I drop my gaze quickly, and they go back to cleaning the last few trays. It’s really just a quick rinse with soap.
Shawn, ever a master of timing, picks that moment to duck into the kitchen, making a beeline for the coffee maker, where a half-full pot of coffee has long gone cold.
My teeth grind together as I glance at the three of them. These fucking assholes. They’ve just let me stay in the dark about this.
And all the dreams I’ve been having about meeting a wolf in the woods and letting it lick me to completion...my cheeks flare. If they’re all wolves, and we’re in supernatural territory, was there more meaning to my dreams? Maybe they weren’t just my subconscious stressing out about the wedding prep and Shawn showing up and expressing it through the coyote sightings?
And Aiden has teased me for believing in déjà vu and intuition. I’m going to smack him for making me think such things were silly and just too supernatural to exist in reality.
Flustered and trying to keep my sudden anger in check, I let out a breath that is a little too exasperated to be a sigh.
All of their eyes immediately snap to me, and their attention feels heavy on my skin. I take a deep breath through my nose. I glance at Shawn. I’ve been living here for years without werewolf wet dreams. Those didn’t start happening untilheshowed up.
He’s the only one I’m really mad at right now, and I want to see him squirm.
I meet each of their concerned gazes briefly, and shrug. “I don’t know why everyone keeps talking about the coyote sightings. They’re so...common.”
“They are?” Aiden asks, a little too much concern cracking his voice.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever lived anywhere that there weren’t a lot of wolf sightings and animal attacks,” I say out loud, trying to sound as casual as possible. I glance between everyone else in the kitchen. “Lately there’s been a lot of scratch marks on my doors from wild animals. They just come right up to your house, it’s so weird.”
Shawn looks like all the blood drained out of his face as he concentrates on pretending to sip his mug of coffee, and, honestly, if I’ve taken a couple years off his life with that comment, I’m fine with that.
“That...that’s so scary,” Aiden fumbles to say when he fails to hide his horror.
“I just thought it was normal,” I insist, and then look pointedly at Shawn. “Don’t you remember? I would say it was pretty frequent in...college? I think we met when I was in college.”
“I didn’t really pay attention to the news back then,” he says weakly into his coffee.
Logan is glaring daggers at Shawn with more emotion than I’ve ever seen out of him. I’d just hoped to imply there were plenty of other werewolves out there, but it seems they got something else out of my comment. I wonder if they’ve noticed a wolf has clearly been stalking me these last few weeks.
With the ferocity in Logan’s expression, I think it’s safe to assume they’re all wolves. And if this is a family of werewolves...suddenly it makes a lot of sense why Shawn and I couldn’t be together.
Maybe we were a mistake from the beginning.
Shawn slinks out of the kitchen, a maybe-not-so-metaphorical tail between his legs. Aiden and Logan continue to try to communicate behind my back as I turn my attention back to the stove. I can see them mouthing and gesturing at each other in the reflection on the polished tile backsplash.
I don’t care if I’ve just kicked the hornet’s nest. Or a better metaphor involving a wolf den, whatever.
Unsurprisingly, I make it through the rest of the day with as little contact with any of them as I can, with no effort on my part. Aiden all but runs in the opposite direction whenever I step out into the hallway. Logan is somehow less reachable than usual.
And Shawn finally made good on his promise to leave me alone; of course, it’s when I actually want to talk to him and finally get some answers.
After a long day of rechecking that I have everything ready for the wedding tomorrow evening, I find myself staring out the back door of my little cottage, turning the same tangled web of thoughts over as I dunk a peppermint tea bag in a mug of hot water.
I want to sit down, just the two of us curled up in one another like we used to on Saturday mornings and talk through every little thought and worry I’ve got buzzing around in my head. I miss the way he would help me unspool my line of thinking and find all the frayed edges and help me wind it all back into a tidy little bundle.
I need to confront him about this, but I’m not sure how. He could just deny it, and I’m sure he would. If he wouldn’t tell me when our whole marriage was at stake, why would he just give in and tell me now?
The thought makes a hard, painful lump rise in my throat. I didn’t know that whole time. He managed to keep it so under wraps I never even suspected. Maybe our whole relationship was really a sham.
I stand at the doorway for so long, the mug grows cool in my hands.
There were many nights toward the end of college, the evenings I worked in my apartment, sitting at my desk by the window for hours to get my papers written, Shawn would come home to find me sitting in the dark. I’d hear his keys jangling in the door, the floor creaking underneath as he crossed to me, and found the light switch. Every single time, I’d never realized it had gotten so dark, until that moment he came home.
It’s not quite a full moon, but it lights up the night spectacularly. It doesn’t even really feel dark out. It looks so much like the not-yet-morning hours I’ve given up on jogging during.
A thought, barely more than an impulse, leads me to roll the back sliding door open and step outside.
