“Somebody loves you,” Cayla said to Park.
Cooper dropped his fork.
The six of them were eating pesto pasta with cherry tomatoes and parmesan cheese at a large rustic farm table complete with benches. Cooper had somehow gotten trapped between his father and Sophie while Park was on the other side with Dean and Cayla.
“Oh?” Park said, leaning down a bit to talk to her. She looked a lot like Sophie had at that age. Same big, dark eyes. Same rich, deep brown skin. Her smile even had the same crooked gap between her two adult front teeth that dwarfed the baby teeth around them, though Sophie had outgrown that bit by now. The biggest difference was Cayla currently had curling whiskers painted on her face and a pair of tawny felt cat ears propped up on her curls. “Do I get to know who?”
Cayla pointed down. All of them leaned back on their benches to look under the table. At Park’s feet Beluga was curled up, panting with her eyes closed. She looked totally blissed out.
“I’ve never seen her sit through a whole dinner without begging,” Sophie said. “All right, I’m impressed. What’d you do, bribes? Tranquilizers in your socks? Decoy dog?”
Park laughed and Beluga’s head tilted toward him, eyes still closed, mouth still open, like she was laughing with him. “Let’s just say we came to a mutual understanding.”
“Oooh, tough and mysterious.” Sophie nodded her approval and then winked at Cooper. It was a trip spending time with her again. Even weirder to see her interacting with Cayla as a parent, and weirdest of all to see Dean do the same.
Cooper and Sophie had been pretty close friends in elementary until everyone—kids and parents and teachers—started dropping not-so-subtle hints that boys and girls weren’t friends. Couldn’t just be friends, anyway. The awkwardness, the sense that adults were looking at them like they’d done something wrong or strange, put an end to it eventually.
But he had missed her. So Cooper had asked her to be his girlfriend because that seemed like the thing he was supposed to do to make his father happy and still get to keep his friend.
It hadn’t worked at all. Dating at that age just meant lots of giggling from their friends any time they interacted, and soon even that came to an end as well.
Sophie was asking Park, “Is that some sort of requirement to be in the BSI, sounding all tough and mysterious. Do you get cool sunglasses? If you tell me, do you have to kill me?”
Ed snorted. “I doubt that. They took Coop, after all.”
Cooper focused on spearing a cherry tomato with his fork.
“Cooper’s tough,” Sophie said, tone intentionally light. “Remember when Gabriel Bell dared us to jump off the back dock into the roped-off part of the marina? You know, the side where all the sea monsters live?” She wiggled her eyebrows at Cayla.
“Yeah. Why exactly did we think the sea monsters stayed in that section only?”
“Because sea monsters can’t swim under ropes. This is a fact. Trust me, I’m a vet.”
“Did you do it?” Cayla asked, wide-eyed.
“Your uncle Cooper sure did. Jumped in before Gabriel could get the first ‘bawk bawk’ out after calling us chicken.”
Cooper felt an unexpected surge of pleasure at being somebody’s Uncle Cooper and smiled gratefully at Sophie. “Yeah, and then I froze in the water, too scared to kick down and swim back.” He’d just tried to tread water in one place, keeping his knees as high as possible, absolutely convinced something had touched his ankle. Sea monster or not, something probably had. God, he’d hated that marina. But Cooper had done a lot of shit just because Gabriel Bell had told him to. “Eventually your mom had to jump in and save me.”
Sophie flapped her hand. “Eh. It was teamwork. Not that Gabriel was jumping in to help. So I guess we know who the real chicken was.”
“I saw some ‘Vote Bell’ signs on the drive in. Is that Gabriel?” Cooper asked casually.
“Nah. His sister, Eliza, of course,” Ed said. “Finally campaigning for mayor. She’s only been preparing for it her whole life. You remember how she is.”
“Not really,” Cooper said. He knew Gabriel had two siblings, Eliza and Ja-something—Jack, no; Jacob, maybe—but they were at least ten years older than him and hadn’t been around much. Besides, neither of them had been the Bell he’d had eyes for.
