The Wolf at Bay (Big Bad Wolf)

by Charlie Adhara

  Cooper laughed. “No, not at all. In fact, that’ll probably just set him off on a lecture about follow-through and commitment. Why’d you stop?”

  “I got cut. I was terrible.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” Park tilted his head. “Why do you look so happy about that?”

  “Do I? No.” Cooper tried to school his expression, but Park squinted at him suspiciously, and eventually a grin broke free again. He snagged the front of Park’s shirt and twisted it in his fingers, suddenly unable to resist touching him. “I guess it’s just nice to know you’re not perfect at everything.”

  Park seemed to think that over, perhaps looking for hidden digs or sarcasm. Eventually, almost tentatively, he said, “Well, I was really, embarrassingly bad. Can’t dribble for shit.”

  Cooper tugged Park still closer and slid his free hand around Park’s waist. “Go on.”

  “When my hands are above my head, I’m all thumbs. Can’t catch a thing.”

  “Mmm.” Cooper pressed their bodies together and inhaled the curve of Park’s neck to his shoulder.

  “I never once made a free throw.”

  “Oh baby, the things you say,” Cooper groaned.

  Park laughed, a deep rumbling in his chest. The sound loosened the pulsing knot in Cooper’s chest that had been there since last night.

  He pressed a quick kiss to Park’s clavicle and pulled back. “Seriously, though. It will be horrible and boring and a complete waste of your free weekend, but do you want to come meet my family?”

  “It would be my honor and pleasure,” Park said.

  Cooper snorted. “You’ve never been more wrong.”

  * * *

  In the car, the tension of before seemed mostly forgotten or put aside, and Cooper was relieved. Park didn’t hold grudges or sulk. For Cooper, who said the wrong thing all the time, a seemingly endless supply of fresh starts was helpful. If this was a new beginning, he’d take it.

  He was happy and grateful to move on, to joke and talk with Park about nothing in particular as they drove into Maryland and made their way to Jagger Valley. In fact, Park seemed even more chipper than usual. It was a good sign that Cooper had made the right choice in asking him to come.

  As they got closer to town, Cooper talked less and less. It had been months since he’d been back here, and he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d arrived as a passenger, free to soak in the scenery as they passed by. His old elementary school, the smell of the Chesapeake Bay permeating even the closed car, signs in several yards telling him to “Vote Bell,” all bringing back memories, few of them good.

  His dad had been sheriff or working for the sheriff’s department of this county for most of Cooper’s life. Dean had joined the same department right out of school. Cooper was supposed to do the same. The Dayton boys keeping the county safe. That was the plan.

  Except Cooper hadn’t come back after school. He had gone straight on into his masters for criminology, and from there to Quantico. That had been Cooper’s plan, ever since the summer before freshman year of high school. To get out of Jagger Valley and stay out. He just never quite got around to telling his dad and Dean. The more time he spent away, the easier it was not to talk. That was true for a lot of things.

  He fidgeted.

  “How long has it been?” Park asked.

  “January.” He could feel Park’s surprise. After all, DC was only an hour away. “My last visit wasn’t exactly a big success.”

  “What happened?”

  Cooper snorted. “Nothing happened. Nothing ever happens here. It was just...”

  Freezing his ass off as his father dragged him and Dean on hikes through the woods. Guts still recovering from surgery and unable to eat the same food or the same amounts as his family but unwilling to admit it. Trying to anyway and then vomiting it all up whenever he could get a moment alone. Getting asked incessant questions about his new job transfer to the Bureau of Special Investigations. Getting asked when he was going to get sick of stuffy offices and city life and come home and do some real work. Getting asked when he was planning to meet someone. Settle down. Didn’t he know Ed had been married to his high school sweetheart with two kids by his age? Didn’t he want to be happy?

  Cooper was supposed to spend the whole weekend. Instead he had left the first night.

  “It was just bad timing.”

