He licked my face.
“Oh, that's disgusting!” I tried to push his massive head away, but he just licked me again, clearly delighted by my protests. “You're a grown man! This is undignified!”
Another lick, this one catching my mouth.
“I hate you. I hate you so much.”
But I was still laughing, and Daniel's tail was still wagging, and somewhere in Claire's wildflowers with the ancient oak watching over us, something shifted.
He shifted back eventually. Found me still lying in the flowers, staring up at the canopy, feeling more at peace than I had in months.
“I can't believe you actually chased me,” he said, settling beside me in the grass. Naked and unbothered by it. Grinning in a way I'd never seen before.
“I can't believe you actually play fetch.”
“Wolves like to play. We don't always get the chance.” He propped himself up on an elbow, looked down at me. “Thank you. For this. For asking to see me.”
“Thank you for showing me.” I reached up, traced the line of his jaw. Felt stubble and warmth and the impossible reality of this man I'd somehow fallen for. “Feel better?”
“Yeah.” He sounded surprised by his own admission. “I actually do.”
We sat there for a long time, surrounded by Claire's wildflowers, beneath the branches of a tree that had held fifteen years of sorrow and was finally, maybe, making room for something else.
The forest breathed around us. Patient. Watchful. Approving in ways that had nothing to do with words.
And when Daniel finally spoke again, his voice was lighter than I'd ever heard it.
“Come on. Let's go home.”
Home. Such a simple word. Such a complicated thing.
But walking out of that clearing with Daniel's hand in mine, I thought maybe I was starting to understand what it meant.
17
WHEN WALLS FALL
DANIEL
Thunder rolled across the mountains, low and threatening, and the lights flickered. Once. Twice. The wolf in me stirred, responding to the storm with an answering growl that rumbled up from somewhere deep in my bones.
Michael was in the kitchen. I could hear him moving around, the soft clink of ceramic, the whisper of bare feet on hardwood. Could smell the coffee he'd brewed even though it was past midnight, rich and dark and cutting through the ozone-sharp scent of the storm. He'd stayed after everyone else had gone home, after Evan and Nate had retreated upstairs with those knowing looks they thought I didn't notice.
Ever since the clearing, ever since I'd let myself be vulnerable in ways I hadn't been since Claire, I'd been terrified. Not of Michael. Of myself. Of how much I wanted this, wanted him, and how badly I could ruin it if I moved too fast.
My reflection stared back at me from the rain-slicked window, all hard angles and tired eyes and the weight of toomany years pressing down on shoulders that had carried too much for too long. I'd told him I was going to try. To let go. To make room for something new.
But trying and doing were different things.
“You planning to stand there all night, or are you waiting for the house to float away?”
Michael's voice cut through the storm noise and my spiraling thoughts. I turned to find him leaning against the kitchen doorframe, coffee mug cradled in both hands, wearing one of my flannels over his t-shirt. He looked tired. He looked beautiful. He looked at me like he could see straight through every wall I was trying to rebuild.
“Thinking,” I said, and my voice came out rougher than I meant it to.
“About what?”
About how I told you I was ready to try and then spent three days running from you. About how every time you walk into a room my wolf wants to press against you until our scents are so tangled no one could separate them. About how I'm terrified that what happened at Claire's tree was too much too fast and now I don't know how to move forward.
