by Holley Trent
Before he could get a word out, she poked his chest.
“Nope. Don’t even think about clamming up now. Sean’s been keeping me in the dark all this time, and I don’t care what I have to do to make it happen, but people are going to start telling me things. Not censored things, either. The truth.”
He tried to open his mouth again, but she put a finger over his lips.
“The truth, Tito.”
“Okay. Shit.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m serious.”
“I’m trying to be, too,” he said.
“Good.” She put her hand back in her pocket. “You may talk.”
He laughed and shot a hand through his unstyled hair. “I’m so confused now that I don’t know where to start.”
“You were about to gloss over who Los Impostores were.”
“Ay. Yeah, okay.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “I swear to you, I’m not trying to make up a good lie. I’m trying to figure out how to tell this story without naming names. Naming names sometimes calls attention to you that you don’t want. I’d prefer to let sleeping gods lie, you follow?”
“Nope, but keep talking anyway. I’ll understand it all tomorrow after I’ve slept, maybe.”
“Okay. A lot of years ago, Ma created the Cougar race. I told you that. Anyhow, the first generation wasn’t anything to be so proud of. They were the product of a curse, and every male to this day bears some remnant of it, but that’s a story for another time. Anyhow, after a couple of generations, Cougars became something other gods envied. One god in particular, my uncle … ”
She cringed. “Okay. So Cruz has a bigger family than I thought.”
“I wouldn’t count all the low-hanging fruit on my family tree if I were you, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Anyhow, that dude wanted to create his own race of shifters. Unlike Ma, he didn’t have an affinity for a particular animal, so he poured his energy into these beasts that could change their forms on a whim.”
Her eyes went comically round. “To anything?”
“Anything of similar size to grown men, so large cats, wolves, hyenas—they could transform into any of those things and others without having the personalities of those animals. That’s what made them dangerous. Makes, rather. For a long time, they were so quiet that I thought they had finally been killed off, but we learned otherwise last year.”
“Why would them not having animal personalities make them dangerous? Seems the other way around would be the case.”
“Yeah, you’d think so, but the thing about shifters is that the animal part of the brain is supposed to augment the human part, and the human part is supposed to temper the animal part. Whenever you see a Cougar talking to him or herself, they’re probably arguing with their inner beast. Their mind kinda splits apart a bit when they’re not in perfect agreement. Most of the time, they see that as an evolutionary advantage.”
“Okay. Why are they called Los Impostores?”
“Because they had no identity of their own. During their move north after the Spaniards arrived, they used to infiltrate any shifter group they happened upon. They’d raid them, part the women from their men, steal the wealth, leave entire clans broken. Many groups never recovered. Used to be a hell of a lot of jaguar shifters around. I haven’t seen one in probably four hundred years.”
Her eyes went wide. “Oh, that’s awful.”
He’d always pegged her as tenderhearted. He wanted to tweak her nose again, but didn’t think she’d appreciate the gesture. Somehow, he managed to keep his chuckle under wraps, too.
“Awful is the general consensus. Last year, some Impostores showed up here, including my cousin. The gang had been raising hell in town for a while, but I didn’t catch wind of who they were because I was never in close enough proximity. Same was true of Ma. Hannah and Sean lured them back here from Tucson without knowing the history. We knew what they’d try to do, and we were ready for them. Ma trapped them in magic and tossed them through the hellmouth.”
“But they got out? That was who tried to run me over in town? They’re not dead?”
“Nah, you don’t have to be dead to be in hell.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Too much?”
She made a rolling gesture and shook her head hard. “Tito, just keep talking.”
“If you insist.” He shrugged. “Belle told me to tell you everything, so if this goes sideways I’m blaming her. Anyhow, we knew a couple had gotten out because they sent a message through Steven and Belle when they were down there. Nice little threat, too. Seemed that my cousin wanted to pay Ma and me back for flinging him in there, and, you know, just because he’s a pile of shit in general. My uncle knows this, but he’s not really in a healthy mental place, and can’t or won’t do anything about him.”
“So, let me see if I have this straight. That dude is on the loose with his gang. He has a grudge against you and your mother, as well as the entire Cougar glaring. And this is the same dude who … ” Her voice trailed off at the end as she dropped her hand and rolled her tired gaze up to him. “I’m sorry, Tito. I don’t imagine that ever gets any easier to talk about. I don’t know how I’d have behaved if someone had taken Cruz away from me. I don’t know if I would have survived the loss.”
“Truth? I almost didn’t.” He kicked a couple of pebbles between the marker stones. Then a few more, and larger ones after that.
December didn’t say anything.
Sometimes saying nothing at all was kinder than the same old platitudes.
After a couple of minutes of him brooding, she took a seat on a low, flat stone and rested her chin atop her knees.
He didn’t say anything, either. Whenever he talked about his son, even in the most roundabout of ways, his instinct was to run hard and fast and to not care who he left hanging, but he couldn’t keep fleeing. At some point, he was going to have to confront the things that hurt, and probably again and again until he was too numb to hurt anymore. Numbness was the best he could hope for.
He closed his eyes and started to pace. He didn’t need to see to do that. “What’s her birthday, Dee? Cruz’s birthday. I should know.”
