12
Shawn
Staying away from Elise was proving to be a lot harder than I’d anticipated. I keep having the thought that I could grab some Danishes and bring her one, more to make her laugh than anything else. Then I remember specifically I’m avoiding doing things like that.
It’s just too easy to gravitate towards her.
After the grocery store-run in, I’m starting to feel that nowhere is safe. I’m trying to stay out of the house as much as I can to avoid my family, staying away from the brewery to avoid Elise.
I keep coming back to that conversation in the parking lot of the Market Basket. Why would she ask me if I’ve dated after her? She doesn’t care. Or at least, I thought she didn’t.
But then she used the word “jealous.” She seemed a little flustered, honestly. Maybe that just wasn’t the word she wanted. Maybe she just brought it up at all so she could let me know she’d moved on, dated other men, slept with them. I try not to grit my teeth thinking of it, but my blood heats at the memory of her saying it.
I knew it was wrong to feel jealous and possessive. It wasn’t my place to have that sort of feeling about her. But no matter how many times I’d rationalized over it, it remained. I wanted to pull her into my lap and snap at anyone who looked in her direction.
But I shouldn’t. We’ve outgrown each other, or maybe at least the desperate way we used to need each other.
I’m sitting on the front porch, watching the sun sink lower when I hear raps on the window from inside. I turn around and there’s Aiden, bent over to see under the half-curtain, his face nearly pressed to the pane.
“You wanna go down to the Thirsty Turtle?” he shouts, his breath fogging up the glass.
There’s really only one bar in town. I’ve been there enough to know they have one kind of beer, whatever they get from Aconite Ales, and if they’re feeling fancy, both red and white wine.
I stare at him for a good long moment, wondering why he didn’t just open the window when he starts to repeat himself, louder through the glass.
I wave him off.
“Logan deserves a bachelor party, doesn’t he?” Aiden tries again, and I can see the rigid frame of our middlest brother pacing in the background.
“You’re really going with that?”
“I don’t want a bachelor party,” Logan calls, in case he thinks it looks like this was at all approved by him.
“Come onnnn,” Aiden groans, then squishes his face more against the window. “When’s the last time all of us got any real quality time together?”
He’s got me there. I haven’t been back here in so long, and maybe they’ve visited me separately every now and then, but it’s been years. Even these last couple days I’ve been, more or less, avoiding everyone just to keep from getting in more trouble.
The last time we were all in the same place, we were so much younger.
It aches in my chest how much is gone, the way back home with both of them.
I bend down to the bottom windowpane and breathe on the glass. I swipe a couple letters into the foggy pane before it fades.
“He says it’s on!”
“It’s backward, dumbass,” Logan mutters.
“Yeah, and he’s dyslexic. I’m getting the keys.”
Before I can call off Aiden’s plans, he’s stomping through the house away from me. Logan gives me a shrug and follows after him. Moments later, they both appear, Aiden leading the way.
“Dude, I gave you like ten whole minutes to get ready,” Aiden blatantly lies as he’s climbing into his Jeep. Logan, despite his earlier protests, follows him. Probably knows it’s best to just give in.
I stare at the two of them.
Either stay out of the house as much as I can, possibly meet my mate in town, or stay in the house to avoid figuring out who it is and having to bring her home, and be cooped up with Elise.
I really shouldn’t have come here.
I sigh and after a few moments, hop down from the porch and climb into the Jeep as well. Aiden whoops and revs the engine and takes off with a lurch that sends the St. Christopher’s medal hanging from his rearview mirror swinging.
The one and only local bar is the kind of establishment that has every wall covered in taxidermied hunting trophy birds, and, about four months too early for the season, they all have little, felted Santa hats. It’s macabre and charming, and a million things I forgot how much I missed. I had never really gotten a chance to say goodbye to this town. I take a deep breath, inhaling the musty old scent of the bar, the way it smells like the memory of home.
“Oh, hey, there’s Elise,” Aiden says, snapping my attention to him. My head whips around to where he’s staring, and sure enough, there she is. It’s the back of her head, the messy bun her hair is piled up in, but I’d know the tension in her shoulders anywhere.
“And Laura,” Logan points out and waves to catch her attention.
Shouldn’t have come here either.
Our cousin hears the sound of our voices through the crowd and stiffens from across the room. Unsubtly, she turns around and catches my eye, and waves us over with the fakest cheery expression I’ve ever seen.
When Laura’s eyes flick to Elise across the booth, her expression drops. Clearly, she’s been informed of some part of the recent drama. This whole town is too small lately.
There’s no backing out of this moment though, because Elise turns in her seat to spot us coming through the door. Something shutters in her face as her eyes meet mine.
