"We didn't steal it," Edith assured Livvy. "That nice Mr. Morehouse gave it to us. He trusted us to deliver it. We happened to meet him when we were passing by Seaward's Towing and stopped in to say hello."
Passing by on their way to where? Stan Morehouse worked for Brad and probably caught the nosy pair snooping for more 'evidence'. Livvy was disappointed the evidence they found wasn't Brad himself.
"Who's it for?" she asked hopefully.
"Matthew," Edna told her and Livvy's heart sank. "It's his Christmas bonus. It was lying on the desk and Mr. Morehouse swore it wasn't there before he went out to rescue a poor traveller. There was one for him, too."
Livvy wondered if Miz Ezzy and Eban Hancock would find packages on their doorsteps, as well. It seemed that Brad was reaching out to everyone he cared about. Everyone but her.
"Thanks for letting me know," she said with a weak attempt at a smile.
"When you see him, dear, you be sure to tell him that we love him, too."
"I will." If she ever saw him.
At least now she knew Brad was working his way back into the pack. He wouldn't neglect the twins and he wouldn't let the people who worked for him flounder.
Later, after she'd made supper for her family, and started the last load of laundry before her mother took a holiday break, Livvy packed up that same supper to deliver to the patients. Matt was alone in the room. She raised her eyebrows at the empty bed.
"She's in the bathroom. Didi's helping her get ready for the party. They've been in there for an hour," he grumbled. "How long does it take to shower and get dressed?"
"Aw, poor boy, did Didi take your playmate away." Livvy patted his head in sisterly condescension and. She laughed when her brother knocked her hand away like she was an annoying fly. "Give Hannah a break, Matt. It takes pains to be beautiful, you know."
"No it doesn't," he grumped. "All she has to do is wash her face and comb her hair."
"I knew there was a reason I loved you." This time she kissed his forehead and meant it. "You really like Hannah, don't you?"
His face flushed and he shrugged. "I guess so. She's nice."
"That's all she has to be. You've only known her for a few days, goofus."
"Just don't tell Mama, okay?"
"How old are you? Six? Mama already knows how you feel about Hannah. It's the goofy way you look at her." Livvy stuck her tongue out at the corner of her mouth, wrinkled her nose, and crossed her eyes. She waited until he laughed before losing the look. "Mama has more to worry about than you and Hannah."
"You and Brad," he said quietly as if he didn't want to hurt her with the words.
"Yeah, if there is a me and Brad." She sat on the edge of Hannah's bed and told him what happened. She told him everything from their reunion at the pond to what happened up at the outcropping, editing where necessary – he was her brother, after all – but giving him enough to form a clear picture.
"Geez, Liv, are you okay?" he asked when she got to the part with Bails.
"Yeah, except for making Lucy share her bunk with me last night. Nightmares. Every time I close my eyes, I see Bails' face." There was more than that, but she wasn't telling Matt that part, either. She did, however, tell him about Brad up to the most recent developments.
"Sounds to me like a church fart," her brother said. He rolled to his side and propped his head up in his hand so he could see her better.
Her heart was breaking and he was making a joke? "Matt, this isn't funny."
"Neither is a church fart when it happens to you. Look, Liv, everybody farts, but there are some places you just don't do it. Like church. But sometimes you can't help it. Now picture you're sitting next to the prettiest girl you've ever seen in your life and the urge comes on ya. You think you can sneak it by, keep it quiet, you know? Only what comes out is the biggest stink bomb on God's green earth and I mean one that chokes the folks three pews back. I'm telling you, something like that happens, you got no choice, Liv. You run like hell and you don't stop," he said earnestly.
Livvy breathed in, but she couldn't let it out without bursting into laughter. This wasn't funny to Matt. "Who was she?" she managed to choke out.
"Lisa Cook, freshman year. Her folks invited me over to Kingdome Come one Sunday. Lisa wouldn't look at me after that and I figured no reason she should. No reason any girl should." He lay back on the pillow. "Her folks moved to some pack in South Carolina a few months later."
