Red Moon Rising

15. storm

Chapter Song: The Wind - Cat Stevens

XX

It shouldn't have been Amy who had to make that call. I don't care how distraught Cam's dad is, but he should have been the one to pick up the phone and tell Cam to come home. He told him to never bother coming back, so he should be the one to eat his words. And after refusing to let Amy and Alina so much as text their big brother, it seems particularly cruel that they would only be allowed to speak with him to let him know his mom was on her deathbed.

But I don't say these things to Cam, because I think he already feels them himself. And there's something about his face right now that frightens me, the way his eyes are shifting about the room as he sits on the edge of our bed, his head in his hands.

"What if he made her lie?" His voice is quiet, barely even Cam's voice. I don't know what to do when Cam isn't himself. I'm not used to being the one to keep him strong. He's always been my rock, not the other way around.

"Why would he do that?"

"Maybe they have something planned to keep me there. An intervention or something, or maybe...maybe it's some kind of trap."

"You really think they'd force you to stay?"

"It's been done before."

"But not for something like this...only when someone posed a threat to the pack."

"What if I'm a threat?"

"Cam...what are you talking about?"

"I don't know. I don't know, Layla. What if we were wrong, and we really are dooming the people around us by choosing each other?"

There isn't anything to say in response. I think of Mira's broken leg, of Cam's dying mother. Maybe I hated her a little when she and his dad chose to cut him off entirely. But before the solstice, before everything went wrong, she had been a mother to me after I'd lost my own. "There's no curse, Cam. And I don't think this is a trap, either. I think we need to go back and say goodbye."

"You'll go with me?"

"Of course." I sit beside him on the bed and slip my fingers through his. "Bad things just happen, sometimes," I whisper. "This isn't your fault—I need you to believe that." There was no talk of curses when my mother died, and still, I think each of us—my dad, Tasha, and me—all found a way to blame ourselves for what had happened. She knew there was something wrong with her long before she went to the doctor, and we had reassured her, tried to take her mind off of it. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered if she had seen someone a month earlier, but it doesn't matter now. And never once would she ever dream of blaming us, or herself, or the gods.

"In the morning, then."

"As soon as we're up."

"Layla," he says softly. "Can I admit something to you?"

"Of course." We lie back on the bed, feet still touching the floor. "What is it?"

"I don't really want to see her."

"You don't?"

"No. I don't...I don't want to see her sick. I'm not ready to comfort anyone." His voice breaks and he clears his throat, eyes staring up at the ceiling without really looking. "I don't want to lose my mom."

I don't say anything for awhile, but absentmindedly roll a button of his shirt through my fingers. His breathing is slow, tired, after a long day, but I can feel the tension in his chest. "It's easy right now, to feel like it isn't real. Or that somehow, by not acknowledging it, you'll be able to make it go away." I kiss his shoulder, and he finally looks at me. He seems so young in this moment, face so easily broken, eyes glistening. "When my mom died...even after she died, sometimes I thought, if I just believed hard enough, I would wake up the next day and she would be there, alive and well, like she'd never been sick." He doesn't say anything, and I don't know how to hold the pressure of that gaze. "But those moments we spent with her when she was dying...those are some of my most precious moments. I think they were for her, too."