by Anna Martin
“This looks fantastic,” Jackson told her. “Thank you.”
She nodded, pleased, and left them alone again.
“More?” Jackson whispered across the table.
Leo snorted with laughter. Each of their plates held at least two servings, maybe three if he ate the leftovers for lunch instead of dinner.
“The portions here are generous.”
“I’d say,” Jackson mumbled as he wound spaghetti around his fork. He took the first bite and groaned.
“It’s good, right?”
“I’ve never been so happy to let someone bully me into food,” he said, mouth still half-full.
The meatballs here were the size of baseballs, perfectly brown and crisp on the outside and they fell apart as soon as Leo pushed his fork into one. The taste brought back memories of dinners for special occasions all through his childhood. There were nicer restaurants in Spokane, sure—the fancy French place a few streets over or the Japanese grill downtown. At Rosario’s, though, everything was made with love.
The restaurant itself had been built in the 1940s by Rose’s parents. Inside it was classic Italian: brick walls, white tablecloths, white candles flickering in old wine bottles. The booths were wide enough for a whole family, but the little tables were intimate. Perfect for a date.
Leo was happy to eat in comfortable silence for a while, noticing that Jackson was careful not to get sauce on his light gray shirt. It was cute, especially when he got a little fleck on his cheek.
“You’ve got, uh….”
Leo pointed to it.
“Oops,” he said and wiped at the spot with his napkin. “Gone?”
“Yeah.” Leo was smitten. “Why were you around today, then? I’m sure your incredible beer doesn’t make itself.”
“You’d be surprised, actually,” Jackson said. “I’m responsible for the bit at the beginning and the end. Everything in between the beer mostly does on its own.”
Leo grinned and started on his second meatball. “Sounds like a valid excuse.”
“I was meeting with some of the bars I supply,” he said. “There’s a couple downtown, and a few more pubs near the college campus. I try and keep it small and local. People seem to appreciate that.”
“Did you do much business?”
“Yeah. I have a few new brews that are almost ready to go out. I find it useful to let my clients sample the goods themselves before they make me an offer.”
Leo narrowed his eyes. “Is that code for getting them drunk?”
Jackson laughed brightly. “Not always. Sometimes, though. One of the first big deals I did was when both the owner of the pub and I were steaming drunk.”
“Sounds like a good way to seal the deal.”
“Well, I spent most of the next day panicking that he was going to back out of the contract on the basis of being incapacitated when he signed it. It didn’t help that I was nursing a massive hangover. He called me in the afternoon asking to double his order.”
Leo laughed at that. “How does one train to be a brewer?” he asked, tongue in cheek.
“I don’t think I ever did. I learned a lot online.
Jackson stretched, his arm muscles flexing with the movement, and nudged his plate away. He’d demolished it. The boy had one serious appetite.
“I was working at a bank, of all fucking places, helping people with loans and credit cards, that sort of thing. My heart wasn’t in it at all. One day I went in to my boss and sat down with a business plan I’d sketched up in one of my notebooks. Asked him for the startup loan. I thought he was going to fire me on the spot.”
“Did he?”
“Nope.” Jackson grinned, cocky now. “He agreed to the loan and asked if he could become one of my initial investors. He matched what my dad loaned me. I paid them both back years ago, but he’s still a pretty regular customer.”
“Wow.”
“I’m lucky,” Jackson said, his expression turning humble. “I needed someone to take a chance on me, and it was a serious risk back then. I was only twenty-five, with no real life experience and this dream of working for myself. He said he saw something in me, the potential to do it. I owe him a lot.”
“Sounds to me like you put the work in. The sort of business you have doesn’t just spring up out of nowhere.”
“It’s long hours,” Jackson admitted. “My sister says I’ve turned into a hermit. But it’s easy to get lost in work you love doing. It never feels like work to me, just a hobby that earns me money.”
They talked for a while longer, letting the topic of conversation stray to something easier. Leo finished his glass of wine and asked for the bottle to be stoppered, rather than finishing it at the restaurant. He didn’t want to drive home drunk.
Jackson wanted to cover the bill, almost insisted, but backed off at the expression on Leo’s face and let the server split it. Jackson didn’t seem ready to call what they were doing dating just yet, so it worked out to be a good compromise.
Leo still kissed him before he got in his car. It was just soft, sweet, a thank-you kiss on the cheek for saving him from himself. Going home alone after the day he’d had was a recipe for wallowing and misery; a few hours with Jackson had lightened his heart a little.
BY FRIDAY, Leo was starting to come to terms with his traumatic start to the week. He’d called his old mentor and spent a few hours talking with her, letting her counsel him through what was always going to be the hardest loss of his career. He’d been told the first would be difficult. That still hadn’t prepared him for how difficult.
At the hospital, Leo’s new mentor, Fiona, would partner with him until he got all his required supervised hours in, and then he’d be set loose on his own patients. They were a good team; Fiona had a gorgeous singing voice, all husky blues, and had already started teaching Leo more sign language. He knew the signs to a lot of children’s songs already, but expanding his skills was always a good thing.
