Alpha (Shifters #6)(43)

“Just a minute.” I jogged down the steps and met Marc by the van. “Hey, could you guys drive to the barn and lay him out in there? Mom wants to see him, and I can’t talk her out of it.” And honestly, the sooner she saw him, the sooner she could start to accept his death.
“No problem.” Marc slid in behind the wheel while Vic climbed into the passenger seat, and they headed for the barn in the east field.
My mother started down the steps to follow them, but I stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Mom.” I looked pointedly at her bare feet, and she followed my gaze. “Shoes.”
She nodded absently and headed into the house, brushing past Jace on his way out.
“How you holdin’ up?” he asked, and I let him fold me into a hug. A chaste, comforting hug, with my cheek on his shoulder, because we hadn’t told those who’d missed the floor show in Montana about our relationship yet.
“My head’s spinning, and there’s a little nausea,” I admitted softly. “There’s so much to do. So much to say. It’s too much all at once, for them and for me. And I honestly have no idea where to begin.”
“Start with your mom,” Jace suggested. “She needs you, and she shouldn’t have to hear about all of this with everyone else there.” I nodded, and he pulled away so he could see my face. “And as much as I hate to say it, maybe the part about you and me shouldn’t be a broadcast announcement. It’s not really anyone else’s business, and they have more important things to focus on right now.”
I scrounged up a smile. “Mr. Hammond, I believe you’re getting wise in your advanced age.”
He chuckled softly. “Twenty-six doesn’t feel as young today as it did last month.” 
“Neither does twenty-three and three-quarters.”
“Faythe?” my mother called, and we both looked up, startled. I stepped away from Jace and realized that if we hadn’t looked suspicious before, we did then.
Smooth. So much for not telling anyone yet…
“Are you ready?” I asked, and she nodded. “I’ll go with you. Jace, could you check on Kaci? Tell her I’ll be there in a minute?”
He nodded and ducked into the house, pushing the door closed behind him.
My mother and I walked in silence for almost a minute, our shoes crunching first on gravel, then on the frozen, well-worn path through the east field. The main house lay behind us, long and squat, a one-story ranch house my father had designed before I was born. The barn stood ahead, much older than the house and picturesque with its peeling red paint and tall gables. I’d lived most of my life in and around those two buildings, but I’d never once imagined myself living there without my father.
I hadn’t even been in the house yet, but already home didn’t feel entirely like home without him. I felt like I was playing pretend, or like I’d wake up any moment from a nightmare.
“So…you and Jace?” my mother said, and I froze, then had to jog to catch up with her.
“Was it that obvious?”
“Subtlety was never your strong suit, Faythe.” She stopped to look at me, and I searched her eyes for disapproval or reproach, but I found nothing I recognized, other than the fact that she was searching for something in my eyes, too. “You love him.” It wasn’t a question; it was a statement uttered with the confidence of long-held authority on the subject.
“Yeah. But we don’t have to talk about this now. It’s not really the time….”
“Faythe, there’s never going to be a good time for this discussion, and I think you know that.”
I nodded. Whether because she had advice to offer or because she wanted to distract herself from a reality she soon wouldn’t be able to avoid, she obviously wanted to talk about my screwed-up love life. And I would have done anything she wanted in that moment, if it would help her deal with our mutual loss.
“What about Marc?”
I sighed and absently kicked a rock at my feet. “I still love Marc so much it hurts to turn around and not see him next to me. Jace is something…different. Something separate, but strong.”
My mother frowned, then finally nodded. “You have to choose.”
Why does everyone keep saying that? “I know.”
“Marc is Alpha material, Faythe, and if Jace ever starts to show any Alpha tendencies…this could get very bad.”
“He already has tendencies,” I said, and she nodded again, as if I’d just confirmed her suspicion. “How did you know?”
