“You can make it up to me later. Take me out for a nice steak dinner.”
He thought for a moment, pursing his lips. “We’ve never even been out on a real date, have we?”
I hadn’t thought of it. We’d fallen together by chance. But I didn’t believe that anymore, not really, because something pulled at me. Something that kept me from looking away. I couldn’t turn away from him.
I shrugged. “No sense in being all traditional.”
“Why did you even bother coming after me?” He tilted his head to look out at the horizon. “Why did you bother staying?”
I touched his face. I couldn’t not touch him. I held him, made him look at me, made him see my smile. This was another one of those situations that as a human seemed too weird, too strange to even consider. Sitting in the middle of the desert at dawn, me in pajamas, him naked. But it didn’t feel strange. Sitting beside him, pulling him into my arms, felt right.
“You’re afraid it’s just the lycanthropy. That I wouldn’t be here if we weren’t both werewolves. You should know, I wouldn’t have come after just anyone. I wouldn’t have taken care of just any new werewolf that showed up on my doorstep. I wouldn’t have sat out in the desert all night with just anyone.”
He leaned his head against mine. “You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”
“I don’t know, do you feel better?” He made an indecisive grumble. “Ben, you’re naked. I can’t lie to a naked man.”
He took my hand, where it rested on his thigh. He studied it, rubbing the back of it with his thumb. “If you can’t lie, this is when I should ask you anything. Anything I want to know, now’s my chance.”
This was the kind of conversation new couples had the morning after sex. I was sure I had no secrets from him— he was my lawyer, for crying out loud. But conversations like this were also tests. Uneasy, I said, “Sure.”
“Did you and Cormac ever get together?” He gave a little shrug.
“No. Got close a couple of times. He kept running away.”
He nodded, like this didn’t surprise him. Like it was the story of Cormac’s life. Then he asked, “If I hadn’t come along, would you two have eventually gotten together?”
These were questions I was afraid to ask myself.
“I don’t know. Ben, why do you need to know this?”
“I’m afraid I’ve messed things up for him. Again. But it’s all ‘what ifs’ now, isn’t it? No way to tell what might have happened.”
No. No way at all to tell. Those “what ifs” followed us our whole lives, didn’t they? What if I hadn’t been at that hiking trail on a full moon night. What if I hadn’t met Cormac. What if he hadn’t brought Ben to me but shot him instead. What if I’d invited him back to my apartment that one night…
I had Ben here with me, not “what ifs.” Had to move on.
“You didn’t mess anything up. Cormac never had the guts to say anything about it to me.”
“Ironic. He’s always been the tough one.”
Ben had his own kind of toughness. I smiled. “What about you? Are you with me because you want to be, or because you’re a victim of circumstance?”
He kissed me gently, a press of warm lips. Took my face in his hands, holding me for a moment. And I felt safe with him.
I stood, rubbing the pins and needles out of my legs, and tugged on his hand. “Come on. We’ve got a long walk back, and you have no clothes.”
He covered his eyes and groaned. “It’s just one damn thing after another, isn’t it?”
Slowly, he got to his feet, and we walked back, side by side, arms around each other.
We found his clothes on the way back to the motel, which was good. Then we discovered that we’d both left our keys in the room.
Just one damn thing after another.
chapter 17
We spent the morning replacing the tires on Ben’s car. Then, he wanted to run an errand. He asked me to come along, and I did. He drove, and I didn’t bother to ask where we were going or what he was doing until we ended up on yet another dirt track that led us miles into the desert. We stopped at the bottom of an arroyo, covered with tall scrub, more vegetation than I was expecting to find. Lots of places to hide. This was the kind of area where ranchers grazed herds of sheep, and where wolves liked to run.