“Well, she’s a shoe-in. Though rumor is this is just a stepping stone. She has her eye on governor, eventually. Always has. I don’t know what it is about this generation that thinks they’re too good to stick around town.”
“Hey,” Dean said. “What about me?”
Ed ignored him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up back here one day. Everyone comes home to the Valley eventually.” He looked at Cooper.
Dean laughed awkwardly. “Cue the organ music. Jesus, Dad, that didn’t sound creepy at all. Anyway. What about you, Oliver? Ever do anything totally stupid on a dare?”
“I’m one of six and smack in the middle. Stupid dares were actually a strict requirement of staying in the family. See this here?” Park pointed to the scar that cut through his upper lip. “I got this because of a dare from my siblings.”
“What happened?”
Cooper straightened in his seat, practically holding his breath in anticipation of a rare tidbit of Park’s personal life. After four months of Park never speaking about his past, Cooper wondered why he was so easily offering up stories now. Was it as simple as because he was asked? Or was he, too, trying to pull the conversation away from Ed’s pointed comments?
“Once, when I was just a little older than Cayla, my older sisters dared me to jump out of a seventy-foot pine tree onto the horse barn roof.”
“Awesome,” Dean said. He caught Sophie’s eye and hastily added, “I mean, how horrible and stupid, and I bet you got into a lot of trouble. So, uh, did you make it?”
Sophie rolled her eyes.
“Oh, I hit the roof fine. Then kept going right through it.”
“Rotted infrastructure,” Ed said with emphasis. “Very dangerous.” Cooper bit his lip so hard he wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up with a scar himself.
Park continued quickly. “Fortunately I landed in a stack of old blankets. But that was just luck,” he said to Cayla. “So don’t you go trying it. Even if cats do land on their feet.”
“I’m not a cat, I’m a jaguar,” she said primly. “As an apex predator, we don’t need to climb trees.”
“Too right.”
“Wait a minute,” Cooper said. “You’re saying you fell seventy feet, through a roof, and walked away with literally just a scratch?”
“Actually, the scratch came later.” He shrugged. “My coat protected me.”
Fur coat, Cooper realized from Park’s overly casual tone. He tried to imagine a child wolf-shaped Park plummeting through a barn roof, but he’d never even seen an adult wolf-shaped Park. He always left Cooper’s apartment to do his necessary daily shifts, and usually returned before Cooper woke up. Cooper never asked where he went or why he didn’t just do it in the apartment, not wanting to seem voyeuristic, and Park never mentioned it.
“So if the jump didn’t do it, where did the scar come from?” Dean asked.
“Well, while my siblings were laughing their butts off at me my youngest brother decided to give it a try and climbed up the tree.”
Beside Cooper, Sophie whispered, “Crap,” near silently under her breath.
“Indeed,” Park agreed. “He freaked out at the top and couldn’t get down. I noticed first and went up to get him. He had dug his claws into the trunk and would not let go no matter what.”
Cooper’s eyes widened, and he glanced at the others to see if they were confused by Park’s casual reference to his brother’s claws. But no one blinked, probably accepting it as creative imagery.
“I probably should have tried to talk to him down, but I was impatient. So I just yanked him off and he lost it. Sliced my lip right open.”
“Poor kid,” Sophie said. “Both of you. Did you get down okay?”
“I managed not to toss him. Barely.”
“And I bet you’ve never let him forget it.” Dean laughed.
Park grinned, and the scar disappeared. “Made a speech all about it at his wedding last year. Speaking of which, when’s the big day?”
And just like that the conversation shifted away from him and the wall of privacy was firmly back in place. Now, that was more like the Park Cooper knew and—well, knew.
“Oh, not till the spring,” Sophie said. “That’s plenty of time to get those pesky last-minute details done, like booking a caterer, buying a dress, settling on a venue. You know, background stuff.”
“I’m going to be the ring bear,” Cayla said.
“That’s right, you are. Which reminds me, put ‘get rings’ on the to-do list, Sophe,” Dean said. Sophie gave him a thumbs-up.
“I have my outfit ready,” Cayla added proudly. “Do you want to see, Uncle Cooper?”