“I knew because I know you. You’re strong, Faythe. Too strong for most toms. Most tomcats will either expect you to obey them, because you’re a woman, or to lead them, because you’re an Alpha now. But you’re only ever going to love men who will be led by you, yet can hold their own with you. Men who challenge you.”
I shook my head hesitantly. “But Jace doesn’t challenge me.” Not yet, anyway…
Her sad smile spoke volumes, and her eyes seemed to peer right into my head, and maybe my heart. “Yes, he does, or you wouldn’t be interested in him. My guess is that he challenges you to be true to yourself. That he dares you to take risks you’re secretly dying to take, and to feel things you’re afraid to let yourself feel.” She closed her eyes, and when they opened again, they shined with aching wistfulness, and some spark of excitement I couldn’t comprehend. “He makes you feel alive, doesn’t he? Like the entire world is one dangling live wire, just waiting for you to grab on and ride the current.”I stared at her like she’d suddenly started speaking Russian—and I understood it. “How on earth do you know that?”
Her smile grew wistful with distant memory. “I know because your father was my live wire.”
Twenty
The barn doors were closed, and knowing my father’s body lay beyond them made his death feel somehow even more real—more devastating—than when I’d witnessed his last breath.
“Mom, you don’t have to do this.” I slid one arm around her shoulders while we stared at the doors, neither of us moving to open them.
“Yes, I do.” She swallowed thickly, and that spark of memory—my father as her live wire—was gone, replaced with pain and dread so thick and heavy I could practically taste them on the air. “If I don’t see him, I’m never going to really believe it, because he’s alive in here.” She laid one trembling, gloveless hand over her chest. “He’s so alive inside me that I can still hear him.”
“What is he saying?” I asked, as her face blurred beneath my tears. I’d failed her more than anyone.
“He’s calling me a coward.” Her voice broke on the last word, and she sniffled in the cold, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes suddenly more defined than I’d ever seen them.
“No, Mom, he would never call you a coward.” Not even if it were true. He would never intentionally hurt her, and he’d never forgive himself for doing it unintentionally. “You’re hearing yourself.” She was the source of my frank tongue, if not the coarse language that often fell from it.
“I know.” She sniffed again and stood straighter. “But it sounds like him. He’s daring me to go in there and deal with this, so I can come out stronger and ready to do what has to be done. The funeral and the packing.” She faced me then, eyes wide with real horror. “Faythe, I don’t think I can pack up his things.”
“Then don’t. Who says you have to?” I tried to smile, but the best I could manage was a not-frown. “There are no rules, Mom. There’s no grief timeline.” Other than the five-day Alpha deadline I still hadn’t told her about.
“You’re right.” She took a long, deep breath, then turned back to the barn. “I’m ready.”
We went in through the normal-size side door, and my mother froze two feet into the barn. Marc stood beside a platform made of leftover hay bales, upon which a dark blanket covered my father’s still form. I wasn’t sure where they’d found the blanket, but I was grateful. It felt much less cold and sterile than sheet plastic. 
When my mother finally approached, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs, he folded the top of the blanket back to my father’s neck. I tried not to look, but I couldn’t stop myself.
I’d seen a lot of death, of both friends and enemies, but seeing it on my father was an entirely different experience. His face had grayed since I’d last seen it, and he no longer looked alive enough for me to pretend he was only sleeping.
My mother shrugged out from under my arm and approached him slowly. Marc backed away to give her some privacy, and we joined Vic near the first long-empty horse stall, where he stared down at his own worn black hiking boots. His face was red, his eyes swollen.
Marc looked much the same. I wrapped my arms around him for a moment, then twisted in his hold to press my back against his chest.
My mom dropped onto her knees on the dirty barn floor. She put one hand on my father’s cold chest and pressed the other against her own mouth, like she could stop the whole thing from being real if she could only hold back the words.
But she couldn’t.
I didn’t hear what she whispered, and I didn’t want to. Some things are private. Some things needed to be said, even when the person who needed to hear them couldn’t hear anything. Ever again.