WYLDER Read online

  Like hell! I may not ever be hers, but part of her will always be mine, and no way in hell will I walk away and just forget that I had a blazing sun in my grasp for a moment in time.

  She gave me the sunshine, the warmth that I basked in, the light that I had searched for. It was a brief moment, but I will never forget it, and I won’t forget her.

  “She’s family.”

  “She’s not your problem anymore,” Lyon says harshly, rising to stand over me with a look that screams disdain. “You have your reasons for your baggage. You have reasons for some of the stuff you do and say. I won’t insult your suffering by saying it. Bear has his own. I have shit that keeps me up at night…Lynx and Hawk. We’re all damaged in our own way, so why, why damage someone else, Wolf?”

  He walks away before I can find an answer and leaves me alone in the darkness with only the sounds around me to break the deathly stillness that’s fallen over me.

  I spend the night nursing a beer that is flat and bitter by the time dawn arrives and only go inside when I hear Mom open the kitchen door to let Mittens out for her morning run.

  “Wolf?”

  “Coming, Ma.”

  “What are you doing out here this early?” she mutters when I walk in, sitting at the table as she bustles around and serves me a full breakfast and coffee.

  “Just thinking.”

  “About Lori? Or about what an ass you’ve been, boy?” she asks, sitting across from me with her breakfast.

  She doesn’t touch it, just gives me that blank stare that Bear’s perfected down to a spine-chilling art and waits for me to buckle under the pressure. Christ, for a tiny little thing, Ma sure is scary.

  “Ma—”

  “Is this the part where the boy I raised to be a good man lies and makes some statement about how Lori and you didn’t sleep together?”

  Christ.

  “Ma—”

  “You gonna tell me that after all the terrible stuff you and your brothers have done to avenge Sparrow, it’s okay to sleep with a girl who was saving herself for marriage, because circumstances were unique?” she asks, calmly sipping at her coffee while I choke on a piece of un-chewed bacon.

  “That’s not—”

  “Any of my business? Oh, but it is. I was not a good mother after Sparrow was taken from us, and I have a lot to atone for to you and your brothers. I let my grief rule every part of my life for months, and you all suffered your father’s drinking without my help. I failed—”

  “You had every right to grieve—”

  “Yes, but so did you, Wolf. You and Bear should have had me and Pop to comfort you.”

  “We were grown men.”

  “Grown, but always my little boys, and I owed it to you all to be there. I wasn’t, and for that, I will never forgive myself, but you know…wanna know what I learned after I pulled myself back up again? Sparrow was gone, and she couldn’t feel anything anymore.”

  “Ma—”

  “No! You will listen. The dead are to be mourned, and I mourned her as was right, but it wasn’t Sparrow I was mourning. It was the pain of the life I had to lead without her. I was selfish and empty, but afterwards, I was still alive, and this life is a gift.”

  Her words make my chest tighten because I know she’s right. I too mourned Sparrow in my own way, using anger and vengeance to keep moving forward until it became so much I just forced it all to stop.

  But—

  “So, I got over it. Yes, yes, I did, and that doesn’t mean I didn’t love her anymore or that I don’t still love her. It just means that she’s in a place where she doesn’t hurt, and she wouldn’t want me to stop living. What about you? Why have you stopped living, my son?”

  “I am living,” I protest, shoving food down before I completely lose my appetite.

  “You’re a ghost traveling a path that was not meant to be walked, Wolf,” she intones softly, making the hair on my nape stand on end.

  “Not that mumbo jumbo again, Ma, please. You know I don’t believe in that old story.”

  She sniffs and sucks her teeth at me, the expression on her face chilling as I squirm and shift around, avoiding her steely gaze.

  “I don’t care what you believe, boy. I only know what is true. You have walked the wrong path since your sister died, and you stay on it because it is easier than living! I don’t like it, Wolf. I don’t like it at all, but your choices are your own to make. As long as you make them for you and leave Lori alone.”

