by Selena Scott
Diana broke their eye contact and sat up, ignoring the dizzy spinning in her head.
“I’ve really gotta get going.”
He was quiet for a long minute. “Headed into work?”
She’d thought for sure he’d argue with her, try to get her to stay a little longer with him. But then, she realized, that was the way she’d been thinking last night, and hadn’t he just surprised the heck out of her? “I’ll probably do some work at home. But I won’t go into the center today.”
“I’ve got work in a couple of hours,” he said, sitting up and stretching.
Diana tried hard to ignore the three inches of muscled torso that was revealed by the lifting of his shirt. She tried. And she failed.
He turned to her. “You want breakfast before you go? Or you just wanna get outta here?”
Again, she was a little stymied. His eyes moved toward his bedroom door and suddenly Diana got the feeling that perhaps he was hurrying her out.
What the heck was going on here?
“No, no. I’ll eat at home. Sorry I slept over by accident.”
“I’m not,” he said easily. “I liked the company. And I liked that story. Maybe you’ll finish it for me sometime soon.”
They’d made their way about a quarter through the book.
“Anytime,” Diana heard herself say. “Maybe later this week? Tuesday or Wednesday?”
His face split in two, an easy, blunt grin. “I’m free Tuesday. Wednesday I work.”
“Great.” Her palms were sweating. She’d just made another date for them. A reading date. A friend/reading date. Kind of like the one they’d had last night where she’d ended up sleeping in his bed all night.
His eyes flicked to the door again.
“Right.” She cleared her throat. “I’ll get going, then. Ok. Bye.”
She sprang up, collected her purse, slipped her sandals on, and closed the door on his low chuckle.
Luckily, she made it out of the house without running into anyone, though she did note -with a hearty wince- that Ida’s car was parked directly next to hers. Looked like she might have a conversation with an employee in her future.
She drove home trying not to think about the last twelve hours, and how everything seemed just a little bit different now.
***
That weekend, Orion bought both Ida and Wren humongous bouquets of flowers. He also made them double decker sandwiches that Wren dubbed ‘fit for the queen’. And he spent the rest of the weekend trying not to let his head get too far caught in the clouds.
Because Holy Macaroni, she’d actually slept in his bed. A year of wanting her, waiting for her, being willing to do absolutely anything for her and all it had taken was letting Carl dictate a few documents to him and eating a sandwich with her while not professing his undying love.
If he’d known Carl and sandwiches were the key to her sweet side, man, he would have done this shit a year ago.
Friends.
What a confusing word it was. He couldn’t help but feel like they were using it one way but that it actually meant something else when it applied to the two of them. Because Wren and Ida were his friends but neither one of them had blushed when he’d seen where they lived. Neither one had ever slept the night in his bed either. And definitely neither one of them had held his eye contact while she licked vegan pistachio ice cream off a spoon.
Friends.
Hmm.
Just because he didn’t know what they were or where they stood didn’t mean that he was willing to take any risks with their new, tentative arrangement. So, come Monday he checked in with Carl just like he was supposed to do and even though it practically killed him, he merely waved at Diana through her office door before he jogged out of the center and caught the bus to work.
Friends, he knew, didn’t crowd one another’s time unnecessarily.
He didn’t have a meeting with Carl on Tuesday and only one moving job early in the morning, so this time, he was able to take a shower before he went to meet up with Diana. He called her, but her phone went straight to voicemail, which he knew happened when someone’s phone ran out of battery. But they’d said seven so he decided just to meet her at the center.
He smiled and shook his head when he saw that her car was the last one in the lot. Always the last one to leave and the first one to get there. She was a hard worker, his girl.
He strode into the center and nearly had his eardrums blown out when Diana jumped a foot in the air and dropped her grocery bags all over the place, groceries rolling akimbo and her hands over her mouth, trapping in the tremendous scream she’d just let loose.
“Orion,” she gasped. “You scared the crap out of me. Why’d you come in the back entrance?”
“The front was locked!” He dropped to his knees and started gathering up the groceries that had fallen. Pasta, sausages, tomatoes, some herbs he didn’t know the name of, salad fixings, red wine -thankfully unbroken, bread.
“Fine, but why are you barging in at seven o’clock on a Tuesday? Did you forget something?”
His chin dropped as he stood up with both bags of groceries in his hands. “Did you forget something?” he corrected her.
She stared at him blankly for all of ten seconds before her eyes went wide and she smacked herself on the forehead. “Crap. Crapcrapcrap. I did. I totally forgot we’d said Tuesday. I’d been thinking Wednesday. I’m so sorry!”
Her wide eyes, the genuine regret in her voice, her cute little shift from high heel to high heel all went a long way toward soothing Orion’s ego.
“It’s okay,” he shrugged. “Were you just headed home to make dinner? We never said what we were gonna do tonight. We could just do that.”
She grimaced for half a second. “Actually, I was headed over to my stepdad’s house to make him dinner.”
There was silence for a second. “Okay,” Orion said, filling in the silence. “I’ll come do that with you, then.”
