CHAPTER EIGHT

 

 

Bauer shifted back later that night and Seth felt a terrible, rising hope within himself. This man could shift at will. He claimed he could control it.

Was it possible that Seth’s life, and his brothers’ lives, could potentially gain a modicum of stability?

And the even more tantalizing question: If Seth could control himself, ensure that he would be safe to be around, would it possible to have a relationship with a human?

One human in particular?

The three boys slept at home that night, unwilling to leave their mother alone with this stranger. So, Seth laid awake in his childhood bedroom, Raphael snoring across the room.

Thoughts of Sarah spun in his head. He hadn’t meant to kiss her. But what a kiss it had been. Even now, it was vibrating through him, filling him up. Touching her was pleasurable in the basest sense of the word. His hands on her back, her foot on his leg, his chest against her, all of it had made his cells ache with a buzzing rightness that he’d never felt before.

He hadn’t wanted to leave her. Her hands had played in his hair as he took the phone call with Jackson. By the time he’d hung up, she’d already known he was leaving.              

“Family emergency?” she’d asked.

“Yes. Everyone’s all right, but I have to go.”

She’d nodded. “Okay.”

He’d helped her to her feet and they’d walked downstairs together.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help, Seth. Seriously, I owe you so much already. I’d love to help you out somehow.”

If the news of the shifter attack hadn’t struck him cold, he would have gathered her to him again, probably gotten lost in her mouth for the second time that night. But he just couldn’t do it.

Everything that he was, that he was born as, couldn’t be ignored. He couldn’t pretend that he was a normal human man who just wanted to date her and see where things went. He’d known, squeezing her hand and leaving her house, that there was no possible future with Sarah.

It had been painful to realize. But Seth understood now, lying in bed, that it was more painful to hope that they might have a chance.

It hurt to imagine a different life. One where he and his brothers weren’t quite so beholden to the moon. One where they might be able to nuzzle against the hand of a human and not have the slightest fear of attacking them. Imagining that alternate future was painful. It almost felt as if Seth had been taught to hold his body in one position for his entire life, and now someone was giving him permission to stretch. Hope was hurting him, because he’d never really had any before. It was a new muscle that he’d never used. He wasn’t good at hope.

Seth drifted off to sleep, certain that while Raphael slept like a log, Jackson was tossing and turning in his old bedroom.

And sure enough, when Seth went down for coffee the next morning, Jackson was the first one down there, leaning against the counter, his eyes ringed with exhausted purple.

Seth poured himself a cup and observed his brother. “Maybe yoga.”

“Hm?” Jackson looked up from whatever reverie had had him staring into the depths of his coffee cup. “Oh, good morning.”

“I said, maybe yoga. Or meditation.”

“What’s that?”

“We’ve gotta find a way to get you a little more relaxed. The way you’re going, you’re gonna have a heart attack by the time you’re forty.”

“Someone has to worry about the family, Seth.”

“Maybe it’s time we all started worrying about ourselves and you could put your anxiety on the shelf for a while.” He looked in the fridge and pulled out eggs. “And maybe it’s time we get you laid.”

Jackson laughed at the unexpected advice. “What, did you and Raph switch brains in the night or something? I get laid just fine without the help of my little brothers.”

Seth straightened up, his eyebrows high on his head—this was news to him. He started cracking eggs into a bowl. “Really? I wasn’t sure if you… did that. You never talk about it.”

Jackson glowered at him. “I went to college, Seth. Gone for a decade, remember that part? I got a fair amount of play while I was gone.”

Seth nodded, started whisking the eggs, his eyes on his brother. “Jacks, you’ve been back for four years.”

Jackson looked out the kitchen window at the rising dawn. “I’ve hooked up here and there. Not as much as when I was in California. There’s a lot of… distractions here.”

Jackson cleared his throat and took a gulp of his coffee, wincing at the heat.

Seth added spices and some heavy cream to the eggs, considering his brother’s words. He’d been working on a theory for a while. And he wondered now, if when Jackson said there were ‘a lot’ of distractions, if he really meant that there was just one. One in particular. One gigantic distraction who kept him up at night and kept him from finding someone else to love.

“Early birds,” Elizabeth said as she padded into the room in her slippers and robe. She kissed each son on the cheek and then peered into the bowl Seth was whisking. “You’ll need another half dozen eggs at least.”

