by Kat Kinney
“I’m pregnant.”
For half a second, time seemed to freeze. They shoved apart, falling back onto the sidewalk. And then Dallas was getting to his feet, dragging a hand through the disheveled mess of his hair. I couldn’t look at him. Hayden hurried to Ethan’s side. She glared out at the crowd.
“Nothing to see here.”
Pacing half a dozen steps down the sidewalk, Dallas stared out at the night for so long I thought he wasn’t going to speak. And then—
“You came here? To him—”
“One, after that caveman display just now, you really don’t want to lecture me. Two, I tell you I’m pregnant and that’s all you have to say? Screw you.”
“You could have waited until I got home. Told me.”
“You just humiliated me in front of half the town because you and your brother can’t work out your bullshit. Do you have any idea what this night has been like for me?”
A Prius pulled up down the street. Cal and West got out.
“Lacey,” Dallas began, voice taking on a rough edge.
“I can’t do this.”
Dallas didn’t move. He just stared. As if he no longer knew me at all. West reached out like he might try to stop me. I slipped free. When I rounded the next block, I thought I heard Dallas calling for me.
I didn’t slow.
And no one followed.
11
Dallas
“NOT THAT I NECESSARILY MIND being force fed my weight in pancakes,” West said conversationally from Cal’s breakfast nook over by the window. “Especially not when we’re talking blueberry. But this vow of silence thing is getting a bit dramatic.”
Right. Like we’d all forgotten his reaction last month when an anonymous reader (spoiler alert: River) panned his Harry/Draco fanfic and he’d sulked for two days.
“Think we’ve all had enough drama for one night,” I slurred. Flipping the sausage, I poured a fresh round of pancake batter onto the griddle and sprinkled a handful of blueberries into the center of each cake.
Cal was currently staying in one of the cabins out on the back of our parents’ property while he paid down some of his student loans. Originally built for feral wolves transitioning back into society and working to get back on their feet, each cabin had a combination kitchen and living space, plus a separate bedroom in back. They’d been upgraded in recent years, the sloped roofs covered with solar panels that could power the small fridge and window AC unit that kept our brutal summers from being unbearable. To me, the space felt like it was the size of a postage stamp, but Cal once said that after a long shift at the hospital, coming home to a hammock swaying between a couple of live oaks and nothing for miles but a sea of swirling grass was how he kept his head level.
Shutting off the stove, I brought another round of blueberry pancakes and sausage to the table. West pushed back his chair. “Thanks, but I’m going to check in with August. Make sure he and Topher don’t need anything.”
Translate: shift change. Time for Cal to take over and make sure I didn’t burn half of Lindley County to the ground making brunch completely shit-faced.
The screen door smacked noisily behind him, carrying with it the echo of wind chimes. I leaned against the wall, inhaling the scent of snow.
“How are you doing? Pretty big news to take in, about Lacey and the baby.” Working on a psychiatric ward, Cal had two modes: calm as death and tell me how that makes you feel. The fact that I was getting a two for one deal told me precisely how badly I’d fucked up.
He moved West’s plate aside and pulled out a clean one for me.
“Not really hungry.”
“Think you should probably eat something.” The smell of sweet smoked sausage wafted through the room. Cal loaded up my plate with four pancakes, sausage and eggs, then drenched my lumberjack special in warm maple syrup, just the way he knew I liked it. Cal loved to hunt and with a bounty out on feral hogs in Central Texas, kept all our freezers stocked to last through the next zombie apocalypse. Defeated by the smell of my own cooking, I sank into the chair and stabbed halfheartedly at the pancakes.
If there was ever a day that I needed someone to talk to, it was today. And when it came to listening without spewing advice or crowing your news to everyone in six counties, Cal was pretty much your go-to guy.
“She went to Ethan. How do you think I’m doing?”
“You sure that’s how things went down?”
“She was there.”
Cal rubbed his beard. “To talk to him or to talk to Hayden?”
