I blinked blearily and realized that I was sitting on the couch in my living room, swaddled in thick blankets like a baby, and Giselle was kneeling on the cushion next to me. Funny, she wasn’t a short woman, but with me sitting and her on her knees, our eyes were finally at the same height.
I liked it.
“What?” I asked in a croak that made me sound more like a frog shifter than a wolf.
“Can you tell me five things you see right now in this room?” she said in that kind, gentle voice of hers.
Oh. Had I been having a panic attack? I’d never blacked out from one before. How much time had I lost?
“I see the television. I see Veronica’s little town rug that she loves to drive cars on. I see the spider plant that I’ve somehow kept alive. I see that Benny left the remote on the couch cushion again, which Natalie hates. I see…”
I sawher.
Beautiful, breathtaking,wonderfulGiselle.
She had no idea, did she? No idea that she looked like an angel as she peered at me, her face only inches away from mine. Ethereal and terrifying, something too celestial for my mortal eyes to see.
And yet I stared anyway, memorizing every detail of her. The center of her eyes burned like molten gold surrounding a gemstone-green center. She wore purple eyeliner on her waterline instead of the black she wore on top. Her highcheekbones, hard cut of her jaw, the deep red of her lips, her thick eyebrows knitted together. She’d used eyeshadow to make her brows match her wig. How clever.
She was a work of art, and she’d crafted it knowing I would see it. I knew she didn’t put that on forme, but my ego was flattered, nonetheless. I had no idea how she could even bear to look at someone like me, someone drenched in dripping crimson.
It was more than her beauty, though. It waseverythingabout her. It was her way with words, and how cleverly she would turn them this way and that. It was her kindness that rippled out of her like its own magical force, changing and softening the world around her for the better. It was her intelligence. Her grace. Her creativity.
It was in the way she talked to Benny and smiled at Veronica.
It was in the way she made me feel like maybe, justmaybe, there could be something more for me besides the half-dead existence I was living, cosplaying at surviving so I could be there for my kids.
“Ben?” she murmured, her hands coming up to either side of my face.
I hated that I was stressing her out, butfuck, if her touch wasn’t pure ecstasy against my skin.
Her palms were so cool, almost impossibly so, andsoftlike silk, but somehowmore.I wished I had the same eloquence she had, because maybe then I’d have a remote chance of expressing even an iota of how it felt. There was an electricity to it that shocked me, almost painfully, but also made me feel so incredibly alive. In the moment, like my mind so rarely let me be.
“I see Veronica’s Peppa Pig stuffie that she likes to hold whenever she’s watching a movie,” I said lamely.
Because as much as I was drawn to Giselle, as much as she made mefeel,I couldn’t say it out loud. Partly because it felt impossible to be so affected by someone I’d only interacted with four times, but partly because—much like Natalie had said—I wasn’t ready.
Hopefully one day I would be.
“That’s brilliant. Now, could you tell me four things you can hear?”
I was familiar with this process, and I listed things as she asked. Because I hadn’t even realized I was having a panic attack, I didn’t have all the same symptoms I normally did. When we finished the exercise, I was so weak a feather could have knocked me over.
Why was my mouth so dry?
I must have been smacking my lips obnoxiously loud, because Giselle let out the tiniest little chuckle and patted my hand. She really had no idea how even the simplest touch from her rolled through my entire body.
“Your blood sugar is probably crashing now, and I imagine it’s even worse for a shifter. Do you have any sweet treats that I can get you? Or apple juice?”
Now that she mentioned it...
“There’s Moose Tracks ice cream in the freezer.” Holy fuck, had my voice sounded so wrecked during our countdown? It was like I’d been screaming at a metal concert for a few hours and now my throat was completely raw.
It would heal up in a matter of minutes once I got some calories into me.
“Moose Tracks? A man of taste, I see.”
I didn’t know how I managed it, but I winked at her. “Don’t you know it.”
