Epilogue #2
“None of you are good patients,” Clara says as she follows.
“I’m an excellent patient,” Tristan tells her, winking at me.
Clara rolls her eyes and gives me a conspiratorial look. “Alphas, am I right?”
Inside, the boxes take over the front room. Freddie sets out plates. Megan sits cross-legged on the rug and starts opening one before Mom has taken off her shoes.
“That one is private,” Mom says.
“Then you shouldn’t have written Bianca private in giant letters.”
“Megan Anne.”
She looks at me. “Why does your mother know my full name?”
I laugh and drop beside her. We pull the flaps open, and the first layer is harmless: a stack of notebooks, two framed photographs, the stuffed bee Winston won for me at a carnival.
Dad settles onto the couch. Mom sits beside him, close enough that their thighs touch, though neither reaches for the other.
I hand the bee to Winston, who reminds everyone that I bit the booth attendant when he tried to give me a frog instead.
“I was four, and I hated frogs because you put one in the bath with me!”
Winston bursts into laughter.
Owen takes the stuffed animal from Winston and inspects one flattened wing. “She still bites when she’s angry.”
Freddie crouches behind me with a plate balanced on one knee. He reaches into the box, probably looking for more evidence of childhood violence, and pulls out a folded green-and-white jersey.
His smile disappears.
“No fucking way.”
The number across the back has cracked with age. My entire body goes hot before he unfolds it far enough to show his last name.
Megan reaches. “An old jersey?”
Freddie holds it out of range. “I spent half my junior year accusing Michael of taking this.”
“Maybe he did?”
“It’s suspiciously in your box, baby.”
“That proves nothing.”
Freddie catches the hem and pulls the jersey over my head before I can stop him. The cracked number settles across my chest.
The collar catches beneath my chin. I yank it straight, which only makes Freddie’s last name more obvious while half my family watches. Excellent. Exactly how I wanted him to learn I spent puberty stealing his clothes.
Owen leans over my shoulder and sees a sleeve trapped beneath the notebooks. His hand goes in. I try to close the flap on his wrist, but he’s annoyingly stronger than cardboard.
“Whatever you think you see is a trick of the light.”
He pulls out a black hoodie. The sleeves used to hang past my hands.
Owen stares at it, then at me. “You stole this? I looked for it for two years.”
“You left it at our house. It was abandoned property.”
“You helped me look for it.”
I did. Then I went home and slept in the thing. Fourteen-year-old me was a dick.
Winston makes a strangled sound from behind the stuffed bee. Clara takes it away from him before he crushes it against his face.
“I remember that!” Winston says. “You convinced him Mom donated it to the thrift store and he made me go look with him every day for three weeks.”
Freddie has stopped being offended long enough to laugh, which is when Tristan reaches past him and removes a faded school T-shirt from beneath the hoodie.
“That,” Tristan says, holding it by the shoulders, “was my favorite T-shirt.”
“You lent it to me.”
“I lent it to you after you came to swim at the community pool without anything but your bathing suit to walk home in. You said it got caught in the washing machine and you had to throw it away.”
Mom looks at me.
“This is becoming a hostile environment.”
“Well, all of you stopped pursuing your belongings eventually. Legally, that’s surrender.”
Tristan holds the old shirt against my shoulder, and his smile turns quieter.
“You could have just asked me for it.” He leans closer, then whispers, “This was top of my list of fantasies.”
My cheeks go hot.
Weller has stayed behind the couch, watching the contents of the box migrate across the floor. Mom reaches inside to move a photograph, and something narrow slides free beneath it.
Dark fabric. A small, careful knot I tied before hiding it because I wanted it to look the way it had when it belonged to him.
I snatch it, but not fast enough.
For once, no one says anything quickly enough to save me.
Weller runs the tie through his fingers. “Oh, Bianca, I looked everywhere for this. My lucky tie.”
“It was in your glove compartment.”
“Until it wasn’t.”
“That’s where people store things they don’t need.”
His gaze lifts to mine.
