“Carter.”
“Right. Sorry. Um. Okay. I hated it for a little while. But then I just… didn’t. It became part of me. I would say you became part of me. A constant. And I didn’t know what I had until it was gone. I’m sorry that I didn’t see you for what you were. I’m sorry that I took you for granted. I’m sorry that I let you go. And I know you don’t want me here, and I know you said you didn’t want me, didn’t want our pack, but maybe… maybe you could see me. Because I see you now. I see you, and I don’t know if I ever want to see anyone else. I slept better when you were curled around me. I dreamed that we were running, just you and me. I want to know everything. Where you came from. What you’re like. What makes you happy. What you thought about when you saw me for the first time, if you could even think at all. Why did you stay with me for as long as you did? And then I would say hey, and hi, and hello, Gavin, hello. My name is Carter. And I think you’re my….” I couldn’t finish.
“Penis and all?”
“I’m pretty sure I can figure that part out. I’m a quick learner.”
He laughed until he cried. “That sounds pretty good.”
I closed my eyes.
He said, “The burner phone in your bag. All it would take is a phone call and this could be over. You know I would pick up. You could hear my voice, and I would yell and scream at you and demand to know where you were. I’d tell you to stay right there, that we were coming for you because I would never let you go. Do you know how easy it would be? Carter… do it. Please. For me. For your pack. For yourself.”
“I can’t.”
“You can,” he snapped, and I flinched. “Why are you doing this to yourself? Didn’t you trust us? Didn’t you trust me? We would have helped you with anything. With everything. We were moving heaven and earth to find him. To bring him back to you.”
“Were you? Or were you looking for Robert Livingstone?”
“That’s not fair.”
I tilted my head back against the window. “Do you ever think what it would be like? If we weren’t who we are. If we weren’t Bennetts.”
“Who would we be?”
I shrugged. “Anyone. No one. People wouldn’t look to us to sacrifice everything we have. We give them our blood, our lives, and it’s never enough. They always want more. And it never ends. Joe is a king, like our father. Mom is a queen. In Caswell, after everything was done and they were starting to rebuild, they
looked to Joe to fix them. To fix it all. And since I was his second, they looked to me too. They called me a prince. I hated it.”
“They need hope,” Kelly said quietly. “That’s what they see in us. That’s why they need us. To fight for them.”
“Maybe they should learn to fight for themselves.”
When I opened my eyes again, Kelly was gone.
The cab of the truck was cold.
I tugged my jacket tighter around me and slept.
My dreams were green, green, green, and I was running through the trees, my paws digging into the earth. Around me, my pack sang their wolfsong, and I was home.
THE FULL MOON IN NOVEMBER fell on a Friday.
Kelly was with me most days. He would stay for hours. Sometimes he wouldn’t speak. Other times he would tell me stories that I already knew, stories about our father, our mother. About Joe and Ox. Gordo and Mark. Chris and Tanner and Rico and Jessie. It was like he was plucking memories from my head and laying them out bare. For all I knew, he was. He was a ghost, but he was part of me. A projection.
I looked in the rearview mirror a lot, not recognizing the stranger staring back at me. He was thin, his cheekbones pronounced under a scraggly beard, circles under his eyes like bruises. I flashed my eyes at him.
He flashed his back.
Blue.
Then orange.
Blue.
Then orange.
Sometimes I dreamed in violet, of a locked door where something heavy scratched on the other side. It whispered let me in let me in i promise it will be easy i promise it won’t hurt i promise you won’t regret it just let me in let me let me let me in.