he didn’t make friendly talk with anyone. He wasn’t even
sure how to do it.

So, he didn’t
try.

He stared out the window, watching the
blandness of the interstate. Cars, pavement, sky.

He closed his eyes, resting
his head against the headrest. When he did, one of the pictures of
Dana’s little girl flashed in front of his eyes. She had been tiny
in the picture, only a baby. She had been lying on her stomach with
her face up, grinning a toothless grin at the camera, obviously
delighted about something.

And Cole had seen his little
sisters in the baby’s expression. Not just one of his little
sisters. All of them. They all had that same smile, that same
expression.

Cole really couldn’t tell if
Piper looked like him exactly, but she looked like… looked like his
family.

When he’d seen that picture,
that had banished the last of his hopes that it was all some
mistake—some manipulation—some lie. No, it was true. He’d made that
little girl. Part of him had gone into Dana’s body and twined up
with some part of Dana, and a baby had grown in her.

He’d missed the whole
thing.

He hadn’t even known Dana
was pregnant, not until after the fact. Right after the incident at
Hunter’s Moon Farm, he’d been angry with her, and he hadn’t paid
any attention to her. It was only later, nearly a year later, that
he’d done any checking on her. That was when he found out about the
baby. Found out that she was married to Avery.

He remembered it had hurt
him. He’d felt as if she betrayed him all over again. Even though
he knew he shouldn’t have expected anything else from her. He’d
told her that he’d leave her alone, and that he’d let her find
happiness. She was happy. That was that.

He glanced sidelong at Dana,
who was squinting at the road. The sun was in her eyes.

He lowered the sun visor.

She laughed. “Oh.
Thanks.”

“
No problem,” he
said.

She grinned. “You gonna tell
me where we’re going?”

“
Just stay on this road for
now. I’ll tell you when we get closer to the exit. Besides, I won’t
remember what number it is until I see it.”

“
Okay.”

They were quiet again.

Cole examined his
fingernails. “What’s she like?”

“
Who?”

He felt like he was going to
choke on the name. “Piper.”

She turned to him sharply.
“Uh…” She went back to the road. “Well, she’s a toddler. She’s, you
know, energetic and playful and, um, kind of bratty sometimes.” She
shrugged. “She’s a normal little girl.”

He nodded. “Yeah.
Okay.”
Don’t ask anything else,
he told himself.
Let it
go. It doesn’t matter. Your sperm made a baby, but it doesn’t mean
anything
.

“
She, um… she likes dolls a
lot. She names them all Laura. I don’t know why. I guess she likes
that name. She’s really smart. She remembers things, and she’s
really articulate for her age. She talks up a storm. Um, she… likes
to sing songs. She’s pretty good at carrying a tune, but sometimes
she gets the words confused, and she’ll just sing the same words
over and over and over again.” Dana laughed a little bit. Then she
wiped her eye with her palm. “Oh, God, Cole, we have to find
her.”

“
Shit,” he said. “I didn’t
mean to make you cry. We don’t have to talk about her.”

“
No, it’s okay.” She took a
deep breath. “I mean, you want to know about her. Of course, you
want to know about her.”

“
No, it doesn’t matter.” But
he felt like he was choking on those words too. This was so
confusing. He didn’t have any desire to have children. Just because
this one existed didn’t mean…

Except it did. Somehow, it meant that
he cared.

He’d told himself he was
only looking at the pictures out of curiosity, but it was the
strangest sensation to look at her. Because, even though they were
only pictures, they made him… feel things. Things he didn’t quite
understand.

Cole had known for a long
time that he didn’t feel the way other people did. He wasn’t sure
exactly when his emotions had gotten broken. He thought he’d been a
relatively normal child. Of course, he’d grown up in a cult, and
he’d never really had a normal family life. His father had a harem
of women, and they all had children. He wasn’t close to his father,
but he was close to his mother, and he had a good relationship with
his half-brothers and half-sisters.

So, it must have been later.
Maybe when his father forced him to kill Tasha after he mated with
her. Maybe that was when he got warped. Something in him…
something
shut down
after that happened.

He didn’t notice it at
first. It was only later, when he was older, that he began to
realize that he didn’t see things the way other people did. It
seemed to him that other people were weaker than he was. They
formed bonds to people and things, and those bonds made them
vulnerable.

Cole wasn’t the least bit
interested in forming bonds or in being weak.

