Chapter 10
10
Seth Mays
Are you okay?
It’s like 1am and you’re not back, so…
I guess come wake me up if you need something when you do?
Elliot Crane
I’m fine.
But thanks.
I was not convinced he was fine at all, but he came back at some point before I woke up—the messages were timestamped at 2:57 and 3:14. Which meant that he’d added the last part as an afterthought, although I wasn’t sure that I was glad he’d come back to it and added the ‘thanks,’ or whether it was actually more hurtful that he’d realized he was being a little bit of a dick, since that suggested that the dickishness was intentional.
I shook my head and told myself to stop over-thinking it.
I had no idea where he’d been, what he’d been doing, or who he’d been with, if anyone. He’d left a post-it on the counter in the kitchen that I’d found when I got home around dinnertime that said Went out , although his truck had been here, so I didn’t know if he’d called a ride or been picked up by a date or walked or what. I hadn’t heard when he’d come in, so I knew nothing.
Even though I’d agreed to the Rules—One, no kissing; Two, no emotions; and Three, not a relationship—I wondered if that meant that Elliot thought it was okay to sleep with other people while also having sex with me. It wasn’t something we’d talked about, and I stupidly hadn’t asked him if he’d had sex with anyone else between March and now. It had been over four months since he’d left Richmond. Given how quickly we’d fallen into bed together, I couldn’t really expect Elliot to not have slept with anyone else.
And I hated how that felt. A sick, nauseating feeling that rolled in my intestines.
I suppose it told me just how stupid I’d been to come all the way out here on nothing more than vague hope.
At least the job had panned out.
I just didn’t understand what had been going on with Elliot. He’d been awake when I’d left for work—which was unusual, given his night owl tendencies—and had been surly and not talkative. I’d chalked it up to him being tired, but maybe he’d just deliberately been avoiding me. He’d honestly been getting more and more withdrawn all weekend, despite the fact that I thought we’d established a pretty good working rhythm.
This weekend had been finishing up the shower box design—making an entryway with shelves for towels or changes of clothes and adding in wall-mounted shampoo and soap dispensers—and then helping do inventory of hardware and wood so that he would know what to replenish for the paying jobs he would take in.
It wasn’t like we’d had an argument or even a disagreement. But he’d been short with me the whole weekend, despite the fact that I tried to do everything he asked me. And it wasn’t like he yelled at me or even said anything mean or rude. But there was no banter, no sly crooked smiles, no teasing. Just sharp instructions or responses to my questions.
And I had no idea why.
Work had been mostly paperwork, cataloging, and trying to light a fire under the asses of various people at the state lab to finish a couple of comprehensive tox screens—including one on blood we’d sent over from the shifter kidnapping. Smith had been on our asses about it, so we passed that on. Not that it did anything.
But because there wasn’t much for me to concentrate on work-wise, I’d spent most of the day worrying about what was—and wasn’t—going on between me and Elliot. About whatever I’d done to make him angry or upset. About the fact that it bothered me a lot more than it should have—because I’d completely obliterated Rule Two. About the undeniable feelings I had for him.
About the conversation I’d had with Hart. The one where he’d told me that Elliot had feelings for me, too. And the one in which he’d told me that Elliot probably wasn’t going to take it well if I tried to talk to him about it.
Hart had known Elliot pretty much all their lives. Since they were at least in kindergarten or something. He knew Elliot far better than I did. Knew his moods, good and bad. Knew how he thought. Which meant that Hart was almost certainly right—but I couldn’t help but fantasize, on my drive back to the house, about Elliot confessing his own feelings back, about what it would be like to kiss him—Rule One be damned—and what it would be like to sleep not just with him, but beside him. In his arms.
I knew that probably wasn’t going to be the outcome if I confessed my feelings. Especially not with the mood he’d been in recently.
But I also didn’t know how much more of this I could take.
I set down my fork, too nervous to eat as much as I probably should have. I half-expected Elliot to say something—before this weekend, he would have. But whatever I’d done wrong, or whatever had happened, made him keep his comments to himself. He also hadn’t eaten much, doing more shoving of his food than putting it in his mouth.
