Dark Child (Wild Men 5)

That makes me snicker. Totally inappropriate, and not muffled enough.

God. Just nerves.

Merc takes a deep breath. “He came after me, and I went back into the stream. I crossed it and ran. I did run, you see. In the end, I did.”

A silence falls on the room after this last bit.

Eventually, I say, “Did you see who the man was?”

He hesitates. “No.” His muscles tense, his arm tightens around me. “I couldn’t see his face.”

I don’t move, don’t say a thing.

One thing is for sure. Merc has told the truth about what he remembers all along. He believes everything he’s told us is true—apart from this last thing.

Right now, he’s lying.

But why?

Nobody else seems to notice, though, nobody comments, and the matter ends there.

Making me wonder if I imagined it, if I imagined the tensing in his body, the uncertain tone of his voice as he delivered that last line, the denial.

The family disbands afterward, going home to their beds. Nothing more to do at this point except wait for the police to finish their search and tell Matt what’s what.

JC makes an appearance after the family has gone to ask how Merc is, if he needs anything. He seems distracted, and I have to keep reminding myself he knows nothing of the latest developments. I wonder if Merc will tell him.

Before I give him a reply, he leaves once more, and I crawl into bed with Merc, exhausted, prepared for a sleepless night.

However, I sleep like the dead, not waking up all night, not even for the obligatory pee break. How did he fail to wake me up with his nightmares?

The mystery is solved when I wake up in a Merc-less bed to the sound of my phone ringing. I pat his side of the mattress and find it ice-cold.

When did he get up?

Locating my phone, I hit answer only to find out I landed a job interview in the midst of this mess. I’d forgotten I applied for it, with everything happening. And though I couldn’t care less about that right now, it’s a job I could see myself doing, and it would mean…

It’d mean I’ve really moved here, seriously, properly, to this town.

Into this man’s life.

Merc.

I used to have a teacher at school who kept telling us that if we smiled too much we’d get wrinkles. Well, I’ve been smiling so much since I met Merc I’ll probably look like a raisin a few years down the line.

I picture his face when I impart this tidbit with him later on and end up laughing to myself. Because he’d get it. He’d laugh with me, not at me.

This boy…

JC is in the kitchen, cooking something that vaguely resembles a pancake—if pancakes are dark brown, irregular and give off black smoke.

“Hey… morning. Have you seen Merc?”

He nods at me, then frowns at the brown lump in the pan. “I’m trying to make pancakes. Merc showed me how. But it’s not until you try to do something yourself that you realize how hard it is, have you noticed that?”

I give him a long look and decide this beginning to the day doesn’t seem promising. “Merc,” I repeat. “Have you seen him? He was real sick yesterday.”

Among other things.