I grunted, dragging my sausage through the lake of syrup. We both knew damn well I was full of shit. Cal let the silence stretch, one of his shrink tricks to get patients to talk. Whatever. I had pancakes. And they were damn good pancakes. He sipped his coffee. I chewed, pulverizing some perfectly good eggs. Finally, I threw down my fork.
Point, Calgary Caldwell.
“She’s been having blackouts, couldn’t control her shift.” I was up now, pacing across the rough-hewn pine floor. “I was scared out of my goddamn mind. I came home and found her gone—”
“You got there to an empty house. What did you think happened?”
“That she’d shifted and gotten out, that someone was going to spot her as a werewolf wandering the streets in the middle of the Yule Festival.” I gripped the door frame, unable to stop my hands from shaking. Fuck. I needed more bourbon—which wasn’t happening. Cal had plucked the bottle from my hands right around the time West had pocketed my keys. Bastards. “And who knew if the Feds would pick her up or the Tracers would take her out to make sure one of us couldn’t be captured alive.”
Everything just sort of came spilling out after that. Our midnight kiss in the bakery. Juliet Blair’s deteriorating condition. The conversation with Mom the night of Thanksgiving. And now finding out I was going to be a father.
Cal listened without passing judgment, taking our empty plates to the farm sink. I didn’t want to think about how freeze-your-balls-off cold an outdoor shower had to be in November, but my brother was way into the sustainable off-the-grid lifestyle.
“You love her.”
I pictured Lacey’s face as we joined together under that starry sky, nothing separating us but skin and heat. The sparkle in her January gray eyes as I chased her around a counter in the bakery, a can of whipped cream aimed towards my chest in warning should I come any closer. The soft comfort of her fingers combing through my hair in the early hours of the morning before she left for work. And I knew then that I wanted a thousand stolen moments like that. With her.
“I never stopped.”
“This stalemate with Ethan worth risking all of that?”
No. No, it wasn’t.
I rubbed my lip, tracing the hairline scar I’d gotten that night on the barn floor nine years before.
“I always used to picture it, you know? Her and me. Couple of kids. Big house with a yard and a sprinkler out front for playing in during the summers when it gets hot. The whole nine yards.”
I closed my eyes as my fingertip found the edge of the scar, not missing it was the first place Lacey kissed every time we made love, as if she knew how much that memory still ached and wanted to make a new one instead with the brush of her lips on mine.
Clearing my throat, I went on. “You remember how Dad would take us to the Dairy Queen in the summer? West would be in the backseat trying to negotiate his way out of the mayonnaise the whole way there—”
“What’s next? You gonna refuse to go out on pack hunts if that deer doesn’t come with a side of fries?” Cal growled in Dad’s voice.
“God, I miss him.”
“Me, too.”
I screwed my eyes shut, dread clawing up my insides until I could barely breathe. But I had to get this out before I couldn’t.
“Sometimes I worry I’m all the worst parts of him. That I’ll be the sort of father who beats his son bloody on the floor of a barn. Not the dad who comes to all his games and sits up in the bleac
hers even when it’s pouring rain and he knows he’ll be on duty the rest of the night. Not the dad who takes his son to the State Fair and tells him he’ll open the best damn food trailer in town, but the one who ships him off to Canada to live with his brother. Then doesn’t call for the next four years because he can’t stand the sight of him. The one who doesn’t even show up the day he opens his first restaurant. I think of how pissed I’ve been at Ethan over this thing with Lacey, and I wonder if I didn’t deserve everything that’s happened to me. If maybe in the end, I’m just like him.”
Cal let out a low whistle. “Sounds like you’ve been doing a pretty good job of punishing yourself.”
I frowned. “That’s not. I’m not—”
“Isn’t it?” He leaned back against the sink. “The drinking?”
