“What do you mean, Teddy? I’m right here.”Please don’t leave me, Teddy.
“No, you’re not.” A resigned laugh left Teddy’s mouth. “Sometimes I wonder if you ever really were or if you’re just some figment of my imagination.” He brushed furiously at his tears, almost resembling a small child who’d just lost his favorite pet. Scooting across the bed, Finn reached for Teddy’s hand, squeezing it awkwardly.
“I’m sorry, Teddy. I’m… I’m just not good at this relationship thing, I guess. I’ll try to do better, okay? Just…”Please don’t leave.
“Yeah, I don’t think so, Finn. I can’t do this anymore. I’m almost forty-five. I’m too old for this… this limbo. This strange non-relationship,” he mumbled. “You think I don’t notice, right? That condescending edge to your voice when you talk to me. Or that bored look in your eyes when I tell you about my day? Or how you never want to spend time with my friends?” Finn’s chest tightened at Teddy’s words. At his naked honesty. Because it was true. “And the sad thing is,” he continued, his voice a near whisper by now, “that I don’t really mind all that. I don’t. Noneof that would matter if you’d just look at me the way you look at her once in a while.”
“What way?” Finn swallowed, even though he already knew the answer.
“Like she’s the darn sun.”
“She’s my sister,” Finn murmured.
“I know. But I’m supposed to be your boyfriend, Finn. If I could get just one-tenth of the attention you give Cara, I’d be more than happy. More than happy.”
“Teddy… I just gotta go do this one thing and then I’ll be back, and we can sort this thing out. I just gotta go see Cara.”
“That’s exactly it, isn’t it?” There was a sad edge to Teddy’s voice, his mouth twisted into a grim line on his handsome face. “There’s always something. If it’s not Cara, it’s your patients. And I get it. I do. It’s just… There’s always something, and it’s never me.”
“I’m sorry.” And he really was. At that moment, he was genuinely sorry. “I never meant to hurt you. I guess I’m just not cut out for relationships.”
“Maybe…” Teddy squeezed his hand in return while resting his forehead against Finn’s shoulder. “I really did try, you know?” He mumbled against Finn’s skin. “I really did try to love you, even though you made it so hard. So darn hard. And in the end, I did, even though I always knew that I’d end up getting my heart broken,” he sobbed.
“Teddy, I’m sorry…” He was such an asshole. He was. An imposter. Most days, he was just waiting for people to find out. His parents. His colleagues. His patients. Cara. ‘Don’t look at me, you little shit. I ain’t your goddamn mommy. Now get outta my face.’
“Just go, baby,” Teddy pressed a wet kiss against his already tear-stained shoulder. “Just go.” Releasing his fingers from Teddy’s, Finn got up from what had been their bed for the pastfew years and reached for his jeans on the floor. He pulled them on in a hurry and grabbed his phone. As he reached the door to their bedroom, he turned towards Teddy, who was now hugging a pillow against his chest, a lethargic look in his eyes.
“I’ll come by and get my stuff tomorrow if that’s okay?” He didn’t really have that much stuff at Teddy’s anyway. Most of his belongings were stored in his parents’ garage. Teddy was right. Maybe he’d never truly been here. Maybe he’d always been halfway out the door, his relationship with Teddy just a momentary lapse of judgment. A desperate attempt at something that he wasn’t any good at. Teddy nodded, a frail sob leaving his mouth.
“I’ll go to my parents’ place in the afternoon. Come by then. You can leave the key under the mat.”
“Okay,” Finn whispered. “For what it’s worth—”
“Don’t. Just go, Finn. Just go. I’m giving you an easy out here and I think you should take it. I might feel differently tomorrow and beg you to stay. Don’t make me do that, okay?”
“Okay, Teddy. Okay.”
