A low roar echoed throughout the forest. In it, I heard here here here come come to me come to me.
Gavin sagged. “I know. I know.” He raised his head toward the sky. “I can’t breathe. Crushing. I can’t stop. I can’t stop, Carter. Please help me stop.” He stood slowly and nodded. “You promise? You won’t leave me?”
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. My throat was closed.
“Okay,” he said. And, “It’s secret. You. This you. My ghost. You’re not real. Sleeping you is real. I think. Saying words. Always saying words. Gavin, Gavin, Gavin, that’s all you say. Skinny. Beard and skinny you is real and you never stop talking.?
??
My face was wet. I told myself it was because of the snow.
I heard the familiar grind of muscle and bone and he was away, heading deeper into the woods.
I waited until the sounds of his footfalls faded.
All that remained was my thunderous heart in my ears.
I found the courage to leave the safety of my hiding place. I stepped around the tree.
The snow was trampled where he’d been crouched, and for a moment I almost convinced myself there was a second set of footprints, that he’d been talking to someone who’d actually been there.
There wasn’t.
“You know what this is,” Kelly said suddenly. I looked over at him. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and I didn’t want him to catch a cold again. I thought he’d been dying. Even though he was a wolf now, I worried. I tried to hand him my coat, but he just laughed at me. “You know what this means. He sees you even when you’re not there. Like I’m not really here. It’s how you hold on, the both of you. You try so hard. You always have. It’s one of the things I love most about you.”
“A tether,” I whispered.
Kelly nodded. “I think so. Weird, right? You two are the same. Even with everything that separates you. Holding on to that last thread even though the truth is right in front of you. It can’t last, Carter. It won’t. Something has to give.”
There was a hole in the base of the tree. It looked like an old den for a small animal. Dead leaves and grass littered the inside. I leaned over and reached in, steeling myself in case the hole wasn’t empty and I was about to get bitten.
I didn’t.
I touched the leaves.
The grass.
And then I felt it.
A thin, stiff piece of… plastic? It was—
I pulled it out.
Three smiling boys stared up at me from the photograph.
Joe said, “Mom wants a picture.”
Kelly groaned. “What? Another one? Why?”
Joe shrugged. “It’s my first day of high school. And the first day of your senior year. And Carter’s leaving tomorrow to go back to Eugene.”
I said, “I can’t wait. Get the hell out of this town.”
Joe rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I bet. That’s why you come home almost every single weekend.”
I put him in a headlock. He laughed as he tried to get away from me. Kelly watched us, smiling. “Gotta keep you in check. Make sure the whole Daddy-said-I’m-going-to-be-an-Alpha thing isn’t going to your head.”
“It’s not. I don’t care about that.”