What is it? What do you need to hear? Ah, yes, here it is—
Go away, Gretchen. You’re making a fool of yourself.
Can’t you see how ridiculous you look? Maybe a shifter would have picked up on a real threat, but you’re not a shifter, are you? You’re just imagining things—classic Gretchen! You have to listen to me when I tell you what’s best for you, because you know you can’t trust yourself—you’ve known that since you were twelve, haven’t you? You wouldn’t want to hurt your team the way you hurt your sister. You can’t make your stupid weaknesses their problem. Be cool. Be funny. Laugh it off. And above all else: don’t think about it.
All of that sounded familiar. And, horribly, the fact that it sounded familiar made it sound right.
Gretchen lifted her hand away from her gun.
“I’m sorry,” she said automatically. “My mistake.”
She couldn’t believe she’d just embarrassed herself like that. She had bothered those people for no reason.
She had to get ahold of herself.
She walked back to the car and found, ruefully, that one of the coffees had leaked a little. She shouldn’t have put it in the bag, obviously—none of those cheap plastic lids were ever watertight.
Why had she put it in the bag? She couldn’t entirely remember. She’d been holding the cups, one in each hand, when she’d come out of the gas station—
Oh, well. It probably didn’t matter. Just a brain fart, like when you opened the door to the fridge and then forgot what you’d been looking for.
Besides, she didn’t want to go poking at what had just happened. It was already fuzzy, and that was better, because she had definitely done something... wrong. Something that had made her feel awkward and lesser. Something that had touched on scorched earth inside her mind.
She would just stay away from it. There was no reason to prod at a sore spot.
Gretchen had spent a long time teaching herself that if something hurt you, or bothered you, the best thing you could do—for your sake and for the sake of everyone around you—was to ignore it.
She opened the door to the backseat, inexplicably relieved to see Cooper’s eyes.
Green eyes were much better than amber ones. Although—had she ever seen amber eyes? Probably not.
“One Milky Way Midnight, as requested.” She handed it over.
He reached out his bound hands and took it, but his gaze never left her.
“What was up with the car?” Cooper said.
Gretchen frowned. “What car?”
The little indentation between his eyebrows deepened, and she realized to her surprise that he was worried. “The black car. You talked to the driver.”
“Oh, that.” She waved her hand. “It was nothing. No problem at all.”
“That’s good,” Cooper said slowly, “but—”
“If Gretchen says it’s fine, it’s fine,” Keith said.
Gretchen seized on that agreement, brushing aside the fact that until ten seconds ago, she hadn’t had the highest opinion of Keith’s instincts or opinions. There was something strange about her clinging to Keith’s ideas and disregarding Cooper’s, but whenever she tried to think about it, shame seemed to creep up on her again.
She slid back into the driver’s seat, handing Keith his mini-donuts and coffee. She didn’t feel like drinking hers right now. She had the weird idea that she was going to be sick.
Your body’s trying to reject it, she thought. She didn’t know what the “it” even was. Like it did with Tricia’s bite. Like people’s bodies do sometimes with organ donations. Your soul is trying to spit something back out again.
“Ready to get back on the road?” she said.
“We’ve barely been on the road,” Keith said. “We only made a couple miles before you pulled us over here.”
Always Mr. Accurate.