7. Theo
Theo
“ M om?”
She doesn’t respond to me as I ease my way into my parent’s master bedroom. The curtains are closed today, which is never a good sign. “Did you have a good time with Elsie?”
She stirs in the bed as I open up the curtains closest to the door to let in some light, her voice hoarse. “Close those.”
I don’t. Instead, I sit on the side of the bed. “Did something happen? Nia said you came home upset.”
She’s normally brighter if she gets out of the house, but there’s a heaviness in the air that tells me today is not one of the few good days she gets.
She doesn’t look at me, but that’s nothing new. She hasn’t looked at me in six months. “I’m tired, Theo.”
“I know.” I keep my voice gentle. Low. “I just wanted to check in. Can I get you anything?”
She only burrows down into the covers, ignoring me. Sighing, I tug them up and smooth them over her. “I’ll bring you up some lunch.”
I’m almost to the door when she speaks. “I saw that girl today.”
My hand clenches on the door handle. “What girl?”
“He was so handsome,” my mother whispers, so quietly that I have to strain to hear her. “My sweet boy. She ruined him, you know.”
“Who did you see, mom?”
She keeps mumbling. “I see him, too. I see him everywhere.”
I feel my mother’s eyes skate across my face before they skitter away. “You’re not like him.”
My gut churns. “I know.”
Parents aren’t supposed to have a favorite child. If they ever do, it’s something unspoken. Something almost taboo. “Get some rest.”
That's all she does, now. Rest, and cry, and scream, and talk about the shadows on the walls as if they’re real.
I don’t know which is worse.
As I pull the door shut behind me, my eyes catch on the bedroom door opposite. It’s closed, as it has been for six months.
But it looks the same. Nothing has moved since the last day he was here. I step inside with a guilty glance over my shoulder, carefully pushing the door closed before moving further in. The bed is still messy, haphazardly arranged covers tossed in a careless attempt at making it up. Brett’s washing is still sitting in the basket in the corner. His wardrobe door is ajar, the desk immaculate as always. And the suitcases still sit at the end of the bed, waiting for an owner that will never arrive.
Even his scent is still here, layers of familiarity. It’s one that I could find in any room, pick from a thousand options. Mango and mint, fresh and clean in comparison to my own musky scent.
The bed squeaks as I sit on the end, bracing my elbows on my knees. Across from me, pictures line the walls, some stuck to battered posters of bands we used to follow. Familiar faces, each and every one. Family photos of holidays, our faces squished together with a smaller grinning Nia pinned in between us. Jake, Max and Oscar, all of us from gap-toothed kids to gangly preteens, all the way through to the end of last year.
It’s a timeline of Brett’s life. But the only photos from last year are ones of an omega with deep red hair.
Standing, I cross and tug one off the wall. Kennedy perches on Brett’s lap, her hand buried in his hair and a smile on her lips as he holds the phone to snap the picture.
Another, the two of them at our high school graduation ball. We teamed up with three other schools in neighboring towns so we’d have enough people to make up the numbers. She’s wearing white carnations on her wrist and a brittle smile that reminds me of the hissed whispers in the limo we all shared. Brett’s arm is tight around her waist, his grin wide.
In every single one, my twin is angled around her .
Brett thought Kennedy Traylor was the sun, the moon and the fucking stars. And she destroyed him for it.
My lips press together, and I glance down at the tearing sound. The photo splits into two between my fingers, and I open them up, letting the pieces fall to the floor.
My wrist buzzes with an incoming message, and I glance down.
I have to read it several times before it sinks in.
I found her.
It takes seconds for the call to connect. Oscar doesn’t waste time. “Come to the house. We need to talk.”
“Where?” I’m already leaving, pulling the door closed behind me and jogging down the stairs. My words are short. “Where is she?”
He pauses. “I saw her in town. She never left.”
She’s been here the whole fucking time. “But… we went to the trailer. More than once. Rick told us she’d gone.”
Didn’t he? I try to remember through the haze. But then again, I should have known better than to take anything that asshole said for truth. He’s never done anything worth a damn in his life.
Oscar is still talking, and I focus. “— we need to work out a plan. Don’t go up there.”
I stop in front of my truck. I left it here last night, too wound up to drive. “You’re joking.”
“Not without us.” The slam of a door echoes in my ear. “Jake and Max are coming home. This is a pack discussion, Theo. This is a call we make together.”
The tone of his voice has me bristling. “Is that an order ? Because as far as I knew, nothing was settled yet.”
