Chapter Seven
Rian
P eople clearly didn’t do nice things for Holden very often. Going a little bit out of my way to get him something after the rough night he’d had—it was obvious in everything about him when he opened the door right after his impromptu nap—seemed only fair.
I’d come to him with the mindset of following his lead. If he didn’t want to talk about Hunter, I wouldn’t either. There would be time, eventually, I hoped. He’d been vicious, but I knew where that came from, and I understood. I wasn’t expecting an apology, but I would welcome one if he chose to give me one.
His arms around me didn’t feel like Hunter’s, which was a blessing. Would I have taken advantage of it if they’d felt similar enough for me to fool myself into thinking I was getting one last hug from Hunter? I wasn’t sure.
I pulled away from the comfort and grabbed a paper towel, then blew my nose and wiped my face. He did the same, then looked at me and we chuckled a bit awkwardly.
He turned away to make me the espresso, and I took the moment to watch Cindy stalk another tiny treat as if it was moving. “She’s weird,” I said, having only ever seen cats just chomp on their treats.
Holden snorted. “That is true.” He took his mug and my small cup and nodded toward the small dining nook. “Want to go sit there?”
“Yes, thank you.” I took the food I’d brought him, while he carried the drinks to the table.
He handed me my cup, and I inhaled the fragrant steam like I so often would, my eyes fluttering closed.
A low chuckle made me open my eyes. “What?” I smiled at him.
“You look so happy with a cup of coffee under your nose.”
“Well, it smells nice. I never actually had coffee when I was still human. It wasn’t really a thing in my community.” I thought for a second. “I’m actually not sure when it even became a commonplace drink in Ireland.”
Holden looked at me blankly, then shook himself out of whatever he’d just gone through. “I keep forgetting how different life must’ve been for you as a human.”
Snorting softly, I shrugged. “It was a completely different world. I lived, and died, during the Great Famine.”
He whistled under his breath. “I only even know what that was because my maternal grandma was Irish. She used to tell us stories when we were kids. Jesus. That’s….”
I smiled a bit sadly. “Hunter told me that, actually. He said she would sit in her rocking chair and you’d sit by her feet on the floor. Then she’d proudly tell these horrific stories that had been passed down through generations already.”
“Oh yeah.” Holden smiled, looking breathtakingly handsome for a moment. “We’d play with these toy cars she had for us in a small basket by the fireplace. We’d listen to her stories of hungry families and about little boys who died and then she’d take us into the kitchen—”
“And she’d tell you that at least her grandkids would never have to go hungry while feeding you all sorts of snacks,” I concluded, smiling.
“Yes! Our mom would be mad at the crap she fed us because it wasn’t super healthy, but Grandma would tell her at least we had food to eat.” The way the memory was taking him back and making him happy allowed me to not dwell on my own memories too much.
Before I could figure out what to say next, Holden’s clever brain caught up with him.
“Oh no,” he exhaled. “That was probably really fucking insensitive—”
“No, no,” I assured him, placing my hand on his arm. “It’s a good memory for you and while her stories were something I lived once; it was a long time ago. It’s not an acute pain anymore, hasn’t been in a very, very long time. Sometimes it’s an ache, but only if I let it be.”
He sighed and took a sip of his coffee. Then he opened the salad container and used the provided fork to spear some of the lettuce or whatever the actual salad leaves might’ve been.
He hummed around the mouthful, making me smile. He swallowed his mouthful, then asked, “What?”
“You just sounded a lot like Hunter. He liked food a lot.”
Holden nodded. “I remember. But he needed to watch his calories to stay skinny for the dancing.”
I sipped my tiny espresso ever so carefully, savoring the quality of the coffee. It tasted even better than it smelled, which was rare. I needed to watch how much I actually drank, because a stomach ache wasn’t something I enjoyed.
While vampires could ingest human foods, any substantial amount could make us horribly sick and it just wasn’t worth it. I felt bad for the vampires of the olden days when we had to learn by trial and error. Many were turned in secret and left alone like me, and many of us had to learn it all the hard, painful way.
“I had to try and remind him that he also burned a lot of calories by all the exercising and dancing and hell, even at the clubs we frequented. I feel like he was always moving.” I could still see the flashing multicolored lights and him, a shining beacon in a crowd, dancing as if there was no tomorrow.
“When we were younger, when he got into dance, I often wondered if he was developing an eating disorder. I didn’t call it that then, of course, but I thought he had… issues.” Holden continued eating and raised a brow at me.