“Ah, sure?” He didn’t spend any time around kids besides Ava, and with her they only ever talked about Boogie. Still, Cayla seemed pleased as she scurried away—easily escaping the bench, lucky girl—and disappeared upstairs.
“I think she’s trying to shame us with her preparedness,” Dean said thoughtfully. “Oliver, consider yourself invited. You have until May to come up with an embarrassing anecdote about one of us to tell for a toast.”
Park glanced at Cooper with a strange expression on his face but laughed—not his usual deep rumble, something lighter and forced. “Challenge accepted. So how did you two meet?”
Sophie refilled Cooper’s wineglass and then her own. “Someone broke into the clinic and stole Diazepam. I reported it, and Deputy Sheriff Dayton here showed up.”
“In retrospect I probably shouldn’t have tried to tough out my cat allergy by insisting on searching the overnight kennel myself. But fortunately she goes for the eyes-swollen-shut type.”
“Could have been you, Coop,” Ed said. “They used to date, you know,” he told Park.
“For like a week,” Cooper muttered. “We were twelve. Dating just meant we were awkward and stopped talking to each other more than anything else.”
Park snorted. “Sounds familiar.”
Ed leaned forward like he wanted to hear more about that, but Sophie said, “Um, excuse me, it was more like a month, Dayton. But maybe yeah, that was because we were too busy avoiding each other to do the actually breaking up. Okay, point. Still, you will always be my first love.”
She grabbed his hand and fluttered her eyelashes at him absurdly. Cooper laughed. He was surprised how nice it was to be around Sophie again. He didn’t think he’d missed her. Not actively for twenty plus years, obviously. But there was something soothing about being around her again.
“Now that would have been a good story.” Ed pointed his fork at Cooper. “Childhood sweethearts find each other again.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Dean said wryly. “Real nice.”
“I’m just saying,” Ed said, launching into his favorite repertoire. “At your age I was married with two boys, doing what I loved for the town I love. What about you?”
Cooper thought of Fasser snarling and Simpson sitting on his chest with razor-sharp claws fully extended. “True. Unlike Dean, I don’t really get a lot of opportunities to flirt on the job.” He caught Park’s eye, flushed, and murmured, “Not with civilians.”
“But are you happy sitting back in an office?” Ed pushed. “Rachel always said you’d—”
He broke off the way he always did when accidentally mentioning Cooper’s mother. There was an awkward silence, and then, “I’m just saying you used to always want to be running around, getting into trouble. I don’t want you thinking you have to do some stuffy job because, well, I can’t say I know why.”
“I think Cooper still manages to get into plenty of trouble,” Park said, and Cooper kicked his foot toward his shins. An inhuman yelp pierced the air, and Cooper blinked at Park for a second before looking under the table. Beluga had moved to peer distrustfully at him from behind Park’s legs. “Shit.”
“Language, Cooper Isaac,” Ed said, nodding at the doorway where Cayla had snuck back in, wearing a little royal-blue velvet suit jacket and matching pants and a different pair of ears, rounder and fuzzier and bear-like, on her head.
“Er, sorry, my foot slipped.”
The dog looked like she knew a lie when she smelled it. He saw the same expression on Park’s face right now.
“Somebody isn’t very happy with you,” Cayla said.
Cooper didn’t bother asking her who.
* * *
That night, Cooper shifted under the cool sheets and tried not to look too closely at his surroundings. The posters of baseball players—all retired now—that he’d hung up across his bed for reasons that were about forty-percent baseball-related, the battered dresser with CD cases scattered across the surface, his room preserved in time as if he had just walked out. In a way he had. Maybe that was the problem.
Dean had stayed on longer, moving back briefly after college, slowly dismantling his room until it was an empty office space without even a spare bed. But Cooper hadn’t wanted to bring anything with him he didn’t have to, and his dad had apparently left it all untouched, same as the day he’d left home at seventeen. As if Cooper might still come back one day looking for his Walkman.
Lying in the dark, surrounded by his childhood things, with the trundle bed pulled out and waiting, he felt like he was having a sleepover. He even had that same nervous energy. When Cooper was a kid his dad rarely let him have friends overnight, so it was a big, exciting deal when it happened. He had that same momentous feeling now. Though he and Park had shared a room plenty of times before, here in his old bedroom, his father asleep down the hall, the uniformed stars of his earliest fantasies staring down at him, it felt different.
