Page 70 of Freak Camp
“Are you saying that it’smy faultmy son wants a freak as a pet?”Leon roared.
Jake gritted his teeth and shoved.Not hard, but angry.More of a jerk.Dad’s chest against his hands felt the same as any other guy’s he’d shoved, maybe a little heavier, maybe a little less give.But there was nothing normal about this.It felt strange, wrong and right all at the same time.“I’msayingthat maybe you should try listening to me for once.”
Leon swayed, put his hand to his chest, and stared like Jake had slugged him.“I don’t listen to you,” he said softly, almost shaking, “because you come up with fucking stupid ideas like this, ideas that will get us both killed.”
“Well, thanks, Dad.”Jake threw his arms out and stepped back before he really did slug the man.“If I’m that much of a screwup, why do you even hunt with me?You gave me the Eldorado even though I’m too much of a fuck-up to find my own hunts?When you went off to drink or torture demons or whatever shit—”
“Watch your tongue, or I’ll beat some sense into you.”
Like you could, Jake thought.“I’m getting Tobias out, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
The Hawthornes froze, staring into each other’s eyes.It was a breaking point for something they had never thought could break, for something they had never thought about much at all.A man didn’t think about his bones until he felt them on the edge of shattering.
“He’s a fucking monster, like what killed your mother,” Leon said at last.“He’ll get you killed.”
“No,” Jake said.He didn’t give a damn what Dad thought he was saying no to.Just ...no.No to all of it.No to everything Dad had ever told him about Tobias, and a big fucking no to his ideas about what were right for them.
Jake went to his bed and shoved things into his duffel.He didn’t think about it; he didn’t bother reassembling the shotgun before dumping it in with half-eaten granola bars and his spare set of socks.He was waiting for Dad to say something, anything, and at the same time knew he wouldn’t say a fucking thing that Jake wanted to hear.
Jake had thrown his bag over his shoulder and reached for the doorknob when Leon’s voice snapped the silence, as sure and irrevocable as a silver round cutting through a shapeshifter’s heart.
“You walk out that door for a freak, don’t expect to come crawling back.Don’t come back at all.”
Jake froze, his hand on the doorknob.“You don’t mean that,” he said, but his voice wasn’t sure.Dad had never in his life patched up a relationship unless it was a life-or-death necessity.When the emotional waters got choppy, Leon Hawthorne ran like hell and didn’t send postcards.
“I damn well do,” Leon said.His voice was rough.Jake could pretend it was tears, but he thought rage was more likely, and the skin on the back of his neck prickled in something dangerously like fear.“You can’t be my son and a freak lover at the same time, coddling some fucking monster.”
“Toby’s not a monster,” Jake said automatically.He couldn’t focus on the other words, what he had just heard his own father call him.Couldn’t admit that this was what it had come to.Maybe he was a freak lover, maybe he was wrong, but he had made a promise and he couldn’t, would never, break a promise to Tobias.
In that moment, he realized that this could be the end.Because of Toby, he might walk out on the man who had rocked him when he cried, who had carried him sleeping from the backseat of the Eldorado when he was a child.The man who had given him his first gun, had taught him everything he needed to know about saving people and defending himself.Leon Hawthorne might be a royal pain in the ass, but he had been the rock of Jake’s life.The one thing to hold on to when blood, death, and monsters—some of them human—were the only real things in the world, and Mom was nothing but scattered ashes and a cold marble monument.
Jake realized that he could lose it all, but he still had to take this last step.Because losing Toby would hurt just as much.And if he didn’t go now, everything he took pride in—who hewas, his identity as Jake Hawthorne—would be meaningless.A joke.
If Leon Hawthorne noticed the moment, if he could feel the same tension in the air that threatened to suffocate Jake, then he didn’t pay any attention to it.
“Damn right I mean it,” he said.“I would rather see you dead than welcoming a fucking monster into your life and your bed.”
Jake tightened his grip on the door and jerked it open.“I’m sorry to disappoint you then, sir,” he said, when there was nothing more between him and the night air than the thin hope that Dad would realize what he had said and take it back.Not that Jake expected that.He was Leon fucking Hawthorne, after all, and he had never not meant anything he said: not when he threatened a monster’s life, not when he had cried over Mom, not when he told Jake that the greatest hope in his life was a dirty, perverted, malformed desire.Jake gripped the Eldorado’s keys in his pocket.“But I’m going, and you can’t stop me.”
Leon’s face went blank, and he reached for the gun on his bed.“Damned if I can’t.”
“You gonna shoot me, Dad?”Jake taunted.He mocked him so that he didn’t break down right there.Maybe to beg for forgiveness, or just to bawl.He hadn’t expected Dad to understand.But he hadn’t expected this.
“Jake, just close the door and we’ll talk about this.”But Leon was still reaching for the holy water and his gun.Jake hadn’t hunted with the man for years without recognizing the signs that meant he thought something in front of him was worth killing.
“You never fucking listen to me, Dad,” Jake said, and then he turned and ran.
He ran to the Eldorado, fumbled the keys into the lock, and was out of the hotel parking lot and speeding for the highway before he dared to look back.
Leon Hawthorne stood in the parking lot, staring after him, eyes wide, haunted and horrible.That was the face he wore when he remembered the people he couldn’t save, or when he talked about his beautiful, spunky Sally, dead on a pyre.
He shouted something as Jake turned the corner, squealing the Eldorado’s tires to put distance between him and the knowledge that he was leaving behind everything he had once thought made himhim.
He didn’t know what Leon had said, but he had a pretty good guess.
You’re dead to me.
“Well, fuck you too, sir,” Jake said to the highway that stretched before him.
