Finding Home (Build-A-Pack #2)

Chapter Five

Rian

I watched Holden storm out of my room and immediately burrowed under my pile of blankets on my bed. I shook, the memories assaulting me from every direction. There was a reason I couldn’t think about Hunter. He was the love of my life, and I’d lost him. And I blamed myself.

Even when I curled up and closed my eyes now, I could see his bright, happy expression in front of me. I heard the way he laughed when he was happy, the sounds he made when he came. I watched him dance and jog, saw him arguing good-naturedly at the old lady who frequented the bodega we used the most.

But I also saw his confusion when I recoiled from the bite that told me something was wrong with his body. I saw the fear when I explained what I was tasting. We didn’t know what it was, of course, but we could guess, and—

“Sweetness?” Brodie asked, his tone worried and soft, yet the firmness that was newer, the Alpha of his pack coming through loud and clear.

I didn’t– couldn’t –say anything.

He lifted the covers and settled in next to me. Then he gently grabbed me and pulled me halfway into his lap. He let me hide as he began to rub my back and took hold of my hand with his bigger one. I felt surrounded and safe, and eventually the crying tapered down into an occasional hitching breath.

“Kye said he thought you knew Holden, but that he didn’t remember you?” Brodie started when he deemed me suitably calmed down.

I heard him pull a tissue from the box on my bedside table, and then he handed it to me, never lifting the covers.

I mopped my face and blew my nose, then sighed and uncovered myself. I curled up back against him, and he put one arm around me and began to play with my curls.

“I’ve met him three times before.” I recounted them to him much like I had to Holden. “You remember how I told you once that I’d been so deeply in love that after the loss I couldn’t—” My voice hitched.

“You couldn’t picture ever falling in love again,” Brodie concluded. “I remember.”

“We met at this underground gay club,” I said barely audibly, smiling as I remembered Hunter in his mesh shirt, looking like a twink despite being over six feet tall. “He was… luminescent. It was as if none of the lights mattered except the one radiating from him.

“We hooked up there, and within a couple of weeks we were inseparable. I met his twin brother, Holden, for the first time at Hunter’s tiny apartment one evening. We didn’t tell Holden we were dating, just that I was a friend, because we didn’t want him to tell their parents even accidentally.”

I could practically hear Brodie’s frown in his tone. “Was Hunter not out to them? Or was there some other issue with it?”

Sighing, I pressed my palms together and slipped them under my cheek, feeling his heartbeat against the back of my hand. “He wasn’t not out, but it wasn’t something they talked about as a family. He was a dancer. Hunter always said the only reason nobody bullied him at school was because he had Holden. He was such a stereotypical jock.”

I felt Brodie nod. “So you met Holden. Did you look different?”

I explained all about how I’d had a punk look and a different name, and how I could easily see how Holden wouldn’t remember me based on those meetings. “First time, I was a random friend. The second I was the boyfriend who refused to leave Hunter’s side and Holden was terrified of the virus like everyone else. He didn’t stay for a long time. The third…,” I sighed. “Who wants to remember details of their other half’s funeral?”

I wasn’t talking about myself, I was talking about Holden. While yes, Hunter had been my other half, he’d been Holden’s twin. They might have been on different life paths in various ways, but they’d still had the connection.

“What happened?” Brodie asked after a moment of silence.

“I’d told him I was a vampire from the beginning. It wasn’t something people openly talked about much back then. The social climate was tricky in New York, but I knew I was falling in love so I couldn’t omit that sort of a truth.

“He asked if I wanted his blood, and I explained how it would feel to him, how it would muddle the casual thing we were trying to do at first. He accepted it. Of course, that all changed.” I chuckled. “He once said he’d rather have me bite him than use poppers.”

Brodie chuckled. “Okay, makes sense.”

“We’d been together for a few months when I first fed from him, and it became this thing where he almost started to feel possessive of it. I rarely fed from anyone else after that. And then somewhere around the one year mark, I realized his blood tasted different.”

“Oh no,” Brodie breathed out the words, his arms around me tightening.

