Mateless and Home Bound (In Process Of Publication)

Chapter 15: Fur and Arrows

This was insane! No one ever came to this little house, not in his entire life! He should have been terrified and just ran inside and locked the door, but this was Reggie they were talking about. He could trust Reggie with his life.

He seemed a little awkward when he first came through the branches though, and he didn't seem like he was wearing stuff for hiking or camping. It really didn't look like he brought much of anything with him. As much as those should have been red flags and warnings, he was just happy to have someone there to get him out of his thoughts. He had been in a sea of memories that was just leaving him curled in a ball crying his eyes out.

Reggie stopped right when he got up to the door. He turned around to see him with a scrunched up look on his face. It was like he smelt a rotten egg or something.

"What?" he asked, looking around. There wasn't anything that he could smell that was rotten.

"Sorry," he put his hand on his nose. "I just didn't know you had wolfsbane growing around here."

"Oh," he looked to see the purple flowers growing right by the stairs. He liked the plant. It was really beautiful. "What? You don't like wolfsbane?"

"Uh," he paused again. "Let's just say that I'm allergic to it."

"I thought you said you weren't allergic to anything?" Sage asked. That was what he had said to all of his teachers when they asked about any food allergies or things like that.

"I forgot about them," he shook his head. "Don't worry about it."

"Reggie," he paused before opening the door for them. "Are you alright?"

Something was off about this. Well, just about everything was off about this, but that was the final red flag for him to start asking questions. He really wished he could just go back to hugging him. He always felt so much happier when Reggie hugged him. But he supposed that was just because he liked hugs in general.

Fun fact: hugging actually releases a hormone in the body that made you want to hug more. He found that out from working at a nursing home. There was one nurse who was the sweetest lady there. Everyone absolutely loved her.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Reggie frowned. "I'm more worried about you, Sage."

"Well, I'm not exactly the one who decided to trek into the forest without bringing anything," he motioned towards his thin clothes. "How long have you been hiking? Did you even bring an emergency flare?"

If Reggie really had lived around here his entire life, Sage was surprised that he didn't know even the basics to going into the forest. There were always things that you need when hiking in general, no matter what the climate.

Water was another important one.

"Well, I," he put his hand on the back of his head. He always did that when he was nervous about something. It was cute, but Sage was still too curious as to how he got there to just let this go.

"You what?" he asked. "Do you even have water with you?" Maybe he should let him in at least. He could easily get sick from dehydration.

"I'm fine, Sage, really," he assured him. "It's just a little difficult to explain."

"Did your car break down?"

"Something like that."

"Well, spit it out!" he whined. This was getting ridiculous. He was just giving him the runaround about everything. That wasn't like him. Reggie always told him everything, even when it came to his family. And man, did that sound like a soap opera waiting to air. He was glad that his cousins adopted a bunch of kids, though. That was always something that he wanted to do. His grandma adopted him, after all. She took care of him after his mom passed away. He didn't remember her at all. She passed away when he was still an infant.