Page 6

Six

H e followed her to the mall, parked beside her, got out, but this felt wrong. She’d just taken care of him, put up with his stupid freak-out and never once teased him or rolled her eyes at him. Now to buy her a taco in thanks? No.

“Let me take you out,” he said as Lucy shut her car door.

She gestured toward the food court. “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“No, I mean for real. Let’s go somewhere like…” Shoot, like where? “What’s your favorite?”

“Mexican.” She shrugged. “Tacos are close enough.”

“Not today, they’re not. Let me take you out for real Mexican food.”

Lucy shifted from one foot to the other, but then she smiled. “There’s a really great place over by the fabric store. It’s tiny, but it’s always packed.”

“Let’s go there. Want me to drive us?”

She climbed into his truck without hesitation, and her trust made him want to express his hope and happiness in a deep chest rumble that he held back. What would it be like to use his wolf voice in her company? If only he could. They didn’t talk much on the way there, but the quiet was simple and restful, welcome after his earlier panic. He savored her scent here, in his own truck, one of his most personal spaces.

They’d beat the dinner rush, but Lucy was right; most booths and tables were full. They were seated in a corner booth, and Lucy ordered without looking at the menu.

“Can I please get the tamale plate, one beef one chicken, guacamole on the side, and a Coke?”

He’d planned to order two of whatever she chose, but now that sounded dull. He pointed to an interesting menu photo. “Whatever that is, please. Oh, and a Coke.”

“That’s our fiesta plate,” the server said, her eyebrows gathering with a hint of caution. “So…that’s two tacos, two quesadillas, one tamale and one enchilada, plus a small beef-and-cheese nacho.”

Now that was more like it. Plenty of food and plenty of variety. He handed her his menu. “Awesome. Thanks.”

After the server stepped away looking concerned, Lucy giggled. “You really are a bottomless pit.”

“Yep.”

“Then again, let’s see if you can eat it all.”

“You like fried ice cream?”

Lucy gave a blissful eye roll. “Is grass green?”

“Bet I can eat it all and have room for dessert.”

“If you say so.” Her smile faded, and she reached across the table, palm up.

Jeremy set his hand in hers. What…?

“Hey,” she said quietly, “we’re not eating fancy because you think you owe me or anything. Right?”

His hand squeezed hers before he could control the reflex.

Lucy nodded, squeezed back. “Okay, so…whatever your dating experiences have told you in the past…that’s not how I work. I’m really glad I found you today, so I could help. And I don’t think you’re weird or anything. A lot of people have a fear of something, Jeremy. It’s not a big deal.”

“Do you?”

She shrugged. “I don’t have one of the common ones, like you do.”

He made a scoffing sound instead of the growl he wanted to let out. “Common?”

“Sure. Tons of people faint at the sight of blood, or a needle, or whatever. At least you didn’t faint.”

His hand still gripped hers. He relaxed as much as he could, sat back in his seat, and sighed. “Let’s change the subject.”

Lucy’s pink-glossed lips pressed together, and she looked into his face as though searching for some explanation. At last she nodded, squeezed his hand again, and let it go. Then the food came, and they feasted. Jeremy polished off the entire fiesta platter, and Lucy savored her tamales with cute little groans of happiness. While they waited for their fried ice cream, her easy posture faded, and her scent gained a somber note.

“So I’m just going to come out and ask,” she said. “It’s probably too early for this, but the other topic we opened before? I’ll keep thinking about it until we finish it.”

Yes, yes, yes. His wolf heart surged with every feeling he buried day after day. Feelings for his mate. The need to claim her at the top of his lungs, to introduce her to his pack, to tell her everything, everything. He had quit shielding his nature from her on their third date, and when their eyes met for real that first time, she didn’t react with even a hint of adrenaline. Only a wolf’s mate could look him in the eyes without first being acclimated to his full gaze. That was one lesson from Patrick he hadn’t missed. Jeremy had never doubted she was his, but the confirmation brought on such giddiness he’d almost given himself away.