“I’m not addicted. I just—”
“I’m not talking physical addiction. Were physiology being what it is, that would take something pretty hard-core. Silver. The heavier street drugs. Just look at August and the hurdles he has to go through to keep meds in his system.” He studied me for a beat. “But addiction has a strong psychological component. Human, were behavior… we do what we do because it pays off in some way. Whether that’s for a high or to numb out or to keep from dealing with things we aren’t yet ready to face.”
I frowned, something inside me struggling to work itself free. That cold November night I’d infected Lacey, Cal and Brody had been off at college. Mom had taken West to a jazz band concert up at the high school where he was performing a tenor saxophone solo.
And for whatever reason, I’d picked that night to try to talk to my dad about Lacey.
A decade later, what I remembered wasn’t so much the conversation itself, but the gut punch sensation when he’d shut me down. Hard. I either ended it or he was sending me up to Calgary for the rest of my senior year. No discussion. No options. The rest of the night was pretty blurry. I knew I’d swiped a bottle of scotch from the liquor cabinet, had waited to open it until I was parked in the empty field outside the party, texting Lacey, trying to figure out how I was going to tell her goodbye. And then in the minutes that followed, I’d thrown back most of it, until I could no longer see the disgust in Ben Caldwell’s eyes.
Usually I didn’t drink to get smashed, only to take the edge off. Werewolves burned through pretty much any controlled substance the same way we did calories. The image of my dad drifted back, silhouetted in the doorway as I struggled to crawl off the barn floor, ribs broken, face bleeding, begging to know what I could do. And then his voice followed, telling me to get the hell out of his sight.
When I finished telling all that to Cal, he nodded.
“I see the best version of you every day. The one who takes in feral wolves in recovery and gives them jobs at The Spoke. The one who donates food to the local shelters. You’ve got a big, generous heart. So maybe you and Ethan have some old issues to work out. But you could pick up the phone, name the time and place, and I guarantee you, he’d be there. Any of us would. We love you. And you’re down on yourself right now. I get that. But you’d do the same for us.”
“You know Dad made an idiot out of himself bragging to anyone in town who would listen after you opened The Spoke,” West said from the door, eyes glued to his phone.
“Whatever.”
“I’m serious. He said it all the time. And Dally, Mom’s talked to you about what happened to Dad growing up, about the Feral who killed his mother?”
“Sure.” That hadn’t been the half of it. Suffice it to say, growing up in a feral compound on the fringes of society would have been a hellish childhood unlike anything I could imagine. That my dad had come through it, gone on to join law enforcement and raise a family of his own, lead a pack and fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves said a hell of a lot about the kind of man he was. Learning the truth had only made me respect him more.
But I got what my brothers were saying. Our dad hadn’t ever gotten help as far as I knew, not as in the sit down and talk to someone type of help. If he had, would that moment he’d found me and Lacey together have played out differently, viewed not through the lens of how the local werewolf council had failed to prevent his feral sire from abducting and forcing himself on his human mother, but a horrible, tragic error in judgement made by his teenage son?
But I’d spent enough years holding onto what other people did, that night and countless others. My mom. Dad. Lacey. Ethan. There was only one person in this equation who had the power to end this. Only one person who’d had the power to end it all along. And until I owned up to that, no excuses, no shifting blame, I’d always be trapped there on that barn floor, unable to pull myself up.
I had to start dealing with the underlying issues I carried from that night, and from the years leading up to it, or this was never going to get better. I couldn’t keep holding onto this angry, pissed off, bitter part of myself if I wanted to be there for Lacey, be there for my kid. And damn straight I was going to be there.
West was frowning down at his phone screen.
“Everything okay?”
“August isn’t answering. Which,” he shrugged, “maybe he and Toph are just gaming, but considering what happened the other day…”
He began tapping out a new message, forehead creased.
“I’m going outside for a minute. Keep me posted.”
The moment I stepped out into the icy December wind, the sharp bite of the cold stung my cheeks and set my ears on fire. A hard gust coming down from the northwest slammed into the side of the house, Cal’s windchimes echoing out across the sleet-flocked hillside.
