Page 383 of His Hungry Wolf
“I’ll check,” the dark-skinned girl said from behind the desk. “We do. There’s one copy and it should be on a shelf located on the third floor.”
The girl grabbed a slip of paper and wrote down the card catalog number. I took and stared at it still not believing this was happening.
Bounding up the stairs, I found where the book was supposed to be.
“It’s not here,” I said staring at Titus in a panic.
Titus just stared back with his cocky smirk and said, “I thought you were supposed to be good at this game.”
That got me. “Oh, it’s definitely on.”
Heading back to the desk, I told the librarian it wasn’t there.
“It’s definitely marked as checked in. So it’s in the library somewhere,” she said confirming on her computer. “If you’d like, I can help you check the re-shelving carts. There’s a good chance it’s on one of those.”
I looked back at Titus who watched me smugly.
“I bet there is. Don’t worry, I got it,” I told Titus’s co-conspirator.
For the next twenty minutes, I checked every cart with books I could find. Luckily, there weren’t many. The problem was that it wasn’t on any of them. I was about to declare Titus’s plan a bust when I glanced out past the fourth-floor balcony and noticed all the students at the study desks below.
I looked back at Titus. He knew I had him. Rushing down, I scanned every book on every desk until I saw another familiar face. This time it was Nero, Titus’s ex-roommate and best friend. He was also Quin’s soon-to-be brother-in-law. Nero smiled at me as I approached him.
“Nero, in a library reading? Now I know this is supposed to be a clue.”
“It’s not that weird,” Nero said in his rich, small-town Tennessee accent. Titus and Nero were wolf shifters who grew up together. But unlike Titus, there was no mistaking where Nero was from.
“What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be getting ready for the NFL season?”
“We got a couple of days off so I decided to come in and visit my boyfriend if that’s okay with you.”
“No, that’s beautiful,” I said moved by how open he was about his feelings for a guy.
“And if you don’t mind, I would like to get back to my reading,” Nero said before conspicuously holding up his copy of, ‘The Velveteen Rabbit.’
I chuckled.
The night continued like that with clues, tears, and friendly faces until the last clue which simply said, “Now think about all of the things she was to you and you were to her, and let your sadness sail away.”
I held up the slip and turned to Titus.
“I could either say that you have no idea how grief works and this is the lamest conclusion ever. Or I could take you to where I go when things get too much and I need a moment. But, I’m absolutely positive that there is no way you know about it. If you do, then I should be worried.”
“Then maybe you should be worried,” Titus said with a gentle smile.
I smiled back. And taking his hand, I took him to the pond on the far side of campus.
“This is where I go when being me becomes more trouble than it’s worth. It centers me. It’s the closest I ever feel to home.”
“I know,” Titus said before directing my attention to the group of people standing by its edge.
As he waved, their faces lit up. It was everyone who had presented me with clues and anyone who meant anything to me. They all had candles and sad smiles.
“Your parents didn’t invite you to your grandmother’s funeral. So I thought it only appropriate that we have a memorial of our own.”
I couldn’t stop myself from crying. This time it wasn’t out of grief, it was out of happiness. I was the luckiest guy in the world to have had my grandmother in my life. Titus had reminded me of that and had focused me on the positives. The tears that rolled down my cheeks this time were out of gratitude for Grandma Aggie and for having Titus in my life.
Receiving hugs from everyone when I arrived, we placed the tea candles into little ships. With them, we added the clues that had generated such amazing memories and set them free on the pond. We all watched them in silence before everyone else slowly peeled away.