The door opened and Park slipped in, returning from the bathroom.
“Hey,” Cooper whispered.
Park nodded at him and then looked around the room with a neutral sort of curiosity. He hadn’t gotten a good look before. Cooper had insisted he stay with Ed while he set up the trundle and carried their bags in, wanting to limit the amount of time Park spent in here. He shouldn’t have bothered. Park was taking it all in, darkness be damned. Cooper could see the quick rise and fall of his chest that meant he was sniffing the room.
Cooper wondered what he could smell. He wondered if the years of sadness and laughter and anger and frustration and loneliness and longing had left some invisible mark on the walls. Especially the longing. For something exactly like this. A man who saw him for who he was, accepted him, and could drive Cooper crazy.
Though perhaps in his childhood fantasies he hadn’t pictured this mystery lover sniffing his room quite so intently.
“Do you...want to come to bed?” Cooper shifted slightly on the too-small mattress. It would be uncomfortable and risky, and it took Cooper’s breath away how badly he wanted it.
Park hesitated, then drifted over and sat on the trundle instead. A cacophony of screeches and whines sounded like a jungle brawl from the aged springs. Cooper laughed softly.
“Yeah, well, the same back at you,” he said, and caught the shine of Park’s teeth. They sat in silence and Cooper began to relax into the pillow, bone-tired from staying awake all the night before, worrying.
He had specifically wanted Park to come to the Valley so they could talk in a new setting. Fix things. Come to an understanding, as Park would say.
He should open his eyes and do that now. But the familiar, steady cadence of Park’s breathing here in this room that had once been both his sanctuary and his prison made him feel safe, and he slipped into an almost drugged tranquility.
“Are you falling asleep on me?”
No, just resting my eyes, Cooper said. Or thought.
He felt Park lean over and brush his lips against his hair. But he might have just imagined that as well.
* * *
His mother’s gazebo came apart in ugly chunks.
Cooper had imagined it would be like a house of cards, toppling over into its original elements. Planks and beams and shingles all in a pile at their feet as if ready to be reassembled again.
That wasn’t how it worked at all. Whether through solid construction or time melding its bones together, the gazebo was one whole entity now, and every toothed attack from Ed’s prized machine ripped hunks away like flesh, with all its skin, nerves, and tissue trailing behind.
Dean helped Cayla keep a steady stream of water from the garden hose on each new tear to control the dust and debris. It flooded at their feet in a discolored pool. Cooper looked at that instead.
“Okay?” Park asked, and touched his shoulder gently.
Cooper twitched away from his hand and glanced automatically at his father, steering the excavator jerkily and yelling instructions no one could hear as he ripped into the gazebo again. “Fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Park was quiet and Cooper looked up at him. He looked...tired. Spiderweb lines crept out from the corners of his eyes and mouth, and he held his neck and shoulders stiffly.
“I warned you,” Cooper said.
Park quirked his brow. “About?”
Cooper paused and then settled for a light tone. “I warned you this weekend wasn’t going to be fun. How horrible is the trundle bed?”
“I’ve had worse nights.”
The last of the gazebo, a crooked uneven spire that jutted into the sky like an accusation, crumbled under the machine’s final strike, and Cayla cheered.
“Well, you look like you won’t survive another. Oliver 0, Mattress 1.”
Park shook his head, smiling. “Porcupine,” he said.
Cooper felt heat rush his face. It was something Park called him occasionally in private. When Cooper was being “especially prickly.” Whether it was meant out of affection or exasperation, Cooper wasn’t sure, but it sounded intimate in a way they both usually avoided and tended to do unpredictable things to Cooper’s physiology.
“We could switch tonight,” Cooper said.
Park looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Switch what?”
Cooper nudged him and then lingered with his shoulder pressed against Park’s for a moment. “Beds. I don’t want you in pain. Not that a thirty-year-old twin is going to rock your world, but it’s something.”
