Autumn was in a poor mood. It had been a long time since she and Isaac had a blowout. Autumn couldn’t even remember what had set them off – what had set her off – something dumb and trivial, probably. Whatever it had been had dredged up feelings that she had thought were long behind her, behind both of them. Next thing she knew they were arguing about everything. Which quickly led Autumn to snap at Isaac that she hadn’t asked him to come with her!
He snapped back at her reminding her that she wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without him. That he was the one supporting them. He was the one working countless hours to make sure they had money for the next time she got itchy to run again. He was the one who had to present himself to every fucking pack whose town they entered. He was the one who ran the risk.
He was right, of course, but that had only pissed her off more. “You’re not doing that for me!” She yelled at him. “That’s all for you! To make you feel better! You were raised to be a pet. That’s what you do!” She said it out of anger and frustration and without thinking. He told her to get out. He’d never kicked her out before.
She’d been too angry to apologize, so she left. She was sure to slam the door as hard as she could behind her too. Then she took his bicycle and made her way into town.
Her first thought was to go to Mercy’s hotel room. She got about halfway there when she remembered that Cole was staying with her now. Autumn showing up there out of the blue would be uncomfortable at best. So, she just wandered around town on the bike for a few hours. It was dark by the time she got to Lakeside Tavern. Too tired to keep riding, she went inside.
Autumn didn’t like drinking alone. She knew far too many hunters who gave in to drink and let it swallow them up. But the only friend she really had in town was Mercy. She hated Isaac for being right about that too.
She slid onto a stool near the end of the bar and gave Kennedy a look warning him not to try to mess around with her. To his credit (and her surprise) he made her the drink she asked for and left her well alone.
For the next hour she sat and glowered at her Long Island iced tea.
As she glowered, Castor watched.
Well. Sort of.
It was a busy time of the year for his family, with his moms preparing for the start of the school year and the annual argument of how much time they were going to ask the kids to give to help get supplies and lesson plans ready. It meant hours of his family shouting each other down around the house, each child stationed at some folding table with craft supplies and paper, trying to get things organized so that their moms would just have a chance to breathe.
It didn’t matter how many times he’d done it, he was tired. He was exhausted. He was ready for a nap, but he found himself at Lakeside with one hand on his phone and the other on his beer. It was a horrible habit to have, skipping off to the bar after a stressful day, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t manage it. After all, werewolves had a better metabolism and he drank more water than most living things rightfully should. By the time he left and did a few laps around the block he’d be sober again.
Which was the plan that he’d laid out when he put his beer back onto the counter, but Castor noticed a familiar brunette on the other end of the bar and he leaned back, stretching out to see if she was alone. When he figured the coast was clear, Castor grabbed his phone and went to sit down next to her, a polite smile on his face.
“How’s it going, new girl?”
Autumn looked up from her drink and frowned seeing Castor seated next to her. It wasn’t as though she was displeased to see him, more like she was surprised he had scooted down the bar to her. Their first interaction hadn’t been a rousing success. She never would have expected him to talk to her willingly.
But here he was and he was smiling at her. She didn’t know what to do with that. “My name is Autumn,” she told him without much enthusiasm. “And…not great…” She took a sip of her drink before looking back at Castor. “How ‘bout you?”
“Autumn,” he corrected himself, settling against the back of the barstool. He liked her. She reminded him of Remy, all tough on the outside, ready to fight people over things that she thought were right. Hell, she could have been one of his sisters if people could be related by personality alone. Castor grinned against his hand and shrugged.
“I’m good, I’m good. Better than not great. Had to help my moms with a buncha school shit today, so that ate into my ‘do nothing’ time.” He waved to the bartender and then shifted to face her a little better, his body twisted in her direction. “You wanna talk about it or just be mad?”
“There isn’t much to talk about,” Autumn said. She set her glass down on the bar. She’d been sitting there for well over an hour and she’d only managed to drink half of the drink she’d ordered. She didn’t even really want it, but she couldn't just sit in the bar sipping on water all night, could she?
“Isaac and I had a fight,” she explained to Castor. “I said some things. He said some things. Then I said something that I shouldn’t have.” She chewed her bottom lip. “I’ve said a lot of things to Isaac over the years. Some of them have pissed him off, but…” She fidgeted with the band on her ring finger. “I went too far. He told me to get out, so I did and here I am.”
She turned her eyes back to the drink. The condensation on the side of the glass had soaked through the cheap cork coaster, leaving a pool of water on the bar top. She frowned at it, still twisting her ring around her finger. “I don’t think I’m going back there tonight,” she said.
“That’s alright.”
Castor rubbed his hand on his face and then exhaled, getting himself ready for advice mode. Or listening mode - whichever she needed more. He wasn’t sure how to really ask her, given that she was a stranger. He wondered how he’d ask his sister. That, he figured, was a pretty safe bet.
“Do you want to talk about it or just vent about it? I know that when I try to give my sister advice she kinda gets mad and tells me to fuck off, so I’m happy to do either, just let me know. Or we can not talk about it and talk shit about whatever sport is on TV. I’m pretty easy.”
