Lessons in Love

Chapter 24: It's Tough

POV: Beta Ben Westlake

I sniffed at the air and followed Rick’s scent back to the packhouse. I climbed the stairs to the second floor and knocked on his door twice before letting myself in.

“Rick?” I called out as I opened the door. He was in the kitchen staring out the window. His back was to me, but I could see the tension in his body. I walked up to the island and leaned on it quietly.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He said softly.

“How did it go with my father last night?” I asked instead.

“Fine,” he said. “I put a sleeping pill in his drink, and he was out like a light. He’s in guest room four.” Rick never turned around.

“Did he say anything useful?” I asked.

“Not really,” Rick shrugged uncomfortably. “He kept bringing up …” Rick shook his head and stared down into his sink.

“What?”

“My dad, the war, how useless women are.” He said matter-of-factly. “He doesn’t like Riley.” A growl slipped out at that, and Rick finally turned around. He didn’t look at me, but at least he was facing me. “You need to keep an eye on her.” He added. “Tell her to watch her mouth. He finds her insubordinate.”

I nodded, seeing how red Rick’s eyes were. I wanted to reach out for him, but he was keeping that island firmly between us. “I will.” I managed.

“I think another night with his new drinking buddy might loosen him up a bit.” Rick said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I said firmly.

“I can handle it.”

“That’s not the point.” I said.

“You want to the orchards or the fields?” Rick changed the subject.

“Either.” I shrugged.

“I’ll take the fields.” He said, moving out of the kitchen toward the door.

“Hey,” I touched his arm to stop him for going past me.

“I’m fine.” He looked up at the ceiling.

“Please be careful with my father. The mind games get more intense than you’d expect.”

“I know.” He snapped and sighed immediately, regretting his tone. “We need to stay focused today.” He said firmly. “Please.”

“Okay,” I said. With that, we went our separate ways. He was on my mind for the rest of the day. I was really worried about him. I hadn’t seen the gym after the battle in there, but I had seen some of the bodies, including Crista’s. They were mangled, and I had gagged when I had seen Crista’s bloodied body. The reports I got from the people who’d cleaned it up were brutal. The claw marks in the floor near the bunker door that I knew were Rick’s were so deep that he must have been bracing himself against an onslaught that was unimaginable.

His eagerness to drink with my father worried me. Alcohol was the last thing he needed to add to his mental health right now, and it hadn’t escaped my notice that he’d had sleeping pills readily available to feed my father. He looked exhausted earlier. I didn’t believe he’d slept at all. The combination of those things made my palms sweat.

Rick always played his cards close to his chest, same as me. Maybe we weren’t doing each other any favors. I still had the occasional nightmare about my father or about the war. We’d seen horrible things, friends dying, and beatings that would live with me for the rest of my life. I needed to keep pushing him to talk about it, but it occurred to me that maybe I needed to be more open with him about where I was. Maybe then he’d let me in.

Hiring a new doctor might be a good call, too. A couple of the more progressive packs had started keeping a psychologist on staff. If Rick and I were having this much trouble with the war, what were our warriors facing? The unfortunate reality was that I didn’t think we could afford it. Not that my father would allow us to hire such a doctor. That thought alone made me determined to see my father unseated as quickly as possible.

POV: Riley Campbell

The gym was rough. The floors had deep gouges in the hardwood that indicated a battle of epic proportions. Rick’s reaction was more understandable when I saw it.

“What happened here?” I asked, kneeling next to deep marks near the bunker door.

“I don’t know the details,” Sam said. “But what some of the kids told me was that Rick defended the door against a large number of Rogues. Those are likely his claw marks.”

I touched the marks on the floor, feeling the jagged slashes beneath my fingers and shuddered. I made a note that floors would need to be replaced. The bleachers could just be removed. The building wasn’t that big, and it didn’t take us long to survey it all and get started on the clean-up. There were only two classrooms, the gym and change rooms, a small cafeteria, and the main foyer. Some paint would fix up the rooms and freshen the foyer up.

We were cleaning up one of the classrooms when Sam asked how I was doing with the new curriculum. “It sucks,” I snorted.

He laughed. “Well, I know that!”

“I’m not teaching it.” I said flatly. “I’ve mostly been focused on how to teach the high school curriculum with a 50’s rationale in case I get called out on it.” I shrugged. “The elementary program is the hard part.”

“Talk to Katherine,” Sam said, grabbing a pair of broken chairs and chucking them out into the hallway. “She’s been teaching with me the last five years. She might have a better perspective on how to make the elementary program ‘matehood friendly’.” He used air quotes when he said it.

“She’s also pretty close with a lot of the mothers. She might be able to help you get a read on where to start your training program.” He added, grabbing the edge of the overturned filing cabinet I was struggling with.

“That would be great,” I said, leaning on the edge of one of the desks. “I can’t thank you both enough for helping me out.”

“Well, we’ll be happy to help you out with more than just the school.” He said. “You really think you two are a power bond?”

“I don’t know,” I let out a tremendous sigh, and Sam laughed. “It’s weird. We don’t know if we’re cursed or not. All we can do is try not to act on the bond we’re feeling.”

“No small feat.” Sam said knowingly.

“The bond is … unexpected. The pull I feel toward Ben is, logically, an irrational feeling. I’ve spent a collective two hours with him since we met yesterday. That’s not enough time to get a sense of a person, and yet,” I searched for the words.

“And yet, you feel like you’ve known him your whole life, and the idea of not having him next to you seems more irrational than feeling all that after two hours?” Sam smirked.

I had to laugh. “Yes, it’s infuriating!”

“The Goddess doesn’t make mistakes.” Sam said. “Two hours is more than I needed to know. Katherine was the only person I would ever need.”

“That’s just it,” my smile faltered. “We don’t know that this was the Goddess’s decision. If we act on this and we’re not really mates. We could really hurt each other, and a pair of people we don’t even know yet.”

“I know it’s hard, but stay positive, Riles. Things have a way of working out.”