  “Don’t—”

  I’m about to tell her not to presume to tell me how to live when she slams a hand down on the table and levels a finger at me.

  “I have lost one daughter, boy, and lived to see the sun again. I will not let you or any man take away another. I love Danny and Lori as if I gave them life from my own body. The earth has blessed me with a second chance, and I won’t allow you to take more from her. I love you, and there is nothing in this life that I would not do for my children, but to watch you break her…no more.”

  This set-down is said in a tone that is not only hard but so cold I look up and blink at my usually soft and sweet mother. Her eyes, the strange blue of a mixed ancestry, are like piercing ice chips as she stares me down.

  “I’ve been adrift for a long time, but I woke up, and I see you, Wolf. I see what you can’t hide, and I see the need in you to take the warmth you have lost. You have stolen from Lori already, and I understand the need you have to chase the cold, but she…she is good, too good to be brought low. If you cannot love that woman, let her go to find happiness.”

  Chapter Seven

  Lori

  “Let’s talk about the spa.”

  I shift uncomfortably on the soft white couch in the therapist’s office and stare out the window, the trees swaying in the wind heralding a coming storm in the next day or two.

  I love the sight, the wildness of the weeping willows, their branches like fingers seeming to reach for something as they’re swept up and flung aside.

  I feel like those trees, anchored and yet tossed around by the elements.

  “Lori?”

  “I freaked out. That’s all,” I manage.

  It’s my second session, the first having been a meet and greet, an icebreaker of sorts that I wish had worked. I really hate talking about my feelings, especially when Doctor Nora just sits calmly and gives me a level look, her salt-and-pepper hair surrounding a face that shows nothing but patience and a detachment that doesn’t make me feel as good as it should have.

  I don’t expect a motherly concern type deal here, but it’s hard to unburden myself to an unbiased observer who will see far more than one colored by emotion.

  “Freaked out,” she says, waiting.

  “I lost it, okay? One minute, I was lying there getting a massage, and the next, it felt like everything was numb. I couldn’t breathe or feel, but I could. I can’t explain it other than to say it felt like…I could feel pain and yet my body was frozen.”

  Doctor Nora nods and scribbles something on her pad before sighing when I keep silent.

  “You keep referring to these episodes as a panic attack or freak-out, and yet I think you understand that it is much more than that. I read your files, and as you know, I’ve spoken to the Wylder parents. I know your case, as it happened, but that’s not the whole story. Only you can tell me everything, Lori, and then maybe I can help you. If not, I’m afraid it’s just an hour a day listening to you talk in circles.”

  I agree. I know she’s right, and dammit, I came here to get help so I can go back to my life and live like a normal, sane, functional human being, but I don’t want to talk about these things! The sweat of nerves has already popped out, wetting my brow, slicking my palms, and just thinking is making breathing a danger because my breaths are coming faster than is normal, while my head feels fluffy from too much oxygen.

  But I can do this. No, I have to do this because I need help. I’ve spent the past two nights sleeping two hours if I’m lucky, and I feel so
drained I’ve been shuffling with fatigue.

  Poor Rain keeps looking at me with these anxious glances, and Alric hasn’t stopped trying to spike my juice with sedatives, poor guy. If it didn’t freak me out, I’d be so amused by his sneakiness.

  And Wolf. God, just thinking about him makes me mad! He left yesterday morning and hasn’t been back. Bear finally mentioned in passing that he’s gone to train with some secret military team and won’t be back for a while.

  He seemed pissed but also guilty when he let it slip. I handled myself well though, pretending I didn’t hear a word. Not easy since I was ravenously curious when I didn’t see him lurking outside my door like I’d hoped.

  Stupid imagination and sexual feelings.

  “When I got home the first time after…after everything, it was like walking into someone else’s life,” I start, needing to do this even when the need to pass out hits me.

