Coming Back Home

by Megan Linden

  The sight of Jack and Rosa together had broken him open in a way he’d experienced only once before—when he’d first held his daughter soon after she had been born and she’d looked at him for the first time, blinking her eyes open.

  He replayed the scene over and over in his head, rubbing at Rosa’s back while her little fists were twisted in his shirt.

  Jack’s wolf coming at full speed from between the trees had felt like a dream for a split second. Then he’d noticed Connor and Rosa and halted as if he’d been struck by lightning. Connor had stilled, not knowing what to do. The second wolf had come to a stop next to Jack and that flash of anger Connor had no right to feel had helped him snap out of his shock. Rosa had been the only one who seemed to have no problems with deciding what to do next. She’d jumped almost a foot off the ground at the sight of Jack, then had stumbled and run to him as if—no. He’d shut that line of thought down at the same time as he’d shouted at Rosa to stop, but it had already been too late.

  She’d halted almost in between Jack’s front paws and when she’d tried to peer up at him, she’d done an accidental back flip. Connor would’ve laughed if he hadn’t still been so completely, utterly overwhelmed. Then everything had happened so fast—Jack’s breathless chuckle sounding like a choking noise, Rosa’s nose twitching as if she had been trying to catch Jack’s scent, then suddenly Jack pulling into himself.

  Connor had gotten there before he’d even consciously decided to move. He’d picked Rosa up quickly and had turned to look at Jack, but whatever he’d wanted to say had seemed to vanish from his head. For maybe two seconds they’d just stared at each other, then Jack had bolted as if he were running for his life and disappeared into the forest, followed quickly by the other guy, whoever he was. And Connor had been left behind, standing with a naked baby in his arms, fighting to breathe.

  Rosa pulled him back to the present now, patting him on the chin with her little hand. He forced himself to smile at her and let out a long, shuddering breath.

  “Time to get you dressed again,” he told her, rising from the ground. “No more shifting today,” he said, as if she had any control over that. It was worth a try, though, since he had only one change of clothes for her with him.

  He checked the time and, after putting Rosa in her dress, he packed the rest of their things.

  “Time to go,” he announced and Rosa reached out her hands from where she was sitting on the grass. He lifted her and quickly put her in the carrier. “We’ve had enough excitement for one day, huh?”

  * * * *

  Later that day, when Rosa was sleeping and Connor had time to freak out—freak out more—he couldn’t stop thinking about Jack. Running away was so unlike him. If anything, Jack had always had the opposite issue—he’d push, prod and not rest until someone gave in. To see him back down like that, jump before anyone could react, had been hard for Connor. He’d thought Jack shutting down at the scene of the accident had been a case of shock, but now he wasn’t sure. For the first time since he’d gotten back, he thought that maybe he should reach out to Jack, after all.

  Maybe there was a way for them to not be…this to each other. Maybe they could never be friends again, or lovers, the way they had been before he’d left, but reaching some kind of truce would be good. He didn’t want to see Jack look at him that way ever again—as if Connor had been a wound that had unexpectedly reopened.

  He couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been to take Rosa to Jack’s hiding spot. First, he had avoided Jack at all costs, including offending the Alpha, then he’d done this?

  He tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep, but before he finally did, he decided to do something he probably should have done immediately after coming back to Harrington Hills.

  He was going to talk to Jack.

  * * * *

  The next morning, his new plan turned out to be easier said than done.

  First, he couldn’t decide if they should have a conversation with or without Rosa present. On one hand, if Jack’s reaction to her the day before was anything to go by, he wouldn’t handle it well if she were there. On the other, she was the most important person in Connor’s life now. If Jack couldn’t handle seeing her…

  That’s not fair, his inner voice told him. Jack didn’t owe him anything, especially anything related to Rosa. Just because Connor wanted them to… It didn’t matter what he wanted. His plan was to mend a bridge, not to jump into things as if nothing had happened.