Diana stared at him, her brow slowly lowering. “You want to come to my stepdad’s house with me? And make dinner?”
“Sure.” He shrugged.
“I—,” she trailed off. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I can’t promise it’ll be a good time. My stepdad isn’t exactly verbose.”
“Meaning…”
“He doesn’t talk a lot.”
“Oh, that doesn’t bother me. I prefer it that way, actually. Who doesn’t like eating a quiet dinner?”
“Right.” Diana was still staring at him, her expression pinched in confusion.
If he didn’t think that playing things casual with her was working so well, he really might have attempted to explain that there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do as long as he got to do it with her. Except for maybe the dentist. He’d had to get dental work done last year after he’d joined human society and, yeah, even if Diana were there with him, he’d probably skip out on the whole stranger-hands-in-his-mouth-poking-his-teeth-and-gums-with-sharp-objects thing.
Either way, if she was actually about to say yes to him joining her for dinner with her stepdad, he was going.
“Well, let’s get going, then?” She made it sound like a question, like she was giving him an out. But he didn’t take it. He merely hoisted the grocery bags up higher and followed her to her car.
They were just pulling onto the main road when he turned to her. “What’s a stepdad again? Sometimes I have trouble remembering all the different titles people have for their family members. In-laws and foster parents and half-brothers and all that.”
“Oh. It means that he isn’t genetically related to me. He married my mom when I was six.” She cleared her throat. “And then he got custody of me after she died.”
He reached across the console and laid his hand over top of hers for just a moment, wanting to comfort her, not crowd her. “I’m so sorry to hear that your mom died, Diana. I know how that feels. And I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
She was quiet for a lo
ng minute. “It was a long time ago. And honestly, I’m lucky that I still had Robert after she passed. If they hadn’t been married, or he hadn’t been up to the task of being a single parent then I might have gotten shuffled into the foster system. Which can be a hard place for a kid. Because of Robert I got to keep on living in my childhood home. He fed me three meals a day. That’s more than a lot of people get.”
Orion scanned back to the way his parents had raised him. Whether they were in their wolf forms or human forms, they’d been attentive and loving, playful, wise, kind, patient, stern. Yes, his parents made sure that he had shelter and food, but what they’d done for him was so much more than that. It struck him as a little odd that Diana made a point to say she was grateful for what Orion viewed as the bare minimum a parent should give.
“He’s… not good at being a stepdad?” Orion guessed, trying to interpret her tone while not insulting her.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Diana said quickly, glancing at him, a reserve in her eyes that he hadn’t seen in a long time, not since they’d started to get to know one another. “I guess, yeah, I already said it. He doesn’t talk very much. After my mother died, my childhood was very… quiet.”
Reading between the lines was something that people with a lot of context were able to do well. Having grown up very far from the human world, as a wolf, context was something that Orion distinctly lacked. He was constantly trying to figure out if something was normal or strange or reasonable or bizarre. And right now? This very moment? He had no idea.
Honestly, the person he was most likely to ask about this was Diana herself and she was the one who was making it so difficult for him to understand. He decided that maybe the best course of action was to observe. Maybe he’d understand more after dinner was over, when he’d seen them together.
“How’d your mother die?” he asked, instead of pressing for more clarification on her stepdad.
“Illness. A long one.”
“Same as mine,” Orion mused sadly. “But a short one.”
“I remember,” Diana said quietly. She had, after all, been the person who’d done their entrance interviews as she’d worked to pair them up with mentors and services when they’d first joined the center.
“I bet you know all sorts of private details about all your clients.”
She sent him a little look across the car, a streetlight painting stripes across her face in the dimming evening light. “Some more than others.”
He smiled, couldn’t stop himself. “You saying I’m special?”
“Oh, quit fishing for compliments. I already called you remarkable not five days ago.”
He remembered. He’d replayed it a hundred times in his head. They pulled up to a house in a neighborhood that Orion had never been to before. There were so many hidden pockets of Portland. The house was two story and looked like it had been plunked down from another century, especially compared to all the other houses surrounding it.
The neighborhood was well-kept and neat, all the garage doors down. But the house that Diana was pulling into had an off-kilter look to it, like someone had pushed it one way and then the other. All the other houses had muted siding on them, but this house was brick with ivy crawling up the side. The front yard, contrary to the neatly kept front yards that flanked it, were a tangle of bushes and trees.
“Those are rose bushes,” Diana said. “When they bloom, this is the prettiest yard in all of Portland. They were my mother’s pet project. Robert does a good job of taking care of them these days.”
Before they had even set foot on the walkway up to the front door, the door swung open and a smaller, heavily bearded man stood there on the porch, waiting for them, his hands in his pockets and his eyes swinging back and forth between Diana and Orion.
“Diana,” he said as she bounded up onto the porch.
“Hi, Robert.” She leaned down and kissed his cheek, being at least four inches taller than he was. “This is my friend, Orion. I invited him for dinner.”
“Okay.” Robert stepped forward and took one of the bags of groceries from Orion. He held out his other hand. “Welcome.”
