Searching for Home

by Megan Linden

  He closed his eyes and turned his face toward the sun, letting it warm his skin as he floated.

  Uninvited, the thoughts about yesterday broke through and he tensed. He should feel better after the conversation with Taylor, more grounded in this pack and thus more detached from his old one. But even though he was no longer a part of Donnelly Pack, that feeling of separation, deep on the instinctual level, turned out to be difficult to accept.

  He felt powerless, stripped of everything he’d thought he knew.

  He shivered and pushed his head under the water, throat tight. He stayed like that until he ran out of air then broke the surface yet again with a loud, sharp intake of breath.

  He needed to get over this. He’d been getting better in the last few months, slowly adjusting to his new life. Yesterday was just…another change. He’d known things with Taylor would probably come to a head at some point, and all things considered, the confrontation had turned out well.

  No thanks to you. Patrick could almost feel Taylor’s hand on his arm, the weight of it and the impact much more important than the actual physical touch. That had been the moment of change.

  Patrick inhaled deeply. He was just tired of changes, that was all. He didn’t know how many more of them he could take.

  * * * *

  On Monday, Patrick found it almost impossible to concentrate, checking every ten minutes if Ollie had shown up to work yet, even though he knew Ollie covered the afternoon shift. The tension grew as the hours went by and the blinking cursor in his current work-in-progress only added more guilt to the pile. Patrick forced himself to finish what he absolutely had to get done that day but didn’t touch anything else, playing possible scenarios in his head instead.

  Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe Ollie would wave it off or make a joke or something.

  Damn, Patrick wished that were true. He didn’t handle guilt well. Actually, he rarely felt guilty over anything, which, now that he realized it, made him feel like an asshole. He’d always prided himself on being honest, but as the Alpha’s Son, he’d also been removed from the consequences quite often, he was sure. He’d never set out to be a jackass, but he’d never considered that he might have been acting from a position of privilege.

  Not until he’d been slapped in the face with the consequences of being honest with his own father. But that didn’t count, since it wasn’t something Patrick should ever have felt bad about.

  Regardless of his ineptitude with handling guilt, now he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d fucked up with Ollie and he itched to make it right. They’d come a long way to…wherever they were now. The last thing Patrick wanted was to lose that because he’d been insensitive. He’d been barely holding himself together at the Alpha’s house, but that wasn’t a good enough excuse, even if he decided to admit it to Ollie.

  Finally, the time had come for the shift change and Patrick—who had been eavesdropping from the second he’d scented Ollie coming up to the café—listened as Yvonne, the morning barista, updated Ollie on everything. She still had a few minutes left on her shift, so Ollie offered to deal with the trash in the back as she finished up.

  Patrick took a deep breath. Now that it was time to finally do it, he found himself hesitating. Maybe I shouldn’t do this now. I could wait for him to come over and if he still doesn’t in about an hour or so…

  He stood up. He needed to do it now, especially since he had a chance of catching Ollie alone, away from the prying eyes and ears.

  He went out through the patio doors and rounded the building to where the trash cans were stored. Ollie was focused on tying the trash bags and only noticed him when Patrick paused a few feet away.

  Ollie froze for a second then went back to his task.

  “Hey,” Patrick said.

  “Hey.” Ollie didn’t turn to him or stop what he was doing.

  There went Patrick’s most optimistic scenario.

  “I wanted to apologize for leaving like that on Saturday.”

  That got Ollie’s attention. He straightened and looked at Patrick with narrowed eyes. “Like what, exactly?”

  Patrick frowned. “I didn’t say hello or stop when—”

  “You blew me off,” Ollie told him, arms twitching as if he wanted to cross them against his chest but probably remembered he’d just been handling trash and didn’t want to get himself dirty.

  Patrick opened his mouth to protest, but the tension on Ollie’s face and the uneven heartbeat he heard told him to do better than that.

  “I’m sorry,” he told him. In the end, apologizing wasn’t that hard when he was truly sorry about the way he acted.

