Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2), Sam Hall [leveled readers .TXT] 📗

room as the last words were spoken. I was up and pacing again, imagining my cousin in worse and worse positions, so Lorcan slipped out the door, fishing his phone out. I went to follow him, to listen in, to wrap my arms around his lean frame and just breathe him in, anything to settle me. But Nan shook her head and pulled out a pile of kid’s drawings.

“Nan…” I said, not concealing my irritation well. She was a known hoarder, the house full to the brim of items, memories encapsulated in old junk. If they ever wanted to create a museum of me or one of my cousins, they’d find all the artefacts of our youth carefully stored here. She just hissed at me, spreading out the drawings so everyone leaned forward.

There in the corner, with the scrawling hand of a small child, was my name, sort of, wandering over the top right-hand side of the yellowing paper. My eyes dropped down and saw those weird little stick figures kids always draw, more hastily drawn geometric shapes than symbols of people, the word ‘pack’ misspelt and clumsily written hovering in the sky, along with a bright yellow sun and little lines for birds. But it was what was beneath that froze my complaints on my lips. There was me, signified as a girl by my triangular body shape, which meant the six other figures around me were guys, as they had rectangle bodies. But it was the hair that identified them—one bright red with a beard, one with hair standing up all over his head, two dark haired guys that looked almost identical, and the last figure covered in some kind of squiggles.

“Jesus, I remember when you used to draw these,” Rose said. “Your mum nearly blew a gasket. She ripped up the first one and the second one. Seemed bloody cruel at the time.”

“That’s how I settled you,” Nan said. “I showed you a secret place where I kept them and would only bring them out when your parents weren’t here. You’d sit down and draw like a little demon, giving me a minute’s peace and quiet, I don’t mind saying. The same picture, the same figures.” Her gnarled finger scudded across the cheap newsprint, past each figure until she got to the last one. Drawn in gold, I’d even included some kind of halo or something around his head of yellow hair. “But then all of a sudden, it changed.” Nan flicked through the drawings, glimpses of pack, pack, pack showing, until finally, she pulled out what she was looking for. She placed it on top of the pile, everyone taking a look.

“That’s…Aidan?” one of my cousins said.

“And only Aidan,” Nan said. “You drew that a few times, then that was it. You didn’t ask about the drawings anymore.”

“So what’re you saying? Aidan was what?” I shook my head, unwilling to accept the natural conclusions. “I barely knew Aidan. I used to watch him at school, but I didn’t dare get close. It was Declan—”

“A teenage crush. To be expected of a young girl, and back then, no one considered him a serious contender,” Nan said.

“Um…thanks,” the man himself muttered.

“Back then, I said, young man.” Nan fixed him with her steely gaze. “The town’s seen you grow and become something altogether different than the damn fool you were as a boy. You’d have the support of the people if you put your name forward. Any of you boys would.”

“But all together?” I glanced around the room, not entirely sure how the Meyer side viewed me being a nix. Everyone was making polite noises but…

“Is that what you want? To stay and rule as a coalition?” Nan asked. “It would be hard for people to accept, but…”

“We’re not getting sidetracked by that. Back then, I was all about Mason until I left town,” I said.

“Which your father put the kybosh on, something I think they expected. The leaving town thing?” Nan shook her head. “That was entirely unexpected, wasn’t it?” She gave me a pleased grin. “What Spehr girl has shown the gumption to leave, find her own way, find her strength?”

“And her mate,” Zack said from where he sat on the couch, those smouldering eyes taking me all in.

“Put quite the crimp in their plans. Needed to bring you back and clip your wings a bit, didn’t they?”

“You keep saying ‘they’, Nan. Who’re we talking here? Peters and Nance?”

“He never did take rejection well,” Lyn said darkly, her eyes sliding to Rose’s. “He made an offer to Rose at some point.”

“I’d found Darren by then, but Marshall didn’t seem to care.”

“I remember that now,” my aunty’s mate growled. “High-handed prick. Made a big fuss, as if somehow his position in the community was supposed to mean more than being with your true mate.”

“I sent him off with a flea in his ear,” Nan said. “Told him to not darken my door any time soon. Yes, Marshall Peters and Nancy Spehr. Thick as thieves, those two, even when they took their own mates. She used to look after you sometimes when you were little, Paige. Your father put a stop to that and brought you around here instead.”

I went still, remembering Bridget’s words the other day.

“Mum would shoosh her when she was crying, and she just would. Most unnatural bloody thing I’ve ever seen. As a kid, she did and said whatever Mum said, in all ways but one.”

I stiffened, my eyes meeting my grandmother’s. “Did she…? Would she have…?” Nan’s eyes softened imperceptibly.

“I don’t know what your aunt did or didn’t do. I just know your father wouldn’t leave you alone with her after that.”

“Nance is always a tough one to manage,” Dad had said to me one night after a family function. I was doing my best to shred the hem of the frou-frou gown I’d been made to wear until Dad leaned over and pulled my hands away. “When you take your mate and step