His words were saying one thing but his face said another. “Thank you for having me.”
The narrowed eyes and complete lack of smile didn’t make Orion feel particularly welcome, but then again, most of Robert’s face was covered in a thick gray beard. Orion didn’t always have the easiest time reading human facial expressions when their faces weren’t completely obscured with hair. He figured he didn’t stand a chance reading Robert’s face.
“I’ll get started on the pasta,” Diana said, bustling everyone inside. “Although I’m gonna leave out the sausage this time, Robert. Orion doesn’t eat meat.”
Robert looked at Orion like he was a dog walking on two legs. But he said nothing. Orion followed the two of them into the house, which was larger than it looked on the outside. There was something whimsical about the way it was decorated, but Orion couldn’t have exactly explained what it was.
He just knew that it looked different from the center, which had a very tidy, almost clinical look about the decoration. And it looked different from his house, which had never been redecorated after Wren’s grandmother had passed away. His house had a lot of pink. And a lot of framed fabric on the walls. And a whole shelf that had nothing but mugs with kittens on them.
No. This house was different than that. He made it to the kitchen and helped Diana unpack the groceries. Robert silently offered Diana and Orion a glass of the red wine that Diana had brought and they both accepted, though Orion had never tasted any before. Then, Robert took a seat at the counter next to where Diana was methodically chopping and dicing.
Neither Robert nor Diana said a word. He just looked out the window and Diana kept her attention on her task.
Orion was starting to understand what she’d meant by ‘quiet’. This wasn’t a low-level volume type of house, this was a dead silent house. This was how she’d grown up? Expected to be this silent at all times? Good grief. This was torture.
He wasn’t exactly chatty, but he wiggled against the urge to say something. Anything. For a few, horrifying, moments he was sure he was going to accidentally blurt out something inappropriate just to hear someone speak. When he’d first started at the center, his very first mentor had gone over a few worksheets with him. They were all about etiquette and which words were appropriate to say and when. He’d watched the mentor, beyond amused, as she’d had to read aloud a huge list of inappropriate words so that he’d know not to say them aloud except in very intimate company. Those were all the words he wanted to say right now. Fart! Shit! Boobs!
He was just opening his mouth to say something, anything, when he got a racing up his spine. A creepy-crawly feeling that only happened when he knew that something, or someone was watching him.
He hadn’t survived for thirty years in the wilderness for nothing. Orion always listened to his instincts. He turned on the barstool he sat on and scanned the room behind him. It was darkened, but he could make out the couches and the armchair that made up the living room. No one there. He took a deep sniff.
Cat.
Squinting, he caught a faint movement, the swish of a tail on a bookcase in the far corner. And then, when the cat moved, the reflective orbs of the animal’s eyes caught the kitchen light.
He sniffed for more information, his nose telling him more than his eyes ever could. He caught the scent of territorial fear. So, not just any cat. But a confused cat.
Bailing on the awkward scene in the kitchen, Orion rose and walked to the threshold between the kitchen and the living room. He crouched and made a low sound in his throat. Much the same way that he had the other morning with Diana, he didn’t consciously control the sound. It just kind of happened.
He heard the sound of the cat jumping down in the dark and then silence. He made the sound in his throat again. The scent of the cat intensified and then, regally, an orange cat strutted out of the dark
ness and over to Orion.
Knowing better than to push his luck, he neither made the sound again or held out a hand to the cat. This wasn’t a dog after all, they were either going to be friends or they weren’t, and the cat had likely already made his decision. There was no persuading a cat.
So, Orion held perfectly still while the cat twined around his crouched legs, rubbing his face into Orion’s knee, flicking his tail back and forth. The cat yowled and Orion scooped him up, tucking him under one arm and petting his pretty head.
“Hi,” he said. “Soft fur, you’ve got there, little guy.”
“How’d you do that?” Robert asked, still sitting on the barstool, his eyes as wide as coins.
“Do what?” Orion asked.
“Get Romeo to trust you like that?”
“His name is Romeo?”
“Yeah.”
Orion shrugged. “I’m good with most animals. Most shifters are.”
Robert’s expression altered. Not in a good way or a bad way. It just altered.
“You’re a shifter.”
Orion’s eyes went to Diana. “Yes.”
“He’s my friend from the center, Robert,” Diana clarified, dumping pasta into the boiling water and adding herbs to a pot.
Robert said nothing in response to that, his eyes flicking between Diana and Orion again. But then his gaze landed on Romeo in Orion’s arms and his face softened. “Romeo’s got a sister around here somewhere. If you can tease her out from under the bed then I’ll be truly impressed.”
Later, Orion would realize that -as humans so often did- Robert had been speaking rhetorically. But as he saw it, he’d just been given an opportunity to not only clear out of the weirdly tense room, he got a chance to meet another cat.
He disappeared from the kitchen and came back three minutes later with a small, green-eyed black cat under his other arm. He was flanked in house cats. Phoenix would laugh his ass off if he could see his big brother now.