“Yeah. By then, and remember this was very early in the epidemic, we had already lost a few friends. Had others in the hospital. Fear was spreading.” I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Later on, I wondered if I’d tasted it earlier. The changing. He’d insisted on me feeding from him even when he felt like he had a cold or some aches and pains that we thought just came from him being a dancer.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“No, and in hindsight, there would’ve been nothing we could do even if my tastebuds had been as accurate as an HIV test is now.” I chuckled darkly, defeatedly. “We knew what it was, of course. There were no reliable tests available yet, he was gone by the time the ELISA test was available.” I sighed. “Anyway, within two weeks he had to be hospitalized. He’d worked too hard to keep up with his fitness level, all the while his body had been attacked by HIV for who knows how long.”

Brodie kissed the top of my head. “Because nobody noticed HIV before people started to die of AIDS.”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“Holden came to the hospital?”

“He did. I called him to come when Hunter asked me to. He held Hunter’s hand for a few moments, which was more than most people were willing to do. They said goodbye and….” Tears started to fall again. “It was important for them to see each other one last time,” I choked out.

Brodie sniffled and reached for another tissue. He didn’t ask anything, so I took a moment and then started to talk again.

“When we first figured out what it was, we contemplated me turning him. We knew that turning would heal most things, right?” At his affirmative grunt, I continued, “But we didn’t know anything about AIDS. Nothing at all. It was… the bogeyman. We didn’t want to risk it. What if it wouldn’t take? What if he died?” I laughed, the sound bitter to my own ears. “Of course, by the time he was begging me to turn him, to try so he wouldn’t leave me, he was so frail and—”

“Hey, you don’t have to—”

“I got so upset I walked out of the room. I went to sit in the hospital stairwell and fell asleep. By the time I woke up, it was a couple of hours later and when I got back to his room he was gone.” All emotion was gone from my voice, the numbness already taking over again.

“Jesus Christ, sweetness.” He didn’t need to say anything more. He held me as we cried together, and something about my best friend’s strong arms around me gave me enough strength to not lose it completely.

Eventually, he sighed. “Do you want to tell the others yourself?”

“Yeah. I… I’ll figure out how. I don’t know what to do about Holden, though.”

“How far did you get with your explanation?” I told him everything that had happened and he nodded slowly. “He’s a good man. He’ll come around one way or another. The fact that you lied by omission….”

I sat up and looked at him. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you for saying that, but it’s not me who needs to hear it.”

“I know. But….”

As if reading my mind, Brodie took my hands and squeezed. “He’ll come around. He’s just upset because it must’ve been a shock.”

I dropped my gaze and shook my head. “If it was only about me lying to him about who I was, it would be an easier fix… this is….”

“Complicated.” Then the penny dropped and he nudged my chin with his fingers to make eye contact. “He didn’t know you were a vampire back then, did he?”

Shaking my head again, I felt tears well up in my eyes. “Their parents were anti-vampire. Or wolf, for that matter. We couldn’t….”

Brodie hung his head, then hugged me tightly. “I love you, sweetness. I’ll message him, tell him he can take his time coming back. That there’s no pressure from the pack and that I’m there for him if he needs me, but you’re my best friend, Rian.”

I let out a choked sob. “I’m sure I’ll be fine. He’s your enforcer, you need to—”

“What you need to do is to listen to your Alpha.” At my incredulous look, he rolled his eyes. “Your best friend? Your Dom?”

I snorted. “None of the above?”

“Brat.” He squeezed me once more, then let go and slid off the bed. “I’m sure, once he’s had some time to digest this, he’ll be fine.”

“I hope so, too.” I watched him go to the door he’d closed behind himself and said, “I love you too, Brodie.”

I didn’t tell him he had a pack to worry about now, because he knew that already. We had been each others’ ride or die for a decade before he came here and met his mate—a thing I was ecstatic about, because Brodie deserved someone as perfect for him as Kye—and he had trouble realizing the pack needed to be his first responsibility now.

He smiled and then left my room, closing the door behind him.

Sighing, I slid back under the covers. I should take a shower.

It took me half an hour to make myself move, and I went into the bathroom. I got undressed and just stood under the hot water for a while, before cleaning myself in a perfunctory way with very little thought.

When I finally stepped out, I looked at myself in the mirror. There were dark circles under my eyes. It wasn’t easy to make that happen for someone who regenerated as quickly as vampires did.

Snorting, I toweled off my curls. There were a lot of them. The roots were showing for at least five or six inches and the fire engine red was fading from the rest.