  Park looked at him curiously, and Cooper hesitated. This wasn’t the usual stuff they talked about—family, the past. But if he wanted this to be a relationship, he supposed that included a bit of opening up and sharing thoughts deeper than their typical conversation of whether the book or movie version was better.

  “I had just broken up with someone,” Cooper said finally. And then after a moment, he braved it and added, “I had just gotten dumped on my ass, actually. He’d signed on to date an FBI agent, apparently, and wasn’t that impressed with my new can’t-talk-about-it job.”

  Ryan had also said Cooper had turned into an angry, paranoid, jumpy lunatic two steps away from building a bunker, but there was a limit to this sharing thing. It hadn’t been easy discovering a whole new world of werewolves living amongst “regular people” and, though he hadn’t realized it at the time, the adjustment wasn’t helped by his new partner and mentor feeding him lies about how violent and unstable said werewolves were.

  Cooper snorted. Unstable. Park was the most balanced and solid person he knew. Jefferson was serving life in a padded cell, and in Cooper’s opinion, the pads were more than he deserved.

  “I’m sorry,” Park said.

  “I’m not. He wasn’t...” You. “It really wasn’t a big deal. But being here right after wasn’t great.”

  “Because you’re not out to your family?”

  “Amongst other things,” Cooper said vaguely. “Look, about that, though. I probably should have said something before, but is that going to be a problem with you? Because I didn’t plan on changing that this weekend.”

  Probably. He was always coming close and then bailing once he actually got there.

  “It’s nobody’s decision but yours,” Park said easily. “I can respect that.”

  “Right. Thanks. Obviously I’m not asking you to lie about yourself. I’m just... I don’t know if this is the right time. For me.”

  It wasn’t that he was ashamed of being gay, or even the sort to avoid a fight if that’s what it would come to. But that didn’t automatically mean coming out to his family was the best decision for him. There had been a period of Cooper’s life where people he loved just seemed to disappear one after the other, and despite whatever Park thought, Cooper did in fact have a self-protective instinct. So in middle school when he had first started to recognize his feelings about boys for what they were, he had flinched away from the risk of losing anyone else from his life. Then, after that, all he’d cared about was getting away from Jagger Valley and living his own life far away from the people there. It hadn’t seemed important whether he was out or not back in this tiny town that he didn’t even plan on coming back to. He didn’t owe them anything. They didn’t deserve to know.

  By the time it did seem like it might be important, he was out of school and a real adult with plenty of relationships behind him. The sheer amount of time that had gone by, not to mention the number of things he was already lying to his dad and Dean about, made the whole thing seem daunting. It was just easier to put off until later. And the less he came back the easier it was.

  Ed was a hard man. Hard to please, hard to live with and, in a way, hard to love. But he was Cooper’s dad. He had raised two little boys on his own after the love of his life had died at thirty-two. He had done his best, and god knew it wasn’t always great, but the thought of maybe losing him and Dean now after all these years, of losing the last connections Cooper had to his mom...it just made him lock himself down deeper
as they turned onto his old street.

  “It’s this one right up here.” He pointed to the neat little white-and-brick house on the corner. Park pulled into the short driveway and cut the engine. Cooper stared at the house without really seeing it. He hadn’t lived here in seventeen years, got annoyed with his dad when he referred to it as Cooper’s home, and yet somehow it still was.

  In school, he’d learned that the human eye doesn’t bother much with details. It picks up edges, differences, cues that the brain uses to fill in the rest with memory and reason. That’s why people could read whole sentences with the middles of each word muddled up. That’s why Cooper could look at nothing but the wind chimes by the front door—bright red glass cardinals; his mother had loved birds—and could see the whole house. The small front yard his father still mowed every Sunday, the hall bench Cooper had spent his time-outs on while staring up at his father’s sheriff’s hat on a hook above his head, the wood floors polished and white walls kept immaculate except for the small patch of butter yellow in the back room that his mother had painted to test out the color but never had time to finish and Ed had never painted over.

  “All right?”

  Cooper looked at Park, momentarily surprised he was there. This was a difference. There had been no Park the last time he had come home.

