Page 45 of Howl Will I Know

Eventually, he steps back from the doorway. “No.”

It takes me a second to understand that he means he doesn’t want to be alone, and I follow him inside.

His kitchen has already become oddly familiar—the battered wooden table, the old kettle, the thick ceramic mugs he seems to have owned forever.

Hewit fills the kettle and goes through the motions of making coffee. He measures the grounds carefully, wipes the counter when a few spill, then rinses a spoon that was already clean.

I sit at the table and let him take his time. When he finally joins me, he sets my mug down first before taking the chair opposite.

For a while, he says nothing. Then his gaze settles somewhere over my shoulder. “My brother found me today.”

I blink. “Your brother?”

Hewit nods. “Reid.”

The name means nothing to me, but the way he says it does. “You have a brother.”

“Yeah.”

I wrap both hands around my mug. “And you haven’t seen him in a while?”

“Not for years. Not since that night.”

My eyes lift to his. “You mean since the night of the Frankenpunch?”

Hewit nods, his jaw tight. He stares at the table for several seconds, and I can almost see him deciding whether to keep going.

I place my hand on the table between us, palm up. “You don’t have to tell me anything you’re not ready to.”

His eyes move to my hand. “That’s the problem.”

“What is?”

“You keep giving me a way out.”

I’m not sure what to say to that.

He looks at my hand for another moment before placing his over it. His palm is warm and rough. When his fingers close around mine, the tightness in my chest eases.

“My brother and I were both there that Halloween,” he says. “The night Karloff served the punch. We didn’t know what it was. Nobody did. It was a party. Bad music, too many people, cheap decorations.” The corner of his mouth pulls down faintly. “I gave Reid one of the cups.”

His words carry enough weight that I understand immediately. “You blame yourself.”

“He wouldn’t have drunk it if I hadn’t handed it to him.”

“That doesn’t mean you knew what would happen.”

“No.” His thumb moves along the side of my hand. “But I remember doing it. The fever came fast. Reid changed first, I think. Or maybe I did. There wasn’t much order to it by then.” His gaze goes distant. “Bones breaking. Skin tearing. Everybody screaming. I could hear Reid somewhere, but after a while I couldn’t hear anything except myself.”

My stomach tightens. I’ve seen Hewit’s scars. I’ve traced some of them with my eyes when he wasn’t looking and forced myself not to ask. Now I understand where they came from.

“When I woke up, I wasn’t human anymore. Not completely.”

His fingers loosen around mine, but I turn my hand and lace them back together. He notices, but doesn’t pull away.

“I couldn’t control the shift. Sometimes anger did it. Fear. Noise. Too many people. Someone getting too close. I could smell everything. Hear everything. Every instinct was too big, and I didn’t know which ones I could trust.” His free hand closes into a fist on the table. “I couldn’t tell where I ended and the wolf began. Half the time, I didn’t even know if what I was feeling belonged to him or me.”

His gaze drops to our entwined hands. “I couldn’t make peace with what I’d become,” he admits quietly. “I’d lose control and tear up a room. Shift when I didn’t want to. Wake up outside with blood on me from whatever I’d hunted and wonder how close I’d come to somebody’s house.” His mouth twists. “Turns out you can hide pretty well in a town full of monsters. Nobody thinks the scarred wolf who doesn’t talk wants company.”