Page 79 of Same One
“An hour ago,” he told her, with this knowing smile on his face. “You might hate it. I don’t know. I’m kind of nervous for you to see it.”
Confused, she followed him to the salad bar and filled a plate. Breah came up and chatted with her through it as she got her own, and Delta and Nory followed.
With drinks and salads in hand, they took their seats as Vic told them all to quiet down. “Speech, Tabian! Speech!”
Tabian held her chair out for her and then scooted it in before he made his way to the front of the room while Vic fiddled with the projector.
Bay took the seat right by her and bumped her shoulder before he went to eating.
And here she sat in a room full of werewolves, in the middle of a real Pack who were fast turning into dear friends, watching her Tabian search for words in front of them all.
“Over the past couple of days, most of you have approached me about the reasons why I hid what I was doing with my camping life. Some have been a sentence…Delta.” He shrugged. “Some have been jokes…Vic. Some have voiced frustration…Dodger and Bridger and Nory. One got me. Liam. You were worried that I didn’t feel home enough with your Pack to share about my life, and I watched you search for the words to reassure me. And maybe there were a lot of reasons. I’m a slow open. Well, until Tru I was a slow open. I liked having something for just me. This secret life, but it wasn’t really a secret, right? I was sharing with a million strangers while my Pack didn’t know a huge part of my life. I’ve thought about it so much. I tried to justify it and told myself that I didn’t really share anything real with my viewers. But I did, didn’t I? I showed them the wolf. I brought them into my church…the woods. That’s what the forest is to me, you know? It’s my church. It’s where I figure everything out. I was so scared that one of you would stumble across my channel one of these days and find out about me. See me.” Tabian frowned. “I don’t know why it was so scary to think about that. The other day, when you crashed our campsite, I was frustrated at first. I’d taken Tru and Bay out there to bond with them and see how we all feel outside of the stress and pressure of Coeur d’Alene, and jobs, and school. For a minute I felt like you were taking something sacred away from me. And then I saw the look on Tru and Bay’s face, and I think everything happened the way it was supposed to happen. So…I put this episode together. I hope none of you mind.” He ducked his head and came to sit next to Tru as Vic pushed play on an episode on his channel called Now You See Me. It had five hundred twenty-seven thousand views already.
Dodger turned the lights off in the back, and Tabian moved his chair closer to hers and draped his arm around the back of her chair.
The episode opened up on Tabian sitting down in a chair at his home. His eyes were glowing bright blue, and he looked thoughtful. He rubbed his hands together and began, locking his eyes on the camera. “Some of you are going to unsubscribefrom this channel after this. I hope not, but I have a feeling. The internet is strange sometimes, and having a channel, you have to figure out how much to share, and how much to leave mysterious. I am going to admit something that werewolves and humans alike are going to be able to relate to. Sometimes I get lonely.” He paused and nodded, eyes still locked on the camera. “I was lonely for a long time.” He relaxed back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “I feel like for a long time I was just waiting, but I didn’t know what for, you know? Something was missing. It was like this hole inside of my chest, and the only thing that quieted it for a little while was being out in the woods staying busy. Building these little temporary dens that kept me on the move. The emptiness couldn’t hit a moving target, right? But the second I would slow down or take a day off, or edit videos, or try to sleep, the hole inside of me yawned open again. There was no getting rid of it.” He pursed his lips into a thin line and looked so thoughtful. “You know how sometimes something happens in your life that opens your eyes? I think that happened to me. I have so much to be thankful for, but I was too busy staying busy to take stock of the good. To appreciate my Pack. To understand what I’d built.” He shrugged his muscular shoulders up to his ears. “And then I met someone, and she feels like…well…” He leaned forward again and ran his hand down his short beard. “Let me just show you.” He reached for the camera, and before the monologue cut, he said, “This is probably going to be the only episode like this. Stay with me, okay?”
The scene cut to snippets of old videos from other campsites he’d done before he’d met Tru, but they were one second snippets of him staring off into space. His face was so serious. He would be looking at trees. Sitting by the fire alone. Skipping rocks in rivers by himself. Staring at the tent. Leaning against his truck eating a granola bar with a faraway look on his face. It wenton for a full minute, faster and faster snippets that just gave a feeling of desolation. Of aloneness. Of solitude.