“January tenth.”
“January. Good. Not October.” Not like her brother. “Did she … did she have hair when she was born? What color was it?”
“Just a few wisps. They didn’t stick around long enough for me to put a color name to them.”
“What color were her eyes?”
“No color in particular. They were like paint water. Brown and green and grey. Murky, my sister said. I always hated that word.”
“Was she little?”
When she didn’t respond, he opened his eyes.
“I just need to picture her. I need to put that image in my head and not the one that’s always there now.”
“What do you see?”
Death. Drowning.
He wouldn’t say that. He wouldn’t put that smudge in her mind for it to live there the way the memory lived in his. “Was … was she skinny? Was she fat?”
She rocked a couple of beats on the rock and stared at him in the uniquely eloquent way of a true mate. It was the same stare Hannah gave Sean, and that Ellery gave Mason.
Given enough time, the women could see right through them and know exactly what they were. Most stayed, anyway. Tito had wanted more for December, but there she was.
“She was born three weeks early,” she said. “She had twiggy legs and a tiny little chest and I was afraid to hold her, but my sister made me.”
“Alicia was there.” He nodded. Paced.
Alicia was good people. She’d worked at the bar, too. She’d always had one eye on the bikers and another on December when her little sister bussed tables.
“Yeah.” She giggled. “She wouldn’t leave the delivery room, even after the nurse tried to put her out. She said she had a right to be there because no one else was.”
Tito put a hand over h
is burning heart and rubbed. “Are there pictures somewhere?”
“Of course.”
“Can I see them?”
She shrugged. “Friend me on Facebook. Ninety percent of my timeline is pictures of Cruz.”
He worked his phone out of his pocket and paced some more as he failed three times to remember his password. He rarely logged in. Almost everyone in his friend list had the surname “Foye” or was somehow attached to them. He didn’t need to see those bozos online when he bumped into them in town almost every day.
“That’s crazy,” he muttered as he searched for December Farmer from Tucson. “Gotta stalk my mate’s Facebook page for pictures.”
“Your what?”
Fuck. “Ignore me.”
His mate. Another thing that’d require layers of explanation, and he didn’t have the steam left.
Later. Maybe.
“Is this December Farmer with the profile picture of the pitiful Christmas tree you?”
“Yeah. Forgot to change my avatar after the holidays, and when my sister reminded me in March, I figured I’d just leave it. I get fewer messages from dick-pic creepers with the tree pic than I had with a headshot.”
“Keep the tree, then.”
“Okay, thank you. I will.” She gave him a side-eyed glare.
“It was just a suggestion.”
“And I was just suggesting that maybe I’m capable of warding off most random assholes without supervision.”
“Didn’t do such a good job warding me off.”
“I was much younger then.” She wriggled her phone out of her shorts, and then accepted his friend request. “I figured you were harmless, and I’d been having a rough night. Five hours into my shift, and I’d made about twenty bucks in tips. I was worried about being able to pay bills at the end of the month.”
“Did I tip you?”
“I can’t remember. You probably did, or I wouldn’t have left with you when you came back at closing time.”
“Man, that sounds illicit in a way I don’t like. You make me sound like I paid to play. Scoot.” He waved his hands, indicating that she should give him some room on the rock.
She slid over and peered down at his phone screen. He’d started scrolling down her timeline just that quickly, because he was so curious. He wanted to know what she’d been up to in the past five years … not that he really knew what she’d been up to before them.
He grimaced.
“Like I was telling you,” she said. “The bar had a rough crowd that night. Plus, I was lonely, and you seemed nice and approachable.”
“You? Lonely?”
“You don’t think that’s possible?”
“You’re always so sweet. I figured you’d have more friends than you’d know what to do with.”
“Nah.” She leaned the side of her head against his shoulder, and he rubbed her arm with his free hand as he navigated her photo albums, starting with Cruz’s preschool graduation.
He smiled at the graduation caps made of green and white construction paper and Cruz’s checkerboard smile as she held up her diploma.
Should have been there.
He couldn’t erase what had already happened, though. He couldn’t fix the past.
He moved on to an album labeled “Fourth Birthday” next, and took a deep breath. Another event he should have been there to see with his own two eyes.
They were at what looked like a park, and there were just a few kids at the picnic table, staring openmouthed at a frilly pink cake. A couple of adults, with heads cropped from the image, stood behind them, and Cruz was blowing out the candles.
“Just the three?”
“The kids? Yeah. My nieces and nephew. That’s Alicia and her husband behind them. That’s all we ever invite.”
“Why?” he asked softly.
She shrugged and nuzzled her face against his arm. “Because they’re safe. They always show up. They don’t disappoint.”
Oh.
She hadn’t needed to say the words, but the “unlike you” hung between them, anyway.
“Maybe the next one will be bigger,” she said.
“Yeah. I’m sure Ma will see to it.”
He backed out of the birthday album and moved on to the next, visually devouring every picture. Smiling and laughing, and sometimes cringing. The birthdays and holidays didn’t tug at his heartstrings the most, but the candid little moments, like Cruz looking out a window at a rare rain shower, or blowing bubbles, or demonstrating such concentration as she picked a knot out of a Barbie doll’s hair.