Seth blinked. “I already used a dozen. And I was going to fry up that bacon.”

“Trust me,” Elizabeth said, pulling out more eggs and handing them over. “Bauer eats like a horse.”

And just like that, the calm, brotherly atmosphere the boys had been enjoying dissolved away like smoke in the wind.

“I don’t like that you’ve been living here with him, Ma,” Jackson said in a low tone.

“Surprise, surprise,” Elizabeth murmured. “Jackson, you make it sound like I’ve been shacked up with the man. I’ve been locking him in the garage and sleeping with my gun. Not sure how I could have kept myself safer than that.”

“You could have called us, Ma. If you thought it was so important to let him stay here, you should have called at least one of us to come and stay with you,” Seth said, pouring the egg mixture into his mother’s decades-old cast iron.

“Oh, not you too.” Elizabeth poured herself a cup of coffee and then started slicing fruit for a fruit salad. “When did this happen? When did I go from being the most powerful woman in the world to all three of you acting like I’m two steps from the old folks’ home?”

“I don’t act like you’re two steps from the old folks’ home, Ma,” Raphael said from the doorway, shirtless and scratching at his messy hair. “I still think you're the most powerful woman in the world.” He held his hands up in the pantomime of his mother holding a rifle. “That whole thing last night was badass.”

She patted Raphael’s cheek as he came to stand beside her and smacked his hand away from the peaches she’d just cut. “That’s sweet, but you’ll wait for the food to be on the table, like everyone else. And go wake Bauer, so he doesn’t miss breakfast.”

The three boys all sort of froze for a second.

“You… want me to go wake up that guy?” Raph asked slowly.

And Seth understood what his twin was really saying. It had always been just the four of them. They were the complete family unit. After Jackson left for school, Nat and Kaya had subbed in. But there had never, ever been a grown man amongst them. It felt awkward and strange to think of the four of them sitting at a breakfast table with a man there, too. Intrusive, even.

“That guy is already awake,” Bauer said, knocking on the doorway. “Sorry, didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

“I thought you were locked out,” Jackson said sharply.

“I unlocked the door on the way into the kitchen,” Elizabeth explained. She looked around at the faces of her sons and then threw her hands on her hips. “Boys, either we’re trusting this man and letting him stay, or we’re not trusting him and kicking him to the curb. But we sure as hell can’t have both, all right? We’ll go crazy.”

To everyone’s surprise, it was Bauer who spoke. “It’ll take time. You can’t just snap your fingers and manifest trust.” He frowned. “Maybe let’s just start with breakfast and see how it goes.”

“Excellent suggestion,” Raph agreed, patting his bare stomach. “I’m starved.”

A few minutes later, they all sat down together. Thankfully, it was warm enough to eat on the dewy back porch, which saved them all the awkwardness of sitting at the dining room table. They’d had too many family dinners at that table. Too many arguments and jokes and tears. Seth and his brothers had grown up at that table. It would have just been too creepy to add a man into that equation.

It was Sunday, so none of the boys had any place in particular to be, though Seth’s mind couldn’t help but drift to Sarah. After they ate, they set their plates aside and a silence settled over them all.

Come on, Raph. Seth sent mental wavelengths to his twin. Get the ball rolling. Do something to make this less awkward.

Raph looked over at Seth, as if he could feel the thoughts vibing toward him. He smacked his hands together. “So, like, let’s get this show on the road. How do we start?”

Bauer looked startled. “Start… you mean right now?”

“No time like the present.”

Bauer looked around them, at the trees that lined the yard, and a paranoid look crossed his face, souring his expression. “I don’t care how secluded we are. I’m not shifting in broad daylight.”

As if sensing that her presence was going to be more of a distraction than a help, Elizabeth gathered the plates and rose to leave.

“Leave the dishes for me, Ma,” Raph said, tugging on the sleeve of her robe as she went past.

She nodded, kissed the top of his head and kept going.

Seth watched Bauer observe this interaction. He watched a pained softness come over the man’s face, wiping away the paranoia. “I keep forgetting that y’all are a family. Usually, you get this many shifters in one place, it’s some kind of safehouse situation and those are never very safe, if you know what I mean. Somebody’s always threatening to report somebody else to the government, scuffles break out. You never know another shifter’s level of control…”

Bauer trailed off, suddenly looking exhausted and about a decade older than when he’d started talking.