Tristan lowers himself onto the arm of the couch. “To clarify, you accumulated one scented object from each of us and concealed the thefts while maintaining a separate performance of complete disinterest.”
“I did not smell them.”
Everyone looks at me.
“Very often,” I add.
Megan falls backward onto the rug, tears streaming down her face.
Winston is laughing hard enough that Clara has to take his drink before he spills more of it on the floor.
Dad removes his glasses and rubs at his eyes.
Even Mom laughs, one hand pressed to her mouth, and the sound is rusty enough that I glance at her before I can stop myself.
The clothes don’t smell like the alphas anymore. They smell like cardboard and my parents’ house, with the faint dusty sweetness of everything kept too long. But when I close my fingers around Owen’s sleeve, my body remembers what I was looking for before I had a word for it.
Freddie sits behind me and wraps both arms around my waist. “Tiny criminal.”
“I prefer the term collector.”
“Thief,” Owen says, but he pulls the old hoodie over my knees like a blanket.
Tristan folds his shirt with pointed care. “Pathological little scent raccoon.”
“I hate every one of you.”
Weller comes around the couch and reties the stolen tie loosely over Freddie’s jersey. The knot sits crooked against my throat.
“Perfect.” His fingers brush the mark beneath my skin before he steps away.
Dad clears his throat and tries to regain enough authority to speak. “There is one more box in the trunk.”
I look from Weller to Tristan. Tristan is inspecting the fold of his shirt as if national security depends on it.
“Be right back,” Dad says, wandering out the front door. Owen follows him out.
Freddie tightens his arms around me for half a second, then releases me.
Owen returns carrying a cardboard box so large it blocks most of his chest. It isn’t closed properly.
He sets it down in front of me, and a pink leash spills over one side, followed by the corner of a dog bed and a yellow rope toy.
I stare at the leash.
“So we can get a dog now?” I ask.
A tiny bark sounds from outside.
My heart completely stops.
Nobody answers before another bark comes, higher and frantic.
Then Dad opens the front door, and golden fur launches through the gap.
She’s bigger than the last time I saw her, too-long legs and enormous paws skidding across the wood. One ear stands up. The other is folded inside out. She sees me and loses her entire mind just like the first time I met her.
I barely get onto my knees before she hits me.
Her paws land against my chest. I fall backward into Freddie’s legs, laughing as her tongue covers my chin, my mouth, my nose. She whines and wriggles hard enough to bend her whole body while I try to hold every part of her at once.
“Oh my God, it’s you.”
She catches my thumb between her teeth.
The laugh becomes a sob so quickly it hurts. I press my face into the warm spot between her ears, and the puppy climbs higher, completely confident that my body is where she belongs.
“How?” I manage.
Tristan crouches and scratches beneath her collar. “I called the rescue.”
“We covered her care,” Weller says. His voice is rougher than it was upstairs. “A rescue worker agreed to foster her until we had a stable address.”
“They were going to keep her if we couldn’t,” Freddie adds. “They love her. We didn’t leave her waiting in a kennel or anything.”
The puppy spots his wild curls and lunges. Freddie catches her around the middle while she snaps playfully at his hair, laughing so hard he has to sit on the floor beside me.
Owen lowers himself on my other side. The puppy abandons Freddie long enough to lick his knuckles, then can’t decide who to attack.
I look at the supplies, the faded rescue card, the four men watching me. “You did all of this without asking me?”
Owen’s hand stills on the puppy’s back.
Weller takes a thin envelope from the leather folder and holds it out. “We haven’t adopted her yet. You can change your mind.”
The forms inside are mostly complete. The line for the owner is blank.
The puppy puts one paw on the papers and immediately tries to eat the corner.
I pull them away from her. “I want to keep you, little missy, so don’t tear up the papers.”
Tears keep running into my mouth when Weller hands me a pen.
I sign the line while Freddie holds her. She writhes free before I finish, scrambles back into my lap, and reaches for me with both oversized paws.
This time, I don’t put her down. “Who’s a good girl? Do you wanna sleep in bed with mama tonight?”
Four groans rise around me. The puppy licks the tears from my chin and settles deeper into my arms.