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 bleachers 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.