Sixty Seven. Jase Won’t Forget the Love of his Life, But He Has Forgotten Who the Real Enemy Is
Cassi bailed out of the car and went racing right back toward the city, right back in the direction of Mike and the wrecked animal clinic… I shoved open my door the same second she did and tried to tell her why it wasn’t safe, but her only response: “Leave me alone!”
She sounded so frightened and on edge. I do not want to scare her any further.
I climbed back inside the Bentley in an instant and just sat there powerless, watching her vanish off into the distance. Even when she's a good two hundred meters down the road, she keeps checking over her shoulder every few feet to ensure I’m not ripping right after her. She thinks I’m in it with Mike, that I kidnapped her, manipulated her, and did things I would most certainly never do.
Even though…
I have pictured us together like that, yes. The way she smells... I would have leaned right over and kissed her the first minute we sat down in this car, if that look in her eyes hadn't turned from craving straight to fear the second I took her hand.
I really did think we had a connection though. Even with the awkward circumstances of our naked first meeting, things were going pretty great until Mike showed up. Sure Cassi was nervous, but even so she was pretty damn funny, endearingly awkward, feisty and brave…
She’s perfect, and I love her, as crazy as that sounds.
Shit. Maybe I am a psycho stalker. I just met this girl, and she is terrified of me. There is no way I should be considering chasing after her. She is not heading back into danger. She won’t go anywhere near Carson’s clinic again, because she has no reason to return there. She’s probably just headed home to her apartment. She’ll hitch a ride with someone, and a highly populated area in broad daylight is a hell of a lot safer for her than a farm packed with aggro werewolves and my paranoid witch-hunter mother. I was taking her home with me without even thinking it through really, all because…
I do not want her to leave. I feel it instinctively that she belongs to me. I belong to her, and I want to stay by her side forever.
And that is a completely irrational and unhealthy obsession around someone I just met. I need to let her go and just… keep driving, go home.
I pull back out onto the road and gun the gas until I draw within sight of my family farm way out in the boonies. One of my brothers heads down from the porch as soon as they see my dust trail, probably Felix--
No. That scent, it’s…
I park right on the grass and rush over to greet him, wide eyed and tearing up like a little bitch, as my brothers are probably going to start mocking. “Dad?”
“Jase--” He cuts out with a grunt as I pull him into a bear hug, crushing the air from his lungs. His returning embrace is so gentle by contrast, chest shaking with laughter. “Scared you pretty bad, huh? But it’s over now.”
“How?” I press, pulling back and making a thorough, paranoid study of his fully human eyes, healthy teeth and nails. “How are you back?”
His brow furrows, though his smile never dims. “I assume it was your vaccine. Grace brought it over, loaded it right up into your mother’s rifle and started, uh… delivering it to us via long distance injection through the door slits.”
“Grace… How would Grace know about the vaccine?” I demand, shifting my eyes to her and Felix, standing arm in arm in the doorway.
“‘How would I know?’” she repeats, eyeing me in concern. “You brought me there, Jase. Though what happened at that clinic? I had to sneak off before the police caught me. Took your car,” She gestures to my rust-spotted sedan parked neatly in my parents’ double wide garage. “since I thought it might get you in trouble, just leaving it parked out back of the crime scene.”
Why would I have brought Grace, of all people, with me to the animal clinic? Why would I have shown her Carson’s extremely experimental, untested vaccine for lycanthropy, and why can’t I remember any of this?
“Jase?” My father puts a hand on my shoulder. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, you’re acting like a spacey freak,” Aiden snaps. And who the hell is that baby in his arms? Sniffling and staring at me with those big brown eyes... “Stop gawking at Jack. You’re making him nervous.” Aiden orders, turning the baby’s head protectively into his shoulder. “And where the hell is mom? Grace said you must have gone looking for her, but let me guess, you traitor, you just went straight on after your freaking girlfriend instead.”
“Girlfriend?” I murmur, thoughts turning instantly to Cassi for some reason and that borrowed set of women’s clothing she apparently found scattered across my bedroom floor…
“Cassi, your girlfriend,” Liam chimes in cheerily. “Or maybe your ex-girlfriend? Free now to date the man she really, clearly wanted all along--”
Felix punches him in the stomach, but I’m too confused to even react. My entire family knows who Cassi is. She really was my girlfriend, and even more shocking, I trusted her enough to bring her home to this farm. No wonder I have all these irrationally deep emotions swirling through my chest. I really have lost an entire month’s worth of memories, and my fully cured father is just studying me in clear concern as Aiden rocks that strange infant in his arms and my mind almost shuts down completely from the overwhelming number of questions buzzing through my head.
Mike’s witch must have done something, to me and Cassi both. She stole our memories, and even now she might be...
There’s another dust trail ripping up the road right behind me now. That may be mom’s truck, but I know it’s Mike behind the wheel.
He stole that truck and drove it over to my apartment. Aiden said mom went missing last night. She’s missing along with Dr. Carson and even Nick…
Mike hurt them, all of them, and he needs to pay.
So the second he opens the truck door, I charge.