Toward the end of the five-year period, he found each album harder to open. He was heading to the penultimate image, and he worried that seeing it, he’d behave the same way he had when he figured out that the child in December’s car was his.
He had to look, though, even if doing so was akin to self-flagellation. He couldn’t be numb all the time.
Something in his chest popped when he finally focused his gaze on the birth gallery. He felt like the tethers holding his heart in place gave way and the organ was sinking toward his upset stomach like a leaden weight.
There weren’t very many pictures, but December had certainly been too preoccupied to be concerned with photography.
She looked tiny in the hospital bed, hooked up to machines. Even with her face pale and bright eyes sunken from probable exhaustion, she was smiling.
“Longest hour of my life,” she said.
“Why?”
“Every time I pushed, it was like taking one step forward and two back. Couldn’t get her down, and her heart rate was doing crazy things. My sister was freaking out. I’d been awake for so long, and I was just delirious. So delirious.”
“She was okay, though? Cruz?”
“Yeah. She finally came down. Had to use forceps on her, which my sister was adamantly opposed to, but the doctor said he either used those or they would start prepping me for surgery. She shut up pretty quick.”
He moved to the next images. Wet, sticky baby on December’s chest. December’s face crumbling. Cruz crying as someone rubbed her back with a blanket.
A dimmer room—much later, obviously—with December asleep. All the monitors and IV lines were gone, and Cruz was in a little bassinet at the bedside. One of her cousins peeked through the clear plastic side at her.
He hadn’t witnessed Eztli’s birth, either, but times had been different then. His wife had sent him away at the first contraction and let her mother and the midwife in. The birth hadn’t been meant for him to see, but at least he’d been around.
“I don’t even know where I was on the day she was born,” he said. “That was just like any other day for me, and there you were, having my baby. I was probably in my damn truck on the way to make a delivery or waiting for the guys in the facility to load up my trailer. I was probably laughing it up like there wasn’t a damn thing I’d rather be doing, and all this time, Ma knew. I bet she was even there at the damn hospital without you knowing.”
December pressed her face against his arm and made a “hmm,” sound. “Could ask her.”
“I don’t want to know now. I’d probably get angry, and I don’t have the right to be. She did what she did because she thought she had to, I guess.”
“People should have choices.”
He wanted to put his arm around her. With the way she was nuzzling him and insinuating herself so close, his urge was to cling and protect—to hover, the same way all the Cougar men did when they thought their mates weren’t watching. They were almost always okay. They didn’t need their help. If anything, the men just made even more work for them to do. The ladies got shit done in spite of them. They were the shoulders the weight of the glaring was carried on. Cougar women had a reputation for brashness, but Ma had known what she was doing when she’d cursed the first men so many centuries ago. They had to be bold so that men would listen. In the place where they came from, women were silent vessels, but Ma had given her Cougars agency.
“
Yeah,” he said. “Choice. But, listen, I don’t know if I could have been any good to you then. I like to say I would have shown up at the hospital if she’d told me, but I’m afraid that’s not true. Seeing the event unfurl through pictures is easier. That’s all in the past. I can look at Cruz and see how little she was and not be so fucking scared she wouldn’t survive the night. That was my existence all those hundreds of years ago. Every time I looked at my son in those early days, I worried each day would be the last one. I didn’t stop thinking that until he was three or four. I thought all the worst was behind him and that he’d only get stronger from there, you know?”
She nodded against his arm and wrapped both of hers around him. “There’s so much less of you to do this with,” she whispered.
He kissed the top of her head and pulled in a deep inhalation through his nose. She smelled like the same hair conditioner she had almost six years ago. He didn’t think he’d ever forget that green apple scent.
“I’ve been avoiding the apples,” he said, chuckling.
“What?”
“In grocery stores. I just realized that every time I walk through a produce section, I stay away from the apples because that’s what you smell like.”
“Oh.” She groaned. “Two-dollar conditioner. I changed products for a while. Cruz liked the old ones better. They were cheaper, anyway.”
“The smell is imprinted on me. Made an association in my mind. I’ll never be able to smell that or see apples without thinking about you and wondering where you are.”
“I’m always pretty easy to find. I haven’t gone anywhere except Tucson since the last time you saw me.”
He forced down a swallow. If he had everything to do over, he wouldn’t have left because in the end, it hadn’t mattered. He had another human to worry about, and a child who wasn’t exactly human, but who he’d worry about, anyway. “Not what I mean.”
If he had been a true Cougar like the rest of the men in the glaring, he might have tried to transfer his scent to her to mark her as his and to ward off any contenders, but that was unnecessary. He didn’t have much in the way of magic. Unlike Ma, he didn’t automatically know when the people who belonged to him were nearby, but he could forge connections—the same kind he had with Ma whenever he got mad enough and loud enough. She could hear him seeking her. He could draw a line between himself and December in the same way, but they’d need to trade something first—consent. She needed to agree to receive what he offered, and there was a good chance she wouldn’t want it. There was a chance that she wouldn’t want him when she grasped the magnitude of what it meant to be a demigod’s mate.