And then it cut to the camping trip with Tru and Bay. They weren’t on camera, but a song began playing, and his eyes were following something behind the cameras. The smile stayed on his lips. When he spoke, she could tell he was teasing. He laughed in four quick snippets in a row. And then Tru showed up, slumped shoulders, pouting out her bottom lip as she shuffled to him and fell into his offered hug. She remembered this. She’d dropped the carton of eggs and broken half of them. She was apologizing, but Tabian was laying kisses all over her face. Next, they were cleaning up eggshells together, laughing. Next was Bay holding the drone out and Tabian hitting the right button to get it airborne off his hand. Next was the drone footage of them grinning up at it, and Tru clapping for them. Next was Tabian’s attempt at putting her hair into a high ponytail as they sat by the fire. It looked awful and she had made a silly face at the camera as he cracked up behind her. Next was a close up of Bay’s face as he watched them with this soft smile on his lips. Next was Bay tapping her shoulder and then moving out of the way before she saw him while Tabian filmed himself cooking. She’d thought it was a spider and took off high-knee running.
The Rogue Pack was chuckling around them.
Next, she came out of the tent wearing one of Tabian’s hoodies that hung down to her knees. He approached her, his lips moving with whatever he was saying, and he splayed his legs to be more eye-level and pulled her hood up, then cupped her cheeks and laid a kiss on her lips. He walked away, still talking, and the film zoomed in on the softness in her eyes as she watched him.
Oooh, her heart. Even she could see the love she had for him in this. Her eyes prickled.
Next was a montage of moments between she and Bay, where he was watching her, or moved to help her in ways she hadn’t realized at the time. Catching a napkin she dropped before it hit the dirt and handing it back to her. Moving the chair so she could sit closer to the fire. It cut to the hard conversation they’d had over s’mores, and the way she’d looked at Bay with her heart in her eyes.
“I told him he could use it,” Bay said softly to her. “As long as he took the volume off of it.”
Emotionally, she squeezed his hand and released it, then wiped her eyes.
Tabian was showing her the love Bay had for her. He was showing her the love Tabian had for her. How could any of her insecurities as a guardian hold when she was watching Bay lay dandelion flowers outside the tent and sitting beside it like he wanted to be close to them.
The next scene was absolute chaos. It was the Rogue Pack walking past one of the cameras one by one, each holding camping supplies and chattering. The good vibes were top tier.
A montage of Bay jabbing jokes with the guys, of them racing to the water, drone footage of Bridger’s campsite across the river while Liam talked to him by his fire. There was a scene with them all by the campfire cracking up as Vic played an out of tune guitar badly that he’d bought from a pawn shop. Earline’s cage was sitting right by his boot. There was a close-up of Bay holding Earline’s cage, talking to her. The hamster was wearing a little pink sweater. It was s’mores with the Pack, them cooking over the open fire together, the girls by the fire when she’d told them about Vic being her mate. There was a hike where the Rogue Pack walked by a camera one by one, and at the end was her and Tabian, talking as he walked with her with his arm thrown over her shoulder. There was a zoomed in scene of Bay doctoring a cut she’d got from a thorny plant on her shin. Theothers stood loosely around, and Vic and Dodger were having an epic stick battle in the background. Next was a scene with Tru sitting in front of Delta’s camp chair as she braided her hair. The girls had all matched braids that morning. Tru had her face tilted back and her eyes closed while Delta braided, and near them, Tabian was sitting down drinking coffee, just watching her face with this loving look on his face. Bay and Vic were shadow boxing in the background.
A tear slipped to Tru’s cheek as she realized what she really had found. What she really had.
This was it.
This was it for her and Bay.
They’d found it.
They’d found where they belonged.
She inhaled shakily and leaned her cheek against Tabian.
“Is it okay?” he whispered.
“I love it,” she murmured thickly.
She could feel Bay’s attention. He would look at her and glance back at the screen. At her, and then to the screen. On the fourth one, he handed her a napkin and said, “Don’t cry, Tru.”
“It’s good tears, buddy.”
