“I’m sure you’re right,” Emmy said out loud, which would have been better if Karl hadn’t just mentioned he liked Virtue, but he was afraid there wouldn’t be much for him to do there, work-wise. She clapped her hands over her suddenly-scalding cheeks and squeaked, “No! I didn’t mean that! There’s lots to do in Virtue! Especially for someone who has the stamina to walk across the country in the winter! I’m sorry, I was talking to someone else.”
Karl’s eyebrows rose and he glanced around. There were plenty of other people in the pub, but none of them close enough to talk to, and obviously, none of them had been talking to her.
“Myself,” Emmy said weakly. “I was talking to myself, I was sure…that I wanted to order dessert?”
“Oh!” Karl brightened. “That sounds great. I didn’t want the evening to be over yet, for sure. I’m really enjoying spending time with you.”
See? her rabbit said smugly.
Emmy hushed it.You already made me sound like I wanted him to leave. Don’t make me mess up again!
The rabbit, quietly horrified at the thought their fated mate might justleave, went quiet, then suggested,Carrots!for dessert.
“Carrots are not dessert!”
Karl’s gaze slid back and forth before he said, cautiously, “I didn’t suggest carrots for dessert? And I thought it was the cafe that had carrot cake?”
“Chef Charlee would probably whip some kind of amazing carrot concoction up in twenty minutes if we asked her to,” Emmy said with a groan, “but no, no carrots for dessert, otherwise. Sorry. You ever feel like you’re arguing with yourself and losing?”
Karl leaned in confidentially. “I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time doing just that, on this hike. I feel you.”
Emmy momentarily forgot how to breathe as she contemplated the wonder of Karl feeling her, and sounded a little breathless when she finally managed, “Right. So you understand, then. That’s me, a lot of the time.”
“Tell me something else about you.” Karl put his hand out, palm up, and without thinking, Emmy put her hand in his.
He curled his fingers around hers, big and strong and warm, and something in Emmy melted completely. She never wanted to be away from that touch again. All she had to do was seize the moment and confess she was a shifter. Except they were in the middle of a restaurant, and Emmy was fairly confident that “I’m a shifter” was not something you said to true humans without the immediate ability to demonstrate the facts of the matter. Instead she said, “I’ve never been outside of Virtue’s city limits.”
Genuine astonishment curved Karl’s beautiful mouth in a shallow smile. “Really?”
“Really.” Embarrassment burned through Emmy so strongly she took her hand back and folded her arms around herself, gaze fixed on the table. “I have…I get anxious. I’m not sure it’sanxiety-anxiety, like people have, because…”
Because her inner self was a rabbit, and rabbits were anxious creatures. Her rabbit saw Virtue as their den, a safe place that no one in their right mind would leave, and Emmy had neverreallywanted to travel enough to make the rabbit nervous. But it was her own stomach that dipped and her own mind that came up with increasingly implausible scenarios about what could go wrong if she did leave. The rabbit mostly only agreed with those things, rather than invented them itself. “Well, because I’m not sure. But when I think about going somewhere else it’s…scary. I don’t think I could do what you’ve done, walking across the whole country. If I try to be rational I know probably nothing would go wrong, but I get…anxious.”
She made herself look up, expecting scorn in Karl’s sky-blue eyes. She found incredibly gentle sympathy in them instead. “I left Seattle because my mom died.”
Emmy’s jaw fell open and it was clearly Karl’s turn to be uncomfortable, his own gaze dropping to the table. “It was always just her and me, my dad wasn’t around, and when she died, I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t do my job, I didn’t want to be around other people, and my whole world just felt like it was getting smaller and darker and more awful every day. So one day when I was making myself go for a walk, I kind of thought, well, why not just keep walking? Then you won’t have to deal with anything. So I did.”
He looked up, as vulnerable as Emmy had felt a moment earlier. “So I don’t think I’m brave, doing this. I think I’m running away. Maybe it’s the opposite of how you keep yourself safe, but it seems a lot like the same thing. I’m supposed to finish up in Bar Harbor. I don’t know what I’ll do then. I haven’t really had to think about it yet. I don’t want to think about it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Emmy said as gently as she could. “When did she die?”
“Almost a year ago. I thought if I could get to Bar Harbor on the anniversary of her death, I’d know what to do, somehow.” Karl laughed, a not-very-happy sound that made Emmy want to pull him into her arms for a hug. “So I have to get there by then. In case there’s an epiphany waiting for me.”
So he really wasn’t going to stay. Even though he was her fated mate, Karl wasn’t going to stay in Virtue. But Emmy couldn’t imagine asking him to, either, not now. “How long will it take you to get there?”
“Most of the rest of the month. Three weeks or so.”
Emmy smiled a little. “Long enough that you could stay in Virtue over the holiday weekend first, if you wanted.”
Karl asked for her hand again, with his palm up on the table, and Emmy carefully put hers in it again. Maybe he didn’t feel the electricity of that touch, after all. Maybe her rabbit, and her conviction, were wrong. Maybe hewasn’ther fated mate.
But Emmy couldn’t imagine feeling this way about anyone else, ever. She’d only known Karl Sutton a few hours, but she just couldn’tbelievethat they weren’t meant to be together.
“Honestly?” Karl said. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than hang out in Virtue all weekend with you. You’re the first person I’ve talked to about my mom in months. The first person who didn’t know her that I’ve ever talked to about her at all. I don’t know what it is about you, but I just feel like I could tell you anything.”
“You can,” Emmy said wistfully. “Really, you can, Karl. I’m honored you feel like you’re able to tell me about her, even a little. Even if I’m just an anxious small-town girl.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re a lot more than that.” Karl studied her a few seconds, then twisted a smile. “I brought the mood down, didn’t I? I’m sorry. I probably need a guide book for ‘how to not screw up a first date.’ I haven’t been on one in a long time.”