“Bauer, how do you know how to do all this? Who taught you?” Jackson asked, his arms crossed over his chest.

The sun had risen an hour ago and now was just starting to creep over the tree line, casting itself unforgivingly over their faces. Seth watched Bauer pick at the bottom of the old T-shirt he wore. Seth recognized it as Jackson’s old track T-shirt. The man needed some real clothes. Seth inwardly sighed, already knowing that he would be the one to go out and buy them. He might not be sure whether or not to trust Bauer yet, but this kind of thing was a compulsion for Seth.

“Ah,” Bauer said, finally raising those creepy green eyes back up to Jackson. “My father. And my mother a bit as well. They were both shifters.” His eyes creeped to the tree line again, as if even saying the word ‘shifter’ outside was enough to have him looking for federal agents lurking in the woods. “You asked me where to start, and to be honest, I have no idea. Like I said, I’ve never taught anybody anything before. I don’t know how.”

“Just start where your father started with you,” Raphael suggested.

“That’s the thing,” Bauer said, scraping a hand over his face, his stubble making a scritching sound against his palm. “This is the kind of thing my father was teaching me since my first shift. Since I was a toddler. They’re not formal lessons. It’s like the way a parent teaches a kid to speak English. Slow and steady. It happens a little bit every day.”

That was… shocking to hear for Seth. And when he took in the expressions on his brothers’ faces, he knew it was shocking for them as well. Being shifters had been such a secret their whole lives, they’d never known any others. They knew nothing of any sort of shifter community or culture. In truth, none of them had known there was anything to know about being shifters besides just, like, beware of the full moon.

Jackson was the first to gather himself. “Maybe a good place to start would be assessment. You won’t know what to teach us until you know what we know. Or don’t know.”

“Right.” Bauer nodded, looking around at them. “So, why don’t you boys tell me about your shifts.”

“They happen at moonrise on the full moon,” Raphael said. “Which sometimes happens during the day. And they end at dawn the following day. Like clockwork.”

Bauer’s eyes clouded. “All right. And, what do they feel like?”

“The shift itself?”

Bauer nodded.

“Well,” Raph continued. “I can’t speak for my brothers, but for me? They hurt. I feel my bones realigning. Which kind of feels like knuckles cracking, but, like, a hundred times the intensity. And then the hair, which burns like a mother. What else…” Raph tipped his head back, wracking his brain.

Seth thought his brother’s description was dead on. But there was more, too. He filled in the blanks. “The worst for me is what it feels like in my head. I can feel my thoughts go from, I don’t know, civilized, to sort of primal. I lose language and don’t want to. I try to hang onto it but it hurts. And then, when I’m shifting back into human form, I don’t like that either. I have a sort of primitive and instinctual understanding of the world when I’m in wolf form. It’s simple and comforting. I hate letting it go to come back to the world of cell phones and to-do lists and complicated human emotions.”

As Seth spoke, Bauer’s face clouded over even more. The older man turned and looked at Jackson. “This is how it feels for you, too?”

Jackson nodded tersely and Seth could tell he was lying. Seth slanted Jackson a look and Jackson softened a bit. “It’s more painful for me than that.” He cleared his throat. “Almost unbearable.”

Raphael and Seth exchanged eye contact. They hadn’t known it was like that for him. He’d never mentioned it. But, then, why would Jackson mention it? He was a real suffer-in-silence type of guy.

Bauer swore and rose up from his chair. He paced to the edge of the deck and looked out at the trees. When he turned back, the light caught the side of his green eyes as he scraped a palm over his stubble again.

“Y’all are just babies,” he said eventually. “Don’t mean that as an insult, but what you’re describing… this is the way a toddler shifts.”

“What does that mean?” Seth asked, feeling as if he’d just been sucker-punched. It was a strange feeling rolling through him, defeat and hope all at once. Wrapped up into one thing.

“It means we’ve got ourselves a hell of a long way to go. And it’s gonna be hard.” Bauer’s eyes found Jackson’s. “And it’s gonna hurt.”