There was a pair of scissors by the edge of the sink, and I did what every unstable, heartbroken person has done at least once in their life: I started to cut, while I tried to remember where my hair clippers were for the sides.

T he next morning, I was the first one downstairs, having dozed off and woken up intermittently for way too long.

At least Acacia had texted me to tell me she had time for me to “have a quick bite” in the afternoon. I sent her a confirmation that I’d drop by her place when I went for a drive later.

I didn’t feel like being in the house, I felt itchy in an unfamiliar way.

I sat in the window seat in the kitchen and zoned out as the sky began to lighten and one by one, the pack started to wake up.

Everyone came to give me a hug, but nobody made me talk past “good morning.” Most of them messed with my now short hair, the curls having none of the red left. None of them commented on the haircut either, and it only made me realize that I loved these people so much.

Eventually, they all spread out to do their thing, and I was left alone in the kitchen with Kye, who joined me with a mug of coffee.

He didn’t ask anything, but I started to talk, telling him what was going on and what had gone on in the early eighties. By the time I got to Hunter’s death, heavy droplets of tears rolled down Kye’s cheeks and he grasped my hand.

I continued, telling everything until the moment Holden had stormed out, and he winced. Then his eyes suddenly widened.

“Wait, wait, that couldn’t have been easy,” he said earnestly. He’d put his mug aside and took my other hand as well.

He looked at me seriously, as if expecting something.

“What?” I frowned, not understanding what he was getting at.

“Seeing Holden. He looks like Hunter, right?”

“Yes, of course, they’re identical.”

“Rian, Holden looks like Hunter would’ve if he’d lived to forty.”

Of course I’d noted that. Of course I’d known that. But seeing Kye’s sympathetic expression and really letting myself think it through?

I pulled one hand free from his and put it over my mouth as my eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, gods,” I choked out.

“Uh, Brodie?” Kye called out.

Within a few seconds, Brodie was there, gathering me into his arms. He carried me into the living room and I got sandwiched between him and Kye.

Kye explained to him what happened, and Brodie squeezed me harder.

“Of course it would be hard to see him. I didn’t even make the connection,” he murmured against my hair. “Do you think you’ll be able to be around him—”

“Yes!” I blurted out quickly. “It’ll be fine. I’ll get used to it. Especially now that I’ve fully understood what’s going on.” I hiccupped. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”

Brodie pulled back and looked at me, frowning a little.

“He’s a grown man,” Kye piped up. He squeezed my hand. “He’s certainly old enough to know his mind, Brodie.”

My best friend chuckled. “That he certainly is.”

I was sitting on the couch later, reading a book and idly tugging at my hair when Max materialized from somewhere.

I’d apologized to him for scaring him when I’d snapped, and he was losing the rest of his reservedness around me again. I’d kick my own ass before triggering him again.

He came in to cuddle against my side, then looked at my hair and began to run his fingers through the curls as much as he could, because well, curls.

“These look so nice. How do you know to cut hair so well?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been doing my own hair for a very long time. Oh and I dated a hairdresser in the late nineties.”

He hummed. “Makes sense.”

“You want me to do yours?” I asked, glancing over his hair that was well past his chin.

“Nah, I’m good. Once I can figure out what cut I might want, I’ll let you know.”

I smiled. “Okay.”

He curled up against my side, then gradually slid down until his head was on my thigh and I kept reading. Carys joined us after her online therapy session. She didn’t want to talk about it, but also didn’t look too upset, just tired.

When it was time for me to get going, to go for my drive and to get my bite, I slid out from under them and put pillows under their heads. Brodie, who had been working outside, was standing in the family room doorway. He smiled at me, looking proud.

I frowned at him playfully as I passed him. “Don’t even start.”

“What, you’re so good with them. I know you have doubts with your temper, but this?” He gestured at the most vulnerable members of our pack. “This is priceless. Having you here is a blessing, sweetness.”

Kye walked out of the kitchen. “What he said.” Then he looked at Brodie. “I have your sandwiches ready, come eat before your coffee gets cold.”

Their domesticity was bittersweet to experience from so close, but I was happy for them both.

I slipped away and went upstairs to change. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do in town yet, but whatever it was, I wanted to look my best.