Don't Pretend With Me, Shane

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"Hey, buddy. I don't know what you're talking about."

Shane stepped closer, refusing to admit anything.

At the same time, he glanced back toward camp. Only when he saw Rick still in place did he relax a little.

"Don't pretend with me, Shane."

Evan set the hammer back on his shoulder.

"How many people in camp do you think don't know there was something between you and Lori?"

"Nobody said it because it didn't help anyone, and nobody wanted to pick a fight with you."

"Back then, Lori needed someone who could keep her and Carl standing."

"You ever notice that every time the two of you went off alone, nobody came looking except Carl?"

Evan laid it out without softening a word.

Shane had not fully broken yet.

And even if he had, so what?

Evan's Strength was complete now.

If Shane could still drag him down at this point, Evan would have to respect the achievement.

"We didn't mean for it to happen. I thought Rick was dead."

Shane's eyes flickered. His head was clearly a mess.

"All right, all right. I'm not blaming you. Why are you so tense?"

Evan had no intention of leaving Shane alone with his own spiraling thoughts.

Most situations had more than one face.

How they ended depended on how the people inside them chose to deal with them.

Shane had always been quick-tempered. That was why, after killing Otis, he had gone so far toward the edge.

Evan walked across the yard, and Shane followed.

They did not stop until they reached the farthest side from camp, near the chain-link fence.

Only walkers wandered outside.

In other words, no one could hear them.

"There is no one else here," Evan said. "And I won't volunteer this conversation to the camp."

He turned the hammer upside down and planted the head on the ground, handle standing straight.

"So I'll be direct."

"I don't know how you see me. Maybe you hate me. Maybe you think I make the camp unstable. Maybe you think my arrival weakened your authority."

With each sentence, Shane's jaw tightened.

He hated that every point found a mark.

Every word landed on something he had tried not to say aloud.

For a moment, he could not understand how Evan had looked at him so little and still seen him so clearly.

"And when I was kind to Lori, when I took Carl out alone to train him, you probably wanted to kill me."

Shane's head snapped up.

Evan cut him off before he could deny it.

"Don't. In some ways, you and I are the same kind of man. Of course I know what you were thinking."

Evan did know.

When he had taken Carl out and taught him almost like a son, part of him had been deliberately trying to get under Shane's skin.

Shane pressed his lips together and swallowed the denial he had been about to make.

He suddenly remembered what had happened that afternoon.

Evan had shielded him from Dale's moral pressure, then executed the last corrections officer without hesitation.

If anyone else in the group had done it, people would have whispered, questioned, condemned.

That was why Dale stepping forward with that look had made Shane so angry.

Shane had never been good at handling that kind of pressure.

Then Evan had stepped in.

And Evan was the one person the group would not openly challenge for doing it.

Shane knew it.

Dale knew it too.

That was why Dale had backed down from his precious mercy and morality.

'Maybe we really are alike.'

Moonlight silvered Evan's hair and Shane's.

For once, the hard edges seemed to slip out of Shane's posture. He looked less like a man ready to fight and more like one forced to stand still with the truth.

Seeing him waver, Evan pressed on.

"And it isn't just me who knows. It isn't just the camp."

"Rick knows too."

"Lori probably told him. That part doesn't surprise me much."

Shane inhaled sharply and let it out in a rough, unsteady breath.

"Why did you think you and Lori could hide it from Rick?"

Evan asked it plainly.

"Wait." Shane stared at him. "You're saying Rick already knew?"

"Rick has more room inside him than most people. That is why, when I am not here, the others naturally listen to him."

"Yes. Rick guessed enough."

"But he never brought it up."

"He understood that saying it out loud would not just destroy you. It would destroy Lori, Carl, and their family."

"Rick knows some things are different when they merely exist and when everyone is forced to look at them."

"He still remembers what you are to him, Shane."

"Even after knowing, Rick still sees you as his brother. He does not want to destroy his family, and he does not want to destroy you."

When Evan finished, Shane looked back by instinct.

In the distance, beyond the campfire glow, Rick seemed to be standing, looking toward them from far away.

"What the hell am I supposed to do?"

Shane turned back and shouted in pain.

He gripped his head. Lori was still the only thing filling his mind.

His voice drew walkers to the fence. Two or three of them slapped against the chain-link, the rattle feeding Shane's agitation.

Then a strong hand landed on his shoulder.

Shane flinched and looked up.

Evan was smiling, calm as if the answer were simple.

"I'll tell you what to do."

"Look at the moonlight and remember what you did when Rick wasn't in camp."

"You protected everyone. You took responsibility. That was why you had authority no one else had."

As Evan slowed his voice, Shane's expression eased a little.

His gaze fixed on a strip of moonlight, and his mind drifted back.

"You protected Lori and Carl."

"And if you hadn't barricaded Rick's hospital room the way you did, he might not have woken up at all."

"Your duty as a cop and your bond with your brother never disappeared."

"You only pinned all of it to Lori and Carl after the world collapsed."

"So when Rick came back alive, it tore you in half."

Evan watched Shane closely, guiding him one step at a time.

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