Carter sighed. “Sorry, Ox. It’s just…. Joe, man. He’s Joe.”
I hung my head.
“Dad,” Carter said quietly. “Don’t you think he should know already? He’s pack.”
“Inside,” Thomas said.
Carter didn’t say another word. He was back up the porch and inside, shutting the door to the Bennett house.
“Is he okay?” I asked Thomas, unable to look at him.
“He will be,” Thomas said.
“I didn’t mean….”
“I know, Ox.”
I looked up at Thomas. He wasn’t angry. He was just sad. “I’ll walk you home.”
I thought to argue. To tell him I just wanted to see Joe for a minute, to tell him I was sorry. But his tone left no room for argument, so I just nodded and followed him, feet dragging in the dirt.
“Is she nice?” Thomas asked.
“Who?”
“The girl.”
I shrugged. “She’s okay. She seems like a good person.”
“And you haven’t had many of those,” Thomas asked. It was not a question.
“I do now,” I said honestly. Because I did.
“You do,” he said. “Sometimes I forget you’re only sixteen. You’ve got an old soul, Oxnard.”
I didn’t know if that was good or bad, so I said nothing.
“Do you like her?”
“I guess.”
“Ox.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Good,” he said. “That’s good. Elizabeth and I met when I was seventeen. She was fifteen. There has never been another one for me.”
“But… Joe. He’s….”
“Joe….” He sighed. “Joe was upset. I’m not saying that to make you feel bad, Ox, so please don’t misinterpret my intent. Joe is… different. After everything that has happened to him, he can’t be anything but different.”
“Gordo said—” I stopped myself, but the damage was done.
Thomas cocked his head at me. “And what did Gordo say?” he asked, sounding more dangerous than I’d ever heard him.
“That someone hurt him,” I whispered, looking down at my hands. “I didn’t let him tell me any more.”
“Why?”
“Because… it wasn’t his right to tell me. It’s not my right to be told anything at all. And honestly? I don’t know if I care. And not because I don’t care about him. But because I want to be his friend no matter how he needs me.” I scuffed the dirt a bit with the tip of my boot. “And I’ll be his friend as long as he lets me.”
“Ox, look at me.”
I did. I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to.
His dark eyes were bigger than I’d ever seen.
And he spoke, his voice even and soft. Words that washed over me like a river and I couldn’t stop him, no matter how much I wanted to. No matter how hard I wished he would shut his fucking mouth.
Joe was taken by a man who wanted to hurt Thomas and his family. The man kept him for many weeks. He hurt him. Physically. Mentally. Broke his little fingers. His little toes. His arm. His ribs. Made him cry and bleed and scream. He would call them sometimes. The bad man. He would call them and they would hear Joe in the background saying that he wanted to come home. All he wanted to do was come home.
Eight weeks. It took them eight weeks to find Joe.
And they did. But he wouldn’t speak.
He knew them. His family. Mostly. He cried silently, his arms and shoulders shaking.
But he wouldn’t speak.
Even when his nightmares were at their worst and he would wake screaming in the night, thrashing on his bed, trying to escape the bad man, he still wouldn’t speak.
They tried therapy. It didn’t take. Nothing would make him speak.
“Not until you,” Thomas said.
I must not have been a man yet, because under all that rage, a tear worked its way out and rolled down my cheek. “Who?” I asked, and that one word sounded like an earthquake.
“A man who wanted something he couldn’t have,” Thomas said.
“Did you kill him?”
His eyes grew darker. “Why?”
“Because I will if you didn’t. I will break him and make him suffer.”
“You would?”
“For Joe? Yes.”
“You are so much more complex than you first appear,” Thomas said. “These layers of yours. Just when I think I’ve reached the bottom, it falls away and goes even deeper.”
“Can I see him?”
“Give him a couple of days, Ox.” Thomas touched my shoulder, squeezing it gently. “He’ll find you when he’s ready. And you take care of your girl. She deserves it.”
I flushed. “She’s not my girl,” I muttered.
“She could be.”
“Maybe. Am I part of your pack?”
For the first time since I’d known him, I had caught Thomas Bennett by surprise. His eyes went wide and he took a step back and said, “What?”
“Your pack. Or whatever Carter said.”
He said nothing and I wondered if I’d crossed a line I didn’t know existed.
“I didn’t mean….” I trailed off, unsure how to finish.
He said, “What do you think pack means?”
“Family,” I said promptly.
Thomas smiled. “Yes, Ox. You are part of my pack.”
CARTER AND Kelly weren’t at school the next day. I worried. Usually, I rode with them. But they weren’t there in the morning and I was almost late after Mom gave me a ride.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Jessie said, squeezing my hand while we sat at lunch. I did my best to smile at her as she talked. About how she liked Green Creek more than she thought she would. About how she couldn’t wait for summer. About how she missed her mom. She wondered how long it would hurt and I told her I didn’t know, even though I wanted to say it would probably hurt forever.
She kissed me on the cheek before I went to work.
THE GUYS gave me shit at the shop. Chris said Jessie had gotten home the night before and was all swoony.
“Ox is so dreamy,” he breathed in a high falsetto. “His eyes and his smile and his laugh. O. M. G!”
I blushed furiously and tried to focus on an oil change.
“Look at him!” Rico said gleefully. “He’s like a tomato!”
“Our precious baby boy is growing up,” Tanner sighed.
I said, “Where’s Gordo?” His office was dark.
“Day off,” Rico said. “Had some business to take care of.”
“What business?” I didn’t remember him saying anything. He never took Mondays off.
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” Tanner said. “You just worry about trying to impress your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend!”
“Yeah,” Chris said. “Try telling her that.”
JOE WASN’T waiting for me on the dirt road. The house at the end of the lane was dark, like no one was home. I thought about knocking on the door, but I went home instead. In my room, the stone wolf sat on a shelf. I held it and realized that Thomas had never answered me about the bad man who had hurt Joe. If he was still alive.