  “Yeah, course. The question is, are you ready?” Cooper teased.

  A strange expression passed Park’s face that Cooper couldn’t quite identify before it was gone and Park nodded. If Cooper didn’t know better, he’d say it was nerves, but Park didn’t get nervous. Cooper had seen him take down wolves whose claws and fangs were fully out with a relaxed smile on his face the whole time. Hell, he’d seen him remove Boogie from his spot on the couch without blinking an eye. Not a task for the weak of heart or skin. Cooper must just be projecting.

  “Then let’s do this.” He opened the door and hopped out. “Just, if things get to be too much around here, remember your safe word.”

  Park smiled and followed him toward the front door. “Right. What was it again?”

  “‘Safe word.’”

  “Ah. Nice, easy, and just a little bit subversive.”

  “My yearbook quote.”

  “What, easy or—”

  A roar shook the house. Cooper reached for his gun, spinning off the front step toward the sound, before remembering he wasn’t carrying, not even his Taser. The scars on his belly pulled sickly and the roar carried on, longer than it should. Cooper shook his head. Were his ears ringing? Or was that...

  A mini excavator rounded the corner of the house and paused, rumbling in the driveway. A small version of those big diggers—though still about seven feet tall—used to tear up ground or knock down houses. It was so unexpected, Cooper had to resist looking back at the house to check that they hadn’t wandered into a different yard.

  The long, toothy arm moved up and down jerkily, like a wave.

  “What do you think, Coop?” His dad’s voice, clearly shouting but hardly understandable over the roar of the machine, was coming from the metal-and-glass control booth.

  Cooper just shook his head, not bothering to try being heard, not that he knew what to say. He looked back at Park still standing on the step, looking quietly amused with just a touch of that mysterious something else. Park met his eyes and raised an eyebrow.

  The roar abruptly cut off and his dad clambered down. Ed Dayton was one of those people who had settled into a certain look early and stuck with it. His gray hair was short and no-nonsense while his thick gray mustache distracted from the deep lines around his mouth. His face was tan bordering on leathery, and besides a soft gut he was fairly fit, with big shoulders and chest, much stockier than Cooper, who took after his mother in stature. Ed had looked this way as long as Cooper could remember, which had made him seem old and worn for a forty-year-old but pretty damn good now for a retired man in his mid-sixties.

  He certainly seemed energetic and happy as he strode toward Cooper and slapped him hard on the shoulder three times. The scratches there screamed. Ed frowned at his flinch and then slapped him once more in the same spot. “You’re late, kid.”

  Cooper suppressed a sigh. He’d only told his father he’d be coming straight here a couple of hours ago, had purposefully avoided giving an ETA, and was still somehow late. The miracles of family.

  Park, giving them space from the front step, finally approached. His stride was typically silent, but Cooper could tell he was getting closer by the way Ed’s eyes widened, the color a familiar faded brown and green, the same as his own.

  “Dad, this is Park. Oliver Park. My partner. At work. The BSI.” Cooper bit his tongue. Any more clarifications and he’d need to supply his father with an index. “Oliver, my dad, Sheriff Ed Dayton.”

  “Just plain old Ed now.”

  “Sir, good to meet you.” Park looked uncharacteristically intense, almost a little grim as Ed shook his hand with his usual firm, one-two pump, then went all out and gripped his shoulder with his left hand.

  “Whoa, big guy, huh?”

  “Depends who’s asking,” Park deadpanned, and Ed brayed his startlingly loud laugh that always sounded a little off, like he’d read how to do it somewhere.

  “Ha! Ha. Ha. True. Still, I bet you can teach Coop a thing or two on the bench.”

  “What?” Cooper said.

  “Well, he didn’t get shoulders like this from lifting textbooks and filing papers, did he?”

  No, just from running around on his arms. Cooper bit his tongue again. At this rate he wouldn’t have any taste buds left by dinner. Of course, if his dad was cooking, that was a good thing.