  But even if he did decide to go talk to Jack alone, there was no one he trusted to take care of Rosa for him. The Alpha and Tamara had told him to use the support system the center provided and he wasn’t totally opposed to the idea, but he still couldn’t just hand over his baby to a stranger.

  He finally decided to stretch his plan in time. In the morning, he would take Rosa to the playground and, as she played, he would meet parents and someone from the staff, and hopefully he would find someone he could trust. If it worked, Connor would later ask that person for help. If it didn’t work, he’d have to think of something else—or bite the bullet and go talk to Jack with Rosa.

  * * * *

  “Okay, sweetie, Plan A. Are you ready?” Connor lifted Rosa above his head to see her grin. “Great, let’s go.”

  This time, he went in the exact opposite direction from yesterday—toward the voices. He watched Rosa carefully as they neared the playground, but she seemed fine. She stared at all the kids and Connor realized that it was only the second time she’d had an opportunity to interact with anyone even close to her age and the first time when some of them were werewolves like her. When they had still been in Texas, she had been too young to introduce to kids from the local pack at first, but after a few months… He sighed. Yet another thing he should’ve done better than he had.

  Suddenly Tamara was there at his side. “Hi, there. Nice to see you and nice to meet you.” She smiled at Rosa and reached out with one finger to put it against Rosa’s palm. Her grin got even bigger when Rosa closed her fingers into a fist around Tamara’s finger.

  “I hope it’s okay that we came here,” Connor started, but the woman waved him off.

  “Of course, it’s okay. It’s what this place is for. Come on. I’ll introduce you around, so you can still push away that terrifying moment of letting go of your baby.”

  He knew she was teasing, but he still looked down at the ground. At least he wasn’t blushing.

  “Hey, that’s okay. We’ve all felt it,” she added quickly and squeezed his shoulder. “That’s why we know.”

  Connor breathed a little easier. “Okay. Thanks.”

  He let himself be led from mother to mother—he was the only man at the playground—and introduced himself and Rosa, who was clearly blossoming under the attention. Coming here was worth it just for that.

  But there were also swings, slides, a ball pool and two sandboxes—one for younger and one for older kids—so there were multiple reasons why it had turned out to be a good idea. Then there were the moms. He talked with Tamara the most, but he also spent a good twenty minutes talking to two women, Aisha and Claudia, who each had a daughter about two months older than Rosa. From their group, only Claudia and her daughter, Sally, were human. The rest were werewolves.

  Then the door to the school opened and a group of twelve little kids came out, led by a woman who looked familiar, but Connor couldn’t remember where he’d seen her. As the kids ran in the direction of the playground, he glanced at Aisha and Claudia.

  “Can we still be here when the class goes out?”

  “Sure.” Claudia smiled. “Just watch out for your little one. When they get excited, they don’t always look what they’re doing.”

  Connor nodded. He was sitting at the edge of the smaller sandbox, Rosa situated between his legs. Any kid who came running would hit him first.

  Then the teacher—the same woman who looked familiar to Connor—walked up to him.

  “Connor Warsen? I’ll be da…surprised,�
�� she redirected at the last moment.

  He nodded at her. “Ma’am.”

  “Please, call me Susan. Everyone does.” Her gaze was following every child, but she smiled at Rosa, too. “Cute kid.”

  “Thank you. I agree.” Connor grinned when she smiled.

  “Do you recognize me?” she asked, turning back to the kids.

  “I know I’ve seen you somewhere, but I can’t remember. Sorry.”

  She shook her head. “It’s all right. I haven’t been at your house in about fifteen years or so.” He raised his eyebrows, but Susan continued before he could say something. “I was a good friend of your mom’s but then I moved away for years. I only got back to the Hills a little over a year ago.”

  Something jogged his memory. Connor remembered her more from a photo his mother had kept on her dresser than from meeting her in the flesh, but he connected the dots.