I frowned and thought back. “It wasn’t quite a disorder, I don’t think. But it could’ve developed there.” Then I remembered something, and because I’d fed so recently, I blushed a little.
Holden noticed and cracked up. “Now I’ve got to know what that expression is for.”
Shaking my head in defeat, I smiled. “You know how feeding a vampire feels, right?” At his nod, I said, “Well, at one point he was getting obsessive about how much he ate, but he also wanted to feed me. So we made a deal that he could do it, but only if he ate healthily so he would be able to dance at full capacity.”
Holden laughed. “Oh, that makes sense. Good incentive.” He seemed fond, and even though the connotation of me biting Hunter having been sexual was there, he didn’t look uncomfortable.
He finished his salad, having eaten the garlic bread at the same time. He opened the pastry box and grinned at the chocolate cheesecake.
“Do you two need a moment alone?” I asked while lifting my cup to my lips.
“Maybe.” He picked the fork he’d been using for the salad and sucked it clean, then used it to start on the slice.
As he sat there enjoying his cake, I watched him. I could see Hunter in him, now that I let myself truly look.
Identical twins weren’t necessarily carbon copies of each other. Stylistic and lifestyle differences separated their looks, and even in their early twenties Hunter and Holden had looked different from each other.
Holden now, in his forty-year-old body that was almost frozen in time, was tall and strong, even a bit stocky. He was fit in a way a wolf would be, but his forty years as a human before his twenty as a wolf had made him more… well, human, I supposed.
Whereas born wolves had all kinds of body types much like humans, they were always strong and fast, their bodies still made for protecting the pack and themselves, whatever it took. Brodie, for example, had led a life working construction and eating healthy. He looked the same as any muscular model on a book cover.
The boys, on the other hand, were lanky and were only starting to put on weight post-addiction. But even they were rangy and strong, and they would keep getting more fit given time.
“You know, I think it’s actually better that you’re a wolf,” I mused out loud.
Holden, having demolished his treat, looked at me over the rim of his coffee mug. “What do you mean?”
“If you looked like this and were a human, it would be almost too easy to confuse you with how Hunter would be had he lived.” I put my cooled coffee back on the table, having ingested maybe a tablespoon of the nectar. “If you were human, you’d smell more like him.”
Wolves smelled and tasted earthy, as if somehow the wilderness had been imprinted in their genes.
Holden frowned, thinking hard. Then his face did something complicated and he ended up smiling slightly. “Well, then I’m extra happy I’m a wolf. I wouldn’t want to make things more difficult for you.”
I smiled back. Then a thought crossed my mind, and I asked, “Do you happen to have any photos of Hunter? I have one Polaroid, but nothing else. We weren’t really photo people back then.”
Grinning, Holden picked up his trash and went to put them in the bin. “I have so many pictures of us. Let’s go sit on the couch and I’ll show you?”
With excitement bubbling inside me, I took the remnants of our drinks to the sink, and followed him to the living room where Cindy had finished her treat hunt and was curled up in a cozy looking armchair in the corner.
I sat on the couch while Holden rummaged in an ornate wooden chest that bookended the small fireplace with an entertainment unit. He picked up a couple of different things, then closed the lid.
“If I don’t close it, a certain someone will go look. It’s not as if she’d pee in there, but she likes to dig with her claws to get into things….” He glanced at Cindy fondly.
Holden came to sit next to me and placed his loot on his other side. First, he picked up an ancient looking homemade baby book.
“My mom couldn’t find one for twins, so she made one herself.” He showed me the cover with a stork carrying two babies in one bundle on the cover. “She had her sister, who was an artist, illustrate it.”
As I watched, he opened the little book to the typical information. A small summary of what the boys were like in their first week of life. Hand- and footprints. Two locks of identical blond hair that had darkened when they got older.
The pictures were mostly polaroids, but she’d taken care with them and each one was still much crisper than I would’ve thought.
“Our dad knew a photographer, so for every birthday, we’d go have our portrait taken,” Holden explained the professional looking pictures of two chubby little boys sprawled on their stomachs on a sheepskin. They were both looking at the camera, but one was holding a small teddy bear to his mouth.
“Do you know which is which?” I asked, sounding a bit choked up even to my own ears.
Holden snorted softly, wistfully. “Yeah, I’m eating the bear.”
The book was thick and covered major milestones for the twins’ first three years of life.
After that, Holden put the baby book on the table and showed me the thick photo album.
“This is where all the other stuff is.” He put the large album halfway on his own lap and half on mine.
