Chapter 27
27
as Alex rode away, Devin bent to pick up the crumpled purple paper she’d dropped on his front steps. The Prius that picked her up got smaller, slowly, as the driver hugged the spiral turns down the hills from his home.
MY BOSS IS OUT OF TOWN, LET’S PARTY , the flyer read, followed by an address in Silver Lake.
If Alex thought she was punishing him by running off to drink warm beer with strangers, she wasn’t. He’d been to a thousand Eastside hipster house parties. You know what happened there? Small talk. Good luck with that, sweetheart.
He slammed his door on his way back inside.
Devin knew he’d fucked up at the game, okay? It had been like the shift; he could feel it happening, but he couldn’t stop it. Alex’s advice didn’t land over the wolf’s restlessness, the screaming panic in his bloodstream that stepping back into LA had brought on. He hadn’t realized how bad this town made him feel until he spent a significant period away.
His footsteps echoed on the poured-concrete floors, too loud as he wandered aimlessly across his downstairs. The empty house held traces of Alex’s scent—not the plastic, chemical compound of her new clothes but the pure, unadulterated notes that came straight from her skin.
Devin purposefully gave a wide berth to her sweatshirt hanging by the door.
The wolf wanted to bury his nose in it. Wanted to find Alex. Show her his neck.
Devin overruled his instincts.
Why should he run after her and apologize? She was the one abandoning him at his most vulnerable. When he needed her. The full moon would rise in a few hours, and sure, Devin could handle himself, but they’d arranged this whole thing so he wouldn’t have to. Alex was supposed to be here, armed with emergency tranquilizers, her comforting scent surrounding him like a blanket, her sweet husky voice keeping him tethered.
Devin opened the fridge and let the blast of cool air hit him full in the face. He had no food in the house. He’d made a reservation for dinner for two at Crossroads on Melrose. It was supposed to be the best vegan food in the city.
He bet they wouldn’t have any snacks she could eat at her shitty little house party.
The wolf whined, worried.
Alex is a grown woman. She can order herself a delivery salad if she gets hungry.
Devin pulled out a beer even though he hadn’t been able to get drunk since his transformation. At least the bitter hops on his tongue matched his mood.
As he leaned against his kitchen island, the label came away under the pressure of his thumb.
Alex was supposed to be different. She wasn’t supposed to leave him.
Just because he’d been selfish.
And pathetic.
And mean.
Fuck.
All these feelings he couldn’t look at straight on swirled inside him.
He’d completely lost his head when she tried on new clothes—how would he react when she inevitably came home smelling like someone else? He was losing her, and he couldn’t figure out how to stop it. What if she’d walked out that door not just for tonight but for good?
People left when Devin stopped paying them. His parents, his ex-wife, Jade, now her…
He didn’t know what to do. How to make things right.
Alex loved The Arcane Files . At least if the show came back—if Devin was Colby again—he’d still mean something to her. She might insist she was only hate watching so she could tell him how bad it was. But whatever. He needed to matter to her in whatever way he could.
Try as he might to hide it, Devin had always been desperate.
He booked his first feature film at seven. A family vacation comedy with a veteran Oscar winner playing his father. The guy had made a career in Mafia flicks in the seventies, a frequent collaborator with Scorsese. He’d taken the easy-money role to combat mounting alimony payments. Though of course Devin hadn’t understood that at the time.
He was funny with a big, belly-shaking laugh. Devin took to following him around after the cameras stopped rolling, calling him “Dad” even between takes. The guy had been okay about it at first, but then one day, after a series of shitty delays, Devin tried holding his hand, only to have it smacked away. What’s wrong with this kid? He doesn’t know when to quit.
The hit hadn’t been hard, not enough to leave a mark, but yeah, Devin remembered the sting.
He thought he’d learned to live like this, constantly scared and unable to show it. But this whole werewolf thing made everything worse, more precarious. Because now, if he got too emotional—if he felt anything too strongly—he could lose control.
Seconds ticked by on the wooden Scandinavian clock his decorator had picked out. Every minute without Alex made him more anxious. It was like at some point, while Devin was obsessing over the moon, she had become his sun. Each step she took away from him pushed Devin further into darkness, into the cold.
How could he tell her he wanted her when he needed her like this? It wasn’t fair. She couldn’t save him indefinitely.
He needed to be able to control himself without her. To subdue the riot of his emotions all on his own.
Devin had spent an extraordinary amount of his life working out. He’d had a bunch of different trainers, but they all agreed on one thing: no pain, no gain. The second your body adjusted, you had to make it harder. Add more weight, more resistance. Cut time, increase the reps. The trials he’d done with Alex, honing his senses, finding his center, testing himself in increasingly stressful situations—it was the same. This was just the next step. His newest test.
Alex was a crutch. It had always been inevitable that one day, sooner or later, he’d be alone with the wolf when the moon came calling.
Devin went to the master bath to collect his phone from the pocket of his joggers. The thing had died on the way back from the stadium. He plugged it in at the kitchen island and then forced himself onto his too-stiff sofa, flicking on his grossly expensive TV.
The Entertainment Tonight logo flashed. Just as Devin hovered his thumb over the button to pull up the on-demand guide, Brian Dempsey came onscreen.