It wasn’t that the meal wasn’t good. It was simple, but good—rice, spiced beans, shredded chicken marinated in a spicy pepper sauce, and cheese for Elliot. But neither one of us had much of an appetite, apparently.
It finally got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Did I do or say something wrong?” I asked him, trying not to sound whiny or let him hear the lump in my throat.
He didn’t look up, but a muscle in his jaw twitched. “No,” he answered shortly.
“Will you tell me what’s wrong?” I tried again.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
So much for me attempting to be supportive. “Okay,” I said softly. I wasn’t really sure what to say after that. But I couldn’t just leave it there. “Is there something I can do?”
“No.”
I shifted in my chair.
Elliot finally looked up, and I didn’t like the twist of his expression. Almost angry. Derisive. Then it smoothed out, but it left me feeling a little shaken. I didn’t want him to think that way about me.
Then he sighed. “It’s just… not a good day,” he said, finally.
“Sorry,” I half-mumbled.
Elliot shoved more rice around on his plate. “Not your fault,” he replied, his tone tight.
After another five or ten minutes of silence broken only by the sound of fork-tines on plates. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I got up, taking my plate with me over to the sink, pushing the food I hadn’t eaten into the garbage disposal. I felt bad about wasting it, but I didn’t have the stomach for it.
I heard Elliot sigh behind me. “I’m just in a foul mood,” he said. It was almost an apology, but it wasn’t, and that left me still feeling unsatisfied and unsettled.
“It’s okay,” I told him, putting my dishes in the dishwasher. That done, I began to get out various containers into which to put the rest of the leftovers—one for rice, one for beans, and one for the chicken. “But I want to help, if I can.”
He got up and rinsed off his own plate, putting it in the dishwasher. “Why?” he asked me, a little belligerent.
I huffed a little. “Because I care about you,” I snapped back—and then realized what I’d just said.
Oh, shit .
Not only had I long since violated Rule Two, but I’d just told him.
I hadn’t meant to. Not even I am stupid enough to think that blurting out my feelings on a day when he was already in a terrible mood, quite possibly because of something else asinine that I’d inadvertently done.
Elliot just stared at me, the expression on his face completely unreadable. Then it flickered through several emotions, none of them at all encouraging or flattering.
And then he walked out of the kitchen without a word.
I stood staring at the gaping patio door, not sure what to do.
Damn Hart. He’d literally told me this would happen, although I felt like he’d maybe understated things a little bit.
The look on Elliot’s face had hit me like a punch to the gut—hot, painful, nauseating. I’d thought for a good minute or so that I might actually throw up. I didn’t, but the back of my throat was still burning from the acid that had burbled up.
Betrayal, rage, disgust. In that order.
I’d broken Rule Two. Taken a goddamn hatchet or mallet or sledgehammer to it, in fact. And doing so had clearly violated the promise I’d made five months ago to keep feelings out of it.
“Elliot, I know we agreed that this was going to be casual, but—I have feelings for you. I know we agreed not to do that, but I can’t help it.” I’d rehearsed it a thousand times in my head, in a thousand ways. None of them sounded any better than that, and I knew it was awkward and uncomfortable. But it was true. And I was tired of pretending it wasn’t.
It hadn’t been even remotely the right time or the right context. I knew that. I’d had no intention of telling him, not then. But it had come out of me anyway.
I hadn’t even said anything like what I’d carefully rehearsed. I’d just blurted out that I cared about him. On a day when he was already short-tempered and in a bad mood.
He’d just stared at me, the twist to his mouth anything but pleasant or mirthful.
It was a knife to the chest. Right under the solar plexus.
I would have felt better about it if he’d said something. Anything. Yelled at me. Told me I was wrong. Thrown me out of the house.
But he’d just given me that look , then walked out of the room, leaving me standing there in the kitchen, staring down at the small pile of takeout brochures sitting on the counter top. I’d walked out to the living room when I heard the sound of the sliding patio door to find a fluffy tail disappearing into the long grass and evening shadows. He’d left the door gaping open, and I numbly crossed to it, pulling it shut, but not locking it. He’d be able to pull it open again with the rope.
