Chapter 2 #3
“Fuck you!” I lunged, swinging clenched fists wildly as he ducked, all he’d taught me himself about fighting condensed into my fury. “Damn you! How dare you pretend! He’s dead. He’s dead!”
Kill him! Beat him! I threw myself at Dustin.
The photos scattered across the ground as my attack bowled him over. I got in punches to his nose, to his eye, the impacts jarring my arms, before he rolled us and pinned me in the dirt with his weight and skill, my hands clamped above my head.
“Calm down!”
“Fuck you! Fuck you!” I fought, panting, flinging my weight about, trying to head-butt or get a knee up. His grip dug bruises in my wrists. I kicked and connected with his leg but he just grunted.
“Sniff my damned pocket.” Dustin shoved me down harder into the dirt.
The odd request made me blink and weakened my next kick. “What?”
“I have one of Shawn’s washcloths in my pocket.”
I froze. “You what?”
Dustin let go and jumped back, leaving me lying sprawled on my back. He dug in his pants pocket and tossed a scrap of terrycloth onto my face.
The scent hit me like a brick. Shawn. My brother’s live body.
No doubts, no denials. Faint but unmistakable.
I tried to hang on to my anger and pretend the traces could be lingering from seven years back, but why would Dustin be carrying an old washcloth around all this time just to mess with me?
And I knew an old scent from a fresher one.
Shawn’s alive. Oh my God! My chest heaved painfully and I gritted my teeth to hold back a sob, raising a hand to touch that scrap of fabric, the roughness of terrycloth real under my fingertips.
Dustin backed up another step and folded his beefy arms across his chest. “I figured you might need convincing.”
I pressed the cloth to my face, covering my nose and burning eyes, and breathed as my whole past rearranged itself. Everything I’d thought was real spun away in the darkness, replaced by a jumble of wild hope. “Where is he? How? Is he okay? Where is he?”
“Can we go somewhere more private now without you attacking me?” Dustin asked. “He’s fine.”
“I need to know—”
A little kid’s voice interrupted me. “Are you all right, Mister?”
I yanked the cloth off my face, keeping my fist tight around it, and peered up at a boy of perhaps eight.
“Yeah. I’m good. We were play-fighting, and I fell over.
” Dustin held down his hand and I took it, letting him haul me to my feet.
He let go immediately, which I appreciated, because his touch sent shudders through me.
I was still furious, and… I wiped my hand on my sweatpants before patting some of the dust off myself and forcing a smile for the kid.
“Okay.” The boy ran back to the climbing structure.
Dustin said, “I parked my car a couple of blocks away. Or we could go back to your place.”
“Your car.” I didn’t want Dustin in my space— not his presence, not his scent, where I’d dreamed so often of spilling his blood.
I bent and picked up the snapshots, half-a-dozen of them, blew off the dirt, and focused on each one in turn.
There was Shawn, smiling, walking, pulling down a flowering branch to smell the blossoms, looking at the camera with pale blue eyes so like our mother’s, and like mine.
His blond hair, more kinked than my dark curls and longer than I’d ever seen it, caught the sun.
He appeared confident, at ease. Real. “He’s alive? ”
I hadn’t realized I’d said that aloud until Dustin replied, “Yes. Come on.”
My stupid sweatpants didn’t have pockets, so I wrapped the photos in the washcloth and clutched them safely in my hand.
Dustin and I crossed the ball field side by side and headed out of the park.
After a hundred feet of trudging silently shoulder to shoulder as shock and joy and hate and regret boiled inside me, I had to ask, “You swear? It’s true?
” The instant the words came out, I realized how stupid asking for reassurance was.
Dustin was a pack Fixer which meant he lied and twisted people and facts into pretzels to keep the pack safe as his job.
Dustin promising should mean nothing at all.
Yet, when he said, “On my mother’s grave,” I believed him.
We’d both lost our mothers young. When my mom died, Dustin was one of the people who’d been there for me, day after day, silent when I wanted silent, listening when I needed to talk, sharing fragments of his past with me.
That was probably when my crush on him started, at eighteen.
I’d despised my own foolishness, since if anyone found out I was attracted to a man, the wolf I was crushing on would be the one to arrange my death, but I’d been helpless against Dustin’s perfection.
Sometimes I’d imagined he might save me, if that moment came.
Until he destroyed my younger brother.
Only apparently not.
I tripped over a crack in the sidewalk, still unsteady at the idea that Shawn was out there in the world. Seven years. We’d been close despite our age gap, bonded by all the changes and losses in our lives. Now I’d missed such a long and vital part of his.
Questions piled up behind my clenched teeth but Dustin was right.
We needed privacy for this conversation, and once we left the park, there were still folks walking home or out on their stoops, having a smoke or a chat as evening came on.
The scent of cigarettes and weed came to my nose as we passed the squat brick buildings.
Dustin paused at a rust-pocked old Chevy parked in a tight space along the curb and bent to unlock the passenger side. “Get in.”
He jogged around and swung into his seat.
I hesitated, my brain still thinking Dustin and trap, but I needed to know.
I forced myself to slide into the seat, pull the door shut.
The thunk of our doors locked me into this small space, way too heavily scented of Dustin and wolfdom.
I held the scrap of washcloth to my nose and ground out “Talk. Now!”