He knew she wanted him, knew she enjoyed their time together, knew that somehow every give-and-take conversation between them shrank the wound that someone—no doubt an idiot who had failed to appreciate the beauty and worth of Lucy—had left deep inside her. The scent of her moods clued him in on things he’d never catch otherwise. One more perk of being a wolf.

But she might not want what he wanted. Not yet anyway. So he had to let her steer the topic. He couldn’t howl at the sky for her. He had to give her room to be honest.

She was waiting for him to speak next. That wouldn’t work. She had to say it first.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“Um…well, you said it sucked that I saw what happened to you, and I asked—well, said, but I was asking really—if we were casual. And you didn’t answer.”

He swallowed hard. “What do you want us to be?”

“That’s not fair, Jeremy. I asked first.”

Shoot. What was he supposed to do? What would Patrick say to Nicole?

No. He couldn’t be anyone but himself right now—flaws and all, Jeremy Freeman, Lucy’s wolf. The burst of resolve popped in his chest like a firecracker, and he held her gaze, promised himself to honor the vulnerability she risked in pressing the question.

He cleared his throat. “I don’t think of us that way.”

“What way?” Stress spiked in her scent, submerged lavender in an unpleasant tang.

Right. Too vague. Try again. “Casual. I don’t think of us as casual.”

She blinked, and lavender mingled now with bright hope. She smiled, only one corner of her mouth lifting. “You don’t?”

“No.”

“Oh, wow.” The smile grew. “I don’t either.”

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“Oh,” he said. “Wow.”

At the same moment they both began to laugh. Just then their server brought a bowl of fried ice cream and set it between them, and they each grabbed a spoon and began a race to see which of them could consume more spoonfuls. Jeremy competed at a half-hearted pace, just to be fair. Lucy did not.

She claimed the last bite, and mischief sparkled in her eyes. “I win.”

“I concede.”

Her giggle was one of the cutest sounds he’d ever heard. “So, um, how far do we want to go with the labels thing? I mean, like, are we dating?”

“Yes,” he said.

She grinned. “Are we boyfriend and girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“I agree.”

Jeremy set both hands flat on the table as unplanned words burst out of him. “And if we’re dating, then you should know I’m a wolf.”

The grin froze, faded from her eyes. Confusion filtered into her scent as her brows drew together. She sat back in the booth, but the shift seemed unconscious. Or he hoped it was.

“Yeah,” he said when the silence between them started to hurt.

She still smelled confused. Not scared, not repulsed, so…that was good. Her silence wasn’t, though.

Maybe she wasn’t familiar with the pack’s preferred term. He gritted his teeth against the stupid word humans had coined for his kind, but he would use it if he had to.

“Lucy, I mean I’m a lupine.”

Now she blinked, and her lips parted. “That’s what I thought you meant. I’ve never heard anyone use wolf before, just lupine .”

“Then you don’t know any other wolves.”

“No. I don’t.”

Without her scent, he’d be entirely clueless right now. Based on her body language, her withdrawn expression, she might be about to bolt screaming or to break up with him calmly. But nothing in her scent hinted at either. She was…intrigued. Incredible, but she was.

“Lupines are extra hot,” she said as if it were the most scientific fact in the world.

A smirk pulled his mouth. “Yeah?”

“No, no.” She rolled her eyes. “I mean your body temperature. You always feel like you have a fever, and I thought it was weird but I never thought to ask you about it.”

“Oh. Right.”

She reached across the table, and her thumb traced his knuckles as she said, “I don’t know about lupines in general, but my boyfriend is also …extra hot.”

He seized her hand before she could pull away and laced their fingers together. Ridiculous to have this conversation in public. Ridiculous to sit across a table from her at a time like this. A low rumble filled his chest, muted for her ears only. She jolted up in the booth and stared at him, mouth open.

She whispered, “Did you just growl?”

He nodded.

“And when you were scared of the blood, you made a sound like a hurt little dog.”

Well, crap on that. “No, I didn’t.”

“You did. I should’ve figured it out for myself. I know lupines make—um, noises?—like dogs or wolves. I read it somewhere, probably in sociology.”

