I tried to ignore the date in the upper right corner, but it was almost impossible.
Saturday, November 6, 2021.
It’d been eleven months since I’d recorded a video in a house at the end of a lane.
And I had nothing to show for it.
I dropped the phone back in my bag before I crushed it in my hand.
After a moment’s hesitation, I reached over to the glove compartment and popped it open. I told myself I was being stupid, that I’d just looked at the contents the day before. They wouldn’t tell me anything new, and it was pointless to dwell on them.
But they were all I had.
I pulled out four pieces of paper, each featuring blocky words I’d long since memorized.
The top page—the last one I’d gotten a couple of weeks before in a nothing town in Kentucky—read:
STOP FOLLOWING ME. GO HOME ASSHOLE.
“Fuck you,” I muttered. “You goddamn dick.”
The other three notes were similar, each of them blunt and scathing, threatening me with bodily harm, telling me he wanted nothing to do with me. I closed my eyes, remembering the way he’d looked when he snarled at me, telling me I was nothing but a child, that he didn’t want anything to do with me, that he wasn’t pack.
His heart had held steady and true, but I still thought him a liar.
Because I’d felt it when he’d stood before his father, a witch turned impossibly into an Alpha beast, one eye socket empty, the other red and blazing. I’d felt it when the bond that had stretched between us—a bond I’d been blind to—snapped in two.
He had been one of us.
He had been pack.
And he’d given himself up to Robert Livingstone.
To save us all.
I couldn’t let that go.
I couldn’t let him go.
I owed it to him.
To find him.
To do whatever the hell it took to bring him back.
I should have seen it for what it was. In the couple of years he was by my side, all the times I’d scowled at him and snapped at him to leave me the fuck alone, I should have seen it. From the moment I’d faced him outside the Lighthouse when the hunters had come to Green Creek, I should have known.
The third note read:
LEAVE ME ALONE. GO HOME OR I’LL HURT YOU.
The second note read:
I DON’T WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOU.
The first note read:
ARE YOU TRYING TO GET YOURSELF KILLED?
Though I fought against it, I smiled. I’d only heard him speak a few words, and they’d been grunted more than anything, but somehow, it fit with who I thought he was. I wasn’t allowing myself to think of what he could be to me. When I tried, my chest felt tight. We weren’t Ox and Joe. Or Kelly and Robbie. Or even Gordo and Mark, though the fuck you vibe was apparently a family trait.
Gavin.
The brother of Gordo Livingstone.
The son of Robert Livingstone.
I put the notes back in the glove compartment, unable to look at them anymore.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
Kelly was there in the dark. He smiled at me and held out his hand.
Though it wasn’t real, I was grateful for it. I took his hand in mine, and for a little while at least, I could pretend he was with me. That he didn’t hate me for leaving him behind. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
He said, “Hey.”
I said, “Hey” and “Hi” and “I’m so happy to see you.” And I meant every word.
“All right?”
I tried to be strong for him, this Not-Kelly. But he was a figment of my imagination, and I was alone. I said, “No.”
He squeezed my hand. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”
It was enough.
By the time I opened my eyes, the sun was rising over the horizon and another day had begun.
Kelly was gone.
WHEN THE PACK BROKE APART after the death of our father, I followed my brothers into the great unknown, Gordo trailing after us. Our blood boiled, and we had rage in our heads and hearts. It burned far longer than I thought it would, the years passing by until it felt like we were ghosts haunting the secret highways known only to those who drifted. These were roads forgotten, roads that led to nothing towns that had died long ago. We told ourselves we were still filled with righteous fury even as we were silent, days passing with only a couple of words spoken aloud.
But we’d been together, the four of us, feeding off each other’s pain, our heads shaved and our hearts hardened.
It was different now that I was alone.
I thought it would be easier.
It wasn’t.
The secret highways were lonelier. Some days I never spoke at all. I was lost more often than I wasn’t, especially toward the beginning. I didn’t know where I was going, at first chasing the rising sun, hoping for something, anything that would point me in the right direction.
It wasn’t until a dead-eyed motel clerk in Utah wished me a merry Christmas that the weight of what I’d done crushed me.
That’d been a bad night.
I thought it’d get easier.
It didn’t, but I got better at ignoring it.
I stayed away from the major cities, knowing Livingstone would most likely do the same. I had conversations in my head with my father, with my mother, with Joe and Ox, with Kelly, justifying why I’d left, telling them that I owed it to him, that Gavin would do the same for me, trying to make myself believe that was true.
We’re looking for him, Ox told me.
No. You’re looking for Livingstone.
We want to help you find him, Joe told me.
Like you wanted to find Robbie?
You can’t do this alone, my father told me.
You’re dead.
You should have trusted us, my mother told me.
I don’t even know if I trust myself.
But it was Kelly I talked to most. Kelly who was sometimes so angry I could almost see the spittle on his lips as he shouted at me. Kelly who would be there waiting for me as I closed my eyes. Kelly who would sing along with me when an old rock song came on the radio.
He wasn’t there.
But I could pretend he was.
I said, “I’m sorry.”
I said, “I know you don’t understand.”
I said, “You might never forgive me.”
I said, “I wish I could see you.”
I know, he’d say. And, Turn up the radio. I like this song.
I did, because I would do anything he asked me.
It was getting easier to imagine Kelly was there.
Sometimes I could actually see him sitting next to me.
It should have scared me more than it did.
THE FIRST NOTE I FOUND was after I’d seen a ghost. I’d left Green Creek behind five months prior, and it was one of the bad days.
It was my birthday.
I turned thirty-one years old.
I was talking to Kelly, telling him that if I was home, there would be food and presents and everyone would be smiling. Kelly and Joe would make breakfast. I’d wake up, and they’d bring it into my room. We’d sit on the bed, just the three of us, and Joe would eat my bacon, and Kelly would slap him on the back of his hand, telling him to leave some for me. Joe would flash his Alpha eyes, and we’d make fun of him for it. We’d stop talking after a while, listening to Mom in the kitchen, singing about Johnny and his guitar.