But then he’d tried to kill
Dana, and he couldn’t. And then he
did
have a bond. Maybe he’d always
felt something for her. But he didn’t think it was the same kind of
bond that other people had.

Well, he knew, for instance,
that other people didn’t try to kill the people they were connected
to.

He thought of the scar on
Dana’s belly. He thought of the way it had felt to have his claws
inside her, her voice shrill as she begged for her life. And then
he thought of the previous afternoon, Dana lying on the bed. He had
his mouth on the scar. He thought of whispering to her that she
should say it again, say that she was his.

He didn’t think he’d ever
get tired of hearing her say it.

The sensation from looking
the pictures…

It wasn’t the same, but it
was. He wanted Dana in a different way than he wanted the baby,
obviously. But there was the same desire to… to possess, to belong,
to be possessed.

He wanted the baby to be
his. Or, he guessed she wasn’t a baby anymore, she was a little
girl, but he wanted to protect her, to hold her, to
know
her.

And it frightened him.

“
Are you sure?” Dana glanced
at him again.

“
Sure about what?” He could
no longer remember what they’d been saying.

“
Are you sure it doesn’t
matter to you?”

“
Yeah.” He squared his
shoulders. “You know, I could drive again, if you want.”

She let out a frustrated
sigh. “Cole, stop doing that.”

“
Doing what?”

“
Avoiding the subject. You
haven’t even told me how you feel about it.”

He looked down at his
fingernails again. “I don’t feel anything.”

“
You’re not angry with me
for keeping it from you? For pretending the baby was Avery’s? That
doesn’t bug you?”

He picked at his thumbnail.
“I don’t really get angry with you, Dana. Not the way I get angry
at other people, anyway.”

“
What the hell does that
mean?”

“
It means that it’s fine.
I’m not angry.”

“
You really don’t feel
anything at all?”

He picked harder. His finger
started to bleed. “No. Nothing at all.”

She grimaced. “Sometimes I
wonder if you really are a monster.”

He flinched. He rubbed
furiously at the bead of blood on his thumb. “Fuck you,” he
muttered.

“
What?” She turned to look
at him.

“
Watch the road.” His
nostrils flared.

She whipped her gaze back to
the windshield. “I thought you said you didn’t get angry with
me.”

He clenched his hands into
fists. That only made his thumb bleed harder. “You know I want…”
Screw this. He didn’t know how to say this out loud.

“
What do you
want?”

His throat was dry. It was
burning. He tried to swallow, and he had no saliva. “You… I…” He
punched the dashboard.

“
Cole?” She glared at him.
“What the hell?”

“
The only time I don’t feel
like a monster is when I’m with you,” he said. “And you don’t…” He
shut his eyes and slammed his head back into the headrest. “Never
mind. Forget it.”

She was quiet.

Then he felt her hand on his, her
fingers curling around his own.

He opened his eyes.

She was staring at the road,
biting her lip. “I’m sorry I said that,” she whispered. “You’re not
a monster, Cole. I don’t think I could feel the things I feel about
you if you really were.”

He squeezed her hand. His
throat burned even harder, but she was touching him, and that was
good. She’d reached over and touched him voluntarily.
She
had touched
him
. “You feel things
about me?”

She squeezed back. “You know
I do.”

They drove in silence for several long
minutes, and Cole thought they might be the best minutes ever, just
sitting next to her, holding her hand, her words echoing in his
brain.

He could have left it
there.
Maybe I should
, he thought. But he foundered onward, trying to find the
words to say what he wanted to say, to make his tongue and teeth
form them. “I, uh… I might feel something.”

“
About?”

“
About…” His throat
was on fire. It was burning down into his chest. He tried to pull
his hand away from hers.
Never mind. Fuck
this.

She tightened her grip.
“About being Piper’s father?”

“
Yeah.” His words scraped
against his throat.

“
What?” she said quietly.
“What do you feel?”

“
It’s, uh… It’s good?” He
made it a question. He wasn’t sure if it was okay for him to say
that.

She smiled at him. Tears
were glittering in her eyes. “Good, huh?”

He did pull his hand away
this time. “I didn’t mean for you to cry,” he said
gruffly.

“
They’re not bad tears,
Cole.” And she grabbed his hand again.

* * *

Eventually, Dana did let
Cole switch with her and start driving again. She sat on the other
side of the car, and watched his face, feeling puzzled and confused
by him. She
’d seen Cole emotionally
vulnerable a grand total of three times.