“I’m glad I could protect you,” I said honestly. “And I always will.”
He stared up at me with those big blue eyes. Then he blushed. It started at his throat and rose up through his face. He looked away. Kicked the dirt. I waited until he could make up his mind.
Eventually he grabbed my hand and we continued on down the road.
ANOTHER ARGUMENT.
“They’re my family,” I snapped at her.
Jessie’s face was flushed, her eyes bright. “I get that,” she said. Her voice was hard. “Ev
en if I don’t fully understand their weird fascination with you.”
“It’s not weird.”
“Ox,” she said. “It’s kind of weird. Like, are they some kind of cult or what?”
“Knock it off, Jessie. You don’t get to talk about them like that. They’ve never had a single bad thing to say about you, so don’t you talk about them that way.”
“Except for Joe,” she muttered.
“What?”
She looked up from her spot on my bed. “I said except for Joe. He doesn’t like me.”
I laughed. “That’s not true.”
“Ox. It is. Why can’t you see it? Why are you so blind when it comes to him?”
“You leave him out of this,” I said, my voice starting to rise.
She looked frustrated. “I’m just asking to be a part of your life, Ox. You blow me off. You keep things from me. I know something is going on. Why can’t you trust me?”
I said, “I do,” though it almost felt like a lie.
She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
JUST AFTER Thanksgiving, Mom texted me, asking that I come straight home after work.
The house felt different when I walked in. It hit me in the chest. There was anger. Sadness. But relief. So much relief. It had to be a pack thing. I’d never felt the emotions in the house before. I wasn’t a wolf, but I wasn’t just human, either. I was something more.
It almost felt like seeing colors.
The anger was violet, heavy and cloying.
The sadness was a flickering blue. It vibrated along the edges of the violet.
The relief was green, and I wondered if that was what Elizabeth felt in her green phase. Relief.
Mom was at the table. Her face was dry, but her eyes red-rimmed. She’d cried, but it had passed and I knew I wasn’t completely normal anymore when I somehow knew exactly what she was going to say before she said it.
But I allowed her to say it anyway.
I owed it to her.
“Ox,” she said, “I need you to listen, okay?” and so I said, “Yeah, sure,” and put my hand over hers. It dwarfed hers completely, and I loved this tiny little woman.
“We have each other,” she said.