I—
I couldn’t be here whenever that happened.
I managed to make it out to my Cruiser before I completely lost it. It somehow felt wrong to let my emotions overwhelm me in a house where I was clearly no longer welcome.
I’d walked into the room where I’d been sleeping, grabbed all my clothes and toiletries and everything else I had moved to Wisconsin and shoved it haphazardly into the bags I’d brought it in, and then carried it out to the Cruiser, throwing it into the back seat, the trunk, the passenger seat without caring about being careful. Except for the aloe plant, because it didn’t deserve to be broken or abused when it hadn’t done anything wrong.
Then I’d sat behind the wheel and put my forehead on my arms and sobbed.
But I had to get myself under control. I had to.
I wiped the tears off my face, then picked up my phone.
I need a parachute , I sent to Hart.
You sure? came back quickly. Can’t talk—sitting in a stupid regional meeting I don’t want or really need to be at, but am required to attend anyway. But I can text Mom.
I thought about it. I might be able to figure out some way to sleep at work, but starting the habit of crashing under tables or on makeshift benches made out of chairs from the break room was not a good way to start impressing your brand new coworkers who already thought you were weird for leaving the big city—not that Richmond was that big—for Shawano ass-end-of-nowhere Wisconsin.
They’d have thought I was weirder if I told them I did it to live with a guy who didn’t want anything resembling a relationship to whom I’d just confessed that I had feelings and who had then literally run out of the house.
In badger form, but still. It wasn’t what I’d wanted.
But Hart’s offer of a place to sleep had come back to me, at least once I’d packed up my stuff and dragged it out to the car and had a good breakdown.
Reacting badly was a pretty accurate summary of what had just happened. Probably on both our parts. Because after Elliot had fled, I’d grabbed all my stuff and threw it in the Cruiser. Because I couldn’t keep staying in Elliot’s house after that. I hadn’t actually thought about the consequences of storming out, but once I’d done it, I couldn’t make myself go back.
Especially not if Elliot had come home.
Yes, I sent back to Hart. I’m sure.
Making this extra awkward was the fact that I wasn’t really sure what to say to or do with Hart’s mother. Or any mother. Mine… well, there’s a reason I don’t talk about her or think about her really ever at all. And never without an unhealthy dose of bitterness.
Noah and I had moved out at fifteen. Noah, because he didn’t have a choice, and me because I loved my brother more than my evangelical parents whose idea of child-rearing involved fire, brimstone, and regular fasts designed to force us to purge ourselves of our bodies’ naturally sinful nature.
Thirteen was how old we were when Noah told them that he was a guy, and they’d told him that God didn’t make mistakes and tried to have him committed. Fortunately, the psychiatrist they took him to wasn’t the kind of psychiatrist who believed in forced conversion therapy.
When they’d asked me if I thought I was a girl, I told them of course not—because I didn’t. I followed it up by saying that I didn’t even like girls because I was angry and stupid.
So Noah and I both were packed off to some Jesus-camp conversion setup in Appalachia. I don’t remember where. I could draw you every single building in that goddamn shit-hole, but I couldn’t tell you if it was in Virginia or West Virginia or Tennessee. It doesn’t matter.
Both my body and soul were bruised by the summer we spent there. Noah’d had it even worse. I was at least tall enough and big enough that they couldn’t really do that much physical damage to me. But Noah…
I’d sneak out of my dorm as often as I could to go find him, to lay under his bed and hold his hand as he sobbed into his pillow. Because they thought that if they showed him what a woman’s duty really was, that it would somehow change his mind about who he was.
It didn’t.
It couldn’t.
What it could do was break people down until they’d say anything, do anything just to make it stop. They’d become so conditioned to give the right answers and mumble the right prayers that they couldn’t help themselves, even if some part of them inside was screaming or crying or catatonic. Or dead.
Some people died inside.
Some people died outside, instead.
Tracy slit her wrists in the dark and nearly bled to death into her mattress in the bed next to Noah’s before someone came to find out why there was so much screaming. The ambulance came and took her away. I don’t know what happened to her after that, and I’m too afraid I know the answer to try to look her up now.