  “You met in elementary school, right?”

  Susan smiled. “On the first day, yes.” Then she stood up. “Jin, get down from there. Mia, don’t lie in the sand. Go on a swing.”

  “Never a dull moment, huh?” he asked, absentmindedly tossing sand to and from a tiny shovel right in front of Rosa, who seemed captivated.

  “Never.”

  “I can barely handle one, so I commend your talents with keeping a dozen in line.” He couldn’t even imagine that.

  “At least one mom is always here with me. And I usually have help, too, but Jack’s buried himself under the mountains of paperwork and is determined to finish them first.” She grimaced, as if she couldn’t imagine anything worse than that.

  That was… That was better than anything he could’ve hoped for. Jack was close by and, if Susan agreed, Connor felt he could leave Rosa with her. It was his chance, and if he was ever going to do it, he should do it now.

  “Jack Harrington, right?” When she nodded, he glanced down at Rosa, who was kneading the sand and didn’t pay any attention to him. “Listen, could I ask you a favor? I need to talk with Jack for a few minutes, but I’m always with Rosa and there’s never—”

  “Say no more.” Susan raised her hand to stop him. “Go talk to Jack. I will keep an eye on the princess here.”

  “Thank you so much. If anything happens, I’ll be here in ten seconds.”

  She smirked. “The staff room is 104, fourth door to the left when you come in through here.” She pointed at the entrance her group had walked out of a few minutes earlier and he nodded and thanked her, as if he had no idea where anything was. As if he hadn’t visited that office numerous times.

  He got up slowly, trying not to disturb Rosa, and with another nod from Susan, he headed to the door. He turned back only once, which he counted as a success, but Rosa was fine, still engrossed with the sand, so he turned away again.

  Connor squared his shoulders as he reached for the handle. His heart was beating fast, but he tried to calm himself to avoid drawing anyone’s attention.

  He stepped through the door and looked around the familiar corridor before heading left.

  It was now or never.

  Chapter Seven

  The knocking surprised Jack enough that he forgot the number he was at while counting the clear sheets of parental agreements for various activities. Damn it.

  “Come in,” he said but didn’t turn around until he’d put the sheets back in the drawer. He would count them another time. “What can I do—?” he started, turning around, but the words stuck in his throat when he recognized Connor’s scent right before he saw him at the door.

  “Hi, Jack.”

  Hi, Jack. Just like that, as if nothing had happened, as if the last nineteen months hadn’t meant shit. ‘Hi, Jack,’ he’d said.

  Connor closed the door and stepped farther into the room, and Jack fought the urge to back away. He clasped his hands over the armrests of his desk chair.

  “What do you want?”

  Connor looked down at the floor and Jack wished he could be indifferent as he watched Connor struggle to find words, but he still felt a tug on his heart at the sight, even if a bigger part of him was pissed. You came here. You crossed that line, so now you figure it out.

  “There’s a long list of things I want,” Connor said quietly after a moment, staring at the window behind Jack. “I want to apologize for…for, again, a lot of things, but right now, I want to apologize especially for going to the clearing. I needed a place to hide and I didn’t think. I didn’t—”

  “You didn’t consider me in that plan.” Jack nodded. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Connor frowned. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not my property, Connor. You can go there whenever you want.”

  “Still, I’m sorry,” he insisted.

  Jack nodded. “Fine. Fine, I accept your apology.”

  He watched as Connor’s shoulders visibly relaxed, as if he really cared. Don’t go down that road, Jack tried to warn himself, but there was that thing in his chest again—that thing that pulled and squeezed and twisted his insides whenever Connor was near him. The anger was already fading, exposing hurt once again.

  “Do you need something else?” he finally asked, when he felt like his voice wouldn’t betray him.

  Connor sat down on the little couch against the wall and Jack suddenly remembered the last time Connor had sat there, waiting for Jack to be done with work so they could get out for a run. They’d run almost to the county line that day, then had taken a break to swim in the nearby lake.

