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“No!” Newt said as he began shaking his head.
“Newt—” I said, sensing the mother of all temper tantrums kicking in, but he surprised me by keeping his voice low and surprisingly calm.
“I gotta help Loki, Isaac. They took him away from his family,” he said softly. It was the words he didn’t speak that made my heart hurt.
On the one hand, I didn’t want to go anywhere near town, and especially into a situation where we’d stick out like the sore thumbs we were, but on the other, Newt didn’t often ask me for much.
“I gotta tell the mean people what a nice dog Loki is. They’ll believe me, Isaac, ’cause it’s the truth. And we always gotta tell the truth.”
I wanted to laugh at that because it was a lesson I was always reinforcing with Newt, despite the fact that our whole lives were pretty much one big lie. I studied my little brother for a long time. As the person who’d pretty much raised him from birth, it was both humbling and overwhelming to see him becoming this actual little person with emotions and beliefs. And despite all he’d been through, he still had such a good heart, and in spite of everything, his trust in others wasn’t completely destroyed yet…
I shook my head because I couldn’t trifle with that. It would change him into someone he was never meant to be.
Newt must have mistaken my shaking head as my answer because he suddenly looked crestfallen, so I quickly said, “You know what, Newt, you are absolutely right.”
He paused for a moment, then a big smile split his lips. “I am?”
I tickled his stomach. “You absolutely are. I’m so proud of you for being brave enough to tell the truth about Loki.”
As trusting as my brother instinctively was of people, he’d had to learn in the past year that he needed to go against his nature and not trust every person he met. So for him to be willing to get up in front of a room full of strangers would be easy for him in some ways but frightening in others. I needed to make sure we were cautious, but that he could also have this moment to let a little of himself shine through.
I looked up at Nolan and Dallas as I pulled Newt into my arms for a quick squeeze. “We’d love to come with you, if you don’t mind giving us a ride.”
“Of course,” Nolan said. Dallas typed something on his phone and handed it to me.
You guys are welcome to stay with us as long as you like, Isaac.
“Thank you,” I said as I handed the phone back to him. “I think we’ll have to impose on your hospitality one more night, but hopefully by tomorrow I can get someone out here to fix the car.”
I felt my phone buzz in my pocket and fought the urge to check it. On the one hand, I really, really needed it to be a response to my ad, but on the other, that was the last thing I wanted.
Dallas and Nolan exchanged a quick look between them, but I didn’t understand what it meant. Dallas typed something again.
I’ll look at your car again tomorrow. Maybe I can get it running once the cold snap eases a bit.
If the whole state of Minnesota suddenly burst into flame, I doubted it would change the outlook on my car, but I nodded anyway and said, “Yeah, thanks.”
The fact was that if I could meet a couple guys at the motel in a span of a few hours, I could earn enough in one afternoon to buy another cheap-ass car that would at least get us to Chicago. Chicago wasn’t New York, but we could get sucked up by that city just as easily as the Big Apple.
“How about some lunch?” Nolan asked. “Newt, you look like a peanut butter and jelly kind of man to me. Just like this guy,” Nolan said as he motioned to Dallas.
“Grape jelly?” Newt asked.
Dallas nodded and then held out his hand. I swallowed hard when Newt automatically took it.
Yeah, he needed to trust just so damn bad.
“He’s an amazing kid, Isaac,” Nolan said as we watched the very tall Dallas lead the very small Newt up to the house.
“He is,” I agreed. “How’s Dallas feeling?” I asked.
Nolan nodded slightly. “Hanging in there. He’ll be better when we get Loki back and get this town off our ass for good.”
His bitterness surprised me. There was clearly a history between the pair and Pelican Bay that went beyond a few freaked-out citizens trying to take their pet away and close their center down. I wanted to ask him about it, but reality intruded right before I opened my mouth.
He and I weren’t friends. Yes, he’d been kind to me and didn’t seem to be holding a grudge over the fact that I’d both stolen from him and slept with the man he’d considered his boyfriend, but even if I could trust that he was being genuine when it came to not wanting revenge for all that stuff, I couldn’t do something stupid and start to think of him as something more. He was just a kindhearted soul feeling sorry for me and my kid brother and that was it. At most, we could repay that kindness by offering support at the meeting tonight.
