“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just that you act like this big, bad loner, but you’re always chatting up people.”
“It’s easy to interact with people on a shallow level, I guess. An hour or two here, a day or two there. I have trouble with long-term relationships. People like Ollie? I can count actual friends like that on one hand.”
“But why?” She adjusted herself, turning to look into my eyes.
“Don’t know, really. I guess it’s hard for me to trust people enough to make a deeper connection.”
“You obviously trust Ollie. How long have you guys been friends?”
I sighed, unsure how to explain. “We’re friends, yeah, but it’s not like we hang out a lot. That’s mostly due to the way I live, always going from place to place. I’ve known him for a long time, but until he called me to come to town for this feral case, I hadn’t seen him in person in over two years.”
“So, you aren’t super close?”
From the way she asked the question, I could tell she was trying to peer into my mind. She wanted to see how all the gears and levers in my brain worked. The problem was, I’d spent very little time on self-reflection in my life. Too much of my energy had been focused on surviving and getting from one place to the next.
“I guess we are close,” I mused. “Uh, as close as I could be to a friend, I suppose. He’s the best friend I’ve ever had, but I probably don’t treat him the way I should. His job helps me get work, so that helps us stay connected. It also gives me some interaction with the pack, so I don’t lose my mind and go feral. In the end, we’re friends, but that relationship isn’t deep. Not like a relationship with a mate.” I eyed her warily, worried what she thought of me, the lone wolf. “When there’s no reason to stay in one place, it’s hard for me to stick around.”
“So, if there was a reason for you to stay somewhere, you would?”
“Maybe.” This conversation was going somewhere I wasn’t sure I wanted it to go.
“But usually, when the job is done, you move on?”
“Yeah.”
The expression on her face was hard to read in the flickering light of the bonfire.
“You’re here hunting a feral and protecting me,” she said. “When that’s handled, you’ll move on? Just hop on your bike and hit the road without a backward glance?”
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry. “I don’t know, Cameron. It’s what I’ve always done.” Was she saying shewantedme to stick around? “Would it upset you if I did leave?”
Rather than answer, Cameron trailed a finger along my forearm, tracking the hash mark tattoos I had there. “What do these mean? Do they have some sort of significance? I’ve wondered since I first saw them.”
I’d never told anyone what they meant. The tattoos were part of my journey that no one else needed to know about. But Cameron had changed something in me, and I’d never felt closer to anyone. Glancing around to check that no one was in earshot, I decided to tell her the story.
Touching the tally marks, I said, “Each of these is a year I’ve lived on my own. I get a new one each year. It reminds me of what I’ve lived through.”
“Tell me,” Cameron said, gazing up at me.
“Tell you what?”
“All of it. I tried to get it out of you last night, but you kept circling back to me. I want to know about you.Allof you.”
I sighed, wondering where to begin. No one had ever wanted to know the whole story. Ollie had asked before, but when I shut down, he hadn’t pushed. This was different. Cameron wasdifferent. I’d never really laid it all out for anyone before, but it was best to start at the beginning.
“My surname isn’t really Zane, for one,” I said. “I actually don’t know what my real last name is.”
“You don’t know? You said you were in foster care. Did you get put in as a baby or something?”
“It’s not that simple,” I said, slipping an arm around her waist. “My first memory is of a long, dark road. I was around six years old and stumbling along the road in the middle of the night. It was pouring rain. The road ran through a forest, which made it seem darker than it was. Everything before that moment is nothing but black. No memory, no clue where I’d come from or even who I was. I remembered my first name was Nate, or Nathan. Other than that? Nothing.
“It was freezing cold, and I was soaked. Honestly, if it had been three or four degrees colder, the rain would have been snow. I was shivering like mad and hugging myself as I walked. I had an oversized waterproof jacket on. No clue where that came from. I must have gone like that for at least an hour, probably two, just shuffling along, crying every now and then. The worst thing was what I heard in the woods by the road. Well, what IthoughtI heard, anyway.”
“What did you hear?” Cameron asked, her voice low and quiet. She stared at me intently, engrossed in the story.
“Snuffling, growling. Every now and then, I thought I saw yellow eyes peering out at me through the branches. I suppose it could have been anything. Wolves, coyotes, maybe some wild dogs—maybe even shifters, for that matter—but it freaked me the hell out. From that day forward, I wasterrifiedof big dogs. German shepherds, golden retrievers, anything big enough to do damage freaked me the fuck out. Kind of ironic in hindsight.” I chuckled.
“Eventually, I stumbled across this small shop on the side of the road. I was desperate to get warm and dry. The sign above the door said Zane’s Bait and Tackle. A little fishing supply store and gas station combo. I climbed up the three concrete steps until I was under the awning, out of the rain. I just stood there. I didn’t know where to go, and I was too scared to speak.