Park’s eyes flickered with a sort of soft, pleased surprise, but he said, “I literally rearrange every bone in my body on the daily. I promise a mattress is not going break me.” He poked Cooper’s back. “Some company on said mattress, on the other hand...”
“Might not break you, but would certainly break the bed,” Cooper finished with an incredulous laugh.
“That sounds like a challenge.”
He shook his head mournfully. “And you used to hear so well.”
Park’s response was lost in the noise of Ed driving the machine over the pile of debris, crushing the rubble and the few lilac bushes left standing. Sophie had suggested trying to save the plants by digging them up and transplanting them somewhere, but Ed had flatly refused delaying the demolition.
“Besides, I’ve always hated the smell of lilac. Dean? Coop?”
Dean had just shrugged and Cooper followed suit. The lilacs, like the gazebo, reminded him of his mother’s last days, just before the final move to the hospital, when she was too weak to move around much and he spent most of his time visiting her in the gazebo. He supposed he should be just as angry that his father was destroying them, but the truth was he hated the smell as well. Especially during the very last days of the flower’s bloom, when the edges of the petals soured to brown and the smell thickened to an overpoweringly sweet rot, like a mouse forgotten in a trap.
Across the field something caught the afternoon sun in the second-floor window of old Mr. West’s house and flickered a bright white light. Cooper squinted, but the light disappeared.
Of course, Mr. West probably didn’t even live there anymore. Or live anywhere at all, for that matter. He’d already been old and terrifying when Cooper was a kid. Always watching the neighborhood kids play in the field. Still, it was the terrifying ones who seemed to live forever, and something about that flash tickled a sleepy memory in the back of Cooper’s brain.
“I ran into your father sitting in the gazebo this morning.”
Cooper looked at Park, startled. “What?” he said, not sure he’d heard correctly over the destruction around them.
“Ed was sitting in your mother’s gazebo.”
Cooper frowned, not sure what to do with that information, so he filed it away for later and focused on the second part. “Why’d you call it that? My...my mother’s gazebo.”
“You don’t talk about her much, but nearly every time you have, you’ve mentioned that gazebo.” Park shrugged. “I took a guess.”
Cooper didn’t say anything for a long time. “She liked to sit there and watch the birds at the feeder. She was so happy she cried when a little bird family started nesting in the birdhouse. They never had before.”
“How old were you when she died?”
“Eleven.”
Diagnosed with ovarian cancer when he was nine. His clearest memories of her were from when she was sick. But she’d still managed to cement herself in his mind as his ally parent. Rolling her eyes when Ed would go off on one of his lectures at Cooper, she would tell a joke and they’d both relax. She made everything lighter, easier. He often wondered how things would be different with his dad if she hadn’t died when he was so young.
“It was longer than they expected. She said she was hanging on for Dean to become bar mitzvah and make sure he didn’t chicken out. Talk about a guilt trip.”
Park laughed. “Did you have a bar mitzvah?”
“Nah. Not for me. All the personal responsibility, none of the gift cards. Dad made me keep going to temple for a bit, but I don’t think he even noticed when I stopped. He was pretty out of it after—afterwards.” Cooper felt oddly guilty saying it. His dad always presented a strong front, and to admit, even if it was just to Park, that he had once showed weakness felt like a betrayal.
“They got married out of high school,” Cooper added quickly, as if that was the only reason Ed could be affected by his wife’s death.
“Young.”
“Yeah. Well, that was Dean’s doing, too, actually. But now Dad thinks anyone in their thirties and single is bound to die alone.”
Cooper suddenly felt uncomfortable and exposed. He realized with a jolt that, aside from the cute little tree story last night, he knew about as much about Park now as he did within the first three days they’d met. Not that he asked that often. Accusing someone’s relatives of being involved in murder and mass conspiracy tended to make chats about the fam awkward later.
Cooper knew he had been raised by his scary, rich, alpha-zilla grandparents, but Park was frustratingly vague about his past. The one time Cooper had asked what had drawn Park away from academia and into the agency, he’d said “I wanted to fix things” and left it at that.
“What about your parents?” Cooper asked now.
