Page 32 of Someone Else's Wolf

"I knew that. Did he say something?"

"No, he hasn't. We haven't talked." My voice sounded suffocated and small. I thought about what Kirk had said about me: that I was small inside. He hadn't meant it in a bad way. I think it was more about not posing a challenge to him, but it was an uncomfortable thing to think about sometimes: smallness, as if I wasn't much of a man, as if perhaps I got hurt too quickly.

That wasn't really a surprise, but it was an uncomfortable diagnosis. I'd thought I'd overcome most of that stuff. Being an adult meant not getting hurt about every little thing — such as a not-boyfriend not calling or texting for days. It didn't matter; it didn't. But I was still fragile and raw about it.

Kirk looked at me thoughtfully and brought a hand up near my face, hesitated for a moment, then touched me, cupping my cheek.

"Kirk," I complained. He shouldn't act like I was so fragile. It could make a guy insecure. Or more so, anyway.

"I'm not hugging you," he informed me. "This is the best I can do."

It was surprisingly compassionate — mostly because he hadn't told me it was my own fault and to buck up. But then, maybe he never would tell anyone to "buck up."

I leaned into the comfort he was offering. My dangerous, hard-eyed partner.

After that day, he was gentler with me. I'm not sure how, exactly, since he was as blunt, truthful, and unsentimental as ever. It was something in his eyes, or his stance, or the way he was when we were together. A hint of protectiveness, a softer look in his eyes, like he no longer looked at me only to judge what he saw. He simply saw it, and me, and accepted.

He would never be a particularly tactile person; he rarely touched me or anyone else if he could help it, but he was kind to me in his own rough way, sharing a tip for the coursework, or offering me something to eat, or informing me that I shouldn't wear blue because it clashed with the color of my eyes.

Most of all, he managed to look at me without giving the impression that I disgusted him or made his life a misery — and I knew that meant he actually was rather fond of me, in his own way.

And he never again scolded me about my feelings for Peter or brought them up in any way.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Our first real test was to be a trial by fire — or at least it felt like it to me.

We would be accompanying another team of shifter and partner to a hospital where the shifter would be doing some diagnosing. Kirk and I were to watch, to learn, and Kirk was to diagnose everything as well, privately, without saying anything.

I knew we'd be doing this soon for real, but I still felt woefully unprepared for it. It was a hell of a lot of responsibility, which seemed to sit more easily on Kirk's strong shoulders than on mine.

I felt useless the whole way through. There was no point in me being here, was there? I couldn't smell anything, and I couldn't provide the emotional support Kirk probably needed. We ended up observing a cancer screening of an older woman, the diagnosis being 'Yes, it's cancer, and you need treatment immediately.'

Had they picked this patient on purpose? It had to mess with Kirk's head. But then again, he couldn't avoid certain types of patients, could he? And he'd only gotten into this because he wanted to make a difference in a way nobody had been able to for his mother.

It was difficult to tell if it was getting to him, because Kirk hadstony and colddown to an art. As we drove away, after it was all over, I was still no closer to knowing if he was okay or not.

Something made me think he wasn't, but perhaps it was just how I'd feel if it were me. I didn't know him well enough yet to tell, and it made me feel off-balance, not sure how I could help, whether I should try, and whether I was imagining the whole thing or not.

I kept glancing at him and wondering if I was being jumpy and weird. He'd trusted me with the facts about his mom, and I shouldn't make it weird for him now, should I? But I couldn't shake the feeling that he was very deeply upset.

The ride was very, very silent. Finally, we got back, and I broke down and asked him while we were walking back from the parking lot.

"Are you all right, Kirk?"

His jaw clenched, and I braced myself to be snapped at.

"What a waste." His voice was cold, cracking like ice. "What a fucking waste! There's no way they couldn't have found that sooner. It was incredibly obvious." He put his hands over his face and took a deep, deep breath, gathering himself together. "The sooner we start our job, the better."

That wasn't what I'd expected at all. But of course, this was Kirk. He wasn't going to break down because this was hard on him. He was pissed off because it had been hard on the patient.

That's my boy.

"We'll start soon," I told him. "We'll help."

His jaw looked sharp enough to break glass. "Not soon enough."

I dared to touch him then, a hand on his shoulder. "Maybe not, but we've got the rest of our working lives to do this. Let's say you help find an early diagnosis that saves someone's life once a week. That's fifty-two a year, for the next twenty years or more — and maybe a lot higher rate than that, too. You've got this, Kirk. You've amazing."