Most of their work was pretty separate from the rest of the nursing staff. Occasionally he’d have a nurse helping a child with particularly complex needs, but most of the time he worked one-on-one or in small groups.
The nurses at the Spokane Children’s Hospital were incredible. Some days Leo wondered what his life would be like if he’d kept pursuing a clinical line of care. Others he was grateful he hadn’t.
Since he and Fiona could work anywhere in the hospital, he didn’t get to build relationships with the medical team in the same way he would have if he were a nurse. They might visit a ward one day and not go back for weeks. Their work meant flitting between departments, wards, even buildings on a day-to-day basis.
So when Leo was invited out to a birthday party for one of the nurses, he immediately accepted.
Since he’d moved to Spokane, he’d been working and studying almost solidly, which meant, apart from Mitch and the dancers at Flair, he didn’t have many real friends. The chance to go out with a new group of people would be good for him.
What was once the old industrial district had been severely gentrified, and Leo found himself sitting in what had once been a textile factory. Now it was a bar serving overpriced beer and twenty-dollar cocktails. All the booths were covered in different types of fabric, a nod to the former use of the building. The rest of the décor was distinctly hipsterish.
It was all right. Some kind of folk band was playing on an elevated platform, but it wasn’t overly noisy, and Leo had managed to hold a decent conversation for the past twenty minutes with Jen and Enzo from the pediatric oncology department.
The server covering their area was run off her feet, and Leo didn’t really know what he wanted anyway, so he took the opportunity for a bathroom break and headed to the bar to decide what he wanted next.
Leo spotted Jackson in a much more secluded booth just off from the bar, talking to two guys with beards and plaid shirts. He looked stunning in a button-down and dark jeans. His shirt was very light gray denim, a few more buttons undone than strictly
necessary, showing off a toned chest and a light smattering of hair.
Leo paid for his drink in a daze and headed over. In the Pacific Northwest, werewolf and human society overlapped considerably, so he’d had a patchy education in werewolf culture and biology. Unlike in some parts of the world, wolves were accepted here, and not revered as gods or reviled as monsters. That didn’t mean werewolves and humans lived peacefully side by side, though. There would always be those who didn’t want the two cultures to mix.
“Hey,” Leo said, grinning at Jackson and lifting his glass. “Is this one of yours?”
Jackson scowled at the label. “I don’t think so.” He didn’t look pleased to see Leo.
A quick, hot rush of shame filled Leo’s stomach.
“Guys, this is Leo. Leo, this is Grant and Adam. They own the bar.”
“Nice to meet you,” Leo said, nodding at each man in turn. “Sorry to interrupt. Just wanted to say hi.”
Both men looked at Leo like he was some kind of worm crawling through the dirt at their feet. Jackson wasn’t doing anything to change that opinion. He sat in stony silence now, clearly waiting for Leo to leave.
Leo turned on his heel and shoved his way through the mass of people. What was he thinking? That Jackson was going to pull him into a kiss, introduce him as “soul mate” to his business contacts?
Jackson wasn’t that guy. He was barely coming to terms with the idea that Leo was his mate in the first place, let alone being ready to be publicly out about it.
Well, Leo was out.
And proud.
Not that that stopped the hot shame twisting in his stomach. Suddenly he wasn’t interested in socializing.
“Just bought this,” he said to Enzo, passing him the beer. “But my roommate called, I’ve got to run.” He grabbed his jacket from the back of the booth.
“You sure?” Enzo asked, checking out the label.
“Yeah. Someone might as well drink it.”
“Well, thanks. Sorry you have to go.”
Leo nodded. “I’ll see you on Monday.”
He raised a hand to wave at the others before he ducked out of the bar.
Stupid.
Chapter Seven
“WHAT THE hell are you doing?” Adam demanded as Jackson watched Leo walk away, feeling like a complete failure.
“Adam….”
“No,” his friend said, clearly angry. “You know you shouldn’t be involved with them. You know it never works out when we have relationships with humans. You remember what happened—”
“I remember,” Jackson cut in. “I remember, trust me.”
“We’re just worried about you,” Grant said, his voice softer than his brother’s.
“He’s my soul mate,” Jackson said. And felt miserable about it.
He felt the brothers recoil. The silence that followed was loaded, even as the bar throbbed with noise around them.
“He’s human,” Adam said eventually.
“Yeah.”
“And a man.”
“I’d noticed,” Jackson said drily.
“I didn’t think you were into either of those things.”
Jackson chuckled darkly and drained his beer. “I’m not. I wasn’t.”
“Past tense?” Grant asked.
“Still trying to figure that out.”
“Jackson… there is no way this ends well. You know that, right? No way at all.”
The brothers were werewolves too, though their parents weren’t. They’d been adopted as children without having any genetic testing, so when Grant first shifted when he hit puberty, it had come as something of a shock.
At eighteen, Grant had filed for custody of his brother, citing emotional and physical abuse from their parents that both boys had endured since Grant’s first shift. They moved into a halfway house run by a werewolf charity, and Grant worked days in gas stations and nights in bars to keep them going.