Park looked away to watch the last of the gazebo being flattened beneath the wheels. “What about them?” His voice was flat, but the strain around his eyes and mouth had deepened.
Cooper took a step back. Park rolled his shoulders and shook out his arms suddenly, like he was fighting a cramp. “Sorry. Maybe you were right and the trundle bed got to me worse than I thought.”
Cooper touched his arm gently. “This house makes porcupines of us all.”
His words rang out across the suddenly silent yard as the excavator was powered off, and he yanked his hand away.
Ed hopped down from the control box and clapped his hands. “Now we just got to clear this away. Coop, stop gabbing over there. It’s time for some real work.”
October or not, Cooper was sweating hard by the time they tossed the last of the rubble into the back of his dad’s truck.
“Now that wasn’t so bad,” Ed said, closing the back with a final thud. His face was red and his mustache dark with sweat, but there was a look of satisfaction and almost relief in his eyes.
“Whatever,” Cooper mumbled, rubbing at his stinging eyes. The dirt and wood dust stuck to his skin and made his eyes burn more. In the yard, they could hear Cayla singing to herself and swinging a shovel, smack, smack, against the big dirt hole where the gazebo had been.
Ed clapped him on the back. “We couldn’t have done it without you.” Cooper looked at him, surprised, and Ed continued, “If you hadn’t brought Oliver we’d still be breaking our backs.”
“Right. Yeah. He’s handy like that.”
“He’s a beast,” Ed countered, clapped him on the shoulder, and squeezed.
Cooper stiffened. “No, he’s not.”
Ed laughed. “Whatever, Coop. The point is, you could learn a thing or two from him. You’re skinnier than ever. Did you know I caught him sneaking out to go for a run at the crack of dawn? I told him he better save his energy for today, and it’s a good thing he did.”
“Yeah, I heard about that.” Cooper paused, not sure if he should ask. “What were you doing up, out here?”
Ed fiddled with the truck door and watched Cayla, who had given up hitting the dirt and was trying out digging for the moment. “You used to do that. Sing to yourself. All the time.”
“I can’t sing.”
“Believe me, I know. The whole neighborhood knew.” Ed looked past Cayla to the field and the houses beyond, like he was seeing a different time.
“Dad...” Cooper hesitated. “Why tear down Mom’s gazebo now? Really?”
Ed sighed. “Coop—” He shook his head and looked at Cooper, then squinted. “Are you crying?”
“What? No!” Cooper scrubbed again at his burning eyes. “It’s just this stupid dust.”
“Last bit coming through,” Dean called out. He and Park were carrying a chunk of support beam still attached to some shingles that Cooper was fairly sure Park could have carried on his own, literally single-handed.
Cooper stepped aside as they tossed it into the back of the truck with a lot of grunting on Dean’s part and a scraping groan from the already full truck bed. Cooper pulled the bottom of his T-shirt to wipe the sweat off his face again and then just pulled the whole damn thing off to use the clean inside instead.
“Woo. That’s the last of it. Too bad Sophe had that poodle surgery and didn’t get to see my masculine prowess,” Dean was saying, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Actually, what with the whole wood spider incident, maybe it’s for the best she wasn’t here to see me screa—”
“What is that?” Ed interrupted. His voice was so sharp and urgent Cooper automatically snapped to attention, his hand reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there.
But there was no threat. Ed was staring at Cooper with a twisted expression of anger and horror.
Cooper blinked, a bolt of unease pulsing through him to see his father look so furious. “What?”
“That.” Ed moved toward him quickly, hand outstretched, and in the corner of his eye Cooper saw Park step forward, watching Ed intently, while Dean just looked back and forth between them, confused.
“What happened to you?” His eyes flicked across Cooper’s body, and for a moment Cooper thought he was going to make another critique of his muscle mass. Then he realized what “that” was and wished he hadn’t.
“Oh.” He tried to cover the bruises and scratches on his arms. “Just some bumps from the last case. It’s nothing. You know how easy I bruise. Looks worse than it is.”
“Does that look worse than it is?” Ed stepped closer, pointing to the thick scars running down Cooper’s belly. Park stepped closer as well, and Cooper stepped away from both of them, butt pushed up against the truck. “Because that looks like you were mauled by a...by a bear.”
