by Sara Summers
When my phone rang at 9 PM, neither me nor Tanner wondered why. We were always getting calls at weird hours from kids who had done stupid things and needed an out.
We’d been in the middle of an intense makeout session and neither of us wanted to stop, but he let go of me and I grabbed my phone off the dresser.
“Hello?” I answered,
“Is this Hallie Mayfield?” a woman responded on the other side of the call.
“Yes.” I frowned. Our pack was full of guys, the only women were me and Emma and a new girl who was driving to Washington with her soulmate as I answered the phone.
“My name Jen, I’m calling from the North Mountain Care Facility. Is now a good time?” She asked.
Tanner met my confused gaze with one of his own.
“Um, sure. Can I ask why you’re calling?”
“Of course. Your father, Chris Mayfield, was a patient here. You’re listed as the only family to contact.”
“What are you talking about?” My stomach churned, and bad feeling started settling into my skin.
“Your father passed away earlier today, Hallie. I’m so sorry.” She apologized.
“What?” I sat down on the edge of the bed, a million emotions filling me. I started to feel like I couldn’t breathe. “He’s fine, he showed me the scans. The tumors were gone.” I forced the words out.
Tanner sat down beside me and wrapped his arm around my back.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not allowed to share details of his health with you.” She apologized again. “He asked to be cremated and he didn’t want a funeral, but we have a box of his things here. He wanted us to send them to you when he passed. May I have your address?”
“No, he’s not dead.” I stood up and began to pace the room. “You have the wrong number, the wrong names. My dad was never in a care facility, I’m the one who took care of him. He’s alive and well, I just talked to him yesterday. He said he was going to a barbeque, he said—“
“Hallie, give me the phone.” Tanner said gently, pulling me close as he took the device from my hand. “This is her husband.” He gave the woman our address, and then thanked her and hung up the phone.
“Give it back! She’s lying, Tanner, she has to be lying! My dad would’ve never forced me to leave if he knew he was dying, he never would’ve lied to me. I took care of him, I kept him comfortable, I was there for him. He wouldn’t just lie to me.”
I yanked my phone out of Tanner’s hands and stepped out of his hug, clicking on the phone number that had just called.
“North Mountain Care Facility, how may I help you?” a woman’s voice answered. It wasn’t the woman from earlier.
“I received a call that my father died, can you confirm that it’s true?” I demanded.
The woman paused.
“Please, I didn’t even know he was in a facility.” I begged, pacing again.
“What’s his name?” She asked, and her words were gentle. I had a sinking feeling that she spoke to people like me a lot.
“Chris Mayfield.” I hurried to answer.
“I’m sorry, but the call you received was real. Your father died earlier today.”
I sat back down on the edge of the bed, dropping my phone. It hit the carpet with a small noise that I didn’t even hear.
“This can’t be happening.” I stared the wall in front of me, hoping that this was just a nightmare that I would wake up from.
Somewhere inside me, I knew I wasn’t sleeping.
“I’m here.” Tanner’s voice was as gentle as the woman’s on the phone. He sat down next to me and pulled me into his arms, holding me tight.
He could’ve been sitting on top of me with a ten ton boulder and I wouldn’t have felt it, my entire body was so numb.
“This is my fault. I should never have let him go to the hospital alone, I should never have let him face it all alone. I was supposed to take care of him, I was supposed to look out for him. I should’ve—“
“This is not your fault, Hallie. He chose not to tell you for a reason, I’m sure that when we get the box they’re sending it’ll make sense.” He assured me.
My dad had just died and he was trying to assure me that it would make sense?
How could losing my father at nineteen years old ever make sense?
“It’s not your fault.” He repeated when I didn’t respond.
“You’re right.” I surprised myself with the answer, because my brain and my heart were tripping over each other as they ran in two separate directions. “It’s your fault.” I stood up and glared at him, my hands shaking at my sides.
“What?”
“It’s your fault!” I shrieked, clenching my fists to stop them from shaking. “You took me away from him, you kept me out of the hospital. If I hadn’t been busy making out with you I would’ve been there for him. I would’ve held his hand and said goodbye, I would’ve made sure he didn’t die feeling completely alone. I didn’t even know he was dying!”
A sob caught in my throat and I bent over, one hand over my mouth and the over my stomach.
“He lied to you, Hallie. I’m sure he didn’t want you to watch him die.” Tanner stood up and pulled me into his arms again.
I pushed him away again.
“Just let me hold you.” He pleaded.
“You’ve done enough, Tanner. Get out.” I pointed to the bedroom door.
“You shouldn’t be alone right now, it’s not—“
“Get out.” My words were brimming with barely-controlled rage. Tanner took a few steps back, stopping in the doorway.
“Right now you’re hurting but if you—“
I slammed the door in his face and twisted the lock before collapsing on the ground, sobbing. My body shook and my muscles felt like they were going to give out as tears pooled underneath my arms.
“Hallie, please.” Tanner begged.
