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There are many ways to grieve—no one way less valid than the others—but this shutting down and shutting out... Cooper didn’t know how to help him. And he wanted so desperately to help Park. To be there for him the way Park had been there unerringly for him the last four months; teasing him out of dark moods, arguing calmly with him when the inertia set his blood on fire, holding him like he was the one sure thing in a life full of uncertainties.
It wasn’t the roughest sex they’d ever had by any means, but there had been a panicked, almost clumsy edge to it that had frankly amped Cooper’s arousal up a notch or two. For a short but glorious time he felt as needed as oxygen.
What had once seemed like a mind-blowing adventure had lost its shine. At the end of the day, the BSI was a government agency struggling to be better while built on a faulty, problematic and hole-ridden system, and under the financial control of a broken and immoral government.
“It’s barbaric and unnecessary, and I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself for doing it,” Park said, his chin drawing circles in Cooper’s shoulder now. “But I hate that his scent is all over you.” He whispered that last part and slid his hands up and down Cooper’s arms. “I want you to smell like us again.”
Rather than be pissed that Park had led him unaware and unprepared into this situation, he asked himself why he had done it. Was who and what Cooper was holding him back from having this? Was his being here forcing Park to choose?
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been in this barn. It’s weird having you here. Good. But weird.” Cooper had felt the same way seeing Park in his own childhood home. That collapsing of compartments we all build for ourselves.
“The first werewolf revealed her true nature to him and told him to warn the rest of his kind not to wander too deeply into the woods ever again. It did not belong to them, and hunters were not the only animals who could learn.
“I wasn’t trying to hide you or anything about you from anyone. I’m so proud of you, so proud I get to be with you, to be part of your life. That you chose me.”
“We’re always wolves, Mr. Dayton. You just choose not to see it when we walk and talk like you.”
He didn’t say “It’s okay” because it wasn’t, or “I know” because he didn’t. He didn’t say “I’m sorry” because it was an empty, ritualistic platitude, or “You don’t need her” because need had nothing do with it. It was about want. And at some point, at least once in a lifetime, no matter who or why or what came before, everyone wants their mom.
One person can’t love you enough to make up for all the people who don’t, but Cooper wasn’t trying for all the people. Just the one. Just for right now.
