Slow Shift by Nazarea Andrews (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📗

Reids. I mean—you know it’s weird, right? That what you’re doing, hanging out with them the way you do—it’s strange.”

Chase is quiet, and Ben catches his arm. His expression is wide open and earnest. “Chase, you don’t have to spend your time with them—you could come see me, hang out with me and Brielle.”

“Be a third wheel,” Chase scoffs.

Ben shrugs. “Or you could date.” He hesitates, and then says, “You could stop hiding.”

Chase stares at him and feels hurt burning in his chest, tears stinging in his eyes. “I’m not hiding, Ben.”

“You’ve been hiding since your mom died, man,” Ben tells him gently.

“The Reids aren’t hurting me. They’re not—” Chase bites off his words, not sure how to explain without spilling secrets he has no right to share.

Secrets that aren’t safe to share.

“Maybe they aren’t hurting you,” Ben says, “but maybe you’re using them to hurt yourself.”

~*~

He doesn’t like the scent in the house.

The sweaty scent that is layered with aconite and gunpowder, sweetness and sweat, lightly touched with Chase. He doesn’t like it. When he dreams, he snarls and snaps, biting at the black wolf in his anger, but here, the scent fades away.

Here in his dreams, there is only the sweet familiar scent of Chase, the heavy comforting scent of Tyler, the warmth of summer in the woods. Here, the wind ruffles his fur and his mind is clear, silent, filled only with Pack.

Here, he can’t smell ash and aconite and burning tires.

He runs and when he howls, his pack answers him.

~*~

Tyler watches him, after Ben visits. He’s quiet about it and Chase is pretty sure Tyler isn’t even aware of his gaze, following him while he eases Lucas through his yoga or makes chicken salad, the way his gaze skips over him while Tyler takes a quiz and starts a paper.

It’s like he’s waiting for something.

Chase thinks they both are.

~*~

“Dad?”

John looks at him and Chase shifts anxiously, moving from one foot to the other. He looks nervous in a way that makes his stomach turn, because a nervous Chase is never a good thing, and there’s always that niggle of fear—that whisper that says the Reids are dangerous.

“Do you think I’m hiding?”

John closes the file he’s been reading and studies his son. “Do you think you are?”

Chase squirms, which is answer enough. “I think... I’m comfortable. And I don’t want to lose what I have.”

John nods. “Do you think you will?”

“No,” Chase says decisively, without any hesitation, a certainty that makes John ache.

The only thing he was ever that certain of was Nora and his love for Chase. “Tyler and Lucas want me to be happy, even if I need more time away from them.”

“Do you want to spend more time away from them?”

Chase shakes his head and bites his lip. “I—I think I need it though. I don't want to use them to hide.”

“What about Ben?”

Chase gives him a confused look and John says, “Are you going to sit on the bench again, hide your skill behind him for the sake of friendship?”

Chase stares, a little pale. “You—you know about that?”

John gives him an unimpressed look and Chase flushes.

“Kid, if you’re going to stop hiding—stop. All of it.”

“But Ben,” he trails off, looking conflicted.

Interesting. Chase didn’t question the Reids’ loyalty and acceptance—but he did question Ben’s. He wishes he was more surprised by that.

“If Ben can’t handle you playing while he sits the bench, maybe you need to reassess that relationship,” John says, and Chase retreats, looking conflicted and worried.

~*~

“Ty?” Chase says quietly, tucked in his favorite spot, pressed between Lucas and Tyler in the corner of the sectional. Tyler stirs, peering down at the boy. “Ben wants me to go on a double date with him and Brielle. She’s got a friend who she thinks I’d like.”

Tyler stares at Chase.

“I—I think I should.”

“Ok.”

Chase exhales and stares at his fingers, playing with the edges of Lucas’s blanket. “When you went back to school—it’s like you were accepting, or starting to accept, that you were allowed to have what you wanted.”

“And you wanted to date?” Tyler says, confused.

“No,” Chase says grumpily, flicking the werewolf. “But you taking something you want—that’s part of how you healed. And me—I have to stop hiding. This here is good for me, but if I use it to hide from the world, it’s not.” He looks up anxiously. “Right?”

Tyler stares at him, at this boy he never expected and can’t imagine his life without, and he nods slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.”

~*~

He dates.

There’s girls Brielle knows, girls he doesn’t know, but pretty girls. The dates are awkward, but the more he goes on, the more fun he has.

He spends a month dating Harley, a pretty black girl with a wide smile and sleepy eyes. He kisses Cassie, a girl he’s known since he was a baby, a fumbling thing fueled by wine stolen from her parent’s bar as much as it was adrenaline.

There are times, when he’s got his arm around a girl and Ben is laughing with Brielle, that he feels like he fits here, that he isn’t a broken boy with a dead mother and more baggage than he knows what to do with.

And there are times, pressed against a pretty girl in a dark theatre, the unfamiliar taste of lipgloss on his mouth, that he feels lost, adrift, an imposter in a world he doesn’t understand.

~*~

He dates, and sometimes it even dips toward serious, toward relationship, but he never does stop dreaming about Tyler.

Chapter 9

Chase starts his senior year with a girlfriend, a starting spot on the football team, and a looseness to his shoulders that John hasn’t seen since before Nora died.

Ben was quiet and absent after tryouts when Chase made first line, and John stuck close to Chase—he almost broke down and called Tyler, but then Ben came back. He was subdued for a few days, but Chase was almost belligerently normal and eventually things went back to usual.

Ben starts jogging with Chase and he thinks it