“There was a can of chili, but…”
“It was out of date?”
“I don’t eat meat.”
He was unsure why he was surprised by that. “Oh, right. Sorry.”
Vague fantasies of bringing her home popped like a soap bubble. The fact that she was a vegetarian was so far down the list of reasons why they were incompatible, it shouldn’t have mattered, but it was just such a visceral thing. Visions of Nonna cooking up an enormous pot of meat sauce or a sizzlingbisteccafloated through his head. He wasn’t sure if they were coming from him or his wolf. She would stand out like a sore thumb.
You can’t have her. You never could.
The porridge was filling and tasted good.
He helped her do the dishes and put the leftovers outside in the snow, and then they stared at each other in the increasingly dim light.
“I guess there’s nothing for it but to go to bed,” she said.
She does not mean what you think she means,he told himself sternly.
“It’s too dim to see the numbers on the cards, or I’d whoop you at poker,” he said to watch her eyes flare.
They did. “There are games you can play without counting cards. I know there are.”
“Why the hell would you want to?” he asked, genuinely trying to picture it. “What’s the point when you have even odds to win or lose?”
“I keep telling you,” she said, “you’re not playing the cards; you’re playing the other person.”
He scoffed. “Reading body language is a pseudoscience that has been debunked multiple times.”
“The best poker players in the world are going to disagree with you.”
“And that’s you, is it?” he said and immediately regretted it.
“Better than you if you take away the math brain!”
“Okay, Patchouli,” he said and sat down on the bed.
“I do not wear patchouli!”
“No, youembodypatchouli.” He bit hard on his tongue to shut himself up. Antagonizing her was not what he was going for.
Fortunately, she burst out laughing.
He could barely see her in the dim light, even with shifter eyes, but she opened the stove door and the glow illuminated her face as she fed the fire. She was still smiling.
“We can probably hike out tomorrow,” she said, “if only to the road. The snowplows will be out now that it’s stopped, and we can hitch a ride into town.” She spoke to the fire, and he watched shadows dance along her cheekbones.
In the light, she looked like a woman out of time, not from the swinging sixties, but from the 1800s, a mysterious witch tending her magic.
“What’s going to happen next?” he asked, and she blinked and focused on him.
“I just told you?”
“What did you tell me?” Every thought had left his head.
She shut the stove, and he was blinded for a second. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in complete blackness. In seconds, his eyes soaked in the dim light from the stars outside one window, but the world was still just shapes. Hiswolf hated it. Was this what humans saw in the dark? No wonder they put lights everywhere.
“We hike out in the morning?” she said hesitantly.
