Page 37 of Outcast
“Yes, you fucking do,” Holden shouted, voice hard. “I promise you do.”
Axel paused with the gate half open. Sugar, Taz, and two other mangy pooches came up beside him.
Sugar gave a sharp bark. Taz showed me his evil little teeth, snarling silently. One of the others darted forward through the gap in the gate. My heart lurched as I stumbled back, but the black-and-white border collie only licked my hand.
“This better be good,” Axel said.
“Nothing about it is good,” I said. “But you deserve to know why I left the way I did.”
Axel nodded once and pulled the gate wider, admitting us into his sanctuary. He could stay at the house with Holden and Bailey, but he chose to be out here. That didn’t really compute because as a kid, he’d been clingy. It took three months before he’d even sleep in his own bed. He climbed in with me every night.
He’d adjusted, gotten more independent over the years. But isolating? That seemed off-script.
Unless my leaving had written him a new one.
Bile climbed my throat. I swallowed hard, worried I might puke. If I’d damaged Axel more than he already was…
“Easy, now,” Holden murmured behind me. “You were a kid, but you’re stronger now. Let’s clear the air once and for all.”
I nodded once. Sucked in a breath that smelled like dogs and old cars.
Axel led us down a dirt road between mountains of piled-up junk, most of it old vehicles or their parts, but also some beat-up refrigerators and stoves, sheet metal, and other odds and ends.
An old RV bus sat in the center of the yard. Axel led us up the aluminum steps. A long pleather sofa ran along one wall. The driver’s and passenger’s seats faced the seating arrangement. Made sense. No one was driving this thing anymore.
A curtain was only half-closed, revealing the queen-sized bed that Axel slept in. Sugar trotted straight to it and made herself comfortable. The border collie stuck close to me, trying to stick her nose in my crotch. I pushed her face away as gently as I could.
“Sit,” Axel said. “Talk.”
Okay, then. Guess we were doing this.
I perched on the edge of the sofa, and Holden dropped down next to me. Axel and Bailey both took the bucket seats that were farther away. It felt symbolic, this distance between us.
“You all know I left suddenly. I didn’t say goodbye or anything. It all happened so fast, and I thought you were better off not knowing because the old man… He would have made you choose, you know? Between me and him. And as fucked as he was, you needed him more than me.”
Axel’s hands tightened around the chair’s arms. “You could have still said goodbye. Told us why you were leaving. Not made us wonder—” He stopped short, jaw clenching, but he didn’t have to say it.
He’d wondered if he’d done something wrong. If I’d cared about him at all.
“I’m sorry,” I rasped. “I thought I was saving you pain. You didn’t need to be dragged into my mess, you know?”
“What mess?” Bailey asked.
“Dad told me to leave. He said I wasn’t welcome anymore. Not under his roof. I wasn’t his son, and I wasn’t your brother.”
“What the fuck happened?” Axel asked.
The words clogged my throat as the memory hit again. Me on my knees. Dad walking in. Dallas throwing me under the bus and high-tailing it away.
I gave my brothers the condensed version. “The old man caught me with a guy.”
There was a beat of silence.
“You’re gay?” Bailey blurted.
“Yeah.” I glanced at Axel, who still hadn’t said anything. His stormy expression didn’t bode well. “Dad told me he didn’t want me infecting the rest of you. He told me to leave. It happened right then and there. He waited while I packed some things, shoved a few twenties into my hand, and watched until I was gone.”
“Oh my god,” Bailey murmured. “I can’t believe he never told us.”