Jackson nodded, almost imperceptibly, obviously accepting his fate.

“Long way to go,” Seth said softly. “How long?”

“You say your natural instincts aren’t aggressive toward humans, well, that’s good. But if you’re not in control of yourselves, then it might just be coincidence. That murder? Make no mistake, that was done by a shifter with no control. It’ll take a hell of a long time to get to the point where you boys are actually safe around humans. Might take years.”

The word years echoed in his ears as Seth looked at his brothers’ faces. He was confused for a moment at the cautious hope he read there. Because his brothers didn’t care if it took years. They had all the time in the world to hone their skills and become safer and more controlled. But Seth? He wanted Sarah now. He wanted to be safe for Sarah immediately.

He should have known there’d be no quick fix.

Besides, this foolish hope had tricked him into focusing on the wrong thing. He’d never planned to be close enough to her on a full moon for her to have to worry about whether or not he was in control. The real problem was that in control or not, she could never know that he was a shifter.

All at once Seth realized that even though everything had just changed, nothing had really changed at all.

 

***

 

 

Sarah spent the two days after her kiss with Seth feeling like a hundred million bucks. Almost like she had her pre-Olympics groove back. She felt good. Positive. Her body was loose, her house looked great, colors were brighter, yadda yadda yadda.

She spent the third day after her kiss with Seth wondering why the hell she hadn’t heard from him since he’d rushed out of her house three days ago. Her natural self-confidence didn’t let her submerge herself in self-doubt. She knew, with every fiber of her being, that he’d enjoyed that kiss. That he’d been attracted to her. That he’d had to tear himself away from her. He’d wanted her. He’d wanted to stay. No question.

But she was very clear on the fact that humans were complicated creatures. There were plenty of scenarios where she wanted Seth, Seth wanted her, and they still never managed to kiss again. People had hang-ups and rules and fears. There were any number of unknowable reasons why, for the first time since she’d moved in, Seth hadn’t popped over to check on her.

Or maybe he was just busy. Maybe he was swamped with work and couldn’t find the time. She knew he was in town because she’d seen his truck in and out of his driveway.

Maybe, now that he’d finished with her house, he didn’t have as many reasons to drop by.

Halfway through that day, she got fed up with wondering. She’d been holed up in her house all day. She was gonna go for an epic run, get some of this energy out, and then she was gonna march over to his house and either kiss the daylights out of him, or demand to know why he wasn’t kissing the daylights out of her. She hadn’t decided yet.

She yanked on some athletic clothing, stretched in her living room, and was just stepping onto her porch, yanking her hair into a bun, when a sight in her front yard stopped her still.

Because there was Seth. Sweating, frowning, and pushing a lawn mower around her front yard.

She’d heard the mower go on twenty minutes before, but why would she have ever thought the noise was coming from her own property? She’d assumed it was a neighbor. She didn’t even own a mower!
She stared at Seth until he felt the touch of her gaze and turned around. He kicked off the lawn mower and walked toward her, using the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face.

As always, she was utterly bamboozled by the sight of his stomach, but it didn’t pass her notice that by the time he let his shirt drop, he’d wiped the frown off his face and replaced it with his usual easy grin.

She eyed him carefully, trying to figure out whether he was faking or was actually happy to see her.

“Hey, there,” he said, coming to stand at the bottom of her steps.

“What are you doing?”

“Your lawn needed a mow. I do the Krugers’ lawn too, when I get a free moment.” He nodded down the block and Sarah turned to see another freshly mowed lawn.

“But it’s the middle of the week. You work during the week.”

He shrugged. “Lunch hour.”

She frowned. “You’re mowing your neighbors’ lawns in the middle of the week, during your lunch hour.” She was almost tempted to add a ‘because…’ and roll her hand in the air, prompting him to fill in the blank.

Basically, she wanted to know if he was mowing her lawn because he planned to kiss her again, or if he was mowing her lawn because he planned not to kiss her again. There was a world where either answer made sense and she didn’t know him well enough to know which was more likely.

He squinted at her in the bright sunlight. “It’s really not a bother for me. I like to do it. You going for a run?”

She looked down at her athletic clothing, like there were answers in the fabric. She half expected to see Seth is into it, or Sorry, he’s passing on this one printed across her stomach.