Candice took as many pills as she could get her hands on, although she was still breathing when they drove her away. I hope they had the decency to take her to a hospital somewhere.
Randall—I never knew his last name—hung himself in the showers. His was the first dead body I’d ever seen.
I don’t know what they did with him. Called his parents, I assume.
They called mine when Noah and I tied cinderblocks to our feet and threw ourselves off the dock.
Somebody heard the splash and came running. I suppose at least they had the decency to do that. It took Noah hours to wake up. They gave us blankets, but we were still in our damp clothes when our parents came and got us. I only had one shoe. Noah had neither.
My phone buzzed, jerking me out of the dark and waterlogged past.
It was an address.
I took a deep breath, then clicked on it to open up navigation.
I drove up to a split-level cream-colored house with a wide driveway and a two-car garage. Everybody had a garage in this state. Elliot had said it was because of snow.
I had no idea what Mrs. Hart did or didn’t know about me or about why I needed to sleep on her couch, but it was going to get dark soon, and I had to sleep somewhere.
I grabbed my backpack and duffel out of the Cruiser and began climbing the steps to the front door. The door opened barely seconds after I rang the bell, revealing an extremely short, slightly round woman who looked nothing at all like the tall, leggy elf I knew.
And then I was being hugged by surprisingly strong arms. “You must be Seth.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Come in, sweetie, come in.” She ushered me into the kitchen. “Marsh is off on his annual fishing trip with the guys, so it’s just going to be you and me.” She beamed at me. “Val says you’ll feel more comfortable sleeping on the futon downstairs, but you can sleep in his old room upstairs if you want.”
“The futon is good, thank you, ma’am.” Sleeping in Hart’s old bedroom? Nope. Way too weird. This was already weird.
She patted my arm. “Okay, sweetie. Just down those stairs. There’s a full bath down there, so you don’t even have to come up here to shower in the morning.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“No need to ‘ma’am’ me, sweetie. Judy’ll do just fine.”
I wasn’t sure I could manage that, but she was calling me ‘sweetie,’ so I was going to try to make her happy. Especially because this might be the most mothered I’d ever been in my life, and it had been about a minute and a half. It was going to make me even more emotional than I already was, so I tried not to think too hard about that. “Okay,” I told her, then went down the stairs.
The whole bottom level was one open room, with the exception of a small bathroom near the back. A set of privacy screens—the whitish wood-framed kind you could get at someplace like Target—had been set up around a futon that had already been pulled out and given bedding.
I had to swallow down more tears. I hadn’t gotten all weepy about Elliot putting me up, but Hart’s mom making up a futon for me was apparently hitting me a lot harder than you’d think.
It wasn’t something my mother would have done. I didn’t have friends over as a kid. I didn’t really have friends, period. Noah’d had a couple, but he definitely wasn’t interested in bringing them back to the house, because our father would have seen it as an early inclination toward fornication. That was a phrase that had been used a lot more than once in our household.
It had been fine for me to hang out with guys at school, but not Noah. Even though Noah only wanted to hang out with them, and I—well, I did, too, but as I’d gotten older my definition of ‘hanging out’ had taken a bit more of a PG-13 turn.
When you’re raised by radical evangelicals, you don’t really go farther than PG-13 as a kid because your survival instincts won’t let you.
I let out a deep breath. That was quite enough thinking about my parents for one day. More than enough. I was already in a bad place after my not-really-a-fight-but-kind-of with Elliot.
Needing distraction, I set my stuff beside the futon, then went back upstairs to offer to help her clean up the kitchen or something. She’d clearly been washing up when I’d walked through.
“Hello, sweetie!” She sounded weirdly happy to see me when I came back upstairs. “Did you have something to eat?”
“Oh, I’m fine.” I was hungry and hadn’t had dinner, but I was trying not to be a total leech.
Hart’s mom eyed me. “You look like you aren’t eating enough for that shifter metabolism of yours,” she told me. “Let me fix you a plate.”
I blinked. “Hart told you I’m a shifter?”
“Mmhmm.” She didn’t sound like she cared. Then, again, her son was an elf and both his best friend and fiancé were also shifters, so I guess she’d had plenty of time to get used to being around Nids. “Do you like potatoes?”
