This moment when I knew nothing would ever be the same.
I looked at the computer monitor on the desk.
I saw a version of myself staring back, one I didn’t recognize. This Carter had dead eyes and black circles underneath them. This Carter had lost weight, his cheekbones more pronounced. This Carter had bloodless skin. This Carter knew what it meant to lose something so precious and yet was about to make things worse. This Carter had taken hit after hit after hit, and for what?
This Carter was a stranger.
And yet he was me.
My hand shook as I settled it on the mouse, knowing if I didn’t do this now, I would never do it.
And that’s the point, my father whispered. You are a wolf, but you’re still human. You give all you can, and yet you still bleed. Why would you make it worse? Why would you do this to yourself? To your pack? To him?
Him.
Because it always came back to him.
I thought it always would.
Which is why when I hit the little icon on the screen to start recording, his name was the first thing from my lips.
“Kelly, I….”
And oh, the things I could say. The sheer magnitude of everything he was to me. My mother told me when I was young that I would never forget my first love. That even when all seemed dark, when all was lost, there would be the little pulsing light of memory stored deeply away.
She’d been talking about a faceless girl.
Or boy.
She hadn’t known that I’d already met my first love.
My throat was raw.
I was so very tired.
“I love you more than anything in this world. Please remember that. I know this is going to hurt, and I’m sorry. But I have to do this.”
I looked away, unable to watch this broken man speak any more than I had to.
“You see, there was this boy. And he’s the best thing that ever happened to me. He gave me the courage to stand for what I believe in, to fight for those I care about. He taught me the strength of love and brotherhood. He made me a better person.”
I tried to smile to let him know I was okay. It stretched wide on my face, foreign and harsh, before it cracked and broke.
“You, Kelly,” I said hoarsely. “Always you. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
I looked out the window. There was frost on the glass. Snow was beginning to fall. “You’re my first memory. Mom was holding you, and I wanted to take you for myself, hide you away so no one would hurt you.” It was fuzzy, the edges frayed like it’d been nothing but a dream. My mother was wearing sweats, her face free of makeup. Her skin looked soft and glowing. She was speaking quietly, but her words were lost to me, a quiet murmur that disappeared at the sight of who she held.
A tiny hand reached up, the fingers opening and closing.
And there, in the recesses of my mind, I heard her speak four words that changed everything about who I was.
She said, “Look. He knows you.”
I didn’t understand then the earthquake this caused within me.
I poked his fat little cheek, marveling at the way his skin dimpled.
He blinked up at me, eyes bright and blue, blue, blue.