Carolina Moon

Chapter 2

Cameron

___

Jesus Christ, she was never going to stop crying over this one.

Cameron Tifford stood beside the rumbling belly of his old Toyota, studying the heap of fur on the ground. He didn't spot any blood, and the thing seemed to be breathing, but Lucy sure as hell wasn't. She was sitting on the ground a few feet away, hyperventilating into the hoodie that she'd tightened around her face to a pucker that showed only her nose and not much else.

Cameron wasn't a stickler for much, but the mercy of animals was something he shared in common with his twin sister. He knew the moral obligation he had to a swift and easy coup de grâce. Still, he spat out the sour taste in his mouth as he retrieved his father's old shotgun from the backseat of the Toyota and loaded it up.

The sound of the bullets hitting the chamber must've snapped Lucy back into reality. She scrambled up to her feet and put herself between the wolf and the gun—which thankfully, hadn't been aimed yet.

"Lucy, dammit—"

"Don't shoot it," she pleaded. "Cam, come on. I've had a horrible night, if I have to see a wolf die to top things off, my soul will literally harden and fall out like a—like a wart."

Cam sighed and dumped the bullets back out of the chamber. "What do you wanna do then, genius?" When he noted the despondent look on his sister's face, and the way her cheeks were stained red, Cam loosened his shoulders and asked more softly, "What can I do to fix this?"

Lucy shrugged a little and knelt down beside the wolf. She didn't hesitate to run her fingers over its coat, like the damn thing couldn't have come alive at any moment and ripped her throat out. "It's still warm, and it's breathing. Let's get it somewhere safe for now. I can call animal control in the morning."

Cam sighed. "If it wakes up in the middle of this and eats my face off, I'm taking yours. Get its legs."

Together they knelt and lifted the beast from the ground. It was heavy—weighed damn near as much as a grown man, and Cam found himself nearly buckling under the weight as they slid it into the back of his truck and shut the hatch.

"We'll take it to the farmhouse."

Lucy shook her keys out of her hoodie pocket and made for the door of her station wagon.

The farmhouse wasn't used for much besides a summer home, even back before their family was broken. It sat on the mucky edge of a lake that had—in the last decade—been jam-packed with colonies of rich million-dollar homes belonging to NFL stars and B-list actors.

The lakeside was a funny place for celebrities to be buying up homes, given that the tiny town of Canosonee had nothing else to offer but the vast, clean, beryl waters of Kokowee lake. For folks like the Tifford's, who hadn't the millions of dollars to buy deep-water properties, the waterfront view was a bit more...swampy. The further out you went, the bluer the waters, and the more city folk buzzing around on jet-skis and pontoon boats.

Cameron didn't hate the city folk—or as his father used to call them, Yankees. He yearned desperately to be like them; with enough money lining his pockets to hop on a plane and fly out of this place when the taste of it turned sour in his stomach.

Lately, the town was starting to look more and more foreign. Which Cameron didn't particularly hate, either. The only people who enjoyed the concept of South Carolina were the folks who didn't live here year-round, choking down the terrible food and the insufferable Jesus billboards on every freeway drive to the city.

The place was changing, and so were the people. He just hoped it was for the better. But there was something painful about looking across the waters from his four-acre farm and spotting a million-dollar mansion on the horizon. In a way, he missed when everyone in this place was just as poor and miserable as him.

On the plus side, property values had skyrocketed in the last year. The farmhouse was probably worth millions, and if Cam had the option, he'd sell it. But it didn't belong to him. It belonged to their older brother.

But no one had heard from Angel in ten years and Cam preferred it that way.

The motion light came on as they entered through the front gate and pulled around to the back of the farmhouse where the animal pins remained empty since the day they'd sold the stock. Cam pulled forward and backed his truck up to the barn doors. He was unlatching the padlock and shoving open the decrepit old barn when Lucy pulled her station wagon to a stop beside the chicken coop.

"You wanna keep him in here?" she asked, stomping through the mud to meet him at the door.

"Why not? Straw to keep him warm," Cam said. "Don't want him escaping, right? Little dude looks pretty roughed up. He has to live so he can let his homies know to avoid paved roads when Lucy Tufford's driving at night."

"Shut up," Lucy grumbled. She climbed onto the back of the Toyota and pulled the latch. "I'll go get the wheelbarrow."

It wasn't a pretty sight, loading the limp wolf onto an old wheel barrow and dumping him into a feeding pen meant for horses, but it was the best they could do with the muscle power they had. And Cal was feeling pretty good about meeting his brotherly expectations.

Hell, there was a Climson game tonight. He could have been flirting with cheerleaders and pre-gaming, and yet here he was, suffering for Lucy's mistakes.

With the wolf safely locked away in the barn, Cam started a fire at the pit and fetched them two beers from the fridge inside. "Alright," he said as he took a seat beside her on one of the rusty old patio chairs. "Tell me what happened."

Lucy shrugged, watching the flames eat away at the wood. "Thought I'd surprise him with takeout, and she was there. In his bed."

"Damn," Cam muttered. "You at least leave with the takeout?"

Lucy shook her head.

"Damn," he said again.

"Maybe it just isn't for me," said Lucy. "I gave it a try. I wanna go back to not caring how I look, or if I'll spend the rest of my life alone. Thing were easy when it was just school and video games."

"We're getting old, Lucy," Cam muttered, poking around at the fire. "Can't be school and video games forever. Better to find someone now than spend the rest of our lives alone."

"I'm not alone," Lucy insisted. "I have you."

For once, Cam couldn't think of any clever insults to lighten the mood. Because he had been holding onto a secret for all too long now. He felt a pang of guilt and washed it down with cold Blue Ribbon, but it didn't leave him.

For the rest of the night, he found it difficult to meet Lucy's eyes. Even once he returned home to his empty apartment, Cam struggled to sleep. The phone numbers were still on his fridge, the job offer still in his email. He even had some coupons for a U-Haul sitting on the counter next to the fruit bowl.

He'd been offered a job in California as an electrician. He was just sitting on the offer, waiting for a sign to accept it. Wasn't like there was anything keeping him here, anymore. Besides Lucy.

He would bring her with him to California once he had the money. But...it was California. Would he ever have the money?

Cam took a seat on the kitchen table and rested his head against the cool wood. He never enjoyed visiting the farmhouse. Too many memories there. His father's belligerence, his mother's mental anguish. The stink of manure and his own bruised and black-eyed reflection staring back at him in the mucky waters of the lake.

He was ready to leave this life behind. But that meant leaving Lucy behind, too.