Loaded silence in my ear. And then Oscar sighs. “A request.”
We don’t truly know who has the strongest dominance. Brett would have been the obvious choice for pack leader before everything went to shit. But Oscar and I are neck-and-neck, have been for years, and only time will tell us which one is the strongest.
“We can pick an argument,” he says after a moment. “I’ll fight it out with you, if it makes you feel better. But come home to do it, Theo. Don’t go up there on your own.”
The phone goes dead in my ear, and I swear as I slide into the truck and toss my phone into the passenger seat. “Sanctimonious asshole.”
I don’t mean it. Oscar, Jake, Max, they’re the only ones holding me together at this point. Some days I feel like I’m nothing but a leftover of Brett, the gap my brother left in my parent’s lives one that highlighted my own inadequacies in their eyes all too clearly.
My brother was a better alpha than me in every way that mattered. Physically stronger. More dominant. More focused. More confident.
I never felt lacking in any of those things, until I stood next to him.
I shove my hands into my eyes. “Fucking hell.”
She’s here .
I’ve spent months trying to contact her. But her phone is dead, her emails unanswered. Her social media pages deactivated.
I should have gone to the college to see, but I couldn’t bring myself to make the fucking trip. Not when we should have done it together, all of us.
See? Fucking weak.
The voice in my head sounds suspiciously like my father.
They’re all there when I get back. Max is still wearing his hiking boots, his face grim as he sits at the table. He looks as if he came straight from a trail. Jake leans against the wall, and Oscar kicks out a chair. “Sit down.”
I tense again, and he rolls his eyes. “Just a suggestion.”
“I can’t help my reactions,” I snap. I pull out the chair opposite instead. “You know that.”
“Kind of annoying though.” I turn to glare at Max, and he raises his hands defensively. “Just saying.”
“Easy for us to say,” Jake murmurs. “Our dominance settled already.”
They wear it so easily, both of them. Even Oscar manages the ebb and flow of his without complaint – whereas sometimes I feel as though I’m fighting inside my own body, every moment of every day. And if I’m not fighting myself, I’m fighting everybody else, taking offense over every single interaction like a personal insult.
I fucking hate it. “Let’s move on. Tell us.”
Oscar lays it all out. Jake slides into the seat beside me, a frown on his face. “Her scent… that doesn’t sound right. Maybe she’s sick?”
“Sick in the head,” I mutter.
Oscar grimaces. “She seemed fine. Enough to knee me in the fucking balls and ride off without a care in the world.”
Max snorts. He sounds almost admiring. “Did you expect anything else from Kenny?”
I tense again. “She’s not Kenny anymore. Have you forgotten what she did?”
I pull out my phone again, pressing until her voice spills out. Low, and coaxing, and everything I thought I once wanted.
Except her words are poison. Drip, drip, dripping.
“Only you. I only want you. You and me, Brett. Just like we always planned. Okay? This is the only way we can be together without them interfering. You know I’m right. They don’t want us to be together. They’ll ruin it, like they always have. I don’t want any of them to ruin what we have.”
And my brother, his voice shaking. “Do you mean it?”
“Together.” Crooning, toxic words. Wrapping around my neck and cutting off my air, like they do every time I hear them. “Take my hand, and we’ll jump. Nobody will ever separate us again.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Tell them. So they know.”
A pause. “I don’t want you. Any of you. I only want him, do you understand? Just leave us alone. Don’t come after us. Leave us alone.”
The room is silent when I cut off the voicemail. Only the sound of my breathing registers. “That’s who Kennedy Traylor is. Who she always was. She drove my brother to his fucking death, and the proof is here.”
She pushed my brother to throw himself from that ledge, thinking she was there beside him. But she left him there instead. Left him to die alone, at the bottom of that ravine while she walked away without any damned consequences.
“So what now?” Jake asks roughly. “Where do we go from here?”
I have to know. I have to know what happened. What made her leave him, gasping for breath and broken. What happened in his last moments. “We get answers.”
It’s all I want. And she has the power to give that to me.
I hate that she has that power over me. But I need those answers if I’m ever going to be able to breathe again.
“We’ll go tomorrow,” Oscar says quietly. “If that works for you.”
My head jerks in agreement.
“I didn’t get the groceries.” Oscar runs a hand over his face, beneath his glasses. “Sorry, Max. I’ll go tomorrow.”
“No bother. Diner for dinner, then?” Max straightens. “I could eat a burger. Jake?”
I let their voices fade out, still staring at the phone.
One more day.
I can do one more day.