“I’ve never heard of that constellation.”
“It’s from... where I grew up. Different stories about the stars there.”
“Tell me.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he began to speak, his voice low and rhythmic, like he was reciting something he’d heard a thousand times.
“There were once two wolves who loved each other more than the moon itself. But they were from different packs, and their love was forbidden. So they ran. Across mountains and valleys and oceans. Across the very edge of the world. And when there was nowhere left to run, the Moon Goddess took pity on them. She lifted them into the sky, where they could chase each other forever. Never catching up, never stopping. Eternal and endless and always, always together.”
I stared at the stars he’d pointed to. “That’s beautiful,” I said. “And sad.”
“Why sad?”
“They never catch each other. They’re always chasing, never reaching.”
He turned his head to look at me. In the starlight, his eyes were silver.
“But they’re together, always running in the same direction. That’s not sad. That’s devotion. That’s love that refuses to end even when the universe says it should.”
“You really are a romantic.”
“I told you.Veryromantic. Romantically terrible at driving.”
I laughed and he smiled at the sound. Warmth filled my chest.
“Do you believe it?” I asked. “The story?”
“I believe in a lot of things I didn’t use to believe in.”
“Like what?”
“Like fate, destiny. The idea that sometimes the universe puts exactly the right person in your path at exactly the right moment.” His hand found mine in the darkness. His fingers were strong, certain. “The idea that you can meet someone and know, immediately, that they’re going to change everything.”
Holy fuck.
“That sounds like a romance novel.”
“Maybe romance novels have it right.” He murmured as my heart squeezed inside my chest. I didn’t ask what he meant. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know or if I was ready yet. I just laythere, under the stars, next to this strange, wonderful man who drove terribly and packed sandwiches and told stories about wolves in love.
I might be in love. And that was the most terrifying, exhilarating, life-altering realization I’d ever had. The stars wheeled overhead, the wolves chasing each other across the sky. Maybe I was ready to let myself be caught.
13
— • —
Riley
It was Thursday night.Book clubnight, and I was a mess.
This week’s book had been Margo’s suggestion. A dark romance with scenes so explicit that I’d blushed just reading them alone in my apartment. BDSM elements. A possessive, borderline obsessive hero. A heroine who discovered she liked being claimed and owned. Being the sole focus of a man’s consuming, all-encompassing attention.
The problem was, every time I read those scenes, I didn’t picture the book’s brunette, nerdy male lead.
I pictured a certain tall, blonde Australian with gray eyes and red knuckles…And I may have done things while picturing that. Things I wasn’t proud of and which involved my hand and my bed and gasping his name into my pillow at two in the morning.
Multiple times.
At three in the morning, in the shower, even once while eating breakfast, which was a new low even for me. I’d been reading a particularly intense scene involving a wall and creative use of restraints, and suddenly my cereal was soggy and my hand was between my thighs and I was imagining Caelan pinning me against my kitchen counter.
