Under My Skin (Wildlings) Read Online Free

he seems perfectly okay. I want to throw my arms around him and never let go, but his mother beats me to it and I manage to keep my cool.
    I just smile and lift my eyebrows.
    "Good to see you, Saunders," I say. "Nice duds."

    Josh

    By the time I finish telling my edited version of the facts to the cop, I half believe the story myself. I'm glad that Marina headed off to school. I wouldn't be a very good liar around her. We're so tight, she'd see right through me.
    But I do turn out to be pretty good at it when it counts—or maybe that's something else being a Wildling has given me. There's a bad moment when the detective takes me down the hall to my room for some private questioning. He points to my jeans and T-shirt lying on the carpet and asks me why I wasn't wearing them. Turns out the best way to be believable is to embarrass yourself. Good thing Mom is waiting in the living room.
    "I was just, you know, looking at some pictures on my computer," I say.
    He gets a smirk. I guess he saw the photos of Joanie Jones on my screen when he was first called in to investigate the attack and thinks I was sitting there jacking off when Steve came in my room.
    I go on, feeling a flush darken my already brown skin. "Steve comes in yelling about how I broke his laptop—which I never touched—and he hits me across the back of the head and then all of a sudden this giant cat is all over him and I just took off."
    "Naked."
    "Well, I was still wearing my boxers."
    He nods and writes something in his notebook. Good thing he doesn't check because right now I'm going commando. Cory didn't provide me with underwear and I wouldn't have put on somebody else's old skivvies even if he had.
    "And these clothes you came home in?"
    "They're from a donation box out near the mall."
    Cory said to tell the truth as much as possible and it seems to work. I didn't take the clothes from the box, but that's where they came from.
    The detective nods again.
    "And why did you wait until the morning to come home?"
    "I was scared. I knew Steve was already mad at me. I thought he'd find a way to blame me for everything."
    "But you finally came back because ...?"
    I shrug. "Where else am I going to go? I'm just a kid. And then when I was in this diner, I saw my picture on the news and I thought I'd better come home ..."
    "Tell me about this giant cat. What do you mean? Was it a house cat or something bigger?"
    Somehow I wasn't expecting this question and I'm sure I probably have guilt written all over my face. What do I tell this cop? Again, I think about Cory's advice.
    "It was bigger," I say. "A … mountain lion, I think."
    "And did you see it come in the house?" the detective asks.
    "No. It just showed up all of a sudden. There was no warning."
    The cop looks at me thoughtfully. He makes some more notes, then closes his notebook.
    "I think we're done here," he says.
    I walk with him back out to the living room. Mom jumps up from the couch and I let her give me a hug. She turns to the cop, her arm still around my shoulders.
    "You okay with your boyfriend disciplining your son?" he asks her.
    He says it like she shouldn't be and goes up a point or two in my estimation.
    "What do you mean?" Mom asks, eyes open wide.
    "Well, if you want to press charges for him hitting your boy ..."
    Mom presses her lips together and her gaze hardens. She moves back in front of me, grabs both shoulders and holds me at arm's length. She's obviously waiting for me to tell her what happened. I shake my head.
    "I just want this all to be over," I say.
    "Steve's not going to be a problem," she tells the detective. "Not anymore."
    The detective shrugs. "If your son had any obvious injuries, we would be pressing charges, Mrs. Saunders. It's the law."
    "So would I, officer, but he seems to be all right. For the moment, anyway."
    Mom walks the detective to the door. When she comes back, she gives me another hug.
    "Tell me everything," she says. "God, the things I was imagining ..."
    I feel