Chapter 10 #2
I dug in my pocket, dropped in the coins, and waited till the line clicked back to Shawn.
“Thanks for not letting it bother you,” Shawn said.
“What?”
“That I’m gay.”
“Oh.” I realized we’d never had any coming-out discussion. Shawn must’ve thought he was alone, growing up. What if I’d told him sooner? Would he have been more careful if he’d known he could talk to me about being a gay wolf? Could I have helped him figure out how to explore safely?
I forced myself to let those regrets go.
Shawn was alive, and happy, and despite the pain of his last hours with the pack, the end result was him and Zay together.
Maybe I’d have made things worse. Still, I’d fix my cowardice now.
“There’s nothing to bother me. I’m, um…” I fumbled for the right term, and finally said, “bisexual.”
“You?” Silence fell at the other end of the line. I strained to hear Shawn’s breathing. After almost a minute, he asked, “How long?”
“Well, all my life, I guess. Except I tried to fight it. I like girls, women, you know.”
“Oh.”
“Made hiding easier.” I decided to share another truth. “Except from Dustin. He said, those two women who took you in? He’d searched them out first because he thought he might need a place to stash me.”
“Wow.” Shawn blew out a long breath. “Rearranging a few thoughts here. So, are you and Dustin, like, together? Because Zay thought you were, and I said that was ridiculous. Dustin told me he was gay back after he almost killed me, when I was feeling like shit. But I thought you…”
I realized part of why I’d called was to talk to someone who had his gay relationship together, beyond anything I’d ever managed.
Asking Shawn for advice felt alien. I’d always been the big brother, the expert, the explainer.
This seemed to be my week for learning new things.
I started a bit obliquely. “How did you decide Zay was the one? Someone you’d trust with, well, everything? ”
“Right from the first, we clicked. We liked a lot of the same things, laughed at the same jokes. He must’ve been desperately curious but he never asked me to explain why I’d been naked in the middle of a snowstorm.
He waited patiently till I was ready to talk.
” Shawn hesitated. “And, I don’t know. He made me want to be better.
Like, he had to have surgery after the storm.
They amputated two toes. Even then, he was sad, and angry at his parents, but he wasn’t bitter.
He didn’t let their rejection poison his joy in life.
I’d spent three years stewing in bitterness and fury at the, uh, cult and cult laws and hating everyone who didn’t stand up for me.
For Zay, I was able to let my hatred go. He made me a bigger person.”
I remembered thinking how Dustin had cracked my world open. Is that how it feels? Something else caught my attention. “Hating everyone. Even me?”
Shawn said slowly, “Sometimes, even you. I used to imagine an alternate reality where you saved me and came with me. Not stood back and let them almost kill me.”
My throat tightened, my breath coming short. “I didn’t stand back. They locked me up.” I’d destroyed my fingers on the door, beaten my hands bloody on the walls of my prison, and screamed myself hoarse, throughout the worst hours of my life.
“Yeah, I know, Dustin told me. In my head, I understood. In my gut, it took a few years to get to where I purely missed you. Where all the anger was gone. Zay helped with that.”
“I guess I owe Zay a lot.”
“He’s pretty awesome.” A teasing note entered Shawn’s voice. “Dustin seems like he could be awesome, too.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
The operator broke in with, “Deposit two dollars for another minute.”
I fumbled out my quarters and dropped them one by one.
Shawn said, “Don’t go broke on this call.”
“Nah. It’s worth it.”
“You’ll have to come back sometime when things settle down for you. Bring Dustin along. We can have time to really get to know each other again.”
“I’d like that.”
“You can taste test my new cider ideas. Apple-ginger. Apple-lemon. Apple-black-licorice”
“You picked that flavor?”
“Nah. Just pulling your leg.” Shawn laughed. “I’ve got to go help Zay with the damned sprayer. Keep in touch. Tell Dustin I said hi. Tell him I said to treat you right or I’ll Challenge him.”
“He’d wipe the floor with your scrawny ass.”
“Okay. Maybe don’t tell him that.”
I didn’t want to hang up. “You’re really happy, right? Life is good?”
Shawn’s tone softened. “Really. I’m great. Money’s tight, but we’re making it work, and if Zay was a girl, I’d be asking him to marry me. You can stop fretting about me. Go get your own man.”
I didn’t have a good answer so I just held the receiver to my ear until Shawn said, “Bye, big brother,” and the line went dead.
I left the booth and headed back to the apartment.
I should’ve hustled. I had lots of carving to do, replenishing the pendants, which were small and fiddly work.
I needed to ask Mr. Owens what projects he had on his list that I could take off his hands…
Instead, I walked, enjoying the sun and the fresh— well city version of fresh— air.