  Ollie deflated. “What happened?”

  This was the difficult part. “I’d had a bad day and I should’ve stayed home,” Patrick admitted. “I would’ve, if it hadn’t been the Alpha’s party. So I went and I had a talk with Taylor that left me all…” He paused, not knowing how to say it. “I knew I needed to get away from people. I didn’t even say goodbye to the Alpha pair. I just went straight for the door and that’s when you saw me.”

  Ollie raised his eyebrows at the mention of Taylor and his eyes widened when Patrick admitted to leaving the party without following proper protocol.

  “What the hell did you two talk about?” he asked.

  Patrick winced. “We needed to set some things straight. We haven’t had the easiest relationship from the get-go.”

  “Oh yeah, I heard about your introduction to the town,” Ollie told him. There was a hint of a teasing smile there and Patrick relaxed.

  “Exactly. Everything was cleared up right away but it set a certain tone. And I admit, it’s mostly on me. The last few months have been an adjustment and I’ve struggled with some aspects of it. On Saturday, we cleared the air, but it was”—he shrugged—“difficult.”

  “So you’re not in trouble with him anymore? Or the Alpha?”

  “We’re good now.” About as good as we’re going to get.

  Ollie looked at him for a long moment before nodding. “Okay, fine.”

  “Fine?”

  “Apology accepted. I can’t hold a grudge when the Alpha doesn’t, huh? You blew us both off, after all.”

  “No, you can—” Patrick started before he realized Ollie was teasing him. “Shut up.”

  Ollie grinned. “Hey, it’s not often I can compare myself to the Alpha. I have to milk it for what it’s worth.”

  “Yeah, no. No more milking. You accepted the apology, no take backs.”

  “No take backs?” Ollie laughed. “What are you, twelve?”

  “Shut up,” Patrick repeated, taking a step back before he would do something stupid like kiss the guy. It wasn’t the time and definitely wasn’t the place. He scrunched his nose at the trash cans. “I’m gonna leave you to it. See you later.”

  “Fine, go.” Ollie waved him off, but he was still smiling.

  Patrick was, as well, all the way back to his seat.

  Chapter Ten

  Ollie had to admit his afternoon was going a lot better than he’d expected this morning, when the mere thought of seeing Patrick in the café had made him want to stay in bed the entire day. He’d imagined scenarios when Patrick would completely ignore him or ones when he would try to pretend everything was normal, chatting Ollie up as if nothing had happened. Getting an apology right away was something he hadn’t really planned for.

  It had been a great surprise, though.

  Once his shift officially started, Patrick was there at the counter, ordering his latte, and they picked up where they’d left off on Friday. They joked about the many ways Patrick avoided actually working and Ollie told a few stories about the twins and their latest shenanigans. Then he mentioned that Joy was coming back to work on Wednesday, so he wouldn’t need to cover for her anymore.

  Patrick frowned at that and looked down on his hands resting on the counter, making Ollie frown as well. I mentioned it was only a temporary thing, didn’t I?

  “Did you kn
ow that there’s a small lake nearby?” Patrick asked suddenly, looking up at him again. “Or a pond, I guess. It’s hard to say.”

  Ollie raised his eyebrows, surprised at the change of topic. “No, I didn’t.”

  “We could go there on Saturday, maybe camp out for a night, since you have all this free time coming up. If you’re willing, of course.”

  Oh, I’m willing all right. Ollie didn’t say it, but the thought was there—sudden, if unsurprising. He’d known he was gone on the guy for some time now and he’d stopped denying it after he’d felt sucker-punched on Saturday when Patrick had blown him off.

  “Sure,” he said out loud and smiled when Patrick grinned at him. “I should make use of my free weekends while I still have them.”

  “Why? Is that supposed to change?”

  “Yeah. I promised my sister that I’ll help out when her new baby is born,” he explained, rattling his fingers over the empty tray he was holding. “It’s a big part of why I’m here for at least six months, maybe more.”