I wonder briefly, mostly in a morbid worst case scenario way, if my mate might be in this bar. There’s a cacophony of smells in here, all layered and twisting over each other. It can’t be Elise. She is human, and that wouldn’t work.
That wasn’t the way it was supposed to work, anyway.
There weren’t other wolf packs in the area, so who would it even be? I’m pretty sure the only wolves around Mystic Falls are my family. I would have smelled another wolf trying to cut in on our territory. Logan had to go all the way to Boston to find another wolf pack. Boston-adjacent, one of those little towns outside the city that still considered themselves Boston-native, like that wasn’t half of fucking Massachusetts, but it’s like a two- or three-hour drive, depending on traffic.
But Elise’s scent rises above the rest, a part of my every breath. I never got the smell of her out of my sheets, all those years ago. I had to get rid of them.
I try to run through my head who I would have met in town. I didn’t really stop to talk to anyone or go into any of the shops. I went into the diner before home, but there weren’t really a lot of people in there, and I only talked to my cousin.
Maybe meeting face to face is too much to hope for, but having caught her scent without realizing is some special kind of torture. I would just assume some of the guests for Logan’s wedding came early, that it would be other wolves from the other family’s pack, but there’s no way I wouldn’t be able to smell them around.
What a time to have met my mate, when my ex-wife just came back into my life.
It sits uneasily in my stomach, the knowledge. I can’t really tell anyone here because I don’t even know who it is. And I don’t want to have to answer how I know, because I’m not about to bring up the knotting thing.
My dad never really talked to us about that in particular, when he was with us. I’ve mostly heard about how knotting works from my older cousins when they were trying to gross us out with exaggerated stories of how it worked. Not that they were old enough to know either.
I wouldn’t have been ready to meet whoever she is anyway, if it had happened to me before I met Elise. Maybe with another shifter it would have been different, and I wouldn’t have had to hide all the things I did from Elise, but I’d be stupid in all the same ways. Sometimes, all I can do is look back and sigh and cringe at how I handled everything. With a wolf shifter, I’d be able to be my whole self with her. And I was never going to have that with Elise.
Aiden pointedly corrals Logan into the side of the wooden booth that Laura is on. The things were never really meant to sit more than two adults, so Logan’s scrawny ass is in the middle, trying to fold himself smaller, with Laura shoved against the wall. In a way it was the same as when they were all kids, trying to fit more than there were seats for into a row, while I claimed the front seat as the oldest.
I look to the only seat available now, next to my ex-wife. Christ. Now it feels significantly less like the privilege it used to be.
“I’ll go get a chair from the bar . . .” I start to say, but glancing behind me, I see all the chairs in the place are taken.
Elise rolls her eyes and scoots over. My knees knock instantly with Aiden’s sliding in. I sit gingerly next to her, trying to keep at least a couple inches of space between us, but it is tight.
Logan waves three fingers to someone across the bar, Laura nudges him and he changes it to four. It takes only a couple of minutes for a waitress to bring around four beers. I guess Logan at least is a regular.
Aiden is staring at us intently. Barely a moment passes before he asks, “So, uh, where have you two met before?”
“Oh, we’re just directly asking?” Logan scoffs at Aiden before either of us could come up with an answer. “I thought you said we were going to be subtle.”
“I was being sneaky about it until you ruined it, man,” Aiden exclaims, rolling his eyes.
“That was your idea of sneaky,” Laura deadpans. “Was it not obvious to you both that they dated?”
Logan mumbles from his hunched, folded form.
“Yes, which is why I asked where they met,” Aiden sighs. “Clearly, I want all the gory details.”
Elise glances at me, and I can practically read the thoughts crossing her face. She wants out of this situation as much as I do. If we don’t tell them the dates and locations, maybe they won’t have enough to put it together. Maybe it’s ok.
“We uh. Met at a traffic crossing,” she says, glancing at me again. I nod.
“What? That’s boring,” Aiden interrupts.
“She stepped off the curb too early, there was a car, she wasn’t paying attention,” I start to say. It was a perfectly innocent meeting, really.
“He grabbed my arm and pulled me back, and we started talking after that,” she shrugs, saying it like it wasn’t that special. Forgettable, even.
She looks to me, and for a moment, that memory passes between us. I remember every second of it. The way she was utterly windswept by the cold front moving in, and she was wearing some berry lip gloss, the surprise on her face when she’d realized how close she’d been to a much different fate, how fast it all happened, to how that one moment just stopped. I blink and see the new Elise, her hair frizzy and a lot more freckles than she used to have, her expression almost soft.