Close, but no cigar. “I wasn’t. I just...”
Part of being in the BSI meant lying. He did it all the time. He’d been lying to his father about all sorts of stuff for a lot longer than he’d even been in the BSI. But something about the expression on Ed’s face, like he was angry enough to kill, turned his mind blank.
Cooper looked at Park, but his partner had that closed-off, empty mask firmly in place. Beyond him, Dean was frowning.
“It was nothing. A few stitches and I’m good as new.”
“You were in the hospital?” Dean asked. “For how long?”
“I don’t know. A week?” Cooper lied. “Maybe longer?”
“You hate hospitals,” Ed said, so low Cooper wasn’t sure he heard right.
“Yeah, well. They didn’t really give me a choice of venue.”
“Who did this?”
“Nobody. It’s nothing.”
“Nobody? So you did it to yourself?” Ed had grabbed Cooper’s forearm right above the wrist and was squeezing so hard Cooper could feel the pulse in his fingers. He didn’t pull or push him, just held him like a drowning man. Park had stuck his arm in between them like he was one second away from sweeping his arm out and knocking Ed across the driveway. Cooper felt a flicker of fear for his father and then immediately guilty for thinking that of Park.
“No! God! Just some asshole I was chasing down, okay? Back off, Oliver.” He swatted Park’s arm away with his free hand. Park let it drop but stepped closer.
“When was this?”
“I don’t know, Dad, a while ago. Don’t worry about it.”
“I am your father! Don’t you tell me what to fucking worry about.”
Cooper froze, and even Ed seemed shocked. He didn’t shout and he didn’t swear. He’d always been a hard man but firmly in control.
In the yard, Cayla’s singing had stopped. “Dean?” they heard her call cautiously.
“Coming!” Dean yelled back, and then more quietly, “Dad. Dad, come on.” He stepped forward and touched Ed’s shoulder lightly.
Park was practically on top of them at this point, the four of them standing way too close, and Cooper felt the insane urge to just turn and run away and not stop running until he got home. His real home. In DC.
“Dad,” Dean repeated, and Ed looked up at him like he didn’t recognize him. Cooper hadn’t seen that look since his mother died. “You’ve been working all day. Let’s get some water, okay?”
Ed nodded, releasing Cooper’s arm slowly and leaving white finger marks behind. Without looking at him or Park, he followed Dean into the backyard.
“What the actual fuck,” Cooper whispered when they were out of sight. “I haven’t seen him like that since... I’ve never seen him like that.”
He thought he was shaking but realized the quivering was coming from Park, pressed against him shoulder to shoulder. He pushed him away. “That goes for you, too. What was that about? Why are you crawling up my ass right now?”
Park turned abruptly, walked away taking a few deep breaths, and then circled back to Cooper. He looked upset. “They don’t know anything at all, do they?”
Cooper felt his heart stutter and restart, beating faster, sharper, until he could feel it in his throat. He said slowly, “What do you mean?”
“I mean your family doesn’t know anything about you.”
He whispered, “You knew I’m not out with them. I told you that. I warned you.” An echo of the words he’d spoken just earlier that day, but he wasn’t joking anymore. The adrenaline swirling around his veins from before was settling and clotting into anger. “Is that why you keep touching me? Trying to get them to figure it out? Because if that’s it, Park, you can fuck right off. It isn’t your decision, whatever we are—it’s mine.”
“No,” Park bit out. “I’m not trying to out you. I’m saying they don’t know you at all. Yeah, they don’t know you’re gay and you’re right, that’s your prerogative. It’s your family and I’m not involved as you keep reminding me. But what about everything else? The BSI?”
Cooper lowered his voice. “You’re upset because I didn’t, what, tell them about werewolves? Is that what all those little hints were supposed to be last night? You wanted to know if I told them about...you?”
Park was shaking his head but wouldn’t look Cooper in the eye. “What did you tell them you do? At the BSI? Because it sounds like someone told them you work in the office all the time and don’t go into the field at all.”