She slowly let out her breath. "I doubt the move was because of you, Matt."
"I know that," he said, offended that she would think it. "And I know what happened to Brad was a whole lot worse, but it boils down to the same thing. Brad couldn't help it, either. I couldn't have either, but that don't mean squat when it happens to you. He probably thinks you're disgusted with him."
"Disgusted? He saved my life, Matt. You guys probably saved Hannah's, too." Brad couldn't think she'd turn away from him, could he? Or did he think she should?
"He loves you, Liv. You have to find him and make him see that you still love him, too."
"I don't know where to look."
"Have you tried the shelterhouse?" He snorted a laugh at her surprised look. "Damn, Liv, the Dawsons are in trouble if you're supposed to be the smart one. Even I know that place is special to him. After you blew him off, he spent so much time up there I thought he was gonna grow moss. The Mate found the money to fix it up. Took a week longer than it should have with him mooning over that pond or sittin' in the corner with his head in his hands.
She had to get out of there before the tears of relief spilled over. She leaned over and gave her brother a quick kiss on his cheek. "I love you, ya big doofus."
"Prove it. Take care of my truck."
Chapter 28
Brad sat in the corner of the shelterhouse, elbows resting on bent knees and head in his hands. He'd spent the night before up at the camp across the road in the same falling down trailer in which Livvy had been held. It was the only place that didn't smell like Bails. With Livvy's scent and that fucking creature's flooding the place, though, his wolf couldn't settle. It snapped and snarled all night long and it between, it howled.
"Mate. Pack. Mate."
The downside of having an animal inside you was never being able to get away from it.
"We tried that, remember?" he argued angrily. "It got Matt torn up and almost got Livvy killed. My past did that. What if it happens again?"
The wolf wasn't concerned with the past or the future. It was a creature of the present and it knew what it wanted.
"Mate. Pack. Mate." The damn thing wouldn't quit. Since the fucking feral display, the animal seemed to have gained power or maybe it only freed the power that was already there.
Brad felt like a man torn in two. The wolf calmed when he returned to Gilead to grab some clean clothes and his truck, though he wasn't planning to stay.
The clothes were easy. The twins were out, but the wood pile was low, snow had blown onto the porch, and ... shit, he'd been taking care of the old girls for years now. It was hard to let it go. And then there were the packages for Eban and Ezzy. Edith and Edna would take it as a personal responsibility to deliver them and this was no kind of weather for them to be tramping that far back in the woods. Who would take care of them when he was gone?
He went down to the garage to drop off the bonus checks. His truck was there and waiting, which was a damn good thing since it wasn't at the market where he left it. His keys were hanging on the second peg where they always were. Like an ass, he left them there.
He skirted the village, not wanting any distraction from his mission. He used the paths he ran as a cub before he'd shifted for the first time, before Gilead's pack knew he was there. After delivering the gifts, he needed to say one last goodbye.
The decaying shelterhouse was always his last stop when he took his forbidden trips through Gilead. It stood at the side of a pond ringed with cattails, trees, and tall grasses. When the air was still, the surface gl
istened like polished glass reflecting the stars above and the tiniest sliver of moon. When the wind blew, the glass swirled and eddied in patterns of dancing light.
Raised in the mess and madness of the camp across the road, the cub never noticed the holes in the roof or the smell of rot that clung to the rafters. He sat on the stone wall that formed the boundaries of the shelter and drank in the calm movement of the shimmering water. For the young wolver, the pond and the shelterhouse represented something rarely found across the road - peace.
One night Leonard, a Gilead wolver, was waiting there when Brad arrived. The old man was hidden behind the higher wall that held the fireplace, and by the time Brad realized he was there, it was already too late to run. Still, he thought about it.
"You run and I'm duty bound to catch ya, son. I can do it, too, but I can guarantee ya the result won't be pretty for neither one of us," the old wolver told him with a chuckle. "Might as well take a load off and set a spell." Leonard followed his own suggestion by hoisting himself up on the stone wall, and waited for the cub to obey. "You got a name?"
