Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Grayson
My heart is pounding, complicated emotions filling me.
What is he doing here?
How did he get—?
“Grayson, what’s wrong?” Miranda’s voice is low at my back. Her fingers brush my elbow and pull away just as quickly. “Who is that?”
“He’s my brother’s—” My voice hitches, and I take a breath to steady myself. “He’s my brother’s best friend.”
Derek looks like he’s aged a decade in the years he’s been gone. He steps forward, then his gaze cuts to Miranda. He breathes her in, and his eyes widen with alarm. Before he can say anything, I cut him off.
“You need to go inside.”
She bristles. I can feel it without looking, that small stiffening she does whenever someone tells her what to do.
My voice turns hard. “Miranda, I’m asking you to go inside. Now.”
“Fine,” she mutters. “But if you need help, just scream.”
Scream? Does she think I’m a little girl?
I watch her leave. Derek’s eyes track her until she’s inside, and he stays silent until the door clicks shut. “You’re not going to greet me?”
I try to work through the noise in my chest. Coach told me he was coming back. I should have been prepared. “What are you doing here?”
My voice comes out hoarse.
Derek was never far from my brother. Where one was, the other could be found close by.
I have to force my body to stay still and not turn around.
Because a part of me wants to believe that if I do, if I just look over my shoulder, my brother will be standing somewhere in the distance with that broad smile of his.
But I know he won’t be.
I can’t look.
My eyes are burning with unshed tears as Derek moves toward me.
He closes the last of the distance and pulls me in. His hand grips the back of my neck. It’s an older brother’s hold, one I haven’t felt since the day we walked away from the headstone. My arms come up slowly. I’m not ready for it. I don’t return it for a beat. Then I do.
I give him one short thump on his back.
He doesn’t let go right away. I feel him swallow against the side of my head, the small jerk of it before he steps back and clears his throat.
His eyes are red, and unlike me, he doesn’t hide his tears. “I should have come back earlier. I knew you needed me. I just couldn’t make myself do it. This place, this territory—”
“—It holds too many memories,” I finish roughly. “I know. You don’t have to explain.”
“Ah, fuck.” He wipes his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I told myself I’d hold it together.”
He drags a hand through his hair and exhales hard. “I’d practiced what to say to you. Forgot every word of it the second I saw your face.”
“Coach said you were coming back.” My voice scrapes. “He didn’t say it would be tonight.”
“He didn’t know.” Derek lets out a sound that’s almost a laugh, low and tired. “I drove past his place on my way in. The plan wasn’t to stop. The car ended up there anyway.”
I let out a shuddering breath and then pull him back in for a hug. “I’m glad you’re back, Derek.”
He holds me tightly, and I close my eyes for a second, both of us processing our grief, a reminder of the link between us which went silent four years ago.
When he pulls away, he clears his throat and asks, “How’s Vanessa?”
I blink, and then it occurs to me that he doesn’t know. “I divorced her. Two months after—” The words get stuck in my throat, and when I force them out, they come out lower. “After Gabriel.”
Derek looks shocked. “Why?”
I open my mouth, but the memory of walking into that hotel room with her and my rival player still angers me.
I take a breath. “My game was off after losing Gabriel, and she thought I was—I don’t know what she thought, but she neglected Ethan and left him alone in the house for three days while I wasn’t there.
I found her shacking up with a rival player when I went looking for her. ”
Derek’s jaw tightens. “Two months after Gabriel, she cheated on you?”
I look toward the house for a minute. “I—I didn’t care about the cheating, Derek.
It was the way she left my infant son to fend for himself.
She didn’t even arrange for someone to look after him.
If I had gotten there a few hours later, he wouldn’t be here.
I’d just lost Gabriel. She didn’t care that I could have lost my son. ”
Derek hisses. “She wasn’t punished by Coach?”
“She was. She lost custody.” My upper lip curls in a sneer. “But it didn’t matter to her. She married Brent, the guy she was cheating on me with, and joined his pack. Our pack couldn’t punish her properly since she now claims to be with the other pack.”
Derek’s lips are pressed into a thin line. “That’s—You’ve been through a lot.”
I just tuck my hands in my pockets, not knowing what to do with them. “If you had stayed, it might have been easier. It felt like I lost both you and Gabriel together. Coach crashed here most nights for awhile. He was worried about me.”
