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I folded my arms across my chest. “Then, shoot.”
He walked toward me, slowly closing the distance between us. “I think you feel bad because now you can’t fix things with your father.”
I scoffed. “Guilty’s more like it.”
“You know,” he murmured as he stood in front of me, “your father was…”
I hung onto his every word as his eyes grew unfocused with his memories.
“Your father was an anxious son of a bitch,” he said with a soft chuckle.
I blinked. “What?”
He smiled as he looked down at me. “Your father was a very anxious person. Very paranoid. He used that to fuel the protection of our pack. He always sent out scout parties, even when we didn’t have a reason to. He instilled all sorts of rules, like never going into the woods alone and always taking a buddy into town if we had to go. Your father was incredible at using what most deemed weaknesses as his strengths.”
My arms loosened from around me. “What else did he do?”
He smiled softly. “Every time his depression crept up, he circled around to the pack. He’d come dote on the new babies that had been born and he’d cook a massive meal for everyone around the bonfire. Every time he felt the need to stay in, he forced himself out. He charged through all of those insecurities head-first and always found a way to utilize that to the pack’s benefit. Your father struggled with many of the same things I know you’re struggling with, but they never held him back. You want to know why?”
I nodded. “Desperately.”
And when he bent down into my purview, his breath pulsated against my lips.
“Because he didn’t allow it,” Dean whispered.
It was then that it hit me. It was then that everything clicked. These people had lost someone close to them. They mourned my father in ways I’d never mourn. They lost a leader. A confidante. A best friend and a protector. I had lost a chance at knowing him, yes. But they had lost everything they had already known within him.
It made so much more sense in that moment why everyone grieved so much harder than me.
“Dean?” I asked softly.
His hand pressed into the wall beside my head. “Yes, Raven?”
I smiled softly. “Thank you for helping me earlier.”
“You don’t ever have to thank me for that,” he said with a soft shake of his head. “It’s my job, sure. But I’ll always be your friend, no matter what. I’ll always be that geeky boy that snuck you library books through your window whenever you had pissed off your parents.”
A giggle bubbled up the back of my throat. “I was a bit of a hellion, wasn’t I?”
He smiled. “Just a tad.”
I swallowed hard. “Do you ever think about her?”
His eyes lined themselves with tears. “Every minute of every day, some days.”
My gaze grew unfocused as I stared over his shoulder. “Sometimes I wonder what she’d have to say about all of this.”
“Oh, Gods, I don’t have to imagine,” he groaned. “She would’ve smacked all of us in the back of the head for acting the way we’ve been acting.”
I closed my eyes and conjured her smiling face. “She would’ve been running right there with us, too.”
“Oh, of course. Running was one of her favorite things.”
I slowly allowed my eyes to open and found Dean still staring at me. “I miss her so much.”
He brought his fingers up to my chin and gripped it softly. “I see her in you sometimes, you know.”
“You do?”
