Read Online Red by Kait Nolan - Free Book Online

stream of others that
followed.
    I ran a hand down her arm and curled my
fingers around hers. “Because you’re still here.”
    She shut her eyes, and I was already cursing
myself for sticking my foot in it. But it was the right thing to
say. On a sigh, the tension seemed to seep out of her body, her
hand squeezing mine for the briefest of moments before she pulled
away, moving again in an obvious effort to shake off the mood.
“So,” she said. “There you have it. That is why I am lying to my
father. Satisfied?” There was an edge to her voice that let me know
she was still pissed I’d cornered her.
    “ No.”
    Elodie whirled and glared at me.
    Before she could spew forth what was no
doubt an impressive display of temper, I said, “Now I owe you.
Fair’s fair. So here’s a secret nobody else knows: I’m lying to my
dad, too.”
    She shut her mouth, waiting.
    It was my turn to feel caged and restless,
so I took the lead on the trail. “I got expelled from school eight
months ago. Dad keeps pushing me to go to summer school so I can go
on off to college in the fall. I haven’t told him I already got my
GED.”
    “ Why?”
    There was the $64,000 question. “I’m not
what you’d call ‘on board’ with his plan for my life.”
    “ You don’t want
college?”
    “ I don’t know what I want
right now. He thinks everything can just go back to normal. That he
can just move us across country and start over like nothing
happened.”
    “ What happened?”
    “ My mother was shot.” The
pain was bright and hot in my chest, and it woke the rage. The
beast bristled, and I clenched my teeth, reaching for control. I
was not gonna spill this shit on Elodie.
    A tiny hand slipped tentatively into mine,
squeezed. “I’m sorry.”
    Anybody else tried to give me sympathy, the
beast would snap, but for Elodie, it settled down. So we walked for
a while in silence, hand in hand, until I was back in control.
    “ It shouldn’t have
happened. She shouldn’t have been there. But she was so angry. She
and Dad had some kind of fight, and she’d gone out to blow off some
steam. Just for a run. And this trigger happy farmer thought she
was . . . ” I had to stop myself from spilling out the full truth.
“I don’t know what he thought she was. They said it was an
accident.”
    “ You don’t think it
was?”
    I thought of the farmer, shooting at what he
thought was a predator. “He didn’t see her for what she was.”
    Elodie said nothing, but I could feel her
thumb lightly rubbing the back of my hand. I wondered if her hands
stroking through my fur would feel as nice.
    “ What was she
like?”
    Her words jolted me out of the alternate
reality where she might ever actually see me in fur. I jerked my
shoulders, restless as I tried to come up with the words. “Smart.
Beautiful.” I frowned. All true, but not the essence of her. “She
was a free spirit. Didn’t like being caged by society.” Neither did
I. “She had a temper, like I do. But she seldom lost it without
really good reason. She was a supreme champion for the underdog in
all situations. There was this one time when I was a kid when she
went to bat against the town council for a moose.” My lips curved
at the memory.
    Elodie looked a bit perplexed at that. “A
moose?”
    “ You really had to be
there, I guess. Anyway, she was . . . grounding. When the world was
nuts, she had this way of centering me. Dad too. Of making things
feel okay.” I looked down at our joined hands. “She was a lot like
you actually.”
    She stumbled and stopped.
    Well shit. Two steps forward, three steps
back.
    But she didn’t pull away as I expected. When
I looked over in question, her face was tipped into the wind, her
gaze unfocused. At that moment, I’m not sure she even remembered I
was there.
    As I watched, she tilted her head, angling
her nose more fully into the wind, and she sniffed in a decidedly
canine gesture. What the hell? Could she possibly be scenting