Derek takes a step closer. “Grayson, if I’d known—”
I shrug. “It’s fine. I got through it. I kind of learned how to survive without you and Gabriel. Both of you chose to leave me.”
Derek swallows. “Gray.”
“Don’t call me that,” I say harshly. “Not anymore. That nickname died with my brother. Let it stay buried.”
Derek hesitates and then nods. We stand there in silence.
The chasm between us has widened so much.
We spent our childhoods together. Two brothers by blood and one by loyalty.
And now it’s just us two left, but the pain of Derek’s abandonment has left scars in me, scars that I have tried my best not to look at till today.
I wet my lips and look toward the house where I know Miranda is waiting for me. Knowing her, she’s pressed against the window.
If you need help, just scream.
The memory of her words permeates through me with a soft warmth. I’m not alone anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if Miranda has armed herself with something to come rushing out at a moment’s notice.
That’s my girl.
“Where did you go?” I finally ask Derek, the thought of Miranda making some of the pain vanish.
Derek is quiet for a moment. “I went everywhere. A truck got me as far as Wyoming, where it gave out. After that, a ranch took me on for a year. The work was construction. My nights were spent in motels.” His shoulders move once.
The gesture doesn’t sit right on him. “Every time I packed the car to come home, I sat in the driver’s seat for an hour before unpacking it again. ”
“Why?”
He’s silent, and then he murmurs, “I felt guilty, Grayson. I couldn’t save your brother.
If I had gotten there ten minutes earlier.
If I hadn’t stopped to grab a coffee on the way to his place.
If I had left my house earlier… he would be alive.
I could have saved him. When I walked into that apartment and saw the blood and him—I’ve never forgotten that scene.
It haunted me. The idea of coming back was too hard.
The idea of facing you was too much to bear. ”
I look away. “It wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have left that night. I knew the mental state he was in.”
Derek sighs, his voice thick as he kicks a stone on the ground. “I’m back now, Grayson. I know I’ve made mistakes, but I hope you and I can work things out. And once you’re willing, I’d like to meet Ethan again.”
My heart is aching. When Ethan was born, Gabriel had been so excited, so eager to be the fun uncle. He had rarely put him down. He didn’t just deprive me of a brother but robbed my son of the chance to have an uncle.
Derek turns around to leave, and I find myself saying, “There’s a game this weekend. My fiancée will be there, and so will Ethan. I’ll introduce you after the game.”
“Your fiancée?” Derek looks over his shoulder at me. “The human girl?”
I nod, waiting for the questions in his eyes to appear on his lips, but he only nods. “I’ll be there.”
I watch him leave, and once he’s out of sight, I lean against the car door, my knees weak. The knot in my throat is still there, but it’s manageable now.
I let out a shuddering breath, closing my eyes and leaning my head back.
Derek’s back.
He’s finally back.
Straightening, I begin walking to the house, trying not to think of how Saturday will turn out.
There’s a bottle in the cabinet in the garage. Coach handed it to me two summers back and told me to save it for a night I needed it. It’s pack brew, strong enough to do something to a shifter. I haven’t touched it.
I touch it tonight.
Miranda is asleep in bed. She didn’t ask any questions when I got back from meeting Derek.
I could see the questions in her eyes, but she held her tongue, which is odd for her.
But maybe she could see how tense I was.
She made me a cup of coffee before going to bed, though, and it was overly sweet, the way I like it.
I don’t bother with a glass, just carrying the bottle all the way to my brother’s grave. I know the path with my eyes closed, how many steps, each rock and stone on the ground. I’ve been here so many times.
Gabriel’s stone catches the light from the half-moon. It carries his name with two dates beneath, nothing else.
There are flowers on the grave and a familiar scent.
Derek was here.
I sit down on the grass at the base of the stone and unscrew the bottle.
It burns my throat as I lean against the gravestone, my vision blurred.
“He’s finally back.”
I take another swig before slamming the bottle on the ground. “All these years and now he’s decided to show up.” My voice hitches. “Both of you were fucking liars. You two abandoned me when you said you wouldn’t. And now he shows up…What? Are you going to show up to haunt me next?”
If my brother was here, he’d roll his eyes at me for being dramatic. But he’s not here, and there’s no one here to sling their arm around my neck and sneer, “And what if I do?”