Peering up and down the dark, deserted road, I kept an eye out for a car hell-bent on running me down.Thankfully, none appeared.
When I got to the gallery, I dropped the glamour as I walked back to the deck.I normally would have gone for a swim to relieve the horrible pressure behind my eyes from the fight, but the ocean was too angry tonight.
I went through the gate and startled.Someone was already sitting on a bench.
Bracken looked up at me.“I see we had the same idea.”He glanced down at the bag in my hand.“What’s that?”
“The Swans again.”I put the bag under the bench closest to the gate and hid it behind a spell.I didn’t want my raccoon friends to discover it.
Bracken patted the bench beside him and I sat.
“Are you okay?”I asked, happy to think about anything other than the look of betrayal in Declan’s eyes.
He nodded slowly, watching the waves.“I could ask you the same.”He paused a moment.“Your father is quite angry tonight.”
“Yeah.Me too.Declan and I had a fight.”I wanted to take the words back immediately.Saying them made them real and I didn’t want it to be real.
“Do you want to talk about it?”he asked.
I shook my head and he patted my knee.
“I’m sitting out here wondering about something your father said.”
I turned in my seat and took his hand in both of my gloved ones.“I heard it too.”
He let out a sigh.“That makes you valuable to me, so I help you,” he said, echoing Dad’s earlier words.“Help you,” he said again.“Not helped.Help.Is it ongoing?”He was silent, considering.“I’ve been sitting here contemplating what he meant, though I believe I know.”
He let out a huff that in other circumstances might have been a laugh.“I’ve come to realize that there is nothing more terrifying to me than not being in control of my own mind.Was my mind perfect?No, but it was imperfectly mine.”
He shook his head.“Do you remember when you first met me?I was trapped in a mental spiral, shuffling through tea leaves and glass shards scattered in your mother’s tea shop, unable to pull myself out of a hyperanalysis of what I was seeing.You, though.”He looked up at me with a sad smile.“The utter perfection of your face broke the spiral and helped pull me out.”
“I remember,” I said, squeezing his hand.
“I’m not like that anymore,” he said.“I haven’t had an episode like that since I came to your gallery.I still fixate on topics and research exhaustively, but I haven’t been trapped like that again.I even drove to San Francisco, met your cousin Sam, fought a monster, and interviewed some vampires.”His lips kicked up for a moment.“And at every turn, in the back of my mind, I worried this will be what traps me in a spiral.This will be it.But it wasn’t.”
He squeezed my hand back.“I thought being here, being near the ocean, having family—real family—was what was helping me come back from the dark, suffocating place I’d gone, but now I wonder if it was your father.Is he doing something to my mind?”
I leaned my shoulder against his.“I had many of those same thoughts throughout the evening.Do you want to hear what I think?”
He nodded.“I must or I wouldn’t have told you all of that.”
“My dad can be a lot.”I gestured to the violent waves.“But when Mom was forced to leave him, he didn’t slip into her mind to make her stay.He desperately wanted to have a relationship with me, but he didn’t go behind her back to approach me.He didn’t go into either of our minds to get what he wanted.He understands the importance of free will.”
I watched the waves a moment, hoping I got this right.“You are exactly who you have been since I met you, before Dad would have known about you.My guess is he helped silence the spiral before it could pull you in again.You’re you.Your mind is your own.It’s more your friend now and less your jailer.”
His eyes filled with tears.“Do you believe that?”
I nodded.“I do.”
He blew out a long breath.“Then I will too.”
THIRTY-ONE
So Much Cooler Than Me
The gate flew open and Declan stood there, eyes wolf gold.
Bracken rose and patted my shoulder.“I’ll let you two talk.Maybe I can sleep now.”He paused as he passed Declan.“Have you seen the ocean tonight?The waves are quite angry.”He walked through the open gate and returned to his home.