  Patrick nodded. “So, this weekend, you and I are going to check out that lake?”

  “Sounds great,” Ollie told him. And it did. The idea of spending time with Patrick, outside of the café and apart from other people, was the best thing he’d heard all day. He didn’t know—and wasn’t about to ask—if Patrick considered it a date or not, but Ollie was going to treat it like one, just in case his hopes would come true.

  “Great.” Patrick gave him another one of his blinding smiles and Ollie had to fight the urge to lean in and kiss him over the counter.

  The day had definitely turned out better than he’d expected.

  * * * *

  “I thought you knew where this lake was,” Ollie said when Patrick cursed after taking a wrong turn and was scolded by the GPS voice navigation.

  “I do. I just don’t know how to get there by car. I found it when I was out on a run.” Patrick turned the car around at the first opportunity and soon they were back where they were supposed to be.

  Ollie raised his eyebrows. “That had to be a really long run.” He estimated they had to be closer to Linwood now than to Hills, and even for a werewolf, it was quite a distance.

  “Yeah, well”—Patrick glanced in the rear-view mirror—“I had a lot of energy to expend that day.”

  It finally clicked for Ollie that Patrick had likely found it over the weekend, and with what he’d told Ollie about his Saturday, he’d probably gone for a run right after leaving the Alpha’s house. Ollie could only imagine how he must have been feeling if he’d pushed himself so hard. There was no way he was going to ask Patrick about it, but he knew now that Patrick’s explanation had been the cleaned-up version of what had really happened.

  Neither of them spoke for a while, Patrick being too focused on the road and Ollie thinking too hard about the man by his side. He wanted to learn more about him and hoped that he would, slowly and in time. He knew a bit about what made Patrick laugh, what made him…if not happy, then at least content. But Ollie wanted to know about what made him hurt, too—what made him sad or anxious or angry.

  “Okay,” Patrick finally said before stopping the car in the shadow of the trees on the side of the road. “That’s as close as we can get by car. We need to walk the rest of the way, but it’s not far from here.”

  They left the car and put on their backpacks, then Ollie gestured Patrick toward the forest. “By all means, lead the way.” If he was left to figure it out on his own, he would be lost in less than five minutes.

  Fortunately, Patrick had no such problems. Ollie would have liked him to be a little more considerate about the fact that he was leading a human, not a werewolf, but once Patrick saw Ollie struggling to scale the rock formation on their way, he slowed down and tried to make things easier for him.

  After about a ten-minute walk, they came up right at the edge of the lake and Ollie took a step back, bumping into him. Patrick steadied him with hands on his shoulders and Ollie would swear the touch lingered longer than necessary. He wasn’t complaining, though. He wished he could lean back against Patrick’s solid frame and for Patrick to bring his arms around his waist, maybe pull him closer.

  “It’s nice, right?” Patrick whispered instead.

  Ollie blinked and looked around. The water was clear as he glanced at the surface and it made him want to jump in immediately. “It is. I can’t believe I didn’t know it existed.”

  “It’s not even on any maps,” Patrick told him, moving to stand by Ollie’s side. “I checked. I didn’t ask around, since I didn’t want people crowding it over the weekend.”

  That probably shouldn’t have made Ollie giddy—the idea that Patrick wanted to share something only with him—but it did. He wanted to kiss him for that, but he settled for grinning and raising his eyebrows instead.

  “Well, are we going to go in or what?” he asked, already shaking off his backpack.

  “Of course.”

  They undressed quickly and Ollie tried not to stare at Patrick’s body, since the memories of the last time he’d seen the guy naked were still vivid in his mind, and his swim trunks wouldn’t be able to cover his reaction for long. He did catch Patrick looking back, though, and the heat in his gaze warmed him faster than the sunlight ever could.