“Get away from me.” My heart, body, and spirit felt so broken that I couldn’t even yell at him.
The knowledge that I could’ve spend the last month holding my dad’s hand and talking to him about all of the amazing memories we had was heavy. It was so heavy that I could hardly breathe.
And while I knew it wasn’t right, I blamed Tanner. I had to blame him, I had to blame someone. If Tanner hadn’t showed up when he did, I would’ve been there to hold my dad’s hand and he wouldn’t have died alone, surrounded by strangers.
I could hear him breathing on the other side of the door, and hearing him breathing only made me angrier and angrier.
The anger was more bearable than the complete and utter hopelessness I felt.
So I let the anger build bigger and brighter and hotter until I stood up and ripped the door open, fury all but dripping from my fingers.
“Get out.” I ignored the mascara that I knew was trailing down my face, I ignored the way every part of my body shook, and I even ignored the way the room seemed to spin around me. The only thing I allowed myself to acknowledge was the heat of the anger that burned inside of me.
“I’m not leaving.” Tanner folded his arms. He stood steady and sure, the complete opposite of me.
I pointed toward the front door, watching my hand shake but knowing there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“Get out.” I repeated, the anger starting to fade.
“Let me take care of you, Hallie.” He started coming closer.
My brain switched from fury to panic faster than I knew it could, and I scrambled toward the kitchen without taking a second to breathe.
If I let Tanner hold me and take care of me like he wanted, there would be no one to blame for leaving my dad in that care facility but me. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if that guilt was hanging over me.
I opened a drawer and pulled out the first knife I saw, holding it to my throat.
“What are you doing?” his voice was cautious.
“I’ll kill myself if you don’t get out of this apartment right now.”
Even as I sa
id the words, I knew that I was being horrible. Tanner would do anything to keep me safe, anything.
He would even leave me.
“You wouldn’t.” he didn’t sound like he believed himself when he said that.
I pressed the knife to my skin, drawing the tiniest bit of blood. I knew I could never go through with it, but it was apparent that he didn’t.
As soon as Tanner smelled blood he began backing away, walking toward the door.
“I’m going, you can put down the knife.” He said, lifting his hands in the air in surrender. “But you know I won’t leave the building unless I know you’re safe.”
He was right; we both knew that was true.
“Emma is the only one I’ll let in.”
Tanner nodded, pulling his keys off of a hook beside the door with one hand while he opened the front door with the other.
“I’m going to be right outside the door if you change your mind.” He promised. I guess he knew better than to wait for an answer, because he stepped outside and closed the door.
As soon as it shut, I dropped the knife into the drawer and dropped my head to the counter, tears flooding from my eyes once again. In that moment I wasn’t sure that I’d ever feel alright again.
Twenty-Five
I was sitting on the floor in the shower when Emma came into my apartment. She closed the door behind herself, and I could hear that she was alone.
That was a huge relief.
While I didn’t want to talk to her either, she was an emotionally safer companion than Tanner was if I had to have one.
I heard her walking toward the bathroom and wished I’d remembered to lock the door.
“Hey, Hallie?” Emma stepped inside. She didn’t walk around to the entrance of the shower, which was good. I didn’t respond, but I don’t think she expected me to. “I’m here if you need anything. I’ll just be on the couch.”
When she said that and then walked away, I was so relieved I could’ve cried.
But I was already crying.
I sat in the shower until I ran out of tears, and then I dried off and collapsed on the bed in my towel.
For almost ten minutes, I didn’t move. My mind stopped racing and my heart stopped pounding and my breathing went back to normal. My aching heart didn’t go anywhere, though.
When I finally rolled over to my back, looking up at the ceiling, I realized that I didn’t want to be alone anymore.
I pulled on underwear and my old, orange polka-dot pajamas that always reminded me of my dad for some reason. Wearing them made my heart hurt a little more, but the pain didn’t feel white-hot the way it had earlier. This time it just felt sad.
I’d heard the TV going since Emma had left me in the shower, so I knew she wouldn’t force me to talk or anything.
I sat down on the other side of the gray sectional Emma and I had picked out together and pulled a blanket out of the large ottoman a foot or so away.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked as I wrapped myself up in my blanket.
I shook my head and she nodded.
We watched the movie in silence for half an hour before either of us said anything else. It was a sweet romance movie with the usual drama, a type of movie I’d never watched until Emma and I had started having girls’ nights with Hallmark movies and ice cream.
We were sitting there, watching the movie, when I started to feel like I was overheating. I pushed off the blanket and hurried to the window, opening it as wide as it could go. Emma paused the movie, and I leaned my head outside to take a few deep breaths of air.
“Are you okay?” she followed me to the window.
“I’m fine. Just couldn’t breathe for a second.” I shrugged.
Emma nodded, leaning her back against the windowsill. She didn’t look like she was going back to the couch just then, and neither was I.
