Chapter 25 #2
“I didn’t know you were that unhappy in Elk Ridge,” Dave said. He sounded guilty.
Christian sighed. He moved off Dave, being careful not to jolt his leg, and sat beside him, their shoulders pressed together as they looked out into the darkness.
“It’s all changed,” he said at last. “It was ours. And now there’s going to be strangers there, poking about, asking questions, changing everything.”
“For a while,” Dave agreed. “But once the whole thing about Jesse has blown over, it’ll go back to how it was.”
“It won’t,” he said roughly.
“Why not?” Dave asked.
After the silence had stretched so long Christian didn’t know how to break it, Dave leaned further in, his shoulder pressing steady and warm against Christian’s.
“Talk to me,” he said.
Christian bit back his automatic response that he wasn’t some crystal-wearing hippie who believed trees had feelings, because this was what Dave wanted from him.
He might have to unlearn every single lesson of his life about keeping himself guarded, but if it put the look on Dave’s face that he’d seen earlier, he’d try to do it.
But not this. He didn’t—he couldn’t—not this.
Dave’s silence, patient and steady, pressed closer than any question ever could, until the words tore out of him, his voice rough. “Tristan’s fucking mate. I can’t be around him. I can’t, Dave.”
Dave was very still beside him. “Why?” he asked at last, the way Christian had known he would but prayed he wouldn’t. “Colby’s trying, you know that.”
There was no reason to say it. It wouldn’t help. It wasn’t even about Colby, not really. Except that it was, and it came out without his permission.
“But he’s still enemy pack. He’s still one of them.”
“He saved Tristan,” Dave said.
“Why? He never saved himself, but he saved Tristan when he didn’t even know him.”
Those fucking floodgates—he had to find a way to close them again or there’d be nothing left of him. Hurt and pain were pouring out in hot, angry, furious words, and he couldn’t shut the fuck up.
“Why? What is it Tristan’s got that I—” His voice cracked. He bit the words off, swallowed the rest.
He didn’t mean to move, but he was on his feet, pacing away from Dave, his heart crashing against his ribs like it was trying to break free. He needed air, distance, something to punch.
“I don’t know why I said that,” he muttered. “Forget it.”
He stopped with his back to Dave. Far off in the distance he could see the lights of the town. Beyond that, there were other clusters of lights and the occasional sweep of a car’s headlamps far, far away. But up here it was cold and dark, and he couldn’t stop shivering.
“Christian?” Dave’s voice was low and compelling, and Christian knew he’d said too much already. Shown too much. He shook his head, then turned around to face Dave.
“She never did that for me,” he said, anger making his voice thick and wet. “All those times, she never even tried to stop him. She never got us out of there. She just let him.”
He broke off, teeth grinding together as if he could hold the words back, but they were going to come out, whether he liked it or not. “She lied to the pack, to child services. She lied to protect him, not me.”
The words hit the rock around them like they belonged to someone else, his own voice unfamiliar. He stood in front of Dave, no pride left. Nothing left. Like the kid he’d been, with everything taken away from him.
“How did he do it for Tristan when she didn’t do it for me?” His arms wrapped around his chest, holding himself together. Or trying to. “She was my mom. She was supposed to save me.”
He turned on his heel to stare into the darkness shrouding the land, because he sounded like that kid he used to be, before he knew better.
“I don’t know.” Dave’s voice was low but carried clearly in the night air.
“I don’t know why, if your mom was too beaten down or what it was, Christian, but one thing I do know—you didn’t deserve what happened.
You were—you are—just as worthy of being saved as Tristan.
You’ve got a whole pack now who’d die rather than see you hurt. ”
The shivers racking Christian’s body were getting worse and he didn’t know how to stop them.
“And you’ve got me,” Dave said.
The certainty in his voice was strong and true, and Christian stumbled over to him, desperate for shelter from the storm that was breaking inside him.
He’d done this to himself. He’d opened himself up to Dave earlier, and it had allowed this, this thing that was hollowing him out, opening him up so wide and deep that he was bleeding out and he couldn’t stop it.
He couldn’t see how to survive this. He’d denied them so long, the pain and hurt, the hate and fear, and now they’d broken free they were going to tear him apart. But Dave’s arms were strong, and he held him through the maelstrom.
Afterward, when he could breathe again, when he wasn’t burying into Dave’s hold like a terrified pup into its dam, he couldn’t bring himself to raise his head. Even in the darkness, he couldn’t look at Dave because he was too open, too raw.
He stayed pressed to Dave’s neck, breathing in warmth and the smell of home.