Chapter 32 Falling Apart
FALLING APART
NATE
Sleep had become a foreign concept, as elusive as peace or the kind of innocence that let you believe the world was fundamentally good. I lay in the narrow bed beside Evan, watching moonlight filter through the loft window and paint geometric patterns across his sleeping face.
He looked younger in sleep, the constant tension that lived between his shoulders finally released. His breathing came slow and deep, the kind of steady rhythm that should have been comforting but instead made my skin crawl with restless energy I couldn't shake.
Three weeks since Mom's funeral. Three weeks of training until my hands bled, of pushing my body past its limits, of learning to nock arrows and loose them with deadly accuracy. But it wasn't enough. Would never be enough as long as the bastards who'd killed her were still breathing.
And Dad was falling apart.
I'd seen it in glimpses—the way his coffee sat untouched until it went cold, how he'd stand in doorways like he'd forgotten where he was going, the hollow look in his eyes when he thought no one was watching.
He was drowning in grief just like I was, but while I'd found training and purpose, he'd found nothing but the ruins of everything he'd built his life around.
I slipped out of bed with the careful quiet of someone who'd learned that waking a werewolf was a good way to get your throat torn out by accident. Evan stirred but didn't wake, exhausted from his own training sessions that seemed to grow more intense by the day.
The drive to our old house took fifteen minutes through streets that felt like they belonged to someone else's memories.
Our neighborhood sat quiet and dark, most windows black with the kind of sleep that came easy to people whose worst problems involved mortgage payments and whether the lawn needed mowing.
I envied them that ignorance.
The house looked worse in moonlight than it had in daylight.
What the rogues had left standing seemed to sag under the weight of destruction, windows gaping like dead eyes, the front door hanging askew on broken hinges.
Police tape still fluttered from the porch rails, yellow plastic that caught the wind and whispered secrets about violence too brutal for newspaper reports.
But there was light coming from inside. Faint, flickering, like someone was moving around with a flashlight or lantern.
I found Dad in what used to be the living room, kneeling among scattered pieces of furniture that had been reduced to kindling and splinters. He held a broken picture frame in his hands—the one that had held the photo of him and Mom on their wedding day, all young smiles and impossible hope.
The glass was gone, the photo torn, but he cradled it like it was made of something more precious than memories.
"Dad?"
He looked up, and the devastation in his face hit me harder than any physical blow.
His eyes were red-rimmed and hollow, carved out by grief that had been eating him alive from the inside.
He'd lost weight, I realized. His clothes hung loose, and his cheekbones stood out too sharp against skin that looked like it hadn't seen sunlight in weeks.
"Nate." His voice came out rough, like he hadn't used it in hours. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you." I picked my way through the debris, settling beside him on the floor that had once been our sanctuary. "You weren't at the motel. I got worried."
Dad's laugh came out bitter, sharp enough to cut. "Worried about me? That's rich."
"Why wouldn't I be worried about you?"
"Because I'm supposed to be taking care of you, not the other way around.
" He set the broken frame down with shaking hands.
"I'm supposed to be the strong one, the one who knows what to do when everything falls apart.
Instead, I'm sitting in the ruins of our life like some pathetic old man who can't let go of what's gone. "
The raw pain in his voice made my chest tight with emotions I didn't know how to process. Because this was my father, the man who'd taught me that problems had solutions and that hard work could fix almost anything. Seeing him broken like this felt like watching the foundations of reality crumble.
"You don't have to be strong all the time," I said quietly. "You're allowed to grieve."
"Am I?" Dad's voice cracked on the words. "Because it feels like if I let myself really feel this, really acknowledge what we've lost, I'll never stop falling. I'll just keep sinking until there's nothing left of the man she fell in love with."
I reached for his hand, fingers closing around worn wedding ring that he still wore despite everything. "She loved all of you, Dad. Even the parts that hurt. Even the parts that break."
That's when the dam finally burst.
Dad's face crumpled, and sobs tore out of his chest like they'd been trapped there for weeks.
