City of the Lost (Casey Duncan #1)(116)

“I’m not—”

“Yeah, Eric. You are.”

He nods, settles onto the chair, and watches me eat. Then he stands abruptly and leaves without a word.

“Well, that’s more like it,” I mutter under my breath, as I dig into the pie.

Thirty seconds later, he’s back with the tequila and a shot glass.

“I don’t want—” I begin.

“Good, ’cause you can’t have it with the drugs. This is for me.”

He starts to open the bottle. Then he stops, sets it aside, and walks out again. I hear the distant click of the front door lock. Then the tramp of his boots as he goes to check the back door. He comes up and closes the bedroom one, too.

I say nothing. He pours a shot. Gulps it. Winces and shakes his head sharply, his eyes tearing at the corners.

“Fuck,” he says.

“Yep, you really should stick to beer.”

He shakes his head and pulls the chair over to the bed. Then he pours another shot.

“Umm,” I say. “That’s probably not a good—”

He downs it, and he’s hacking after that, his eyes watering. His hand, still clutching the shot glass, trembles. He notices and puts it down fast.

“We need to talk,” he says.

“That’s usually best done sober.”

“Not for this.” He wipes his mouth and straightens. “Diana said I’m f*cked up. She may be a bitch, but she’s right. Everyone knows it. They think it’s because I grew up here. That’s only part of it.”

He rubs the back of his neck. “You said I don’t want to share my problems with you. You’re right. I don’t share this with anyone. Anyone. Because if they already treat me like a freak, this isn’t going to help.” He looks at the shot glass, still in his hand. “So I could just keep refusing to talk about it. Be the guy with the deep, dark secret.”

He smacks the shot glass down. “Fuck it. I’m not that guy. I don’t want to be that guy. Not with you. So this is your last chance. If you’d rather not hear it …”

“I want to.”

“Fine, but if you ever treat me differently because of this—”

“I’d like to think you know me better than that.”

He eases back, his voice lowering. “Yeah. Okay. So, Jacob … I was ten. He was seven. We’d wander in the woods for hours. Our parents taught us how to find our way, and we were always home by dark. Then one day we see these people. I’m curious. I make Jacob stay back while I check them out. It’s a group, camping and hunting. For three days, I come back to watch them. Jacob’s freaked out. He wants to tell our parents. I say no f*cking way. I threaten to leave him at home next time. On the third day, he’s still whining, so I tell him to get out of my damned face, and I stomp off, exactly like you thought I did yesterday. And that’s when it happens.”

“They take him.”

“No.” He inhales and straightens and meets my gaze. “Not him. They take me.”

“And then what? You escape and …” I trail off. I mentally retrace his story, and I realize there’s more than one way of looking at it.

“Your parents …” I say. “The Daltons aren’t your parents. They took you. From the forest. From …”

“Yeah.”

I blink, and I’m trying so hard not to react, to act like this is no big deal. Huh, guess I got that backwards. Interesting.

But it is a big deal. A huge deal, because losing a little brother would be tough, but to be the one lost himself, to be taken from his family…

“So, yeah,” he says. “That’s where I come from. Out there. I was one of them. Still am, in a lot of ways. It’s not as if the Daltons rescued me from parents who beat and starved me. At first, I fought like a wolverine. I kept thinking my parents would come for me. But if they tried, I never knew it, so I figured they’d given up on me. I was pissed about that, and then, well … life was easier in Rockton. The Daltons were good people. I didn’t … I didn’t have the experience or the self-awareness to really understand that what they’d done was wrong. Everyone said they did a good thing, rescuing me from the savages, and how lucky I was, and by the time I was old enough to know that wasn’t true?” He shrugs. “The Daltons were my parents by then. There was no point going back, because I didn’t belong there anymore. I didn’t quite belong out here, either. I’m just … somewhere in between.”

I think of all the times I’ve been with him in the forest, and how different he is there. All the times he’s sat out on the back deck at the station, and we joke that he is an outside cat. But it isn’t really a joke. He is that feral cat who’d been brought indoors, and maybe life is easier inside, but he’ll never stop feeling the pull of the wild. But he’ll never quite be able to live out there again, either.

“That’s why the council’s threat is such a big deal, Casey. When I say I couldn’t live down south, I’m not being difficult or stubborn or dramatic. I could not live there. I’d go back into the forest first. But it’s not just the council. What if I meet someone here? Someone I want to be with? Someone from down south, who’ll expect me to go with her after her term’s up, but I can’t, and if she wants me, she has to stay here and live a life that’s as wrong for her as hers is for me.”