“I shouldn’t have gone,” I tell her.
“That’s probably true. You always would have wondered, though, if you didn’t.”
“Maybe.”
“Definitely.”
Alicia looks from Orlando to me and back again. She picks up a little toy train and runs it on the carpet in front of her, and then she looks at me again.
“Cage, you’ve always been a dreamer. I’ve never held that against you.”
“I shouldn’t have left,” I tell her again.
“Why did you go?” She whispers.
And this is my chance.
This is my opportunity to be honest.
To be truthful.
This is my chance to be brave.
But I’m just not sure if I can do it.
Chapter Seven
Alicia
He’s holding back, but he doesn’t want to.
I can tell.
Cage is a lot of things, but he’s not a good liar. At least, not when it comes to things that matter.
“Tell me,” I whisper.
“My dad asked me to go with him.”
“And where did he want you to go?”
Cage always wanted his dad’s approval. Always. He didn’t talk about his dad very much when we were together, but he always spoke positively of him when the topic did come up. I could tell, even without him saying it, that he’d always felt like he’d lost his dad when his parents split up.
He’s always felt like he’d gotten shafted, really, by his parents not being there for him at all, but mostly, he thought he was missing out on his father’s life.
I can understand it much better now than I could before.
He’s a shifter.
He wanted to be with his dad. He wanted his father to show him what a bear could be like. He wanted his dad to teach him things, to help him. He wanted his father to be the role model he’d always craved.
But his dad wasn’t.
He wasn’t there.
He didn’t try.
He didn’t understand Cage.