Page 110 of A Wolf in the Garden

“It’s my moon and your moon.”

When I look up at Van he’s staring out the window, his eyes wet with unshed tears, and the sight of it combined with his words makes my heart ache for him, my own eyes welling. “My moon? When… when did you say you got these?”

“The week after I broke off from the pack. Shit timing for attending a function, but I had to go. And then these were being sold and I… It seemed like a sign. I had to get them.”

“A sign,” I echo.

“A sign to come to New Zealand. To find you. Nine years… I was so scared that you would hate me for what I did to you. That you would not want anything to do with me, but I had to try. I haven’t told you this, because when we first found each other again I didn’t want to put pressure on you. I didn’t want it to sound like I’d stalked you, because I hadn’t.”

“Yet,” I interject, my voice watery, thinking about how he’d had plans to hire a private investigator to find me, if he couldn’t track me down himself.

“Yet,” he agrees with a choked laugh. “But I came here for you. I love New Zealand, I really do, but you're the reason why I’m here and not on some vineyard in France or Italy. There were other places that made more financial sense, but none of them hadyouthere. And when I looked at this vineyard online, I imagined you here. It had been so long, and I only had the shape of you in my mind, the memory of the way you made me feel, the smell of your skin, but I tried to imagine you here and it felt right. And you know, this house is big enough for a couple of kids, there’s plenty of space to run around… this is what I was thinking when I bought this place. I was thinking of you, even though I hadn’t found you again yet. Even though I was still on the other side of the world, looking at the wrong moon.”

I’m bawling my eyes out now, tears streaming down my face, nose running, full on ugly crying.

“I didn’t mean to make you cry, baby,” he says, reaching for me, tears running down his cheeks too. “Come here, let me hold you, my mate.”

He tucks me into his lap, and I sniffle against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, feeling the bond settle between us again, his walls down again. We feel the same, when it comes to this, and I already knew we did. We’ll never be apart again.

He squeezes me tight, rubbing my arm. I look around the room, my head still tucked under this chin, and have an epiphany. This place already feels like home.Hefeels like home. He was right when he pictured me here, because I can see myself here too. I’ll make a new garden, move my chooks and my bees here. I’ll wake to sea views every day, and the rolling hills filled with grapevines. Wine and cheese in abundance, and happiness, too.

“We should get up soon,” I say quietly. “There’s still a couple more boxes you haven’t unpacked.”

Van’s sigh is heavy, and he grunts in agreement. “I have to warn you, there might be more tears, because one of the boxes is all of your stuff from Bluewater Bay — all the things that were left at my house nine years ago. We can leave it for another day, if you like. Or we can just sayfuck it, and deal with it all at once.”

“Fuck it,” I say, halfway between a laugh and a cry as I sniff loudly. “Let’s look at the box. Might as well.”

* * *

It turns out the box in question has been hiding in the bedroom the whole time — Van pulls it out of the adjacent walk-in wardrobe, and we settle on the bed to go through it.

“Hold on,” I say, getting up to switch on the overhead lights. We still have the ‘curtains’ across the windows because we’re not pulling down and re-sticking the sheets up every night, and it’s only temporary until I know nothing bad is going to happen again — at least that’s the hope.

There are things in the box that make me feel emotional all over again, particularly the piece of bright crayon artwork on yellowed paper, of a garden filled with oversized flowers that each have smiling faces, the wordsTO ELLIE LOVE JENNY XXprinted in a typical six-year-old’s handwriting. Van steps out of the room after we find that one, a hand covering his eyes, and as much as I feel the urge to follow after him and wrap him in the biggest hug, I give him some space to compose himself because I know that’s what he wants.

I wipe at my own tears and continue to pull items out by myself, setting aside a photo of Van and I at the beach up north, looking babyfaced in our swimming gear, his arm around my waist. I want to frame that one and maybe keep it here in the bedroom, as long as it’s not going to trigger any bad memories for Van. I take a closer look at it, staring at Van’s eyes, the light brown that they once were just as stunning as his gold eyes are now.

He was tall back then — at 6 foot 2, he still towered over me — but the pictures of him at twenty-one really do look so different in so many ways, and yet in every picture his personality shines through.He’s still the same Van he always was.

I pull out the final few items — old hair ties, a receipt that’s so faded that I can onlyjustmake out that it was once a movie ticket to the single movie Van and I went to as acouple, and a brown envelope, filled with…

Holy shit.My mouth drops open as the memories flood back, of getting drunk in Van’s bedroom in the middle of the night, of him sneaking away and returning with Lacey’s Polaroid camera, and it’s not that I’d forgotten per se, it’s just that I’d put that whole night out of my mind.

Including the photos.

“Find anything else interesting?”

Van’s voice makes me jump, and the pictures scatter to the floor. I watch Van’s face as his eyes settle on them, the way they bug out in shock, both humorous and telling all at once.

“You forgot about those, didn’t you?” I ask.

He nods silently, still staring at the photos. Of Van, still baby-faced at twenty-one, looking like a young model as he stares at the camera in a close-up shot. Another of him completely naked, stretched out on his bed, his hard cock in his hand and a daring look in his eyes. Of eighteen-year-old me in a similar pose, my legs spread wide. A close up of my lips wrapped around his dick. Another close up of us having sex, taken from his point of view, his knotless cock halfway inside my vagina. In the final one my stomach and breasts are covered in cum, and there’s a hickey on my inner thigh.

Van shakes his head. “I had no idea those were there.Fuck. Ellie, I’m sorry.”

I shrug. “It’s okay. They’ve just been in this box the whole time. I forgot they existed, too.”

“Imagine if someone had found them…” He frowns, bending to pick them up. “You weren’t soyoungin my memories.”

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