Cooper’s face flushed at the accuracy of that, so there was no point trying to deny it. “So what? It’s easier that way. Think about how bad my dad is now with calling and shit, and that’s when he thinks my job is boring and I bring shame onto the law enforcement family tradition.”
“What’s wrong with calling?” Park said. “Besides, you’d probably get along better if he knew what you did. Or some version of it, anyway.”
“If he can’t be proud of every part of me, he doesn’t get to know the rest,” Cooper hissed. “I’m not some kind of fucking pick’n’mix bag.”
“They didn’t even know you were in the hospital.” Park’s voice was raised now, his eyes dilating and possibly glowing gold, though through the haze of Cooper’s frustration with his father, everything seemed brighter. “You almost died, Cooper.”
“Yeah, and? You think if he’d seen me tubed up in some hospital that would fix us? That he’d realize just how precious life is and forget all about what a disappointment I’ve always been to him? I don’t know what kind of feel-good TV special you were raised in, but that’s not going to happen. You don’t know him.”
“You have no idea what it’s like being lied to by your family. Finding out you didn’t know them at all. Not until they die out of nowhere and you can’t even mourn them properly because they didn’t trust you enough to keep you in their lives.”
Park’s lip curled back as he spoke, revealing slightly elongated canines. He had never flashed his teeth at Cooper before. But then, he had never looked so angry before. Cooper had a feeling he wasn’t the only one projecting. There was the taste of old wounds opening up in the air between them, rank and bitter.
A shiver ran down Cooper’s spine.
Park looked away and scrubbed his hand over his face. After a moment he said into his hands, “I’m sorry. That wasn’t—I didn’t mean—”
The automatic words that’s okay hovered on Cooper’s tongue, and he bit them back. It wasn’t okay.
It was a mistake to bring Park here. Instead of making things better, he had just made them worse. Sometimes letting people get to know more about you didn’t bring you closer, it just gave them more reasons to want to walk away.
After a long moment Park looked at Cooper again. His face was red from rubbing, but his eyes and teeth were normal, or rather, restrained.
“Look, maybe I should—” Park broke off as a strong breeze ruffled his hair. Cooper felt some more dust lodge in his eye and scrubbed at it irritated and a little panicked. Maybe he should what? Take a break? Go back to DC?
But Park wasn’t looking at him anymore. He had turned his back, and Cooper could hear heavy breathing. For one horrifying moment, he thought Park might be crying. His stomach dropped. The thought of Park upset, maybe even hurting... It pulled a wave of protective anger through him and an even stronger desire to wrap his arms around him and hold on until the tension in his shoulders melted away.
“Oliver?”
Park didn’t respond.
“Please don’t leave,” Cooper blurted out. “I’m sorry.”
Park shook his head abruptly and then snorted, like he was trying to clear a bad smell from his nose, and Cooper realized he had been sniffing the air and not sniffling. He felt a hot wave of embarrassment flood his face.
Park was giving him an odd look but then called out, “Cayla!” and jogged toward her, still digging and singing in the loose dirt where the gazebo had stood. “Cayla, come here!”
“What—?” Cooper followed Park to the backyard, and Cayla hopped toward them.
“Cayla, can you go inside and find Dean for me?”
She frowned. “I’m digging.”
“Cayla, please go get Dean. This is important and there’s no one faster.”
She made a face, clearly not fooled and a bit insulted Park thought she might be. She looked at Cooper questioningly. Stupidly, he felt a little smug she trusted him over Park as the adult to turn to. But whatever Park was up to, he felt confident there was a point.
“Go ahead, Cayla. Please.”
Trusted adult or not, he was not safe from her incredulous face either. Still, she pranced toward the house.
Park crouched in the pit where she had been digging and started to scoop dirt away with his hands.
“If you’re looking for somewhere to bury your bone, I can think of a few better places than that,” Cooper joked weakly, confused and not sure if they were still fighting or not.
Park grimaced, stood, and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Somebody beat me to it.” He nodded at the ground.
Cooper took a few steps closer to see. At Park’s feet, protruding from the dirt, was a row of brownish white teeth, flat-topped, all crammed together in one tight row, and still attached to the filthy bottom jaw of a human skull.