Laura squints at nothing for a moment. “Wait, you’ve told me this one before.”
“What? No. I wouldn’t have.”
Wouldn’t? Ok, ouch. There’s a heart stopping moment when I realize if Elise has been close with the family, would she have unknowingly told them about me? Do they know she’s divorced?
“Is he same the guy you made out with like right after he saved your life?” Laura starts to ask, and from the intense red filling Elise’s cheeks, she doesn’t even need to confirm it. “Oh my god, I didn’t realize that was also your ex-h—I mean, the same guy. Shawn.”
I try not to glare at Laura at that near-tripped-over syllable. She fucking knows.
“It wasn’t that dramatic,” Elise hisses, but her protest is lost in the table’s reaction.
Aiden slaps the booth in victory, Logan elbows him to keep him quiet as Laura’s eyes widen comically.
I don’t have more than a second to appreciate the way it has apparently been recounted, because I don’t remember it being quite that dire, when Laura locks eyes with me.
“Didn’t you say that guy had a—NIPPLE PIERCING. Oh my god. Shawn, you have to show us,” Laura gasps, eyes wide with my impending doom.
“Ew, no, I don’t want to see my brother’s nipples while I’m drinking.” Aiden immediately grimaces.
“Logan has a tramp stamp,” I counter, and for once his mask of indifference slips and he looks mildly panicked.
“It’s not a tramp stamp, it’s tasteful and off-center,” Logan mutters. The attention slides off him quickly, but I know Aiden is going to tease him about it later, and with family it really is about the long con.
“Oh my god. Can I tell them that Shawn’s the guy who said the mystical tit-jobs line?” Laura squeals, undeterred, looking like she’s been given everything she ever wanted for Christmas. I wish I’d known to tell Elise not to share a goddamn thing with her, but how could I have known they’d be friends?
Elise just looks as mortified as before, shrinking back in the corner.
“Sordid enough for you?” Logan ribs Aiden, looking the most amused he has in a while.
Making the most wildly evil eyes ever, Laura giggles low and loud, “Huhuhuhuhuh.”
“Hey, guys, lay off,” I start to say, not so much for myself. I don’t care if I have to show them where my old piercings have healed over, but I think Elise might crawl under the table in a few minutes.
Aiden catches my drift and looks between the two of us. He says to her in an undertone, “He should be the one embarrassed for that line.”
“Let’s stop torturing her. Shawn’s turn. Tell us something worse than that, I’m sure you’ve got something,” Laura challenges me.
“Shawn does have a lot of bad breakup stories,” Logan readily agrees.
Elise looks at me, clearly curious, as much as she’s trying to appear disinterested. Maybe she wonders if I ever told my family about us.
“Two. I have two,” I grumble quickly. Having their attention just on me isn’t better, actually. “From high school.”
“Uh-huh.” Laura rolls her eyes.
I grimace at myself. That they know of.
“One girl, I really thought he was going to fake his death or something,” Laura is quick to explain to Elise, reaching across the table to hold her attention.
I can see in Elise’s eyes that she agrees. Instead of amusement, there’s a flicker of coldness in her expression, knowing exactly what Laura’s talking about.
“You never would make the hard decisions. You always chickened out when it was actually tough,” she says, the words cold and cutting, and it doesn’t seem like she said it intentionally. Her face has shuttered in a way that, when she blinks, she seems to realize she said her thoughts out loud.
I watch Elise’s expression turn into something unreachable.
The table has gone utterly quiet. Aiden swallows. Maybe he thought the gory details would be funny and interesting, and not just all the ways we tore each other apart.
I dragged out our relationship much longer than it should have gone. I should have ended it early, so that it never got to the point of wanting to build a life together, because I knew the whole time my parents wouldn’t approve. We couldn’t have a human marrying into the family. It weakened the strength of the pack.
Aiden is the first to find the wherewithal to try and change the subject, but I’m too busy watching Elise to listen.
Her face softens a little as she glances to Aiden. He’s always had an easy-going charm, and while I’ve envied that about him, I’ve never fully felt jealous. But it sits uncomfortably in my chest, a cloying sensation that makes me glare at him unprompted.
Aiden glances at me with a smile on his face that promptly melts off. He makes his sad baby brother face out of habit.
I shake myself and shrug it off.
He’s barely a few sentences in about renovations the bar has made when I get up from the table. They fall quiet and I don’t hear a thing from them as I leave to get outside.
It’s drizzly and gross outside, but I couldn’t be in there for another minute.
There are a few hand-rolled cigarettes with a few dried and crushed aconite petals blended with the tea. Usually, I use them to feel a little toasted, since normal substances aren’t really enough for our kind. But it’s also to keep the wolf at bay. Early on it was harder to control my wolf, and lighting one up was a quick way to calm it down.
