I wasn’t a people person anyway.
IT WAS a twenty-footer, just as Ox had said.
It blocked the driveway, the ramp crossing the sidewalk.
Kelly stuck his head out the back as I turned the truck off. He waved.
I glared at him.
He rolled his eyes.
“You’re not fooling anyone,” he said as I approached the back of the U-Haul. “I can hear your heartbeat. You’re excited.”
“Shut up.” I looked inside. It was still half-full, and Kelly was reaching for a box marked KITCHEN in a familiar scrawl. “There’s no fucking way all of this is fitting inside my house.”
“We had to get rid of some of the crap,” Carter said, coming out of the house.
“The crap,” I repeated.
“You know. The junk. The stuff in your house that should have been thrown away a long time ago.”
“I don’t own junk.”
“Uh-huh,” Carter said, walking up the ramp. “Of course not. I accidentally broke your coffee table into a bunch of tiny pieces, so it’s a good thing that Mark had another one in storage that’s much nicer than yours was.”
“Accidentally?”
Carter shrugged. “Yeah, it was this whole thing. The wolf tried to follow me into the living room, I told it to stay where it was, and then I accidentally broke the coffee table.”
“Those two things don’t have anything to do with each other.”
Carter took the box from his brother. “Weird how that happens, right?”
“And why is that thing in my house?”
“Wherever I go, it goes. You know that.” Carter sounded particularly aggrieved, which made me feel a little better. “I still don’t know why. Although it seemed very interested in how your house smelled. It pissed on the floor in the kitchen. I forgot to clean it up. So, just… you know. Keep that in mind.”
“I am going to kill all of you,” I growled.
Carter reached out and patted the side of my face as he went down the ramp. “Sure, Gordo. Okay. Still totally believe your threats after I’ve seen you make heart eyes at my uncle.”
Kelly laughed in the truck.
I stalked after Carter inside the house.
Sure enough, all my junk was gone. The old couch. The coffee table. For some reason I now had bookcases in the living room and a TV that didn’t have a dial on the front. There were speakers set up on either side of it, and everything looked bright and shiny in this old house, like it was something new. A beginning.
The timber wolf rose from behind the couch and moved to follow Carter into the kitchen. Before it did, it glanced at me, nostrils flaring. It cocked its head, but then it turned away.
“Mark!” I bellowed. “When I said you could move in, I meant you.” I paused, considering. “Maybe some clothes.”
I heard him laugh down the hallway.
I followed the sound. I was helpless to do anything but.
He was in my—our—bedroom, boxes stacked on either side of the closet. There were picture frames stacked on the floor near my side of the bed, piles of books in the far corner, clothes on hangers lying on the bed.
Some of the boxes had been torn open, their contents shuffled. He was bent over one on the trunk at the end of the bed, brow furrowed, muttering under his breath.