Chapter Nine
Hank
Now
“Well, I guess we found our raccoon, huh boy?” Hank took in the shivering lump huddled under a worn sleeping bag that looked like it should’ve been tossed a long time ago. Louis shifted on his paws, eager to give the stranger his trademark welcome—a good and thorough face licking. Yeah, the pup had never been much of a watchdog. Good thing Hayley’s Peak wasn’t exactly a crime hot spot.
It was freezing today; the temperature dropping well below twenty overnight, a crisp layer of pristine snow covering everything when Hank woke up this morning. Most people were cooped up inside on this first day of what Mother Nature haddecided was winter. It was Saturday and if it weren’t for those damn seedlings, Hank would’ve been nursing his third cup of coffee by now, Louis chewing on a bone under the small kitchen table, Rod’s raspy voice promising‘the coldest winter in almost 14 years’from the record player. God, he loved a good mandolin. It always made his heart beat a little faster as his foottap-tap-tappedaway against the hardwood floor.
A pained whimper drew Hank’s attention back to the curled-up figure squeezed into the back corner of Colton’s shelter, Louis grunting impatiently by his side. Yeah, until you’d actually heard it with your own ears, it was hard to wrap your head around the fact that Labradors could actually grunt like a darn pig. Louis had perfected two versions of this annoying grunt. There was the ‘you’re-not-paying-me-enough-attention-and-now-I-think-you-don’t-love-me-anymore’ grunt. It was insistent and whiny and could easily lead to impatient barking if you didn’t throw agood boyin his direction or give him a pat. Then there was the ‘I-really-wanna-go-sniff/eat/lick-something,’always followed by that frantic tap dance Louis had perfected over the past year.
“Easy, boy,” Hank spoke, a puff of white air accompanying his words. “We don’t wanna scare them, do we now?” Hank recalled very well what it was like to be awoken by an energetic ball of fur when you were deep in sleep. With Louis weighing close to ninety pounds, it wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience and the first couple of times, he’d been startled out of his goddamn mind, thinking he’d fallen victim to a home invasion or some shit like that.
Louis tipped his head, trying to decipher Hank’s words. Shit, he shouldn’t have started with the wordraccoon.It was his own damn fault.
“You stay here, boy, and I’ll just check out our…visitor,” he pointed at the entrance to the shelter and Louis immediatelylay down. “Good boy,” he patted the pup behind its right ear. Kicking off the excess snow from his boots, he crawled inside the small shelter. It was not big enough for a grown man to stand up, so he had to hunch his shoulders as he moved quietly towards the left corner, his knees complaining all the way. When he reached the huddled-up figure, a new string of pained whimpers slipped from the opening of the sleeping bag. The frail noises resembled a wounded animal caught in a trap, using up all its remaining energy in a struggle to not surrender.
Squatting, Hank reached for the synthetic blue—or what had once been blue but was now a faded, dirty greyish blue—and tugged at the opening. Immediately, a stale odor wafted toward him, and he was grateful that he hadn’t had his breakfast yet.Sick.It was sickness. He recognized the smell for what it was since it’d been the smell invading his own house when he’d brought Eugene home from the hospital. The familiar overwhelming smell had clung to everything during those last weeks of Eugene’s illness. The sour, stale odor of decay had seeped into the curtains and the bedding. Into his own clothes, hell, even his hair. The stench of imminent death had followed Hank around like a shadow until he could no longer recall what Eugene smelled like. The day after Eugene had gone, he’d burned everything out in his backyard, flames eagerly licking and eating away at the soft blue linen curtains that Eugene had bought at a flea market in Hay Springs and at the white pillowcases with delicately embroidered cornflowers.
A low succession of groans pulled Hank back to the claustrophobic shelter. The face of the sleeping stranger was covered in a mixture of sweat and dirt. He could see the outline of handsome features through the mask of grime on top of grime, a small scar tearing through the left eyebrow, and strands of greasy blond curls clinging to the damp forehead. Carefully,he bent down and patted the shoulder area of the sleeping bag, which was nearly soaked through, cold and clammy to the touch.