It had felt too easy to consider, too reasonable in my mind to dive over the table and grab Aiden by the collar. And for what, because Elise had smiled at him?
That would have been disastrous. Maybe I do need to lock myself in the brewery cellars during the full moon.
The door bangs open a few inhales in, just as I’m starting to feel a little more in control. I don’t expect to see Elise coming after me.
She stops a few places away from me, wrinkling her nose. “Is that the hipster-tea-cigarette-shit you always liked?”
I shrug and kind of nod. Not the way I would have described it, but alright.
She looks ready to pick a fight with me, crossing her arms over her chest. “Do you know how bad this stuff is for you?”
“You got statistics on that? I love statistics.”
She rolls her eyes, regretting the momentary lapse of judgment that made her offer concern. “Never mind, feel free to kill yourself.”
She paces away, reaching for the door to go back inside. She stops just short of it and glares at me. “You don’t get to make this harder for me.”
“I’m not trying to make this harder for you.”
“Then what was any of that?”
“What were you doing, telling our intimate details to my cousin of all people?”
“Obviously, I didn’t know that at the time! I didn’t know any of that or I wouldn’t be here!”
I have to hold back the urge to grin. In some small way, fighting feels more comfortable than anything we’ve said to each other so far, all the awkward tiptoeing. This is the Elise I remember, ready to die on any hill.
I have always loved this Elise.
“Obviously, you wouldn’t be here, you would have left the minute you found out. You would have packed your bags and disappeared without a word.”
Her eyes flash with anger. “Don’t make it sound like I caved the moment it got difficult. You made it difficult for a long time.”
Fury claws up my back, at the nerve she strikes. “I wasn’t the one ready to give up on us. Not even after you left!”
“Even after I left? Did you still love me when you were sneaking out of our bed in the middle of the night? When you left me, time after time, thinking I wouldn’t know you were gone, or wonder where you were, who you were with? When I confronted you and you still couldn’t be bothered to tell me the truth?”
“I wasn’t—” I stop short, my jaw tense.
She looks at me, glaring daggers, frowning so viciously, like she can’t believe that I had ever loved her.
“Even then,” I swear, my voice tight.
Her hand clenches on the bar door handle. Her frown twitches downward like she’s trying not to cry. “Maybe to you, it looked like you loved me. But you were just hurting me.”
She lets go and stomps away, turning around the corner to the back of the building where the dumpster and stacked crates are.
I hear the way her heart thuds in her chest, the sting of adrenaline in the air, before I hear her scream.
I move before I even think to, catching the way she staggers back, and then I see it.
My hand finds the back of her head and pulls her face towards me, turning her away before she has more than a glimpse of a dead deer that’s kind of ripped apart in a way too gruesome to linger over. I’ve seen this sort of thing plenty in the woods, often smaller animals, often not half-eaten like this. Not decimated. Not done with such a violence that goes beyond simple prey.
“I can’t look.”
Elise has never had the stomach for so much as a teen-rated horror movie.
I put my hand over her eyes without thinking and feel her eyelashes flutter closed against my palm. She curls in towards me, the bridge of her nose pressing hard into my chest.
Even though I can bear to look at the gory mess behind the bar, its existence leaves me unsteady, my stomach turning at what the deer means.
There are only a few werewolves in this territory, and the majority of them are standing right here with me. Any of us could have done this, even me. I’d convinced myself I had such control over my wolf that I’d forgotten what I was truly capable of. And this side of myself was terrifying and dangerous to Elise.
It’s every reason I couldn’t let her know what I was, why I had to leave her side so many nights, why being with her at all was stupid and dangerous. It had been reckless of me to endanger her by living together.
She could never know. I don’t know that I could live with myself if she looked at me and saw that I was a monster. It was bad enough now that she was so close by, when my wolf was hunting, stalking, preying.
I swallow, and it’s only a moment before the others are hurrying out. I don’t know if they were able to hear our fight over the din inside, but there was no way the three of them didn’t hear her scream.
I’ll never shake that sound for the rest of my life.
Laura pries Elise out of my arms, helping her cover her eyes on her way to the car.
“What was it that Mom called it? Coyotes?” Aiden offers with a low whistle when he sees the deer, and Logan shoots him a disapproving look.
A few other people start to shuffle out of the bar, also gawking at the overkill, someone immediately throwing up.
“There’s certainly something on the loose,” Logan says. His stare holds on me, as I glance between Aiden and him. Both their faces are a little too serious.
There’s definitely a werewolf turning feral in this town, and it can only be one of us.