“We can’t get truly lost,” Sam pointed out. “Your shift form has wings. You can scout by air.”
Maggie was already shaking her head. “No.”
“No?”
“I promised Hester I wouldn’t shift while I was here. I won’t break that promise.”
“And if she never finds out?”
“I would know,” Maggie said flatly. “You can think I’m a coward or whatever you like. I won’t do it.”
Sam gave her a gentle smile. “I don’t think you’re a coward. I admire you. That’s integrity, Maggie. You have it.”
They were sitting side by side on the machine. With her helmet off, Maggie’s hair was a curly, disheveled cascade. He yearned to touch it, to brush a strand off her forehead. The intense sexual longing when he was straddling the machine behind her had faded to something softer and more wistful.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Maggie said, jolting him out of his thoughts.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“Do you mind if I ask what happened to Charlie’s mom?”
Sam took a slow breath. He figured they would get to that eventually. “I don’t mind at all. She died when Charlie was a baby. Car crash.”
“And you were ...” She hesitated. “Very much in love?”
Sam smiled, feeling nostalgia and a faded grief twinge at him.
“I still miss her. But it was complicated. We weren’t married. It was a rebound relationship for her, and my first serious relationship since I got out of the military. So we had this fling. It was fun, we both had a good time, and neither of us really expected it to go much farther than that. And then there was Charlie.”
“Oh,” Maggie breathed.
“Kim was a great mom. That part was never in doubt. And what we would eventually made out of it, I don’t know. Maybe we would have fallen in love and married eventually. Maybe we would’ve found other people, and Charlie would have had two families. But instead ...” He raised a hand and let it fall. “That happened.”
Maggie took his hand in hers. They were both wearing gloves, so it shouldn’t have felt as intimate as it did.
“You’re a good dad to Charlie,” she said quietly. “I wish my ...” She cut herself off abruptly. “Not everyone has good parents like that. But I know it when I see it, and I’m glad.”
Sam wasn’t sure what to say.I’m just doing what anyone would do... wasn’t true, and he knew it firsthand; in his line of work, he saw terribly broken families up close. His work partner, Fawkes, had a background like that. So no, it wasn’t what anyone would have done.
But at the same time, parenting Charlie had never been a burden or a chore. It could be difficult sometimes, of course. Parenting was a never-ending parade of difficult things. But it had always felt so inevitable, so necessary, that he never had achance to think about what-ifs. He couldn’t have done anything other than what he did.
“She’s a good kid,” he finally said.
“Yes.” Maggie smiled faintly. “She is.”
“She’s a mountain goat shifter, and she acts like one. She’s almost given me a heart attack about a million times. I used to find her in the most terrifying places when she was a kid, on rooftops and up ladders. She just wasn’t afraid of anything. And that was ... the worst and the best thing she could possibly be.”
“What do you mean?” Maggie’s attention was riveted on him.
“I mean that if there’s one thing I needed to learn to do in my life, it’s relax a little and not over-plan things. I guess all parents say they’ve learned from their children, but Charlie really has taught me a lot.”
“And do you never do ...” Her voice was husky. “Wild and crazy things?”
Her face was very close to his, her lips slightly parted as if she was going to say something more, but had stopped herself. It would be very easy to lean in a little closer and?—
“Do you hear an engine?” Sam said suddenly.
He pulled back, and Maggie did too. Their hands were still entwined, resting on Maggie’s leg. He reluctantly let go so he could stand up. There was definitely some sort of engine sound, another snowmobile in the winter woods, coming closer.