Autumn stared at him, genuinely surprised. She did want to talk about it, about everything that she’d been sitting and stewing on for the last hour. But she had no idea where to start. She had no idea how to present her thoughts in a cohesive way. Everything wanted to come out at once and she felt paralyzed to even speak.
Her frustration with herself took physical form in the lump forming hard and cold in the back of her throat. She shook her head. “It’s all just so stupid,” she said, her voice cracking around that lump. She scowled just hearing it. “I hate it!”
Castor nodded and took another drink, his eyebrows raised. “Yeah, I bet I’d hate it, too.”
He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “I don’t fight with my friends often. We’re all pretty growly on our own, right? Lots of hot blooded people running around, people who think that their ideas are the best ones. Hell, I’ve got a lot of it in my family alone. And sometimes we’re all pretty cool about it, but my youngest brother likes to fucking agitate me in ways I didn’t know was possible.”
“Anyway, what I’m saying is that yeah, it’s all stupid. But sometimes you just gotta let it aaaaaaal out otherwise you’re gonna bottle it up and explode. And I just can’t imagine you likin’ feeling like a bottle of champagne that’s about to pop, Autumn.” He gave her a slight nudge and then faced forward again, a small smile on his face.
“I don’t have any brothers or sisters,” Autumn said. “I have cousins, but I don’t know if any of them were my actual cousins. I mean…a couple probably were, but I don’t know for sure. At the Ranch where I grew up, everyone was ‘family’, but at the same time, no one was either. People came and people went. That’s how it was.” She twisted the band around her ring finger again. “It was hard to get close to people and I think it was like that on purpose. ‘Exterminating’....” she glanced at him hoping he’d get the meaning behind the word. “...is dangerous work and people sometimes just never come back.”
She was quiet, still fidgeting with the band. She hadn’t thought much about Horseshoe, the clan or the Ranch in well over a year. Her mouth twisted into a scowl. “I was never meant to be out here,” she told Castor bitterly. “I want to be a part of something, you know? Like a family like you have. Or be a part of a group of people, like them,” she motioned to a group of people on the other side of the bar laughing and talking. “But I’m always on the outside looking in, you know? I don’t know how to get in, where’s the door or even a damn window.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
He sat in silence with her, looking at the other people across the bar. It was easy to feel like you were missing out when other people were laughing and smiling, but to him, those people were just a facade. “Thing is, Autumn, those people are a mirage. It’s like social media. Everyone wants to look their best or make everyone else think they’re doing really well, when we’re all just kinda fucked up.”
Castor leaned back and swiveled in her direction, smiling. “And yeah. Being a part of something, especially when you’re not sure where you’re supposed to be, or who you’re trying to be - that’s real hard.” He was still trying to master that skill of just being who he wanted to be, instead of what people expected him to be. It wasn’t always easy. He couldn’t imagine what it was like for someone who just didn’t have that grounding connection. Even with his family.. “And so this guy, he’s your family then, right? Basically? Like your brother, or your husband, or what?”
“Oh, Isaac and I are not married,” Autumn said quickly. She reached for the glass in front of her again. “And he’s certainly not my brother.” But now that Castor asked the question about just who Isaac was to her, Autumn struggled to find the answer. The best she came up with was to say: “he was Andrew’s friend.”
“Ah.”
Castor didn’t have an Andrew. He got close, a few years ago, with some woman who wanted kids and wanted to get married. He wanted neither, so things ended after five years and he’d avoided anything that resembled a relationship since. Well, most things. He couldn’t keep himself away from Remington, but neither of them were close to discussing whatever the hell that meant.
“So not your friend, not your husband. So what’s that leave you, just some kinda ghost that follows you around from place to place?”
Autumn chewed the inside of her lip. In a way “ghost” wasn’t too far off the mark. “Isaac is here because he promised Andrew he’d watch out for me. And that’s what he’s been doing for the last few years.” She was frowning again, but not the same twisted scowl as before. There was something sad about her expression. “And he’s done a good job. He supports me, he makes sure we have what we need, that we have money….I tried getting a job once. It didn’t…it didn’t work out too well. Since then, that’s always been Isaac’s thing.”
“Yeah, but what’s your thing? Like, if he’s working and supporting you, are you happy with that? Because I’m not trying to be judgmental or anything, but I’d hate it if I just became someone’s constant plus one. Are you doing anything for you?”
Autumn looked at him. “I go jogging and walking in the woods,” he said. “Before I ended up here I biked around town for a while. I like being outside.” She frowned. “I don’t have a ‘thing’.” She said. “Do people usually have a ‘thing’?”
“Yeah, people usually have a thing,” he told her, grinning. “For some people it’s their kids, or their job, or their stupid car. I’ve got my family, the pack. This town. My job. Maybe you gotta find something for you. Something that you don’t have to get from him.”
