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* * *
With the boys safely home, and Denny recovering, I would have liked to put my feet up. Relax. Spend time with my family, kiss my mate, and enjoy our hard-won peace.
But that peace would be short-lived. I knew it. Denny knew it. And, I suspected, the others had begun to catch on as well.
“You’re just gonna have to tell them,” Denny warned me the day he was discharged from the hospital. I wanted a moment to pick his brain, so I’d gone to pick him up on my own. Felicity and I agreed that Denny should stay at the lodge for as long as he wanted. Denny had accepted the offer—at least in part because he was the only other person who knew what was yet to come.
“I know, and I will,” I assured him. “I just needed a few days. I think we all did. The last storm’s barely passed us, and another’s already on the way.”
“That’s the thing about being a leader,” Denny mused. “People think it’s all prestige and glory. In reality, you’re just the world’s most depressing weatherman.”
We drove back to the lodge in comfortable silence. It was one of Denny’s better traits that I’d come to appreciate. He didn’t feel the need to fill the space with meaningless words.
When he did speak, he knew exactly the right thing to say.
“Wanna talk about it?” he asked.
“Talk about what?”
He snorted. “I know you’re a natural blond, Miller, but that’s no reason to play dumb.”
I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, clenching my jaw. Apart from my confession to Felicity on the night I brought Ryder back, I hadn’t spoken to anyone about what had happened when Lizbeth attacked Denny. Felicity had been kind enough to honor what I’d asked of her afterward and hadn’t brought it up again.
But another one of Denny’s finer traits was that he had no problem being the asshole addressing the elephant in the room when it suited him.
I still hadn’t completely forgiven him for not telling Felicity that he suspected she was his kid.
After a while, I sighed. The pressure that built in my chest every time my mind touched the memory of that night wasn’t going to go away by ignoring it. I couldn’t ignore it. It was like a canker sore, a tooth abscess. I couldn’t help poking it with my tongue, even though poking at it made it hurt.
“I’d never killed anyone before,” I admitted quietly. “And I know it was the right thing to do, and I know I don’t regret it. I never will. I know I’m being a pussy about it, even—”
“Fuck off,” Denny grunted. “You’re not.”
“You don’t think so?” That surprised me. I knew Denny had been in Afghanistan. I knew he’d likely seen combat. Rabbit and Beauty—the sigmas on his team—they’d seen it, too. Furthermore, they specialized in dealing with ferals, and there was only one way to deal with a feral in the end.
I didn’t expect to find sympathy from a battle-hardened veteran. I wasn’t sure why I was confessing my feelings to Denny, except that he’d asked.
“Look, Miller. Killing someone, even in self-defense… it changes you. It changed me. Life is a precious thing. You only get one shot at it. Taking that away from someone, even an enemy, it’s nothing to take lightly.” He spoke softly, keeping his eyes on the road up ahead. “Just take heart in the fact that if you’re wrestling with what you’ve done, and what you had to do. It doesn’t make you a pussy, Miller. It means you’re not a sociopath. It’s not supposed to be easy. That’s the thing that separates a weak man from a strong one, in my book. The weak do what’s easy, even if it’s wrong. And even if it’s hard, the strong do what’s right.”
I swallowed and nodded, unsure of how to respond to that. Denny let the silence linger again. It enveloped the interior of the Impala all the way back to the lodge.
“You know,” Denny spoke up again as I parked. “When you’re ready, you might think about talking to someone about it. If not me, then maybe a therapist. I could even recommend you some groups if you want.”
I grimaced. “I don’t think therapy is really my style.”
“Yeah, mine neither,” Denny admitted. “In that case, talk to your mate. When you’re ready. If she’s anything like her old man, she can take it. She’ll want to, even.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Felicitywouldwant to, I realized. For a man who’d been absent for her entire life, Denny knew his daughter pretty well. But that was a problem for another day.
“There’s something else you and I should talk about first, though.”
“Yeah?”
“Ferals,” I said. “I need you to tell me everything you know.”
* * *