The buildings and businesses and small parks were familiar from five years of running these streets.
This was my territory, my familiar space, and with Shawn doing well, my last regrets faded.
I had a life, one I liked even if it wasn’t what most wolves would choose.
And maybe I’d found someone to share that life with.
Dustin didn’t call till late evening. I answered before the first ring died away. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me. How was your day?”
“Fine. The next city meeting is Friday.”
“Mina came through for us again, huh?”
“Yeah. What about you? How’s life in the big city?” Chicago was only an hour away, but it felt like another world, one Dustin had lived in for years, so near and yet so far. Did you miss me today? That was the stupidest question ever, after sixteen hours apart, so I managed not to ask.
“Fine,” he said, hopefully oblivious to my clinginess. “I’ve been digging into the terrible twosome. Quentin is a tough nut— comes from money, good security on his properties, lots of legitimate businesses, wife, three kids. Rosswurn, though. He might be the weak link.”
“How?”
“He scraped his way up, married rich, went into real estate dealing on his wife’s money. He’s not diversified, doesn’t have funds other than the little woman’s millions to fall back on, and there are rumors about other women. I plan to put in some surveillance time, see what I can find there.”
“Why would it matter if he’s cheating, though?”
“Leverage. If he’s cheating, I bet he doesn’t want his wife to find out.”
“Sure.” Stalking Rosswurn to find a mistress didn’t feel quite honest, but neither was what the developers were doing. “Anything that helps, right?”
“Right.” Then Dustin said, “I missed you today.”
“You did? I mean, yeah, my apartment seems kinda empty without your hulking presence in it.”
“I’ll have you know I don’t hulk. Hey, did you ever wonder if the creator of the Incredible Hulk saw a wolf shifting, and some Fixer got him high on acid to blur the memory, and things evolved from there?”
“Um. When was LSD invented?”
“About the same time as the Hulk?” Dustin laughed. “Just a random thought. Sometimes as a Fixer, you wonder what chain of events you set off in the process of protecting the packs.”
“In a bad way?”
“Well, if one of us inspired the Hulk, then I guess not always. Tell me about your day. What did you do? Walk any old ladies across the street? Devour graffiti vandals?”
“I fixed Mrs. French’s sticky window. Carved some sale pieces. Talked to Shawn.”
“From a—”
“Yes, from a payphone.” I was peeved he didn’t think I’d listened.
“Sorry. How are things with the boys?”
“Zay would probably take your head off for calling him a boy. But they sounded good, busy, happy.”
Dustin sighed. “You have no idea what it means to me to know you and Shawn are back in touch. I’ve broken a lot of things in my time, but the one thing I never wanted to break was you.”
Neither of us spoke for a moment. His words sank deep inside me. For so long, I had been broken, and I’d blamed Dustin, had cursed him, hated him. Now I fully believed he’d done his best for Shawn and me, and that belief was a gift, healing old wounds.
“I’m sorry,” he offered as the silence stretched out.
“Nah.” I hurried to reassure him, “Water under the bridge. I’m good.
Shawn and I had a long-overdue chat, and I know where to find him now.
” The comfort of that sank right to my bones.
My wolf stirred restlessly, though, and I knew what he was thinking.
Pack. Dustin. “Which is more than I can say about you. Are you staying in Chicago?”
“When I get off this phone, I have sleeping quarters on the second floor.”
“You never told me where that is.”
“I didn’t? Here, write this down.” He rattled off an address and phone number while I scrambled for a pencil. “Maybe you’ll come see my place sometime.”
“I’d like that.” Dustin had spent some time in my world, but I knew nothing about his. I added, “Hey, by the way, Mrs. French guessed we’re, you know, gay for each other.”
“Hate to break it to you, but I’m gay all the time.” Before I could worry about the correction, he added, “However right now, only for you. So the old lady figured it out? I’m surprised.”
“Apparently, she had a gay brother. I wouldn’t have betrayed you, but she caught me so much by surprise I lost the chance to say no way and be believable.”
“If you trust her, I do too. She’s like your Second in your human pack.”
I didn’t hate that idea, even though my wolf grumbled a bit about Dustin.
Mate. Second. My wolf was delusional. No way was Dustin Second to me, it’d be the other way around.
“If Mrs. French could shift, she’d be a robin or something.
You ever wonder if there are other shifters out there, other animals than wolves? ”
Dustin chuckled. “I think if there were, we wolves would’ve found out over the centuries. Seen them, heard them, smelled them.”
I stretched the phone cord to the limit, sat on the couch, and launched into an argument in favor of bird shifters, just to hear Dustin laugh at me, and keep him on the line a little longer.