  “Breathe. In through your nose, out through your mouth, slowly. Good, that’s good,” she murmurs when I obey and feel the feeling return to my numb fingers. “That is completely natural, Lori. You were changed after your ordeal, so everything in your life, the one you’d been secure in before, must have been alien to you. Survival makes the trivial seem more meaningless.”

  Yes! Yes, that is exactly it, but it was so much more because I knew I had to go on, and it was harder forcing myself to do all the right things when what I wanted was everything wrong.

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I mean, I went back to work, took up karate, and even went out. It was like…like I could forget the bad stuff, you know, and just live.”

  “But can we ever forget what shapes us in the individual moments of life? A little girl sees a mother and her baby and knows love, maternal love, and the need to have that one day. So, she lives her life striving for a family. Or she sees that love and resents it because her life isn’t like that and never has children because she doesn’t want to risk letting them grow up the same way. Little moments, Lori.”

  God. I really hate it when people are so right about things I don’t want to hear. But she is right. Each moment shapes us. Just, unfortunately for me, my moments turned out to be terrible ones most of my life, except for Grangran’s love, until she died and left me alone.

  “So, you were okay for how long?” she asks when I remain silent.

  “Two, three months. Then it just hit me. Going to the store was like walking into a house of horrors. My friends calling were like listening to a foreign language. It all happened so fast, you know, that I couldn’t quite fight it. I love working, and yet one morning I couldn’t walk out the door. I fainted as soon as I touched the doorknob and woke up an hour later only to crawl into bed and just…lay there. It’s not like I’m depressed. I know I’m not. It’s like…”

  “Describe your ordeal.”

  I do. I tell her everything, giving her a strange look when the buzzer pings, signaling the end of the session, and she ignores it, waving at me to continue. I don’t leave anything out, even when I start going numb and the danger of another attack gets worse.

  Somehow, I fight through it, breathing like a race horse the whole time, and when I’m done, I feel… liberated.

  “You’re reliving those moments when you were drugged. The numbness, the cold, the fear.”

  “Yes, but it’s worse this time because I know it’s not really happening but I can’t do anything to stop it. I should be stronger just knowing that it’s not real, and yet when I can’t stop any of it, I feel more terrified than when it actually happened. Does that sound crazy?” I ask, digging my fingernails into my palms.

  “No. It seems to me that it makes you feel more vulnerable.”

  Yes, but more than that. I can’t understand how I was doing fine and then suddenly it was like my life was falling apart, as if my mind was crumbling like a soda can, bit by bit.

  “I don’t know if that is the whole reason. If it was just a few attacks, I would be okay, but it’s like I can’t think sometimes. It happens at the oddest times. The store. Work. When I hugged Danny, for God’s sake! What the hell is that? I love Danny, and if I should trust anyone, it would be her. I don’t understand it. Some guy on a website called me out because I thought I might have PTSD.”

  She hhhmmms the way shrinks always do but doesn’t give me an answer, the very act ticking me off because I am here for answers, not some self-actualization process that I could get through alone without spending money that I don’t have.

  “I need answers, Doctor Nora.”

  “You have the answers, Lori. You just need to examine everything with a clear head and embrace your moments.”

  Embrace my moments? What the F is she talking about? I’m not into hippie psychobabble about finding inner strength and your inner child giving you some secret, deeply hidden answers. If I was capable of fixing myself, I wouldn’t be here, lady!

  “Doctor Nora—”

  “That’s our session for today, Lori. I want you to go home and spend some time walking around, inside or out in the garden, whatever you prefer. I want you to stop thinking for a bit and just see the world around you and take it in with your senses.”

  “What?” I mumble, curling my lip. “I took a walk yesterday, and it didn’t help shit.”

  She smiles at me, the way you’d look at a five-year-old who just told you he crapped all over the toilet seat and you got to clean it up, and shrugs.