Devin froze. He blinked at the caption. Then, when it didn’t change, he got up until he stood two feet from the giant screen. Each letter of the announcement was as big as his palm.
LIVE: brIAN DEMPSEY ANNOUNCES THE ARCANE FILES MOVIE
“What the fuck?” Devin waited for the straight shot of pure elation to hit. This is it.
Despite what everyone had said, he’d done it; he got to be Colby again.
Except why did the role feel in this moment like a beloved jacket that he’d worn for many years, only to wake up one day and discover it no longer quite fit? Devin shook out his shoulders. That didn’t make sense. He loved Colby and he loved TAF . Dempsey must have gone straight to the execs after today’s game. Maybe something raw, something animal in Devin’s play had sparked urgency for him to revisit Colby’s story.
Devin turned up the volume on the TV, even though he didn’t need to.
“We’re so excited for this next chapter,” Dempsey told the reporter, his red hair gleaming under the studio lights. “Gus Rochester blew us all away last year with his performance in Shatter Me . As soon as I saw that, I knew I needed to write for him again. We realized how much of his character’s story we’d left on the table.”
Fine. They wanted to show more of Gus? Let them. Contrary to popular belief, Devin didn’t need the spotlight all the time.
The pretty reporter with the slightly orange spray tan held a finger to her ear, as if she was getting feedback in real time from the studio. “Is it true that the reboot was developed without a role for Devin Ashwood?”
Devin’s ears started ringing.
“Yes, sadly.” Brian Dempsey pouted, his forehead refusing to crease in the movement.
Bad Botox.
“We love Devin. He’s great. But we just didn’t see any more story for Colby. There’s something a little sad about a forty-two-year-old werewolf.”
Devin tasted copper, salt.
No. There’d been a mistake.
“He’ll like you,” the woman at the front desk said, the first time Devin went to Brian Dempsey’s office to read for Colby.
“Why do you say that?” Devin was twenty-two and sleeping on his friend’s couch between auditions, living off frozen Costco burritos. Too afraid to ask his parents for any of the money that he’d earned.
“You look like him,” she said, and handed him a plastic security badge. “Only better.”
That was almost twenty years ago. Devin had gotten old. Why would anyone want a self-insert with crow’s-feet and bad knees?
A crash cut the air, followed by a streaming fizz. Devin looked down. He’d dropped his beer.
The broken bottle spun, leaking across his carpet, the neck shattered.
If Alex came back, she might step on a shard. He went to his knees.
His eyes blurred, burned, as he reached to collect the slivers of brown glass. As his hand made contact, he heard a series of clinks.
Claws.
Fuck. Fuck. Alex wasn’t here. And Devin didn’t know if he could hold back. Not now. Not this.
He needed the tranquilizers. He stumbled toward the guest room, but it hit him in the hall—Alex had taken her purse with her.
Devin tried to slow his breath, to find an anchor. He could stay conscious, in control, even through the shift. As he stumbled down the hall, the walls moved—no, not the walls. That was him, his vision again, going funny. Dizziness setting in. Was the bitterness on his tongue from the beer or the blood?
Need to call Alex.
He missed a step on the way into the kitchen and caught himself on the counter. Still plugged in, his phone lit up with a bombardment of messages, missed calls, emails.
Anthony: Know you must be hurting, brother.
Erica: Don’t do anything rash.
It was like someone had died.
And then it hit Devin. His career was over. It might as well be his life.
What else did he have?
If he was younger, his looks undiluted, his reputation unspoiled, he might’ve stood a chance at a comeback. But Devin was no longer some fresh, new thing waiting for a breakout vehicle. If he was honest with himself, his name had baggage in this town even before Venice. He’d come up in soaps, had a sloppy tabloid divorce. If he had more talent, perhaps these black marks could be overlooked, but Devin knew his ceiling as an artist. How many times had he been told by his parents that he skated by on his good looks?
He’d tried to control exactly what he revealed about himself for so much of his career—of his life, really. And for what?
He wanted to be the perfect canvas for a character. Wanted to be exactly what a director envisioned. Exactly the hero the fans wished could step off the screen.
A new message came in as Devin stared at the screen. I’m so sorry , from Jade.
A metallic crunch drowned out his jagged inhale. He’d accidentally crushed the phone in his fist.
Devin couldn’t catch his breath. There was a weight on his chest he couldn’t shift, even when he tore off his shirt.
He’d seen something like this on TV once, a guy having a panic attack— oh. Oh.
Blackness bled at the corners of his vision.
He’d trained for this. With Alex. But now he couldn’t remember why he was supposed to fight it.
Darkness beckoned, an invitation. A reprieve.
Alex reached for his hand earlier at the game, asking him to trust her. Her palm had been so warm, the tender flesh soft, careful. And Devin had pulled back so he could keep showing off.
He’d lost her.
He’d lost everything.
After a lifetime of seeking the approval of the anonymous masses, he’d wound up completely alone.
Devin wouldn’t know real love if it was standing right in front of him.
After struggling for so long, surrender felt like release.
He might be worthless, but the wolf was strong, sure, unbroken.
Devin opened his arms for oblivion and set his monster free.