I could feel it building, just like it had with Tanner, Chris, and Rico. The need to bind him to us. To make him a part of who we were. It didn’t happen right away, because he’d come in a stranger at a time when trust wasn’t given out very easily. I’d known the guys from the shop for years. They were my friends.
He wasn’t.
Not at first.
But he was becoming… something.
I knew we all felt it. But we never talked about it.
So he was there too, when Jessie came. She didn’t sound surprised to see me. I hadn’t seen her for any length of time since the funeral when her hand had been on mine. We saw each other in passing, maybe in traffic or at the grocery store, but I was rarely ever alone anymore, always someone from the pack with me.
There wasn’t time for her.
Not that there had been before, either.
It was one of the reasons we had ended up the way we had.
But even if it hadn’t been that, it would have been Joe. Eventually, everything would have led to Joe. I was thankful, for the most part, that we’d parted when we had. It made things easier.
So when she said, “Hey, Ox,” I was able to smile at her. I remembered the little flutter in my heart and stomach that I used to get at the sight of her, especially that day she’d come into the shop the first time, mother dead, following her brother to a small town in the middle of nowhere. It seemed like that belonged to somebody else’s life.
“Hey, Jessie,” I said, and she stepped over, not really caring that my hands were dirty when she pulled me into a hug.
I ignored the warning growl that came from behind me. I figured it was too low for Jessie to hear it, but even if she had, she wouldn’t have understood the territorial growl of a wolf. Robbie didn’t know Jessie, and Robbie was closer to us then he’d ever been before. Not quite pack, but I didn’t think it’d be too much longer. If he wanted. If we all did.
“It’s good to see you,” she said, pulling back.
To make things easier, I stepped away. I remembered how Carter, Kelly, and Joe had acted at her familiarity. I didn’t want there to be any trouble.
I glanced over my shoulder and shot a glare at Robbie, who had the decency to look sheepish—and confused, like he didn’t know why he’d growled in the first place.
“You too,” I said when I turned back to Jessie. “What brings you in?”
“Lunch with Chris,” she said, holding up a fast-food bag. “Figured I’d stop by. Haven’t been here in a while. The place is looking good.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Chris is on the phone in the office. He’ll be out in a little while. Rico and Tanner are picking up some parts.”
She nodded, glancing over my shoulder. “Don’t think we’ve met,” she said to Robbie. “I’m Jessie. Chris’s sister.”
“Hi,” Robbie said. And that was it.
I barely stopped myself from rolling my eyes. Fucking werewolves.
“Hi,” Jessie said, not even bothering to hide her smile. She looked back at me. “He’ll fit right in here.”
I didn’t know if that was an insult or not, so I just nodded.
“How have you been?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Okay.” I knew what she was really asking, the part she was leaving off, the how have you been since your mother died. That was fine, though. She didn’t pity me. And I didn’t want her to.
Something in her eyes softened. “That’s good,” she said. “I know that it was… sudden.”
There was a flare of pain in my chest, a swelling black thing at just how sudden it was. It was dark and oily, with little thoughts of it was the fault of the werewolves and if they’d told me what was going on, I could have saved her and they kept secrets from me like it was nothing and look how everything happened. These were the thoughts I had sometimes when I was by myself in bed, unable to sleep, the clock slipping past three in the morning.
She didn’t know that, though. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have followed it up with “And how’s Joe? I know he went to a private school for his last year. He has to be getting ready for college, right?”
That was the cover we’d given. The grief at the death of his father had been too much for him to stay in Green Creek. He wanted out. So he went back to Maine. Carter and Kelly went out of state, vaguely east. No one seemed to question anything about Gordo. Not really.
In reality, we didn’t know where they were. No one had heard from any of them since they’d apparently cut off all communication. Carter, Kelly, and Gordo had ditched their phones too.
Robbie had said no one back East knew anything more. No one had seen them. No one had heard from them.
Elizabeth said all things happened for a reason. That we needed to trust that they knew what they were doing.
Mark was quiet on the matter.
I thought it was bullshit. I’d never felt anger toward Joe before, not really, not something that could plant roots into my skin and bones and grow into something else. But it was happening now. I thought maybe the growth was poisonous, because there were times that I told myself he’d abandoned us, that he’d only been thinking about himself and his selfish desire for revenge. That it was unfair, to me, to his brothers, to the rest of his pack. That he was putting himself in harm’s way for nothing. And apparently we’d been too much of a distraction to maintain contact with.
That’s what I told myself.
True or not, I didn’t think it mattered.
“Yeah,” I said. “College, and all that.” It almost sounded believable.
She squinted at me. “You guys still….”
I shrugged. I didn’t know how to answer that. Were we still… what.
Those were the other little thoughts I had. The ones that said I was nothing to him. That he didn’t just leave us, he left me. That other things mattered more than I did. That he was just a kid and didn’t know what he wanted.
Sure, my father was wrong most of the time, but he’d said I was gonna get shit.
And Joe was giving me shit.
“Huh,” Jessie said. “I always thought it was kind of a done deal.”
“Things change,” I said, forcing a smile. “We’ll see what happens when he comes back.”
If he comes back at all, that little voice said.
She reached out and took my hand in hers, squeezing my fingers gently. “He’ll come back,” she said, like she knew what I was thinking. And maybe she did. There was a time when we knew each other well. “You know that, Ox.”
Robbie growled again, fits and starts, like a motor trying to catch.
“Yeah,” I said. Because it was easier to agree than to argue with her about things she didn’t understand.
“We should get together sometime,” she said. “If you’re free.”
“I think I can—”
“We have that thing, Ox,” Robbie said.
“What thing?” I asked, trying to find my last bit of patience.
“That thing,” he insisted. “That will take up a lot of your time.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“You won’t be free. For a while.”
“Is he a Bennett?” Jessie asked, sounding amused. “Because he sounds like a Bennett.”