Page 48 of Gather the Storm

Goddamn.

“It’s weird,” he said. “Good, obviously. Prison is no picnic. But…”

“But?”

He shrugged. “It’s like everything outside has changed just a little bit.”

“How so?” I took a drink of my beer, glad Syd’s played fast and loose with IDs since I wouldn’t be twenty-one until next April.

“It’s like those puzzles we played as kids,” he said. “The ones where there were two pictures of the same scene?”

I nodded. I remembered them from a kid’s magazine my mom had gotten for Blake and I when were little.

“Everything seems the same,” Wolf said, “but when you look a little closer, there are definite differences.”

“That must be strange,” I said. “Disconcerting.”

“It is,” he said. “But I’m not about to complain. One thing about prison, it makes you appreciate the little things: being able to come and go as you please, feeling the sun on your facewhenever you want.” He flashed me a grin. “Having a beer and a burger at Syd’s on a Tuesday afternoon with a pretty girl.”

I cleared my throat, like I was getting ready to give a speech to a room full of suits instead of sitting across from my brother’s hot best friend, trying to focus on the reason we were together in the first place.

I looked down at my lap and gathered my courage. I wanted to get him off guard, to ask about Blake’s murder point blank-before resorting to other ideas for figuring out what had really happened.

But now that I was here, listening to how much of an adjustment it was for Wolf to be back, I felt almost bad bringing it up. I had to remind myself that they’d murdered Blake.

Or they’d confessed to it anyway. Plus, they’d ignored my letters when I’d tried to ask questions while they’d been in jail.

My brother was dead. I was allowed to ask questions.

“Why did you do it?” I asked softly.

A wall dropped over his features, his gaze closing off to me all at once.

“We’re not talking about that, Daisy.” There was something new in his voice, something low and threatening.

“Why?” I asked. “Don’t you think I have a right to know?”

He shook his head. “No. What happened that night is in the past. It’s better for all of us — and especially you — to leave it there.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “That’s not fair.”

“You’re talking to a guy who just spent five years in prison, sunshine.” The words were mild enough but there was an undercurrent of bitterness I’d never heard before. “You don’t have to tell me life isn’t fair.”

“You spent five years in prison for murdering my brother,” I reminded him. “That sounds more than fair.”

“I did my time,” he said. “The last thing I want to do is talk about it.”

“What about what I want?” I asked, my voice getting louder. “Do you have any idea what it’s been like for me? Have you even thought about that? About Ruth and my dad?”

I was almost embarrassed saying it. I was talking to someone who’d spent five years in prison. Making it about me violated all the rules of empathetic personhood.

Except I had to stop thinking about the Beasts as victims.They’d killed someone.

They’d killed Blake.

I could still hear Ruth sobbing, could still feel her small body shaking in my arms as she cried after Blake died. It went on for weeks, and not just for Ruth, Even my dad had looked pale and hollow-eyed in the months after Blake’s death.

My relationship with Blake had been complicated, but he was my brother and I’d loved him. I’d lain awake at night tossing and turning, trying to make sense of the way our lives had been turned upside down.

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