Chapter Seventeen
DAVE
Dave snapped the phone off and slid it into his pocket to buy himself time as he tried to figure out how much to say.
“Like I said, we’re from a pack in Colorado. We know something bad happened to the pack that used to live out on the cliffs. We’re trying to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
Justin’s tongue flicked over pale lips. His whole body was rigid.
“You need to sit down?” Dave asked.
Justin took two steps to the nearest tree and sank down like his legs had given out. He couldn’t stop staring at Dave. “What do you know about that pack?” he asked, voice raw.
Dave took a chance. “A friend of ours used to be a member. He escaped when—when things went wrong.”
“Oh God.” It was muffled because Justin’s head was buried in his knees.
Completely confused, Dave crouched beside him. “Justin?”
It was a long time before Justin looked up. He seemed lost.
“I don’t know if it makes it better or worse that one of them lived,” he said wretchedly.
Anger rushed through Dave until he was almost shaking with it. How could that even be a question? He pushed it down, hard, and concentrated on what he needed Justin to tell him.
“You evidently know what happened,” he said carefully.
Justin’s hands clenched around his knees, drawing himself in. “It’s my fault,” he said at last, staring out over the empty pool. “It’s my fault they died.”
Dave couldn’t speak. Jesse’s face flashed into his mind—pale and gaunt, eyes dark with grief and horror, the way he’d been for days when his memories had returned.
Justin glanced at him and curled tighter.
Dave slowly sat beside him on the baked earth at the bottom of the tree.
“How is it your fault?” Despite everything, he kept it gentle because Justin looked like he was about to shatter into pieces, and he couldn’t believe someone who was as good as Justin seemed could have deliberately set out to hurt Jesse’s pack.
Justin swallowed several times before he managed to get any words out.
“I told him”—he nodded toward Dave’s phone—“where they were. And the next thing I knew, he didn’t turn up for our date, and when I—I went to see, they were…” He trailed off, throat working.
Remembering the sights he’d seen at Cale’s compound, Dave wasn’t surprised he couldn’t find the words to describe the horror of it.
“You want to start from the beginning?” he asked.
Justin looked at him, pale and wretched. “No,” he said bluntly. “I’ve tried—God, all these years I’ve tried to forget, but I…”
Dave’s heart twisted at just how desperately miserable Justin looked. Forcing him to relive what had happened was cruel and went against every compassionate instinct Dave possessed. But he couldn’t come so close and not find out. Jesse needed to know.
“Maybe it’ll help you live with it if you tell someone,” he said.
Justin barked a harsh laugh.
“The more you can tell me, the more likely we’ll be able to stop them doing it to anyone else,” Dave said firmly.
Justin flinched away from him. He’d expected more kindness from Dave, it seemed, but however miserable Justin was, he wasn’t Dave’s first concern.
“Jess—my friend deserves to know.”
Justin nodded, his eyes screwed closed and his fingers plucking at his jeans.
“Please,” Dave said, reaching out and touching Justin’s arm. Justin huddled even further into himself, so Dave drew his hand back.
“I was fifteen,” Justin said at last in a low voice.
“I knew—I mean, we all knew there was a pack up there on the cliffs, but there was some sort of agreement that kept our pack and them apart. Being young and brainless, Kyle and I snuck up there, just to say we’d done it.
Kyle wanted to impress this girl, and I just—well, Kyle and I did everything together, so I just… ” He sighed heavily.
Dave nodded encouragingly, though really, he wanted to shake Justin to get him to hurry up and reach the important bit.
“We ran into a sentry before we got to the pack itself. What was weird was, they were in human form. He saw us and we ran, then spent the next week terrified someone would find out.”
He gave a ghost of a laugh. “But no one did. Maybe they had, if we’d been punished for it, I wouldn’t have told Duane.”
“The man in the photo?”
Justin nodded, and the words tumbled out.
“He came into town from nowhere, and I thought—well, hell, when you’re that age and you get hard at a passing breeze and this hot stranger turns up, what else are you gonna do?
I made a pass at him and instead of laughing at me, he seemed interested.
He wanted to know about me, and so I told him all about our pack, and I don’t know how it happened, Dave, I swear, but I told him about the night me and Kyle had snuck up there to spy on that pack.
I guess I wanted to impress him, you know? ”
He broke off, his throat working before continuing, the words wet and choked.
“And then the next night, he was supposed to meet me, and he didn’t show. I never saw him again. So when Kyle wanted to sneak up there again, I went with him. I wanted to do something, to forget about the whole date that wasn’t.”
He took a harsh, painful breath. “But I can never forget what we found.”
His eyes were wet as he looked out over the abandoned pool and the rusty iron fence that surrounded it.
“They were dead. All of them, just left there.”
Dave reached out a careful hand to Justin’s shoulder, not sure if he was welcome but wanting to offer comfort.
“The first time we went up there,” Justin said, “I saw a ghost in the trees. A wolf’s ghost, shining under the moon. And now I know why.”
