Kelly made a wounded noise, leaning forward, pressing his forehead against the frosted glass. “Jesus Christ.”
“I healed.”
“You healed,” he spat. “Oh, thank god for that.”
“I had to, Kelly. I had to help him. I don’t know what Livingstone was doing, but he was hurting Gavin. It was like he was feeding off him somehow.”
“How long have you been here?”
I didn’t know. “What day is it?”
Kelly said, “Thursday.”
“The date.”
I could hear him grinding his teeth. “December 9.”
Fuck. I didn’t know so much time had passed. “A few weeks, then.”
He smelled like he was burning. “And you didn’t think to get a hold of us? To let us know you’d found him? To even give us some idea you were still alive?”
“Phone broke.”
“Oh,” he said, and it was mocking. “Burner, right? Because you left your other phone in your room. Wanna know how I know that? Because I called it. After watching your fucking video, after screaming for you outside the house, I called it. I should have known. I really should have. It would have been too easy to track you otherwise. But when I heard it ringing from in the house, I almost let myself believe you were still there. That even though I couldn’t hear you, you were in the house and you were going to pick up the phone.”
“I….”
“But you didn’t,” he said. “Because you were already gone. Like we hadn’t just spent a year trying to get Robbie back. Like you hadn’t witnessed just how much that destroyed me. No. Of course not. Because you got it in your head that you needed to go chasing after Gavin like he was the only thing that mattered.”
“I didn’t—”
He spun around. His eyes were orange. The thread between us, familiar and foreign all at the same time, thrummed as if plucked. “You want me to yell at you? You want me to scream at you? Fine. You asked for it. How could you? After everything we’ve been through, after everything that has been taken away from us, how the fuck could you?” He stalked over to me. I reached for him, but he knocked my hands away. His voice rose. “I asked you to trust me. I begged you to listen to me. That we would do all that we could to find him. That I wouldn’t let this go. I wouldn’t let him go. I told you to hold on to me as tightly as you could. And you walked away like it was nothing.”
“No. No, it wasn’t like that, it wasn’t like that—”
“You didn’t trust me enough,” he said coldly. “You didn’t believe me when I said I’d do anything to help you.”
“You don’t understand.”
He laughed bitterly. “I don’t understand? That’s what you’re going with? Fuck you, Carter. I understood better than anyone. Robbie was taken from us. Taken from me. For thirteen months, I did all I could to get him back. And even when half the pack was against it or, even worse, apathetic about it, I fought for him.”
I couldn’t look at him. I struggled to find the words. I said, “You weren’t alone. Gordo, Ox. They—”
“I don’t care!” he shouted at me. “Even if I was, I still would have done everything I could. I was never going to let him go. He’s my fucking mate, and I would have torn this world apart to get to him, even if I had to do it by myself. And don’t you dare try and say that’s what you were doing here because it’s not the same. You had your entire pack willing to help you, to do anything we could to get Gavin back. But you decided to play martyr. Like Dad. Like Ox. Like Joe. Jesus Christ, you were supposed to be better. You were supposed to—”
I stood. His chest bumped into mine. He didn’t look away. He wasn’t scared of me. He wasn’t intimidated. “You don’t know what I’ve been through.”
“Damn right I don’t,” he snarled. He shoved me, and I took a stumbling step back. “Because you got it into that fucking thick skull of yours that you had to do this on your own. Let me guess. You convinced yourself that it was better this way. Easier. That no one else would get hurt if you could find him on your own.”
He wasn’t wrong. Those days following the battle in Caswell were a haze. I felt like I was disappearing, fading into the background.
Kelly shook his head like he was disgusted. “We always try to have one fucking minute where we can breathe without worrying about what is coming next. Monsters. Hunters. Feral wolves. I never thought I’d have to face you abandoning our pack. Abandoning me.”
I reached for him again. He wouldn’t look at me. “Kelly, I need you. I love you.”
His eyes were wet when he said, “You promised. You promised it would always be you and me. You promised.”
And I said, “I know, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”