He explained every picture that needed explanation. The silly Halloween costumes that made no sense, but had made sense to the boys.
“Yeah, I’m Batman,” he confirmed in a picture that had been taken when they were ten.
“What the hell is Hunter?” I tilted my head, trying to figure it out.
When I glanced at Holden, his lips twitched. “He’s robin.” Then he added, “The bird.”
We burst out laughing, and yeah, now that I knew I could see it. I laughed until I could barely breathe, and tears were rolling down my face.
“So it started as a kid?” I asked as I grabbed a tissue and tried to make myself presentable.
“His sense of humor? Oh absolutely.” Holden looked so damn fond in the moment it hurt my heart to think what he’d lost.
The pictures and some articles continued. The older the boys got, the more their differences started to show.
“I played football in high school,” Holden murmured in a thoughtful tone.
“And he was a theater kid and danced, right?”
As if he’d forgotten for a moment I was there, Holden jerked his gaze to me and nodded. “Right. I….” He swallowed hard, and it seemed as if he was trying to find the words for whatever he wanted to say next. “Our parents loved us.”
He didn’t elaborate, instead choosing to stroke his fingers around a Christmas card portrait of all four of them from when the boys were in their teens.
I cleared my throat. “I know. He told me as much.”
“They weren’t super religious, but we were Catholic. And Dad came from a military family and….”
I nodded, again putting my hand on his arm. “I know that, too.” He couldn’t seem to flip the page, so I continued to speak, “Hunter said they weren’t sure what to do with how different he was. How he was nothing like you or your cousins. Not a typical boy they’d expected.”
Holden echoed my nod. “They tried, but the attitudes toward queer people were….” He shook his head and grimaced. “I guess that led to me becoming….”
I squeezed his arm. “Hunter said he could tell you were picking up his slack when it came to the masculine boy stuff. He thought you didn’t even enjoy football that much, but since it was your dad’s favorite sport, you chose it to take pressure off Hunter.”
He looked at me, shocked. “He said that?” Then, before I had time to answer, he let out a breathy chuckle and ran his hand over his mouth. “Of course he did. I could never hide anything from him.” Holden let his head drop forward as he breathed for a minute. “For a long time, I didn’t know how to do life without him. On some days, I still don’t, and there hasn’t been anyone around who could remember him….”
I took his hand and squeezed his fingers. “But I’m here now, Holden. If you want to talk about him, I’ll always listen.”
He turned toward me, tightening his hand around mine. “Thank you.” A single tear rolled down his cheek. “I know you would’ve saved him if you knew how. But nobody knew or could have. I’m sorry about what I said last night. Will you forgive me?”
It was the easiest “yes” I’d ever said. After the day his brother asked me to be his, that is.
Now, we knew that people with HIV could be turned if their viral load was undetectable. If the disease progressed into AIDS, then the turning was too aggressive for the person to survive more often than not. Either way, even with that knowledge, I couldn’t have helped Hunter by the time I made the decision to try.
With Holden’s forgiveness, and maybe mine too, something slotted together in my head and my heart.
We hugged over the album, and I knew everything would be okay. I’d keep seeing glimpses of Hunter in him, but I now had someone who had known the person I’d loved the most in all my years. I wasn’t a believer by any means, but I still felt blessed.
“Does this mean you will come to the house tomorrow after work?” I asked once we’d put ourselves back together.
Holden chuckled. “Yeah, it does. I think I need to apologize to the pack.”
I shook my head. “No. They understand. Not everyone knows my story yet, or Hunter’s. I don’t have secrets anymore. I think it would make everyone closer if we just sat them down and explained what happened.”
He considered my words for a moment, then nodded solemnly. “I think you’re right.” Then he smiled, looking relaxed and happier than I’d ever seen him. “I’ll try to come by tomorrow night. If I can’t, if I get suckered into a double shift, I’ll come another night soon.”
He got off the couch and went to put the album and the baby book away. He came back with a photo in his hands. It was him and Hunter. They were maybe seventeen or eighteen.
They had shorts on and were standing on a beach somewhere, grinning in the sun. Even then, they already had slightly different builds.
“I have a copy of this. If you want it, it’s yours,” he said simply.
I took it and smiled. “Thank you.”
He found me an envelope to protect the picture while I gave Cindy some attention, and I left soon after.
Somehow, I’d stayed for a few hours, and my whole being was lighter somehow. I’d fed, I had purged my soul and everything was fine in my world.
I picked up some takeout in town to treat the pack, and began to make my way home.