“You have a lot of things,” Autumn said, a brow raised. But what Castor said made sense. And, if Autumn were truly to be honest with herself, it was something that had been bothering her for a long time, even if she didn’t want to admit it. She needed to be separate from Isaac. Relying on him for everything was making her crazy. It couldn’t have been good for him either. Maybe it was time they separated.
“Maybe I should try finding a job again,” she said carefully. “The last time I tried working, I broke someone’s hand. They did deserve it!” She added quickly.
“Hey, I’m not judging,” he said with a smirk, shrugging at her. “Sometimes people need to keep their hands to themselves, and if they can’t learn when they should be doin’ that, someone needs to let them know.”
After taking another drink, he looked at her and sighed. “I think you could do that, but if you do, just take it easy. Maybe a day or two a week, until you’re feeling comfortable? I think easing into something so that you know that you like it might be good. You know what I’m saying?”
What Castor was saying did make sense. Part of the reason she had left Horseshoe was so that she could figure out her life, who she was when she wasn’t part of the clan any longer. She had done very little of that in the past several years. As much as it made sense, she wasn’t confident in herself to actually be able to do it. “Who would hire someone with zero work experience for only one or two days a week?”
A soft clearing of the throat drew Autumn’s attention. She cursed herself for not noticing the bartender had made his way to their end of the bar during the course of the conversation. “I could always use a hand here,” he offered. “Even if it is only a couple of days a week.”
Autumn frowned at him. “I’d rather not,” she said. “Knowing how you operate, I probably would break your hand.”
Kennedy chuckled and shook his head. “Fair,” he said, taking her very watery drink and replacing it with a soda. He glanced at Castor, giving the other man a soft chuckle and a wink as if to say good luck before making his way back to the other side of the bar.
Castor gave him a grin before tucking his head away, his chin pressed to his neck so that he could compose himself.
“That guy isn’t much worse than me,” he reminded her, his voice gentle. “I don’t dislike him. We’re both boneheads. What’s that word? Himbo? He could probably use the company of someone like you. Make him bring it in a little bit.”
With a shrug, Castor took a final drink out of his glass and sighed. “You gotta figure out what you want to do. People hire for stuff and look past experience if the personality is the right fit. It’s less about the resume and more about the DNA. You can’t make people accept someone they don’t want to, but if they get along with the team and require a little more training, well, that’s worth a fortune. You feelin’ me?”
Autumn scowled. “You’re not like Kennedy,” she said matter of factly. “You haven’t hit on me at all.” She turned to her soda, fiddling with the straw. “You’re…” she faltered for the right word before finally saying “real.”
It was difficult to quite get her mind around what Castor was saying. Her experience out in the real world was so confusing sometimes. She’d watched a bit of TV in her day. Sitcoms made it all look so flipping easy. Everything was fixed and everyone was happy and laughing by the end of the episode and by the start of the next episode, everything was forgotten. Why couldn't life be like that?
“Castor,” she said after a moment of silent contemplation. “Would you think I’m a bad person if I left Isaac?”
“No,” he told her, giving her shoulder a friendly squeeze. “I think you and Isaac need to learn how to live as friends but be your own people. Codependency isn’t great. The two of you deserve a lot more than just that. And he might get pissed at me about it, but are the two of you just gonna hang around each other for the rest of your lives? Not do your own things, meet new people? Is that what you really want to do with the rest of your life, Autumn?”
The shoulder squeeze was reassuring. Autumn didn’t even know how much she needed that reassurance until Castor gave it to her. For the first time in years she felt sure about something. She and Isaac had to part ways. Their current situation wasn’t good for either of them.
Despite knowing that and having someone else agree with her, Autumn’s stomach still felt tight. What was she going to do? Autumn rested both her elbows on the bar and chewed on her right thumb nail. She’d tried to make Isaac leave before, but it had never stuck. Then again, she’d never crossed such a line with him that made him kick her out of the Winnebago before either. Maybe they were both on their breaking points. Maybe Isaac would go back to Horseshoe where he belonged. Back to the pack he was supposed to run with Andy…
The idea of watching the Winnebago drive off without her made her feel suddenly very anxious and upset and she didn’t know why. This was her idea, why wouldn’t she be happy? The lump was back in her throat and this time tears were welling in her eyes. She chewed hard on her thumbnail, her eyes darting back and forth from her glass to Castor and back.
She hated this feeling and she hated herself for feeling it. She was stronger than this. She swallowed the lump in her throat and quickly wiped her eyes with the side of her hand. “You’re right,” she said. “I can’t spend the rest of my life reliant on Isaac. I have to do my own thing. I’ll find a job and a new place to stay…”
Her head hurt from the tears she refused to shed. She would have time for that later, if she still needed to. She looked at Castor again. “Can you do me a favor and not tell Isaac about this?” She asked. “I’ll tell him myself as soon as I have everything lined up.”
“I won’t tell him what you’re thinking of doing,” he reassured her, being careful not to promise anything more than that.
He did give her a little nod before going back to his drink. “Just take your time. Do it in a way that makes sense for you. Obviously the two of you care about each other, so it’s not like you hate the guy.