Chapter 14 #2
Without my agreement, my brain served up the memory of him coming apart. The taste of him. The soft touch of his fingertip tracing a hair on my chest and the look in his eyes while he did it.
“What about you?” Claudia asked, bringing me back to the campfire. “Do you have kids?”
“No, I’m a surrogate uncle to many kids, but none of my own.” It was my usual answer, but it sat wrong in my mouth now that one of my “kids” was a thirty-year-old man only two seats away.
Claudia’s face broke into a teasing smile. “Sometimes being the uncle is more fun. Less vomit and bedtime tantrums.”
Her husband heard her and added, “Probably more naps and fancy vacations, too,” before he leaned over to press a kiss to the top of her hair and hand her another beer with a murmured term of affection.
I glanced at the nearby table, where two of their kids were playing Battleship while the other poked at the fire with a long stick, most likely waiting for permission to roast marshmallows.
I couldn’t imagine any nap or fancy vacation would be better than what they had, and it was clear they knew it.
Movement from my other side caught my attention. Jake had stood and held his hand out to Wolfe. “Come on, let’s go grab your guitar.”
Wolfe glanced at me, but I did my best not to interfere. Instead, I turned back to the Reynosos and tried to ignore the tension in my shoulders as I sensed Wolfe stand.
“I think I’ll just borrow Brennan’s,” he said before crossing the campsite.
Eduardo pulled his chair forward a little so he could see me around Claudia. “You the search and rescue guy?”
I blinked in surprise. “Yeah?”
He nodded. “Will told us about you. When we were back in Moab, a kid went missing. He and his friends had gone off on four-by-fours, and the one kid got separated from the group. They thought maybe he’d fallen off a ridge.”
Claudia’s hand came up to cover the center of her chest. “It was terrifying.”
Eduardo reached to squeeze her knee. “Thankfully, they found him safe and sound, just off course. But Will told the parents right away that there were people who specialized in search and rescue. That night over dinner, he told us about you. About the school you run.”
Claudia smiled. “He sounded very proud. Said you’d helped find dozens of people over the years.”
I looked at Wolfe, who was nodding politely at something Jake said while they stood off to one side. My entire body was alert, like each hair on my skin was a satellite in a giant array, all pointed toward the subject of mass surveillance.
Get a fucking grip.
“I love what I do,” I said, turning back to the Reynosos.
Before they could ask me more, Lena squealed and skipped over to Wolfe, interrupting his conversation with Jake. “Are you going to play? I’ve been dying to ask if you know any Alison Krauss.”
His soft smile was genuine. “Absolutely. Did you get on a banjo kick or something to go along with the ukulele?”
The pair moved their chairs side by side, frustrating Jake, who was no longer the center of his attention. Wolfe brought the guitar up and began fiddling with it before starting to play the opening of a song I recognized right away.
The sound of the music flowing from his fast-moving fingers immediately quieted the group around the fire. Lena’s eyes lit up, and she started singing the first few lines of “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby.” Her clear, soft voice fell right alongside the chords.
My eyes went back to Wolfe. His fingertips moved on the fret.
His other hand picked and strummed. His half-lidded eyes were tilted down to watch the strings, but all I could see was the way the tension drained completely out of him as he played.
His shoulders melted down. His legs stretched out.
The soft curve of his lips eased into a half smile.
The light from the fire shone on his dark hair while bits of it fell over his eyes. The muscles in his forearms shifted under his skin, and his head began to nod up and down with the rhythm of the song.
I wanted to freeze time and watch him here in his element, in his comfort and happiness, in the safety of his anonymity, until he’d drunk his fill. Until he felt whole forever.
I sucked in a deep breath as the truth hit me, not like a punch but like warm rays of sunlight once the clouds finally moved aside and allowed it to shine.
Fucking Christ, I’m in love with him.
Part of me wanted to immediately backtrack. To throw up a million roadblocks. I’d avoided Wolfe for so long, I barely knew him anymore. His fathers would lose their minds. He was young, and I wasn’t. It couldn’t be true, therefore it wasn’t.
But what I’d seen couldn’t be unseen. And I was tired of running from it.
I loved Wolfe Marian. So deep down in the marrow of my bones, I could barely breathe from the fullness of it.
I didn’t know how or when it had happened.
Maybe the spark had been ignited six years ago and had steadily grown into a roaring blaze while I pretended I couldn’t see it.
Maybe the tinder I’d laid long ago had caught fire in one fell swoop the night of our kiss.
Or maybe it was seeing him here, away from everything familiar, that had suddenly burned down my resistance once and for all.
Regardless, it was the truth.
Wolfe glanced up and met my eyes, the fire flickering the green from deep forest moss to early spring grass with hints of summer sun. I could only imagine what he saw in mine that made his suddenly widen. Love? Overwhelming need? Stark terror? There was no telling.
“He’s really good, isn’t he?” Claudia murmured, leaning toward me.
I swallowed as Wolfe’s eyes moved back to the strings. “So fucking good,” I breathed.
When the song ended, he moved right into another. Lena recognized it and started singing again. This tune was more upbeat.
I have a secret that no one knows
When the world feels heavy there’s a place I go
Where the salmon runs free and the honey flows…
I recognized it as a newer Zee Barlo song, one I’d only heard a couple of times. It sounded different sung in Lena’s feminine voice.
But then, to my surprise, Wolfe joined her on the chorus.
His voice was both new and familiar. New, because I’d never heard Wolfe Marian sing like this, all deep-toned and sultry. Familiar because this was the voice of Fletcher Coe… and anyone who followed him on social media like I did could recognize it.
I stared at him, at how easy and free he was as he played and sang. No one had ever seen Fletcher’s face. Why in the world would he risk being recognized like this?
Jake pulled up his phone to record a video, and I leaned forward in my seat as if to stop him, when Wolfe simply… stopped singing. His voice faded out midway through a stanza as if that was always his intention, but I could tell he’d made a conscious choice to stop.
Jake continued recording for a few moments before stopping, presumably to send it to his sister. When he finally slipped the phone back in his pocket, Wolfe’s eyes closed in relief for just a microsecond. No one else would have caught it, but I’d been clocking his discomfort level all night.
If this was how mindful Wolfe needed to be when just having fun with friends by a campfire, what the fuck was his life even like trying to keep this huge secret? It had to be impossible.
God, how fucking lonely must he be?
After several songs, he returned the guitar to Brennan and accepted everyone’s compliments with a shy smile and a dismissive flick of his hand.
I stood and grabbed his water bottle from where it had been left on the ground next to Jake’s chair. I handed it to him, staying on my feet a moment longer than necessary.
He flashed me a grateful smile with a murmured thanks.
“No, thank you,” I said softly, biting back the term of endearment that wanted to swan dive so easily off my tongue. “That was beautiful.”
Wolfe twisted the cap off the bottle in two quick rotations. His fingers weren’t quite steady, which surprised me.
I watched him tip the bottle back and drink, his eyes sliding closed for just a moment as if gathering his composure. When he lowered the bottle, a small drop caught the firelight at the corner of his mouth, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.