"Sec. Second," he clarified. Back then, only his mother called him Brad.
"From across the road and up the hill?"
A world away. Brad nodded. "I'm rogue."
The old wolf winked at him. "We all gotta start somewhere. Only thing that counts is where we wind up in the end. Your daddy know you're up here?"
His father would blow a gasket if he knew Sec was in Gilead. He debated lying to the old man, but as it turned out, he didn't have to.
"Dumb question, huh? There's nothin' Boss Seaward don't know about where his people are and what they're up to."
"You know my daddy?" The camp and Gilead didn't mix. And this gentle sounding old man sure didn't look like any other friend of his father. "You talk to him?"
Sec swallowed hard. This could be bad, real bad. Sneaking over to Gilead was a betrayal and Boss didn't take any kind of betrayal lightly. He'd seen what happened to others who broke the rules.
"Known him since he bought that land over there. We chew the fat from time to time." The old man laughed and placed a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder. "No need to worry. Gilead is off limits to the bad. We ain't never turned away the good and never will. Your daddy knows that. Kind of gives a wolver a choice, don't it? And it's a lucky man who knows he has one."
Sec's shoulders slumped. "I'm a cub. Cubs don't have a choice." And as Boss Seaward's son, he never would.
"Sure you do. Maybe not about where you live, but how you choose to live. No life is free from sorrow, son." He waved his hand, offering the view. "Don't matter how pretty, no place is perfect. No one is all good or all bad. We wolvers know that better than most." He nudged the cub with his elbow. "We've got a real animal living inside what's got no morals at all," he said with a smile.
That night, Leonard talked to him far longer than any adult ever had.
"Being a cub don't last forever, you know. In the meantime, you do the best you can with what you're given, good or bad. Learn from both. That's all a body can ask of a man. Do your best with what you're given and if it happens to be something good, treat it like a gift, cherish it. Hang on to it with both hands."
He'd chuckled and clapped Sec on the shoulder. "That being the case, I got a deal for you. You don't tell my mate you saw me up here and I won't tell your daddy I saw you." He'd ended that conversation with an invitation. "You remember now, son. The door's always open. You're welcome to come visit us again."
Brad didn't know Leonard was Gilead's Alpha until much later. That night, he thought the man was just another old wolver, but he liked the sound of his voice, deep and easy, so instead of forming a plan to pick his pocket, he listened - and believed. Leonard Coburn taught him to dream.
Brad hadn't thought about that conversation in a long, long time, not since Livvy Dawson smiled and said his name and the dream came true. He didn't know why he remembered it now.
"We all gotta start somewhere. Only thing that counts is where we wind up in the end," Leonard had said. "There's nothin' Boss Seaward don't know about where his people are and what they're up to. Do your best with what you're given and if it happens to be something good, treat it like a gift, cherish it. Hang on to it with both hands."
Had Leonard seen his yearning for a way out of the rogue camp? Was he saying that Boss Seaward wouldn't mind if his second son walked through that door? Years before, when Brad was injured and close to dying, Boss had fought, but not too hard, to bring Brad back to camp. Was that his father's way of saving face?
His wolf spun in excited circles. "Mate. Pack. Mate."
"Yeah, I heard you," Brad said, and damn if the animal wasn't right. This was where Leonard and Boss wanted him to end up. They wanted him to hang on to it with both hands.
He was on his way out of the shelterhouse when he was caught in the glare of headlights. It was Matt Dawson's truck. He'd know the sound of that engine anywhere, but when the door opened, the voice wasn't Matt's."
"You can fart in church all damn day, Brad Seaward. I don't care how stinky they are. I'm not leaving you again."
Without waiting for a response, Livvy turned and walked to the back of the truck where she attempted to haul something out of the metal toolbox that ran the width of the bed. She was too short and had to hoist herself up, but whatever it was, she still couldn't reach it and wiggled forward. "I could use some help here."