Despite the hardship and struggles, Grant was more mellow than his brother. Adam was still spitting mad that the “parents” who had adopted them hadn’t faced any repercussions for abusing their children. No one was interested in listening to them. Unfortunately their story wasn’t uncommon.
So Jackson didn’t blame them for being wary of his human soul mate.
“He’s not what you think.”
Adam dropped his head back. “Jackson, I swear to God, if you tell me he’s not like the others, I will actually scream.”
“He works with sick kids.”
Grant slapped his hand over Adam’s mouth before he could make good on his threat.
“I know everyone wants to pretend there is no ‘us and them’ anymore, but you should know better than that,” Grant said. “Be careful. That’s all I’m saying. Because if there’s ever any hint of anything going wrong, you’ll be the one thrown under the bus. No matter who’s at fault.”
“I know,” Jackson said softly.
“It doesn’t fucking sound like you do,” Adam muttered. Grant elbowed him in the ribs.
“Run with us this month?” Grant asked, changing the subject.
“You could come out to my place? It must have been a while since you got out of the city.”
Adam was already nodding. “That sounds good.”
Jackson slipped out of the booth and put on his jacket. Adam gathered up their empty glasses, then pulled Jackson into a hug.
“I just worry about you.”
“It’s okay.” Jackson squeezed him tight, then hugged Grant too. “I’ll speak to you soon,” he promised, waving as he headed out into the night.
IT WAS stupid and dangerous, and would definitely, definitely, get him locked up if anyone ever found out about it. But Jackson was feeling reckless.
He got into his truck and started the engine, then rolled down the windows, letting the cool night air inside. He took a few deep breaths, trying to find Leo’s scent on the wind.
It wasn’t there.
That would have made it too easy.
He drove in circles for a while, a little aimlessly, rolling the windows back up when he noticed a cop car at the stop light. There was no need to draw attention to himself. The radio was playing some jazz with a good beat, and Jackson let his conscious mind focus on that while the bond Leo had yet to recognize led him to his soul mate.
About forty minutes later, he pulled up in front of a nondescript apartment block not too far from the hospital. Without needing to check, Jackson knew Leo lived here. He parked in one of the free spaces and killed the engine.
It was getting late now, and activity in the different apartments was starting to wind down. If Jackson concentrated hard, he could sense movement around him, people going about their lives. He was also more than aware that this was territory; that other wolves lived in this area. Peacefully, but still. He was encroaching.
Jackson closed his eyes and let the feeling of the bond with his soul mate wash over him. Even as his emotions pitched and swirled around the fact of Leo being a man, this bone-deep contentment spread like a balm over his aching heart.
Jackson had never felt so unsure about himself, about his sexuality and what he wanted from his life. He’d never sought out his soul mate, believing that if it was meant to happen, then it would. Now it actually had and Leo was here, and Jackson had absolutely no idea what to do.
With his eyes closed, Jackson let himself tune in to his soul mate, feeling Leo’s heart beat alongside his own. He was definitely not comfortable owning the label “gay,” but it felt like his soul mate had already found a place in Jackson’s life.
Chapter Eight
IT HAD been another horrendously busy week so far, and Leo was swamped with paperwork that he knew wouldn’t get signed off before he left, which was going to bug him. He hated leaving things unfinished.
He was running late for his Starbucks date with Jackson because someone had convinced him to just quickly stop by ward eighteen before he left for the day and he’d spent almost an hour talking to
a couple of parents about ongoing therapy sessions for their kids. He was starting to feel like part of the furniture of the children’s hospital, even though he wasn’t qualified yet, and that had to be a good thing. It meant his job prospects for the future looked bright.
“Mr. Gallagher?”
Leo stopped and smiled politely at the man and woman who’d approached him. They were both smartly dressed, conservative-looking, and he thought he recognized them from somewhere. He wanted to wave them off, tell them he’d finished his shift and they could contact him during his goddamn office hours.
That wasn’t how things worked around here, though.
“Can I help?”
“We’re hoping we can help you, Mr. Gallagher.” The woman pressed a leaflet into his hands. Leo glanced down; it was nondescript, the cover showing a photograph of a white couple who looked startlingly similar to the people in front of him.
If they hadn’t known his name, Leo would have dismissed them as Mormons.
He stepped to one side to let someone pass and realized he’d effectively let them box him in at the busy hospital entrance.
“A mutual friend asked us to come meet you,” the man said. He had a neatly trimmed beard and very green eyes. “You’ve been dating a werewolf, is that right? We can help, Mr. Gallagher. We’re with the Human Protection League.”
“I don’t know what that is. I’m sorry.”
“We help people who have been trapped in abusive relationships with werewolves.”
Leo barked a laugh. “You have the wrong person, then. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”
“You are dating a werewolf, though, isn’t that right?”
Leo hesitated. He didn’t want to have this conversation at all, but the alternative was getting into some kind of altercation with these people and that would be worse—he was a hospital employee, and he was sure it wouldn’t reflect well on him.
“I have a few friends who are werewolves,” Leo said instead of answering their question.
