If I’m Colton in this memory then he watches me for a minute too, dragging my eyes back to me and she fades off out of scene. I have no control of where he looks, because this is his memory. He follows my progress as I swim across the lake and then he’s pulled sideways, and I’m suddenly seeing water. Submerged in bubbles and blurry sight, hands in front, waving as I swim back to the surface, coughing and spluttering as another boy blocks my view. I recognize him as one of his closest Santo pack. A boy called Matteo, who’s usually in Colton’s shadow wherever he goes. He was in the study earlier today.
“Do you like her or something? Why you always staring at her, Cole? Is she why you made me come here? I feel like she’s wherever we go nowadays.” He teases, pushing me back and all I hear in response is…
“Shut up. She has a name. Get out of my face and stop being dumb.” It’s Colton’s voice. Undeniable, even at such a young age, that smooth undertone of immature depth that grew into how he sounds now. The completely defensive edge, and embarrassment, hints that his friend is right, and I know from learning so much about him lately that when he gets caught out, he gets bristly and hostile. It starts to dawn on me what he’s showing me as he lets go and breaks the projection.
I turn on him at speed, eyes wide and gawping, not really sure I just interpreted that the right way, but what other way could I.
“You liked me?” I blurt out accusingly. I don’t understand. That memory is long before the wars catapulted into our life and changed everything. A time I can barely remember, and I definitely don’t recall on that day, either of us having any kind of memorable interaction. He stayed with his friends and I stayed with mine and then I went home with my mom before the sun went down. I would have to claw through the memories to be sure, but there was nothing to suggest he even noticed me.
“I had a crush on you, like you wouldn’t believe. I don’t know how many times I tried to talk to you and got completely blanked or lost my nerve. I used to hang out where I knew you would be, but then the war happened, and you became….” His voice tails off, eyes averting, shame washing over his expression, and I know what he means without him finishing.
I became a black sheep. One of the shamed.
My family died and our people scraped up the remains and shunned my kind to the darkest corner. One of the rejects and much like everyone else, he would have been told we were cursed and to keep his distance. Colton was a kid, and I guess his father really drummed it into his head that I was unworthy. His crush died, he forgot me, and he moved on with his life, onto Carmen.
“Why are you telling me this? I don’t remember you ever trying to talk to me, I don’t recall times where you were there in my childhood.” Not that it means anything. Now it’s just hurting me all over again, knowing that even then, he bowed to his fathers will and rejected me, long before that day in the woods. If we were destined, then he failed me twice.
Colton sighs, pulls me close by the waist and brings my face back to his so that he can move in and rest his forehead on mine. The kind of intimacy you would expect from a mate and I have to remind myself that we’re not anything close. I don’t relax into his touch, but stay like cardboard, and refuse to melt into him or succumb to his power over me.
“I was shy, and you were this fearless, confident girl, that walked around with her friends, oblivious to any of us. Boys were dumb and you all liked to make a point of avoiding us at all costs.” He points out with a smile, reminding me a little of memories gone by, so well buried to save my heart from the pain of losing my family that I almost blocked them out completely. A time when the packs lived in proximity but kept to their own. A time when the Santo boys were just ‘that bunch of idiots from the south side’ and had no authority over the rest of us.
It feels like a million years ago now, when life was normal, and I had a real home. My own warm bed in my own little pink room on our farm. I had parents, a brother, and grandparents. Happy and carefree and had no idea there was a storm coming that was big enough to take it all away from me. There was a time when I was just another wolf child, and Colton and his friends were not our superiors, but a rival pack and we had no real animosity. Not between kids anyway. The fights were for the grown-ups.
I smile at the possibility that Colton was once shy. I mean, I don’t believe it now with who and how he is, but raking through my memories stored in my brain that belong to him, daring to push back to the before, where all my visions pain me still,? I guess I can pinpoint a few that show a much quieter boy. He turned young, and at first, he wasn’t the fearless aggressive wolf that we all know him as now.
He was sweet at some point in his life, until I guess, he was hardened with whatever responsibility his father laid on his head. He was nine when the wars happened, and as a boy who already ran with the pack, he would have lost so many years of childhood in taking over in his father’s absence while protecting his family.
We had attacks here too, and many young boys had to fight for our survival. I don’t doubt he was one. I can almost see the point in which he turned away from anyone who wasn’t Santo, pushed people away and stayed in his own little bubble, snarling at others who dared to come too close. Colton the shy sweet boy and me the fearless bossy girl who didn’t let others push her around.
Oh, how the tables turned.
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