Every time, that word stung like a pellet from a gun. He couldn’t help flinching at it. Lucy didn’t seem to notice. Maybe he shouldn’t say anything. Maybe his reaction was stupid, but since he was thirteen, a newly changed pup newly arrived among the community who had accepted him as pack, Jeremy had been raised to call himself what he truly was. No politically correct euphemism for his very identity.

The server brought their check, waited while Jeremy fished out his debit card, and disappeared with it. Jeremy kept the conversation paused until she returned his card with a polite but harried, “Thanks for coming in; have a great night.”

When she was gone, he picked the thread of discussion back up. Any of his pack would be impressed that he remembered precisely where they had paused this topic, but really, the topic was too important to forget his place.

“If you don’t mind,” he said to Lucy, trusting her to remember too since forgetfulness in conversation wasn’t a thing with her, “we call ourselves wolves.”

“Oh, is—is the other a dirty word or something? It’s in textbooks. Should it not be?”

“It’s not dirty. It’s made up, and it’s a confinement. Or that’s what the older wolves say.”

Again her voice fell to a whisper, and she leaned closer over the table. “But the W-word is dirty. Right?”

He shrugged. He knew the word was technically derogatory, but if Patrick had ever given him a language lesson as to why, he’d zoned out of it. He and his buddies tasted the slur on their tongues sometimes, a rebellion of sorts.

Aaron tossed it around as a joke, said no human could call him a werewolf but he’d call himself what he wanted.

Ezra and Trevor did the same, but less often and never in their mom’s presence. To this day, Ezra twenty-one years old and Trevor nineteen, both those wolves respected their mom’s hatred for the word.

Malachi didn’t use the word. Ever. No doubt he had his reasons. Malachi had reasons for everything he said and did, but Jeremy had never felt right asking him about this one.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to use it,” Jeremy said. “Because you’re not a wolf. I think it’s dirty if you use it.”

Lucy crinkled her nose. “Weird. Okay. So you’re not a lupine. You’re a wolf.”

“Right.”

“You said ‘the older wolves.’ So you live in a pack, but…not with your folks? Because you said y’all are just ‘amicable.’”

Her memory for his word choice was something else. “My folks are human. They live in town. We get along pretty well now, but it was kind of tough for a while. I’m first generation, no wolves in the family going way back, the gene’s recessive, blah blah blah, so they weren’t prepared for…well, for their son to go live with strangers when he was thirteen.”

“Oh, you were just little. Away from home.”

“My pack is home.” He hoped Lucy wouldn’t question that one. It was hard to explain to humans, including Dad and Mom. At least they no longer felt it as a hurtful slight.

Fortunately, instead of digging into the more serious topic, Lucy said, “Body temperature, wolf sounds—I’m trying to remember if there’ve been any other clues I missed. Oh! Gosh! Your super sense of smell!”

“Yeah. All my senses are stronger than yours.”

“I thought in wolf form you’re supposed to be…like, feral. How can you be bloodthirsty and scared of blood at the same time?”

He grimaced, ducked his head, fiddled with his napkin as his chest pinched. If only he never had to talk about this again. With anybody. Ever.

The vinyl seat across from him squeaked as Lucy got up and rounded the booth to slide in beside him. She took his hand, laced her fingers through his as he’d done a minute ago. She leaned her head on his shoulder, spoke with a softness he hadn’t heard before.

“It’s okay, Jeremy. I’m not judging, I promise you.”

He squeezed her hand. “Freaking out over blood is…not a normal wolf thing. It’s purely a Jeremy thing.”

“And that’s okay, babe.”

Was it? Maybe it was. “Not when I’m a wolf, though. Nobody knows why, but under the full moon I can hunt with my pack and I don’t mind it at all.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Hunt with your pack?”

“Not people,” he said. “It’s not like what you’ve heard on social media and places. We’re not bloodthirsty then, just…uh, wild, I guess. There’s an instinct to hunt and an instinct to protect our territory.”

Slowly she nodded. Then, of all things, Lucy cuddled up next to him, rested her head on his shoulder, and said, “Wow.”

He wrapped an arm around her. He sat there, still and quiet, for a lot longer than his normal attention span. Wow didn’t begin to cover it.