Sinking into an Adirondack chair, I pulled out my phone, watching snowflakes swirl down in chaotic handfuls from the night sky. A string of old text notifications popped up.
Ethan: Look, don’t get pissed. Lacey’s okay. She’s here with Hayden. No deets. Sounds like girl stuff. I got kicked out.
Ethan: Maybe give her a little while and I’ll bet she calls. Just didn’t want you to worry.
FriesWithThat: Pick. Up. Your. Phone.
FriesWithThat: Honestly, you’re as bad as Brody.
Me: She’s with Ethan.
FriesWithThat: Woah, I just got the play by play from Hayden. Total Switzerland. But you get that Lacey isn’t WITH Ethan, right? Where are you? Cal and I have decided this calls for an emergency Whataburger run.
ThatsDrCaldwell: Dally, just tell us where you are.
Feeling a killer headache coming on, I pulled up a number I rarely dialed and hit Send.
“Hey.” Hard rock wailed over the sound of coffee cups clinking in the background. The music lowered. Ethan cleared his throat. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know… not really.” I let my head thump back against the chair. “Sorry about earlier. Think I just won dickhead of the year.”
“Ask Hayden. After our stunt out on the street, pretty sure I made the finals.”
“Was good what you did, letting me know Lacey was okay. Know that couldn’t have been easy.”
Ethan was silent for so long that I checked to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. And then— “You were right, you know. Hays and I… it was our wedding day and it was chaos, but that’s no excuse. If it had been anyone else who hadn’t shown up, I would have sent someone over to check on them. But things between you and me have been effed up for a while now.”
“Sure.” I watched the big live oaks off Cal’s porch swaying in the wind. “You really thought I’d miss your wedding day?”
“Honestly? Yeah, I did.” For a beat, there was nothing but the creak of the porch swing. “You’ve always kind of had it out for me. Guess I wasn’t surprised when you didn’t show. And, Dally, for what it’s worth, what you said last month at The Spoke, about how would I like it if you’d hooked up with Hayden and made her feel like trash. God—” He made a strangled sound under his breath. “I don’t even know how I’d start getting past something like that. So let’s just say
I get it. I have a lot of amends to make for stupid ass decisions I made back then. I’ll keep apologizing to Lacey until she’s sick of hearing it, and I need you to know I’m sorry for what I did to you, too. You’re my brother. That comes before anything else.”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “Pretty sure you’re not the only one who’s made a mess of things lately. Maybe we can start by setting this thing between us right.”
Ending the call, I tapped my thumb against the wooden porch railing.
Me: I just transferred the money into your account. There’s more on the way. Use it. Burn it. Take it and rent a series of billboards out on Highway 29 proclaiming what a jackass I am. Up to you. But you’re having my kid. And if you think I’m going to sit around while you and Fancy go halvsies on the last carton of expired takeout in your post-apocalyptic refrigerator, think again.
BabyGotBake: Death wish?
BabyGotBake: Also, was there an apology in there somewhere? Because I seem to have missed it.
BabyGotBake: You know, in between you giving our cat an identity crisis. *skull emoji* *knife emoji*
Damn. I was in trouble.
Me: I was an ass. I’m sorry. And not just for tonight. I owe you an apology for every time I promised you the world then asked you to lie about us like we were a dirty secret. I’m sorry I let us get in so deep, all the while keeping back the truth about who I really was.
Me: I failed you that night senior year when I didn’t stop to tell you the truth before we took that final step. Because it doesn’t matter that we should have been safe. I broke your trust. And you’re the one who’s had to pay for it ever since. And worse, you’ve stood by while I’ve half-assed things and refused to deal with my issues. That ends today. I have no idea how to be a good father. But I’m pretty sure that step one is to go to whatever doctor Cal finds for me and get my head screwed on straight.
Three blinking dots appeared. Vanished. I stared down at the screen, breath crystalizing in the cold night air. A second later, West burst out onto the porch, Cal hot on his heels.