  It seemed like a lifetime ago now.

  “I need to…” Connor started then hesitated. “I’d like to know if there’s a way we could stop running from each other and hiding. I came here to ask for a truce, but now—” He shook his head before looking straight at Jack. “I need to know if there’s a possibility… If there’s a chance of us ever being…close again.”

  Jack held his breath, hoping for an admission that never came. He should’ve known it wouldn’t. He’d played that game before. His heart would start beating like crazy and the breath would stick in his throat whenever there was the slightest pause in whatever Connor was saying about the two of them. Jack was always hoping and always ended up disappointed.

  But that one was on him. Connor was a lot of things, but he had never purposefully led him on. He’d never told Jack he loved him—never promised him a damn thing, really. Which, sometimes, made the whole thing even worse, since Jack was angry at himself as much as he was at Connor.

  At the end of the day, given the choice, Jack would always want to be close to Connor, but— “It’s not that simple.”

  “I know that,” Connor said quietly. “But I hate that we can’t even be in the same place now. I know that I hurt you and I’ve avoided you since I came back, because I was afraid to face that and to risk doing it again. I was afraid you’d run. I was afraid you’d hate me…or Rosa.”

  The last part was barely a whisper and Jack was speaking before he could stop himself.

  “I don’t hate her.” Connor almost sagged in relief and Jack had to blink fast not to cry. Everything in him was shaking. “But there’s… You have a child with another person and you can’t imagine how that—” He paused, looking away and brushing the tear from his cheek. Then the words bubbled out of him. “I feel betrayed and I know I don’t really have a right to, because we were not together anymore, but that just makes me feel stupid about feeling betrayed, and… It’s a mess. It’s a mess that, honestly, I didn’t want to show either of you.” He swallowed and tried to keep the next words in, but the floodgates were open now. “I didn’t want you to know that you could still affect me so much, and I didn’t want her to see… I didn’t want to take my anger out on her. She’s a little pup and needs protection, not”—he waved at himself—“this.”

  Connor leaned closer, resting his elbows on his knees. “But you didn’t take your anger out on her yesterday. She came stumbling at you and you didn’t scold her or push her away or anything.”

&
nbsp; “I was in shock.”

  “People in shock can lash out, too, and she was safe with you.”

  “You don’t know that,” Jack protested, but he also knew that Connor was right. He hadn’t lashed out. The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. There had been no anger in that moment, just shock—then pain.

  “I do know. My senses are sharper ever since she was born and I treat many things as dangerous these days, but it didn’t feel threatening to see her with you.”

  How did it feel, then? Jack wanted to ask, but he bit his tongue.

  “It was just this once,” he finally said. “You don’t know how I will react next time.”

  Connor nodded. “I don’t. But I would like to find out.”

  And that was… There were so many things, so many arguments against it and part of them they’d already spelled out earlier. So why was Connor pushing for it? “Why?”

  “What?”

  Jack clasped his hands under his thighs. “Why would you like to find out?”

  Connor sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and Jack could see he was trying to find the right words.

  “It felt right, seeing the two of you together yesterday,” Connor finally whispered, and Jack’s toes curled, as if that could stop the flash of gutting pain. “And, of course, it did, because, aside from her, you’re the only real family I’ve had since my mother died.”

  “How can you say that?” Jack shook his head and ignored the way his voice broke at the end. “How can you tell me I was ever your family, when you…when you left? You left and didn’t look back, so don’t sit there and—”

  Connor was suddenly out of his seat and on his knees in front of Jack, hands at the edges of the chair, bracketing Jack in.

  “Jack, hey, listen to me.” Connor tilted his head to catch his gaze and his eyes were red, too, so Jack didn’t feel so bad about crying anymore. “You’d been my family since about a month after I’d met you. You were a big reason I didn’t pack up my shit and leave soon after she died.”