“I—Yes.” I gave up and let her pull various containers of leftovers out of the fridge. She looked really happy doing it, so I didn’t want to burst her bubble. And I was hungry.
Except I’d forgotten that I was in the damn dairy state. “Oh. Um. I can’t have dairy,” I mumbled, my neck heating.
“You’re vegan?” she asked, immediately putting several containers back into the fridge.
“No, ma—No. I have alpha-gal. I can’t have anything that came from a mammal.”
She pulled out some roast chicken. “Broccoli slaw? Do you do bacon?”
“No pork or beef,” I answered.
“Bacon bits? That aren’t real bacon?”
“I can do that,” I told her.
A scoop of something that looked safe enough went onto the plate. Then a dinner roll, then a second one. She swapped out those containers for three more. One had a fruit salad. Another some sort of mayonnaise-dressed pasta salad. The third she closed and returned to the fridge before I saw what it was.
“You used to work with Val in Richmond?” she asked, putting the pasta and fruit on my plate.
“Yes, ma—Yes.” I caught myself.
“And he said you came out here for the same reason he went down there?”
“I—uh?—”
She patted me again as she bustled past. “Because where you were working didn’t want you there after you changed?”
“Yes.” I was surprised how much it still stung.
A scoop of peas studded with carrots and pearl onions went on the plate. Then a scoop of what looked like sauerkraut.
I’m not really fussy about what I eat beyond the no-mammal thing. It wasn’t my usual combination of foods, but so far, so good.
“We had a potluck at church yesterday, so I have a little bit of everything,” Judy Hart told me, presumably by way of explaining the mixed grab-bag of foods being put onto my plate.
“Makes sense,” I replied. She scooped out what looked like baked beans, then put the containers back and handed me the plate.
“Sit down and I’ll bring you some silverware. What do you want to drink?”
“Oh, just water’s fine, m—Judy. Thank you.”
Silverware, a flower-pattered cloth napkin, and a glass of ice water appeared. “I haven’t had my dessert yet, but I’ll wait and join you when you’re done with the healthy stuff, if you don’t mind.” She smiled again, the expression brightening her brown eyes.
“Of course.” I didn’t mind. I was actually happy to have the distraction of listening to Judy Hart describe the fishing trip her husband was on, the church social event, even talking about when Hart and Taavi had been here over Christmas.
Well, for about a month and a half trying to solve Elliot’s dad’s murder—which I’d played a very small part in.
“Val said you helped with some evidence collection.”
“Well, I talked Hart and Detective Smith through it,” I replied. “Not that much help.”
“Val said it was very helpful—that was a key piece of DNA evidence.”
I shrugged. “Just doing my job.”
“And now you work for the police here?”
I nodded. “Yes.” Barely. One closed and one ongoing case, and I’d probably half gotten the job because I’d managed not to yarf on the crime scene, which was more than I could say for the rest of the CSI team—which was two other people—and most of the uniforms on site.
“So you work with Detective Smith now?”
“I will if it’s a homicide and not an accident, yes.” The closed case had been a fatal car crash at highway speeds involving alcohol. Consumed by both drivers.
“He volunteers with Marsh sometimes at Habitat,” Judy told me, and then I got a full run-down of all the good work Habitat for Humanity was doing in Shawano and Menominee Counties.
That took us both through dessert—several very large, very gooey cookies that she told me had been made with margarine instead of butter, so they were safe for me to eat.
I was actually full by the time I finished helping Judy dry the dishes. I didn’t usually let myself get really full because I was always trying not to eat too much of other people’s food—but clearly Judy wanted to feed me, and since it was making her happy, I wasn’t going to refuse.
She smiled at me and took the towel from my hands. “You should get yourself some rest before work tomorrow,” she told me. “And I’m up past my early-bird bedtime!” Then she laughed. “Thank you for the company.”
“Thank you for the food,” I told her. “And the conversation.”
She patted my arm again. “You’re sweet. Sleep well.” And then she headed upstairs, and I turned and went back down to my futon.
And proceeded not to sleep much at all.