  Before he could do or say anything, Patrick dropped his jeans with the rest of his things, ran the short distance to the edge and jumped into the lake. He broke the surface with water spraying in every direction and Ollie could only stare at the sight of a wet and almost naked Patrick, grinning at him like a kid. It might have been the happiest Ollie had ever seen him, and the sight brought on some feelings that had nothing to do with Ollie’s libido but were equally—if not more—dangerous. And they couldn’t be cured by cold water.

  “Come on. Don’t just stand there like that,” Patrick told him, but from the way his gaze moved up and down Ollie’s body, he didn’t seem to mind Ollie’s ‘just standing’ there.

  Shut up, Ollie told himself, then took a deep breath and followed Patrick into the lake.

  The water was colder than he’d thought, but it worked to bring himself back from the edge of… He wasn’t sure what. And since he was in the lake only a few feet away from the man who had put him on that edge, Ollie wasn’t going to dwell on whys and hows.

  “Damn, I needed that,” he said, running his hand through his wet hair to push it back from his face. He realized how true it was. He’d been tense and anxious the last few days without any more shifts in the café and his routine being thrown out of whack because of it. He’d spent half a day with the twins and half catching up with various friends and family members, but something had felt off. He just couldn’t pinpoint what. Apparently, he’d just needed to get away for a bit.

  With Patrick, his traitorous mind readily supplied, but Ollie pushed that aside.

  “Yeah, me too,” Patrick said, his grin slipping and being replaced by a thoughtful expression Ollie didn’t know how to interpret.

  “Hills can be very…tiring,” he offered before he overthought it.

  Patrick, who’d been looking to the side, turned back to him. The silence stretched as they stared at each other, both drifting in the water, surrounded by trees that seemed to keep the rest of the world away.

  “That it can,” Patrick said in a whisper Ollie could hardly hear. “But it’s good, too.”

  He sounded almost surprised by it and Ollie wondered why. Why was Patrick struggling? What was his thing with Taylor about? Why had he come to Hills and where had he been before, if a place like Hills surprised him so much? But none of those were easy questions and most expats from other packs had hard stories to tell. Most humans, too. Ollie knew that from experience. “It’s home, no matter what,” he finally said. “Family.”

  The grimace on Patrick’s face was so brief that Ollie wasn’t sure he’d seen it.

  “Not all families are like the ones here,” Patrick told him

  Yeah, no shit, was the
first thing that came to Ollie’s mind, but he swallowed it down. There was no need to get defensive, even if it was pretty thoughtless of Patrick to say that to a guy who had spent most of his pre-Hills life in the system. While they hadn’t shared their life stories with each other, it was no secret that Ollie was one of the sheriff’s foster kids. “I know,” he said in the end.

  Patrick definitely grimaced then. “Fuck, I didn’t think.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  “Okay.” Ollie nodded, relaxing again. “Anyway, I just meant that no matter how tiring it gets, Hills can give you something great.”

  “It already did.”

  It sounded like it could be a cheesy line— or maybe you’d like it to be a cheesy line —but Patrick was looking to the side again and he seemed to be somewhere far away.

  There was only one thing left for Ollie to do.

  He moved closer and quickly, before Patrick could react, jumped forward and dunked Patrick’s head under the water.

  Chapter Eleven

  In half a second, Patrick went from another memory of his father’s bigotry to being shoved under water, flailing his limbs in surprise as Ollie leaned on him hard.

  Oh, it is on.

  He grabbed around Ollie’s middle and dragged him under as well, which made Ollie let go of him and try to escape. Patrick expected an uneven fight, but what Ollie lacked in strength, he made up for in being flexible and, well…slippery. He wiggled his way out of Patrick’s grip and broke the surface at the same time Patrick did, laughing and panting harshly as he tried to catch his breath.

  There was no conscious thought, no decision made. One second Patrick was looking at him as Ollie ran a hand over his hair again—standing, since they’d found themselves in the shallower part of the lake—the next he was pulling Ollie in and kissing him. They were both dripping and, for a moment, Patrick didn’t taste anything but water, but when Ollie opened up for him and tangled his hands in Patrick’s hair, the kiss turned hot and impatient.