Brad went to help her. He'd expected tears or anger. He'd hoped for open arms. He wasn't expecting anything like this. "Have you been drinking Mama's Elixir again? Or are you just crazy."
Bent over the side of the truck bed, her ass was poking up to the sky. Head buried in the box, her voice sounded tinny. "Neither. You're the one who's crazy."
Brad lifted her up and away, and stood her on the ground. When he turned her to face him, his hands stayed at her waist. "If I am, it's your fault. You've been driving me there since I was fourteen years old."
~*~
Brad was smiling down at her, looking as relieved as she felt. Her wolf was whirling and leaping. Dancing. Livvy went with the animal's feeling that everything would be all right.
"It only feels that way," she said lightly, and laid her hands against his chest. "I was fifteen when I met you. You were nineteen. Remember?" She hoped he did, because she would never forget.
"Wrong." He left her to grab a sleeping bag from the toolbox. He looked at it and then at her. "I was halfway to fifteen, so I guess that made you eleven," he said as he handed it to her and reached for another.
"I didn't even know who you were when I was eleven."
"But I knew you." His fingers raked through his hair, combing it back from his forehead. Then he shook his head and the one little section that never did what it was supposed to fell forward. "I used to spy on you," he said.
"You did what?"
"Yeah, I know, and maybe that should tell you something. Creepy, huh?"
Livvy wasn't really sure. She'd never heard his name until she was twelve and being in junior high, rode the bus with the high schoolers. Those Junior and Senior girls were a mean bunch who took delight in tormenting the younger girls. They were gone by the time she and Brad started dating, so she never had her revenge.
Part of her wanted to stick her thumbs in her ears and give those girls on the bus a great big raspberry. While they were busy sighing over the tall, silent, and hot bad boy, he'd been eyeing her, the little ole nobody from Hicksville, USA. Take that, you high school harpies.
Brad, known as Sec back then, didn't ride the bus, so she only saw him from a distance, usually with his girl-of-the-week on the back of his bike. She didn't even know he was a wolver until the following year when one of the older cubs told her Sec Seaward was a rogue and warned her off.
"Why didn't you ever tell me?"
"That would be a real turn-on, now wouldn't it? Hey little girl, I've been stalking you for four years." He handed her a lantern and wiggled his eyebrows.
"Want to take a ride with me? I have candy in my pocket. You would have run like a scared rabbit."
Livvy pictured it and giggled. "Now I would run like a scared rabbit. Back then, I would have been flattered as hell. You were every girl's heartthrob. When we started dating, half the girls suddenly wanted to be my friend just so they could get close to you. The other half hated me because I took you off the market."
"So when I asked if you wanted a ride home, you only said yes because I was a hot commodity?" He sounded hurt by the thought, but she couldn't be sure. They'd started out smiling and laughing, and she didn't want to lose the mood. Not yet.
"That, and you were cute, and I had sexual fantasies about us being John Travolta and Olivia Newton John."
His brow furrowed. "I know who Travolta is, but who's the other one?"
"You know, the movie. Grease? The musical?" she added when he didn't make the connection. She laughed at the ridiculousness of her youthful fantasy. "With you as the dangerous bad boy and me the sexy good girl."
"Never heard of it, but if it's a musical, you can bet your ass I wouldn't be caught dead in it."
"Which is why I never told you about it. Why did you never tell me about stalking me when I was eleven?"
They carried the gear into the shelterhouse. Livvy started loading wood into the fireplace. "This proves you're crazy. Wood and a fireplace and you're sitting in the cold."
"It's not that cold and I wasn't planning to stay."
"Well your plans have changed. There are matches and one of those fire starter sticks in that pack. So why didn't you tell me?"
"Because it was weird, that's why." Brad stooped beside her. He lit the stick and placed it carefully into the tinder below the logs, then turned his attention to the lantern.
"And my visions of you singing and dancing around a motorcycle aren't? Come on, Brad. I told you about my weird fantasy."
Shifter's Magic (The Wolvers Book 8) Page 28
