chapter SIXTY-EIGHT
• COLE •
It was five fifteen A.M.
I was so tired that I couldn’t imagine sleeping. I was that tired that made your hands shake and your eyes see lights at the corners of your vision, movement where there was none.
Sam was not here.
What a strange world this was, that I could come here to lose everything about myself, and instead lose everything but me. It was possible that I’d thrown one too many Molotov cocktails over God’s fence. It would be, after all, a divinely ironic punishment to watch me learn to care and then destroy the things I cared about.
I didn’t know what I would do if this didn’t work. I realized, then, that somewhere along the way, I’d started to think that Sam could really do it. There hadn’t been a part of me, even a small part, that had believed otherwise, and so now this feeling I felt rumbling in my chest was disappointment and betrayal.
I couldn’t go back to that empty house. It was nothing without the people in it. And I couldn’t go back home to New York. It hadn’t been home for a long time. I was a man without a country. Somewhere along the way, I’d become the pack.
I blinked, rubbed my eyes. There was movement at the edge of my vision again, miscellaneous floaters, consolation prizes for actual sight in this dim light. I rubbed again, rested my head against the steering wheel.
But the movement was real.
It was Sam, his yellow eyes regarding the car warily.
And behind him were the wolves.