  “Yesterday was yesterday, Lori. Today is another day all its own. Just try it. What have you got to lose? Go outside if the weather permits and take off your shoes. Feel the grass, the air, hear the sounds of the wind rustling the leaves. That’s it. Just feel the simple things in life and focus on the little details around you. No overanalyzing your feelings or picking it all apart trying to relive it all to find the answers.”

  Jesus, what the hell is this, I wonder, snorting an affirmative before shaking her hand to leave. Rain is waiting for me and smiles patiently, waving away my apology for the session overrunning.

  “No worries, honey. I just found out that Brad Pitt isn’t married to that lovely Jennifer woman anymore. Shocking.”

  Her expression has me laughing, and I’m still snorting as we walk out to the car, my belly rolling with mirth.

  “That happened like ten or eleven years ago, Rain,” I gasp when I can’t stop even after she’s pulled off—seat belts first though!

  “No!”

  “Yes. He has like a million kids now and married Angelina of the hot lips Jolie. It was a big thing. Huge. They have like a huge house in France, and their kids scribble on the walls and run around like heathens with no boundaries.”

  Even she can’t keep from laughing; her eyes rounded comically when she chortles.

  “How modern! My kids got a swift butt slap if they even thought of ruining the house.”

  “Yeah. My sister once spilled juice on Mom’s living room carpet, and she stayed in her room for three days. I got a bell-ringer the one time she caught me touching the oven, and I just wanted to make fish sticks.”

  Rain sighs at the memories I can’t keep at bay sometimes and keeps her eyes on the road while I watch the trees blur into green and brown blobs.

  “How was it today? She still giving you those weird answers? Fucking hippie.”

  My chuckle is loud when she grins and curls her lip, even though we both know she adores Dr. Nora.

  “Still giving me the wax on, wax off version about how I’ll find my inner voice and hear the answers. All I want is a pill that says ‘no more freak-outs’ on the capsule. Is that a stretch, man? We walked on the moon, but one little mental problem and it’s like I’m asking a Jewish man to taste bacon.”

  This is what we talk about lately, and I notice, thankfully and with a huge amount of gratitude, that Rain and Alric don’t mention Wolf at all. We’re all pretending I don’t jump every time the door slams or look around as if searching when I come into a room.

  It’s…ni
ce. Better than I could have hoped for with the way they watch me with those knowing eyes. Only…the feelings I have, the panicking and all that bull crap, seem to have worsened after he left.

  I got so pissed off when I figured that out at two in the morning, while I lay on the bathroom floor panting into a towel to stifle the sounds, I almost screamed bloody murder.

  Damn Wolf.

  “I saw a shrink for three years after Sparrow died, and I was on some gooood stuff for a while until I woke up to a new day. You’d be surprised by how easy it is to overlook the answers you need to get better and heal,” she says softly.

  My head whips around, and I gape at her, the quirk of her lips a sure sign that she knows she’s shocked me.

  “Don’t gape, Lori, honey, I am not superhuman. I was a wreck for a long time, and it took me a while to get better. Alric had already picked himself up and stopped drowning in the bottle, and the boys were all…”

  “Looking for revenge. I know, Rain, but it just seems so unlike you. You’re like the cool shaman type mom who talks to the wind and is in touch with the earth or something.”

  “I’m a modern woman, married to a modern man who doesn’t believe in hocus pocus and all that. I believe in people walking the path they choose to walk. You’re on a path that’s strewn with perils right now. All you need to do is choose the right turn and you’ll be okay. If you want to be, that is. If you can look past my son and his troubles and be as strong as I know you are.”

  The first mention in days has me tensing and looking away to avoid her knowing eyes. I don’t hardly let myself think of that person who shall not be named because when I do I have some breathing problems. I tell myself it’s late onset asthma, and it’s been working so far.

  I just use an imaginary pump that’s filled with ‘do not think of him’ gas, and I am right as rain again. If I keep it up, I may actually believe it and not feel like I’m going crazy.

  “Rain, I don’t want to talk about this, okay?”