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Burying my nose in his sweatshirt, I swallow. The answer can only be no. This love is different. It is special. It seems as though it’s something alive that we must protect, something with many facets and even more memories.
When Bren releases me, Grey barks and comes toward me, tail wagging. “Somebody’s jealous!” I get on my knees and wrap my arms around his neck, enjoying the soft wolf fur against my skin. His rough tongue tickles my ear. “Hey, Grey, don’t worry. No one can ignore you.” But really, it’s not Grey who’s scared, it’s me. Still. Travel America flashes before me, blue and red.
That stupid lettering! It’s only two words. Words shouldn’t scare you! I’ll probably just have to get in the RV and convince myself that the ghosts of the past are gone for good.
I look up at Bren. Dark and wild, hair falling around his face. His features are tense, the stern, unyielding mouth a thin line. He pulls Grey a bit toward him with the leash as if he is now jealous of the wolf. His gaze rests on me.
“What?” I ask softly, straightening up.
He shakes his head. The dying sunlight covers his irises like a brilliant film. “I need this chance, whatever happens.”
“Whatever happens?” I glance over at the RV and fight back the sinking feeling that’s building in my stomach. “Bren, what’s going to happen?”
Bren wraps Grey’s leash around his wrist until the majestic gray wolf is forced to stand beside him. “I’m in therapy, Lou, but I’m still not well. I will make mistakes with you, probably quite a few. I want you to forgive me.”
I laugh involuntarily and push the hair out of my face. “Nobody has ever asked me to forgive mistakes that they haven’t even yet made. Bren, you…”
“No one’s ever had a past like mine…like ours… Lou, I’ve never been in a relationship. I’ve never really had friends. Even the boys from the slums were never my friends, like-minded people at most. I don’t even know how it works…well…how to go about it…living together and all that.”
“We lived together for over two months. From June twenty-fifth to September sixth,” I tease him.
“You were my prisoner,” he says seriously. “I was in charge and you had to obey. You can’t compare that.”
I stroke Grey’s fur in order to busy my hands. “But…isn’t that why we’re here? To find out how to do it…live together?”
A shy smile creeps across his face and miraculously changes it. Now he looks like a normal young man, not so gloomy. Not like someone who drugs girls and takes them to remote places in boxes. “You’re right,” he says. “You see, that was my first mistake.”
“Doubts aren’t mistakes.”
“There will be times when you will be afraid of me.”
Like now? Like here? I don’t know why I feel this way when everything seemed so simple a moment ago in the visitor center. Maybe it’s because we’re alone with no people around. There’s only the tall forest, Grey, the RV, and the twilight. The familiar smell of earth and campfire.
But this time you’re here by choice and you know Bren. You love him.
“I know who you are and how you can be. I make too many mistakes myself. Ask Ethan, he can confirm that for you. Only two days ago, I managed to burn the ridiculously expensive filet mignon. It ended up looking like a charred shoe sole.”
He takes my outstretched hand and brings it to his lips. His breath delicately brushes my palm and a shudder runs through my body. When he touches me, everything else is okay. Even the bad feelings disappear then.
“What about your brothers?” he wants to know now. “Jay brought you here, what about the others? What do they know? And what does Jay know?”
“Jay knows everything, the others know nothing,” I answer truthfully.
“Jay knows everything? Everything, honestly?” He raises an eyebrow again and lets go of my fingers. “And I’m not dead yet?”
I have to laugh now. It feels liberating when he jokes. That rarely happened back then. I can’t say how it is now, but I don’t think he suddenly turned into a joker or ever will, it’s not in his nature. It’s not something we should joke about either, but we have to deal with it in some way: not just with our love, but with all the horrors and horrible things that happened between us.
I tell him how I wrote letters to my three oldest brothers and put them under their pillows before Jay drove me here. Those letters state the truth about last summer, but I know that one truth doesn’t exist by itself. I learned that from Bren in the Yukon. The truth has many faces. And I don’t know if my truth of last summer is—or ever can be—my brothers’ truth: They weren’t there in the dense pine forests, they didn’t walk my path, or watch Bren for two months fight lonely battles against his inner demons. My truth changed then. The way I saw him, what he was to me, changed. Kidnapper, confidant, lover.
I’m telling Bren all of this now and he calmly listens without revealing his feelings. I also tell him that, when I got home, I claimed that I had run away last summer and he nods as if he already knows. Maybe he read it in the newspaper.
“If I were one of your brothers, I would want to hunt down and hurt the guy who did this to you,” he states at the end of my account. He’s not joking this time.
He voices a fear that I can’t let go of either, at least not since I left the house with Jay this morning. I’ve repressed it well so far—I didn’t even know if Bren would show up. It’s not Liam or Avery who worry me. Liam is way too self-absorbed and Avery has too much empathy to stay angry for long. Then again, this isn’t about blue-dyed mashed potatoes.
“Ethan,” is all I say. “He has a hard time forgiving others and his values aren’t just from 1887, they’re also set in stone.” What’s he going to say about me running away? This time for real? And with my kidnapper?
I’m sure he’ll want to get me back, but that’s a long way off and there’s no way he’s getting Bren’s property information from Jay. Jay promises me that. We will be left in peace on Bren’s land.
