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“Can’tyou go faster?”Idemanded, asKurtwove his way through the early evening traffic.Eversince everybody and his brother decided to move to theSunshineState, it’s like rush hour all the goddamn time here inTampa.Somehowwe got put on several high profile lists as “the hottest new place to live” or some shit like that and the riff-raff started pouring in.
Tampaused to be a fairly decent place—if you don’t mind living someplace that’s hot and humid as a swamp nine months out of the year.Butnow that it’s gotten so crowded, it’s fuckingmiserable.Andthere’s new apartment buildings going up everywhere you look—which means it’s only going to get worse.Iswear if myPackwasn’t based here andIwasn’t thePackmaster,I’dleave this fucking place in a heartbeat.Maybego up toNewEnglandwhere a male doesn’t feel like he’s sweating his balls off all the goddamned time.Evennow inFebruarywe had high humidity and some warm days during what should have been the coldest part of the year.
Butat the moment,Iwasn’t worried about the heat and humidity,Iwas worried aboutDelilahand what she had gotten herself into this time.
Thisis my fault,Ithought, as the blackEscaladecrawled through the bumper-to-bumper traffic.Ishould have paid her more attention afterMomandDaddied.
Butthe thing was,Ihad tried and things had gotten…weird.
Myparents had been killed in a car wreck just five days afterDelilah’stwenty-second birthday.Theirbrakes failed, thoughIdon’t know how that could have been possible—Dadwas always such a stickler for car maintenance.Theywere going seventy-five on the interstate when they smashed into a concrete divider.Atleast it was instant—the coroner said he doubted either one of them felt a thing.
Iwas royally fucked up about it—couldn’t eat or sleep for days.ButDelilahtook it even harder.IguessIcould see why—it was the second set of parents she’d lost violently and unexpectedly.Thatkind of trauma will fuck with your head.
Iwent to my parents’ house a day after the funeral and found her just sitting on the couch, staring into space.Shewas wearing the same black dress she’d worn to the service and the same black pumps—they still had dirt from the gravesite on their soles.Itlooked like she’d come in and sat down and hadn’t moved for the past eighteen hours.
“Lilah?Baby?”Imurmured, sitting down beside her and putting an arm around her shoulders.
Atfirst it was like touching wood—she was absolutely rigid.Butthen she flowed to me, just as she had when she was a little girl.Feelingher in my arms again,Iwas flooded with tenderness…and memories.
Afterthat first night as my little sister, she used to always come running to me when she cut her knee or got stung by a bee or anything like that.Myfriends tried to tease me about it, butIrefused to be embarrassed about protecting and comfortingDelilah.Iusually stopped whateverIwas doing to take care of her—to put aBand-Aidon the hurt knee or some baking soda on the bee sting.Whateverit was,Iwanted to fix it for her—andIwanted to fix it now.
Onlythere was no fixing this.
“They’regone,Cole!” she sobbed in my arms.“Gone!”
“Yeah, baby—Iknow.Iknow.”Ipulled her into my lap and let her cry.Icried with her, too—the first tearsI’dbeen able to shed since the highway patrolman showed up at my door with the awful news.
“Theyleft me!EveryoneIloveleaves!”Shepressed closer to me, burying her face in my neck, her body shaking against mine.Shewas so soft in my arms and she smelled like the ghost of perfume she must have put on the day before—faintly sweet and devastatingly feminine.
“Iknow, baby.Iknow it seems like that.”
Iheld her like that for a long time, both of us wrapped up in each other, sharing our grief.Ihad moved out on my own years ago, butDelilahhad still been living at home.Shegot a visit from the highway patrol too and had screamed so loud theAlphaguards at the front door had come running into the house, thinking she was being attacked.
Aftera long time, it seems like she cried herself out.Shedrew back from me a little andIsaw that she had forgotten to wear the blue contact lens that usually covered her golden eye.Eitherthat or it had gotten washed away with all the crying.
“Ithurts,Cole,” she said simply, looking at me. “Iknow it hurts you too.Theywere your parents, more than mine.”
“Don’tsay that,”Isaid roughly. “Youwere their little girl.Theyloved you every bit as much.”Icupped her cheek and swiped at her tears with my thumb.
Hermismatched eyes were red and her cheeks were flushed from crying, but it occurred to me for some reason that my little sister had somehow turned into a beauty.She’dgrown up—andout—in all the right places.
Shewas no longer the skinny little stick she’d been when she first came to our house at the age of eleven.SomehowwhileIwasn’t looking she’d gotten a woman’s full curves with large, round breasts and a lush ass, wide hips and deliciously thick thighs.Herhair, though, was still a mass of flyaway strawberry blonde curls and the freckles across the bridge of her little nose made her cute rather than sultry.
Ipushed the thoughts away guiltily.Whatthe fuck was wrong with me, noticing my own little sister that way?Itdidn’t matter that we weren’t actually blood related—by theLawsof thePack, we werecloserthan blood.Besides, how fucked up was it thatIwould see her in a whole new light at a time like this, when our parents had just died?
Istarted to push her off my lap, butDelilahclung to me.
“Wait,Cole—where are you going?” she demanded.
Imumbled something aboutPackbusiness.Ihadn’t been expecting to have to take over asPackmasterquite so soon—my dad had still been in great shape in his late fifties.Butit was a hereditary position, passed fromAlphafather toAlphason soIhad to step up—with the backing of theProvisionalCouncil, that was.
Butit soon became clear that none of my excuses were making their way to my little sister’s brain.Shejust got more and more upset, her mismatched eyes going wide with fear.
“Cole, please don’t go!Don’tyou leave too,” she begged me. “Pleaseeither stay with me or let me stay with you.Don’tleave me alone in this big, empty house!”
“Butbaby, you don’t want to come to my place!There’snothing for you there,”Iprotested.
“You.You’rethere.”Shelooked me in the eyes. “Please,Cole—Idon’t want to be alone.”
