He Destroyed My Youth, Killed My Child, Now He Begs, But I Am Gone Forever novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: My Terms

Hamish turns up at the clinic. Yvaine sets her terms and asks to see the grave of her baby. His mother will be there.

I was holding a beagle's back leg when I smelled him.

Cedar and woodsmoke and the cold inside of a truck.

My stomach dropped before my head caught up.

I had lain awake all night seeing four black letters across his chest.

YVAINE.

My own name, on the man who had thrown me out.

"Yvaine," said the woman at the front desk, in the voice she used for angry clients. "There's a man here asking for you by your full name."

"Is he big?"

"He's very big."

"Tell him we're booked."

"I tried. He says he'll wait."

The beagle licked my wrist, right over the scars.

I finished the vaccine, signed the chart, and handed the dog back to his owner.

Then I walked out into the waiting room with my sleeves pushed down to my knuckles.

Hamish was standing by the fish tank with his hands in the pockets of a dark wool coat.

Eight people were waiting with their animals, and every one of them looked up.

A greyhound in the corner stood and backed against its owner's legs.

Animals always knew what he was.

"You can't be here," I said.

"I know."

"Then why are you?"

"Because I have to say something and you walked out before I could."

He kept his voice low, and I hated that it was kind.

"Finlay's asleep in the truck," he said. "I left the window cracked. I can't stay long."

"Then you should talk fast."

"I looked for you."

The old greyhound whined.

I felt it in my chest first, in the place where the bond used to sit.

I had cut it with a blade and five years of not looking back, and it still ached when he stood this close.

I pushed that away.

"You looked for me," I said, loud enough for the room. "For five years you looked."

"Yes."

"I've lived in this town for five years. My name is on this clinic's website."

His jaw moved.

"My mother told me you'd gone east, and I believed her. Every time I found a lead, she had a reason why it was a trap. I stopped asking."

"That's your answer."

"It's the true one."

"It's the worst one, Hamish."

He didn't argue.

The woman at the front desk had stopped pretending to type, and a man in a plaid shirt was holding his cat carrier against his chest.

I made a decision then, and it was the cleanest one I had made in five years.

"Walk outside with me," I said. "I'm not doing this in front of a greyhound."

We stood on the sidewalk in the cold.

I could see the black truck at the curb and a small shape asleep in the back seat under a blue coat.

I turned my back on it so I could keep talking.

"Here are my terms. You don't touch me. You don't say the word 'bond.' You don't offer me money, ever, for anything."

"All right."

"And I want one thing."

He waited.

"I want to see the grave."

He went completely still.

"Our baby," I said. "The one I was told I killed. I've never seen where you put our baby."

Nobody had told me whether it was a girl or a boy.

I had screamed the question at his mother's closed door, and I had heard nothing back.

When he spoke, his voice had gone rough.

"It's on pack land. In the family lot, by the cedars."

"Then I'll drive out. Today. I'll look at it, I'll say what I came to say, and you'll never see me again."

"Yvaine."

"That's my price. It's the only one."

He nodded once.

"You don't have to ask. I should have taken you there five years ago."

"You should have done a lot of things."

"Yes."

I thought he'd argue about why I had to go in his truck, or why I needed to wait until tomorrow, or why I shouldn't be near his pack at all.

He said none of it.

He just reached out toward my wrist, and I stepped back so fast I hit the clinic wall.

He dropped his hand at once.

"I'm sorry," he said. "That was the habit of it. I won't do it again."

I did not like that my skin had gone warm where his hand had almost been.

I pushed the feeling down and kept my face blank.

"I'll follow you in my own car," I said.

"I'll go slowly."

"You'll go the speed limit."

"Yvaine." He hesitated, and for the first time I saw how tired he was. "There's something you should know before we get there. My mother will be at the house."

I laughed, and it came out wrong.

"Beatrix."

"She'll be at the grave. She goes every year on the same day."

"What day?"

He looked at me, and I understood it was today.

It was the fifth anniversary of the burial, and he had walked into a tattoo studio that very morning to have my name made darker.

"She doesn't know you're coming," he said.

"Good," I said, and I went to get my keys.

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