Chapter 26 Twenty-two
Twenty-two
Taryn
All right. Day fifty-two. Something to write on day fifty-two.
Something I’m feeling or something I like or something I hate.
Thinking. Thinking. Writing. Brea says to just freewrite it.
How many times have I written that exact sentence because it’s the only thing that I can think to write and I have to keep writing because Brea said to keep writing no matter what?
Day fifty-two back home. Gonna try gratitude again today.
Already written that I’m grateful for each of my pack.
Grateful for our home. Grateful everyone could slide right back into our lives from before life became a fucking circus.
Can’t repeat things I’m grateful for. That’s like cheating, and we—
Oh!! I’m grateful for dirty-sounding words that aren’t actually dirty.
Like, sometimes a word will just jump straight into my head and I literally laugh out loud because it’s such a ridiculous word to exist in our everyday vocabulary and for it to not mean something filthy.
Like kumquat. Who looked at that stretched-out orange and decided that a G-rated name for it was kumquat?
Bratwurst. Sluice. Reticulum. Viscous. I guess that’s not so much dirty-sounding as just something to describe substances that are actu—
The bus shifted and my pen dragged a jagged line across the page.
“Son of a kumquat,” I muttered beneath my breath, closing the book in frustration. Whatever. It hadn’t been a particularly revelatory journaling session anyway.
The bus was eight minutes behind, and I had…exactly zero panic texts from Brooks! That was progress. Last week, when the bus was four minutes late, I had not only four increasingly frantic texts from Brooks, but also a voicemail from Caine and a ping from Brea tracking my location.
Since, yes, the moment we’d gotten back to town, she’d bought me a pretty necklace with a dainty sun charm…that was actually a tracking device. And, yes, I wore it every damn day. Totally for their benefit. Theirs alone.
Their hovering made sense. Still annoying as shit, and I’d reamed each and every one of them for it. But I got it.
My taking the bus—alone, with zero pack supervision—was part of our collective self-therapy since returning home at the end of summer. An exercise in venturing outside the comfort zone. Which had shrunk considerably.
For all my insistence that the others not treat me like a baby bird after we left Greysmoke, I’d spent the first month back in Farendale within the walls of the Arceneaux apartment. None of us had wanted to leave, so they’d indulged me.
But, eventually, Lin had to get back to managing his business. Brooks had to return from his hasty leave of absence. Brea had to meet with her advisor about repeating her residency and finishing her degree.
Which left Caine and me. Jennie had filled my position in the weeks I was away, and I hadn’t yet gathered the courage to find a different job.
Bean they were already behind, so what was another minute? “Well, I gotta go.”
Just as she turned to leave, an electric shock tickled through my system, subtle as an ant crawling down my arm. A feeling of connection took my breath away.
Caro was an omega.