“I already lost him once, my dad.” I bit my cheek and looked down at my hands. “When he was first diagnosed they said he had less than three months to live. We went to Disneyworld, we went to the Harry Potter theme park. We watched all of his favorite movies and ate all of his favorite foods. By the time his three months was up he was just a shell of the person he used to be.
“That was when I knew that I lost him. I cried, I mourned, I prayed. I took care of him because I knew that even though I had lost who he was he deserved to be loved and taken care of until the end. I lost him three years ago, so why does it still feel so hard?” I looked up at the stars.
“He’s your dad. You’re never not going to wish he was here.” I could see the water in Emma’s eyes as she looked down at her feet. She had told me a few weeks before that Ty and Leah had adopted her when she was three, after her mom passed away.
It was different, her experience and mine. Vastly different. But it was still similar enough that I knew she had a sliver of an idea what it felt like to be me.
A noise outside my apartment pulled me out of my thoughts, and I looked outside again. Our building was on the edge of town, so all I could see was forest.
“Did you hear that?” I asked Emma. Being a wolf didn’t mean I could see in the dark, unfortunately. My senses were heightened but not that heightened.
“No.” She shook her head.
I listened again, waiting for the noise.
The next time I heard it clearly. It was wolves howling, lots of them.
I was almost immediately flooded with guilt.
“Did I hurt him that badly?” I grimaced. Missing my dad was bad enough, I didn’t need a wave of guilt weighing down my conscience while I already felt so much pain.
“No, Hallie, no.” Emma shook her head quickly. “Tanner’s not hurt. He sent me here because he didn’t want you to be alone, not because he’s upset or anything.”
“Then why do they sound so sad?” I had been a wolf long enough to know the emotion behind something as simple as a howl.
“They’re mourning your father’s passing.” Emma put her hand over mine for just a second.
“They didn’t know him.”
“They didn’t have to. You’re pack, and that makes you family. When you cry we cry with you.”
Emma’s words sort of surprised me. It had been a little more than a month since I first shifted, and I thought I’d figured everything out. I knew that the pack was like a family, that everyone would take care of each other.
I’d just never expected that the bond between pack members would be strong enough that they would all mourn the death of a human man they had never met.
“I don’t want them to hurt because of me.” I looked at the dark forest again as the howling continued.
“It’s part of being a wolf shifter. We’re meant to take care of each other in the good and the bad.”
It dawned on me that watching a movie with Emma hadn’t taken care of my desire not to be alone. I realized that I didn’t just not want to be alone, I wanted to be with my soulmate and with my pack.
Somehow in my month as Omega, that pack of boys had become my family.
“They shouldn’t mourn alone. Neither should I.”
I headed for the door to my apartment, and I could Emma following me.
As soon as I got outside the building, I shifted and ran toward the howls.
Twenty-Six
That night I ran with the pack. Tanner and I were in the middle instead of the front, surrounded on every side. I never would’ve guessed that being surrounded by wolves could feel comforting, but it was.
I had never felt so loved or so important in my life.
Being Omega made me feel like I was a part of something bigger, something more important than myself.
When Tanner first knocked on my door, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t know where I wanted to go or who I wanted to be.
That night I realized that I’d finally figured it out.
I wanted to be the Omega, I wanted to be in the trees surrounded by a family that was connected by choice rather t
han blood.
I wanted to love people, and to be loved in return.
I wanted to wake up in the arms of the man who loved me enough to send his sister over after I kicked him out because he didn’t want me to be alone.
Tanner had brought me into the most incredible world, and somehow I got lucky enough to have not only that world but him too.
During that pack run I felt plenty of pain and sadness, but I felt hope too. Somehow I knew that was exactly what my dad would’ve wanted.
Twenty-Seven
We slept in the forest in our wolf forms that night, all forty-eight of us. Most of the pack had work or school the next morning, so we all went home around 4 AM.
“I love you.” Tanner told me. He turned on the shower so the water would heat up before he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close. We were both covered in dirt after running through the forest in wolf form, but neither of us cared.
“I love you too.” I leaned my head on his chest and closed my eyes, trying to relax into his arms as much as I could. I was thinking of my dad, until I looked up and saw the deep purple marking under his ear that matched mine. “We haven’t tried the emotion exchange thing.” I realized, remembering back to one of my first conversations with Emma and Logan in Nevada.
They’d said that when I touched Tanner’s cotie he would feel my emotions, and that when he touched mine I would feel his.
“You’re right. Life’s been so busy that I haven’t even thought about it.” He admitted. “We should try it sometime soon.”
“Why not right now?” I looked up into his eyes, giving him a little bit of a challenge. He ignored it and tightened his arms around me.
“I thought you’d want a few days to adjust.”
“Tanner, my dad sent me here with you so that I’d be forced into having a life full of experiences and good memories. I’m not going to wait a few days.”
I lifted my hand to his neck and watched his expression.
He closed his eyes before I could read the look in them, but if I was any good at reading facial cues he was enjoying feeling what I felt.
When he didn’t lift his hand to my neck, I pulled mine away. His eyes opened immediately.