  “Well?” Ed finally stopped groping Park and turned back to Cooper. “Isn’t she something?” He gestured proudly at the excavator like he’d built the thing himself.

  “You didn’t buy this, did you?”

  “Nah, Ramon’s lending her to me. For the weekend.”

  “For the party?” Cooper asked.

  Ed gave him a hard look. “For yard work, Cooper. With this we can finally make some progress.”

  “On what, the moat?”

  Cooper expected another unamused look, but his father turned abruptly away and started quizzing Park on, of course, his ball-playing history, and avoided Cooper’s eyes.

  Cooper frowned. He drifted away while Park and Ed talked basketball, following the deep muddy grooves around the house toward where the excavator had come from, an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach.

  “Coop, wait,” his father called, but it was too late. He rounded the corner into the backyard.

  It was not immediately obvious what was going on, though it should have been. Half of the yard was the same. Same neat little patio, furniture and grill nestled against the big back windows, overlooking the field—town-owned open space that their yard and several of the other neighbors’ backed up on—and beyond that, the forest, looming pine trees casting grim shadows across the field, hiding the flooded patches between the weeds.

  The other half of the yard, the side he always avoided looking at, was a mess. His dad’s ancient tools were propped up against the tiny garden shed that separated their yard from the Hardwicks’ next door. Tire tracks and gaping holes scarred the grass like a brutal attack. In the center of the activity stood the familiar crumbling skeletal structure circled by lavender bushes, though all the flowers were dead and gone by now.

  “You’re tearing down the gazebo.”

  “Coop.” Ed sighed like this was the end of a long and ongoing argument and not a total shock. Nothing had changed about this house in twenty-five years, and now that it was he was starting with this? “It’s falling apart, the beams are rotted. It won’t survive another winter.”

  “It’s always been like that.” Cooper’s voice sounded dazed even to his own ears. Park moved to stand quietly beside him. Cooper cou
ld feel him watching him intently. He cleared his throat. “Why now?”

  “Your brother’s getting married. There’s gonna be kids running around here. Sophie’s daughter Cayla and who knows, maybe more soon. Maybe you’ll finally come home and start a family, eh? This house needs kids growing up in it again.”

  Cooper grimaced, both at the thought of living in this house again and his dad talking like that with Park right there. “But—”

  Ed cut him off. “What do you say, Oliver? Bet you didn’t expect to be put to work this weekend.”

  “I’ve learned to expect the unexpected with Cooper,” Park said lightly.

  Did that sound...overfamiliar? Cooper shifted a little away from him, and then, annoyed at himself, shifted back until they were practically touching.

  Ed didn’t seem to notice anything. He was laughing. “Yeah, Coop never could go about things the way he was supposed to.”

  Park and Ed laughed together at that. Irritated, Cooper took a firm step away from both of them, irrationally annoyed they were already getting along better than Cooper and his father did.

  Ed said, “Know anything about demolition, Oliver?”

  “Park was an English professor,” Cooper said. His dad and Park both looked at him, surprised. “Before the Tru—before the BSI, obviously. More deconstructing tropes than buildings.”

  Park narrowed his eyes slightly, like Cooper was a suspect who had just let slip a clue and he wasn’t entirely sure where it would lead yet. “That’s true,” Park said, slowly. “My brother is in construction, though.”

  Ed slapped Park’s arm again like that was exactly what he’d been hoping to hear. “Attaboy. Come take a look at these blocks around the base and let me know what you think.”

  As they discussed the teardown that was to take place tomorrow morning, Cooper was surprised by how angry he felt, especially considering he hated looking at the gazebo.

  Mom’s gazebo.

  He never went near it after she died. And he wasn’t the only one. Even now, as Ed crouched to show Park the concrete blocks at the bottom, he stayed a careful distance away from it and never once stepped inside. None of them ever did. His mom used to sit there for hours, reading or watching the birdhouse or just gazing out at the field while Cooper and Dean and all the neighbor kids played.