Chapter 19: Two Boys, One Table

I looked at the little glass vial on my palm for a long time.

"Not tonight," I said.

He nodded.

"Keep it," I said, and closed his fingers around it.

"I'm still deciding."

"I know."

He put it back in his jeans, and I lay with my head on his arm and listened to a heartbeat I couldn't feel.

On Saturday morning I had two boys at my yellow table and a stack of pancakes that wouldn't end.

Otis sat at the end with a napkin and a pen.

"Score," he said. "Tobin, four pancakes. Emmett, four pancakes.

"The Alpha, none. The Alpha is a tragedy."

"I'm eating," Conall said.

"You're staring at the syrup like it owes you money."

He was.

He had arrived at seven with a paper bag and a face.

Tobin hadn't spoken to him yet.

He pushed his plate an inch, and then another inch, so that his elbow was almost touching Emmett's.

"Here," Conall said, and put two carved wolves on the table.

They were small and pale, made of cedar, and they were the same.

I knew they were the same because I looked, and Tobin looked, and so did Emmett.

They had the same ears, the same curl to the tail and the same little notch in the left front paw.

Conall had spent three nights on them in the pack hall office, and the sawdust was still in the cuff of his sleeve.

"One's for you," he said to Emmett. "One's for you," to Tobin.

Tobin picked his up and turned it over.

"It's got no crack," he said.

"It's new."

"The old one's got a crack."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Last Time He Called Me Dad from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.