He was shaking. “I killed them, Dave. I told myself it wasn’t Duane, that it was a coincidence. But it wasn’t. They’re dead because of me.”
Dave’s hand closed around Justin’s shoulder and he hauled him close, feeling the shudders that ripped through him.
“Hey,” he said, but he couldn’t say anything more. Couldn’t say it was okay, because it wasn’t. If Justin had just kept his big mouth shut… Except, even through his helpless, sick anger, Dave could see it wasn’t that simple.
“You were a kid who made a mistake, like we all do, but this one…” Dave shook his head, torn between anger at Justin for what he’d done, and pity for the wolves that had been killed and the weight Justin had been carrying that he didn’t deserve.
“The consequences of this one suck. But you can start putting it right now.”
Justin drew back and eyed him cautiously.
“Would you swear before a court—shifter or federal—to what you just told me?”
Dave could see Justin’s hesitation at the thought of having to confess to everyone his guilt and his shame, but then his spine stiffened and he drew himself up. “I would,” he said. “I will, if that’s what’s needed.”
Dave nodded, fierce exultation running through him. Because they’d found out who was responsible—Matt evidently knew who Duane was—and could bring it to court.
Justin’s eyes were fixed on Dave’s, painful and begging. “Your friend,” he said. “Will you tell him—I didn’t know. If there was anything I could do to make up for it, anything at all, I would.”
Dave nodded, though he could never tell Jesse that a teenager’s crush had been responsible for the slaughter of his pack. And then he winced, because that wasn’t fair—the only one responsible was the one who’d done it.
“You ever thought about moving away from here?” he asked. Being here must be a constant reminder of what had happened. “Somewhere by the ocean, perhaps?”
“I should’ve left years ago. Half the pack did, after Barton took over. I don’t know why I stayed. Habit, I guess. Or maybe I thought I didn’t deserve to leave.”
Made sense, but so did staying from habit. Dave knew all too well that sometimes it felt safer not to choose, even though that itself was a choice.
Justin shrugged. “Kyle and Meg are living out near Portland,” he said, his voice husky. “Maybe I could go visit them, see how it suits. They’ve got three little kids I’ve never met, even though he named the youngest after me.”
“Well, there you go,” Dave said.
He rose to his feet. Justin needed to find a way forward, but Dave couldn’t spend any more time on him—he had to let Matt know what he’d found out.
“Do you ever think about going back to the coast?” Justin asked hesitantly as he stood up.
Dave shook his head briefly, giving a quick smile to try and soften it.
“We wouldn’t want to leave our pack,” he said, before his stomach lurched as he remembered Christian’s words from the night before.
“We?”
“We’re mates, me and Christian.”
He pretended not to see the crestfallen look on Justin’s face.
“I didn’t realize,” Justin said. “I got the impression—you seemed kind of casual. Like fuck buddies.”
He turned away and headed for the gate.
Guilt gnawed at Dave as he followed, because if he’d just been paying more attention, there’d have been no misunderstandings, no chances for Justin to get his hopes up.
He walked with Justin across the parking lot to a newly washed pickup and hoped he hadn’t cleaned it up just for today. Justin’s head was bowed as he fumbled in his pocket for his keys. He looked utterly defeated.
Dave wasn’t sure how much of what he was feeling was guilt and how much was compassion, but he didn’t want Justin to leave like this.
“Listen,” he said. “That guy knew they were around here somewhere, and he’d have found them one way or another. He used you, Justin, and that’s not on you. It’s all on him. You weren’t much more than a kid and he fucking used you, you hear me? It’s not your fault.”
Justin’s eyes fixed on him then, and there was something in them—maybe it was hope, maybe it wasn’t, but he was holding Dave’s gaze, which was an improvement.
“That was just one thing you did. It’s no more or less important than everything else you’ve done in your life, all the good things, all the right decisions. Don’t let it define you.”
He could see the way Justin processed his words, before his shoulders went back and he stood a little taller. Justin didn’t believe it, not yet, but maybe he would one day if he worked at it hard enough.
Dave hoped so. He wondered, briefly, whether he’d believe it himself if someone said it to him. Because the thing was, he didn’t think anything was unforgivable. Not really. But he still didn’t know if he could forgive her.
He’d told himself for years that what his mom did, walking away and leaving him, was about her, not him. But the ache in his heart had never fully faded, along with the fear—no, the knowledge—that he’d been too much. She’d given up on him because he’d been too demanding, wanted too much from her.
He drew Justin into a hug, suddenly needing the contact just as much as Justin did. Needing, maybe, to believe in what he’d just said out loud.
When they finally parted, Justin looked a little lost. And then he busied himself digging in his pocket for his cell. “I’ll give you my number in case you need me to testify.”
After they’d swapped numbers, he opened the truck door, and stood there, looking uncertainly at Dave.
“Take care,” Dave said, and he meant it.
“You too,” Justin said.
Dave nodded. He was glad he didn’t say more.