“Yeah.”

He nodded, bouncing on his heels. He was nervous. Was that a good thing or a bad thing. “Did you get a call from Raph yesterday?”

“Yeah. He invited me out for dinner tonight.”

“Cool.”

“Said the group was going.”

“Yeah, that’s what I heard too.”

She internally rolled her eyes at herself. Apparently fishing for information wasn’t her strong suit. “Are you gonna be there?”

His eyes shot to hers. “No. I’m volunteering at Jackson’s animal hospital tonight. Something I do every month or so.”

“Okay. Well. See you later, then.”

She jumped off the porch, passed him, and then turned around.

“And thank you for mowing my lawn, you really don’t have to do that.”

“I know, Sarah. I like doing things for you.”

“Okay,” she repeated, back to square one on figuring him out, and turned to jog away.

 

 

***

 

 

Dinner with Kaya, Nat and Raph was really fun, though Sarah couldn’t help but wish that Seth were there with them. Nat was hilarious and goofy and she and Raphael seemed to understand one another on a level that only lifelong buddies could. And Sarah really liked Kaya. They’d had a lot of fun the other day at the archery range. Sarah hadn’t been able to bring herself to shoot at all, but she’d enjoyed coaching Kaya, who was strong and determined, but had the aim of a blind elephant.

They’d gotten quite a kick out of it, in fact, and hadn’t stopped laughing the entire time. They laughed a lot that night as well. And Sarah went home happy.

She was determined that the next day, she’d sort things out with Seth. Clear the air. But the next day, she didn’t see him. She went down to Eldora to help with some pre-season setup and when she got home that night, his truck was gone from his driveway. There was a cardboard box on her porch, though, and when she opened it, she saw that Seth had baked her a lasagna and made muffins.

“Is this love lasagna or guilt lasagna?” she asked the air, completely acknowledging how nutso she sounded. She invited Aunt Lynn over to have dinner with her, which kept Sarah from feeling lonely, but not from feeling confused.

And so the week went on. Whenever Sarah was completely determined to hammer things out with Seth, he did something else completely sweet and confused the heck out of her. Casserole one night, potted plants for her front porch two days after that. It was when she came home from a long run to see that her car had been washed that she really lost it.

“Okay, that’s it.”

It had been a week since they’d kissed and Sarah had completely had it. It was going to make her insane to stay in this nebulous between-space. Despite all the incredibly kind things he’d done for her, she’d yet to really see Seth. They hadn’t even addressed the fact that they’d made out like star-crossed lovers. And frankly, this wasn’t good for her blood pressure.

She went inside, threw her sweaty clothes directly into the washer and raced through a shower. She was just sliding into some yoga pants when she heard a noise downstairs.

That sneaky, confusing asshole was dropping off food for her again, she just knew it! And she also knew that he was going to be gone before she got down there if she didn’t move quickly.

Knotting her wet hair on the top of her head, Sarah bounded down the stairs and into her kitchen, just in time to catch Seth exiting through into her living room.

“Seth!”

He froze and turned around, that smile on his face.

“Hey.”

“What’s going on?” she asked, her eyes resting on the tin-foil-covered Tupperware he’d just placed on her countertop.

“Not much. I went for a hike today, hung out with my brothers and this guy who is… renting a room at my mom’s house. What about you? What’s going on?”

So, they were playing this game? The nothing-much game? Could it get any more awkward than that?

“Nothing much. I spent the morning at Eldora helping to prepare for the season, and then I went for a run.”

“Cool.” He cleared his throat. “All right, have a good night, Sarah.” He turned and started to walk away.

“Seth,” her voice stopped him. “What the hell is this?”

She pointed viciously at the Tupperware on her countertop, but it was clear that she meant the question on a cosmic level as well. She’d had it up to her ears with pretending awkwardly like they hadn’t kissed and didn’t have yet to talk about it. She’d had it up to her ears with passively accepting his gifts without really understanding why he was giving them. And most of all, she’d had it up to her ears wondering if they were ever gonna kiss again. If they weren’t, she just wanted to know so she could get on with her life.

A trepidatious, intelligent look crossed his face and Sarah understood instantly that he knew what she was really asking. He knew she was pointing at the food but asking about their lives. Apparently, he chose to play the fool.