He doubled over, shoulders shaking with the force of grief that had been held back by nothing but stubborn pride and the misguided belief that fathers weren't supposed to fall apart in front of their children.
I pulled him against me, reversing a dynamic that had lasted my entire life. Now I was the one offering comfort, the one whispering that everything would be okay even when I had no idea if that was true.
"I miss her so much," he gasped against my shoulder. "I miss her voice, her laugh, the way she hummed while she cooked dinner. I miss the way she'd steal the covers and then claim she didn't do it. I miss having someone who knew me well enough to tell me when I was being an idiot."
"I know." My own tears were falling now, hot and shameful and long overdue. "I miss her too."
"How do we do this?" Dad pulled back just enough to look at me, desperation written in every line of his face. "How do we keep going when the best part of our lives is gone?"
"I don't know," I admitted, because lies wouldn't help either of us now. "I've been asking myself the same question every day since it happened."
We sat in the wreckage of our living room, father and son united in grief that felt too big for human hearts to contain.
Around us, the house whispered with memories of birthday parties and Christmas mornings, homework arguments and bedtime stories, all the ordinary moments that added up to a life worth mourning.
"I keep thinking I should sell the lot," Dad said eventually, voice steadier now that the worst of the storm had passed. "Take whatever insurance money comes through and start over somewhere else. Somewhere that doesn't have her fingerprints on every surface."
"Is that what you want?"
Dad was quiet for a long moment, staring at the broken frame like it held answers to questions he didn't know how to ask.
"No," he said finally. "I want to rebuild.
I want to fix what they broke and make it better than it was before.
I want to plant new flowers in her garden and paint the kitchen that color she always said would be perfect but we never got around to trying. "
The fierce determination in his voice caught me off guard, a glimpse of the man he'd been before grief had hollowed him out.
"Then let's do it," I said. "Let's rebuild."
"Nate, the cost alone—"
"I don't care about the cost." The words came out stronger than I felt, carrying conviction I wasn't sure I possessed.
"Money's just numbers. This is home. This is where she lived and loved and raised me to be someone she could be proud of.
We don't abandon that because some monsters tried to take it away from us. "
Dad studied my face with the attention of someone trying to read a map in a foreign language. "You really mean that."
"I mean it." I squeezed his hand, anchoring us both to the decision. "We rebuild. We make it beautiful again. We fill it with new memories that honor the old ones without being trapped by them."
"It won't be the same," he warned.
"No. It'll be different. But different doesn't have to mean worse."
For the first time since Mom's death, Dad smiled. It was small and fragile and weighted with sorrow, but it was real. "She would have liked that plan."
"She would have had opinions about paint colors and furniture placement and where to put the new security system," I said, managing my own smile. "She would have driven us both crazy with her attention to detail."
"And we would have loved every minute of it," Dad finished.
We sat in comfortable silence for a while, surrounded by destruction but somehow looking toward a future that might include hope alongside the grief. It wouldn't be easy—nothing about rebuilding a life ever was. But maybe that was okay. Maybe easy wasn't what we needed right now.
"I should go," I said eventually. "Evan will worry if he wakes up and I'm gone."
"How are things with him?" Dad asked, and there was something careful in his voice, like he was testing waters that might be deeper than they appeared.
"Complicated." The understatement of the century, but true enough. "He wants to protect me from everything, including myself. I want to fight alongside him. We're still figuring out how to make those things compatible."
"Love usually is complicated," Dad said with the wisdom of someone who'd spent decades learning to navigate another person's heart. "The trick is deciding whether it's worth the work."
"Is it?"
"Only you can answer that. But Nate?" Dad's hand found my shoulder, grip firm enough to ground me. "Don't let grief make your decisions for you. Don't throw away something good because you're afraid of losing it too."
The words hit closer to home than I was comfortable admitting. Because that was exactly what I'd been doing, wasn't it? Pushing Evan away with reckless behavior and stubborn independence because loving him fully meant accepting that I could lose him the same way I'd lost Mom.
"I'll think about it," I said.
"That's all I ask."