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Sucking it up, I unlock my phone and glance down at the screen.
Nic – How are you feeling, O? I can be there in twenty minutes if you need me.
I stare at his message and while I desperately want to tell him to get his ass moving and meet me at the church, I find myself holding back.
It’s too much. I can’t handle it.
Nic has the ability to make me feel, to make me face what’s going on, and then forces me to handle it. I don’t want to do that, not today. I want to pretend. I want to hide the pain and just make it through the day and if he shows up, my world is going to crumble.
I’m barely holding it together.
I drop my phone into my lap and let out a heavy sigh. “Uh oh,” I hear Mom saying from my bedroom doorway. “Did you just ignore one of your boys’ messages? You know they’re going to come searching you out now just to make sure you’re still breathing.”
I give her a tight smile and meet her eyes. “Does it make me a bad person that I don’t want to have them around today?” I question as tears brim in my eyes. “They’re just going to remind me how bad it hurts.”
“Oh, honey,” she says, walking into my room and dropping down on the bed beside me. She curls her arm around my waist and pulls me into her side. “That doesn’t make you a bad person at all. It makes you human. The boys will understand your need for space. They can read you like a book. I wouldn’t be surprised if they already knew to back off. You can call them tomorrow and let them know how you are.”
My head drops to Mom’s shoulder and I let out a heavy sigh. “Are you sure?”
“I’m positive,” she tells me, her hand moving to my back and rubbing slow circles. She lowers her voice, trying to keep a soothing tone. “Are you almost ready? I thought we could head down to the church early and offer a few helping hands. You know how crazy these things can get.”
I lift my head off her shoulder and try to hold back my tears. “Yeah, I’m ready,” I murmur. “I’ll go in and grab Colton and then we can go.”
“Alright,” she says with a soft smile. “I don’t want to show up too early and be a nuisance though. We have a few minutes.” I nod as she meets my eyes and I find her heart on her sleeve. “How are you doing, Honey? I’m sorry my decision to move here has caused you all this grief. If I had known the things you were going to experience here …”
“Don’t,” I tell her. “I’m doing alright. Don’t blame yourself for any of this. I know it’s been hard but there have also been some really amazing times too, times that we never would have had the chance to experience back home.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“Besides, who knows what sort of shit would have gone down at home. We could have been worse off. The Wolves have been making moves against the Widows for months. It’s only a matter of time before there’s a gang war in Breakers Flats and someone ends up dead.”
Mom lets out a loud sigh before pressing her lips into a tight line. “Unfortunately, you’re right about that,” she says. “Those Wolves have been a pain in the ass for years.”
The more talk of the Wolves that passes between us, the more the need to ask that one burning question creeps up on me. I’ve been holding back on this for days, knowing now really isn’t the right time, but I have to know.
Dad was everything to me and if he was hiding something like this, something so big … I’d be devastated. But if Dad was one of them, I can guarantee that all four of my boys knew about it, and not one of them said a word. And if he was, what would that mean for me? If dad was one of them, then by right, I’m a wolf too. Were the years Nic spent at my side just some game to get close to my dad? Is Sebastian even the best friend I’ve always believed him to be? Is Elijah really my voice of reason? Kairo my protector?
Every little thing that I’ve known to be true before sitting in that guidance counselors office is in question. I don’t know who to trust, what’s right and what’s wrong. Did Mom know about this and hide it all of these years? Miss Davies could have had a bad case of mistaken identity, she could have had it wrong. It’s possible that there was more than one Big Lou in Breakers Flats, right?
