“I didn’t churn the butter myself.”
“You’re a fraud. I feel cheated. Next you’ll tell me you didn’t even pick the grapes for this wine with your own hands.”
“Or stomp them with my own feet.” He sighed deeply.
“Uh—don’t they have machines for that these days?”
His eyes glittered, and he raised one eyebrow. “You don’t appreciate the personal touch?”
“Not when the touch is someone’s toes. Sorry.” She looked suspiciously at her wine. “This isn’t…?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny. But if I had to guess, I’d say no toes were involved in this one.”
She grimaced, caught his expression of mock-shock, and giggled. “Apart from the mention of feet, this has all been incredible. I feel…”
She hesitated. Moss was worried about something—something he didn’t want to talk about, so presumably something other than the obvious potential-end-of-the-worldand we’re-all-going-to-die. Something he’d been forcing himself to stay in denial about rather than face up to.
And here she was, about to say—
“I feel so lucky,” she whispered guiltily. “That’s awful, isn’t it? With everything that’s happening. People are in danger, and you—youlost your octopus.You gained a new inner animal, and all the history around it, but you lost something that’s been a part of you for years. That’s something that shouldn’t happen. And—and now we’re here, and you’ve cooked this amazing meal and—I’m not thinking about any of that. Only how lucky I am to have you. Even when I—”
When I’ve been lying to you.The words almost came out, but the sentence fractured before they could. There were too many other things she felt guilty about. Lying to him about her part-shifted face. Worrying about her own problems when his life had been shattered.
Letting herself float with him down this happy river of denial, as though stealing a taste of happiness would make the horror less real.
She swallowed down a lump of bitterness. “I’m sorry,” she choked out.
“Don’t.” Moss rose like a thundering wave and knelt by her side, his hands gentle as seafoam on her face. “Don’t be sorry. I set this all up, remember? This romantic evening. The meal. Don’t feel like shit on my behalf. Please.” He hesitated. “Everything’s shit. I know that. But if I can make it good for you just for one evening, it’s worth it. And the fact that you feel lucky to be with me, with what I am… that’s more than I could ever have dreamed possible.”
But I’m just me,she wanted to say. Just Carol. Just one woman, with a face that gave people nightmares and an inner shark who pretended not to know her. How could he feel that way about her?
He gazed up at her, the briefest sea-glass shimmer glossing over his dark brown eyes. “You think you’re the lucky one?” he asked, his voice rough. “On the worst day of my life, the woman of my dreams fell out of the sky right into my arms.”
His voice wound through her mind, a whisper carried on shadows like the night sky reflected in still waters. As though Moss wasn’t actively speaking to her; his thoughts were carried on the shadows that gathered around him like wings.
“And now you know what that means,” he continued. “I lied to you about being an octopus shifter.”
“Youwerean octopus shifter.”
“Not by the time I met you.” His smile was wan. “I was the kraken. You should be screaming in terror right now, you know?”
“I’ve done such a bad job of screaming in terror so far. It doesn’t seem worth it to start now.” She spoke quietly, as though she was using her words to push attention away from herself. The way she used to. He frowned, hearing her tone before he heard her words, and it took him a heartbeat to realize she was joking. When he did—
She would give the rest of her life to make him smile like that.
“So much for my dark secrets.” He put down his knife and fork. “Is that your shark’s perspective, too?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Shit. She shouldn’t have said that.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s… not a talker.” She fretted her fingers together, glad that the evening was drawing in and hoping the dancing flames from the fire wouldn’t betray her expression.
“The sneaky type, huh? My octopus—” He cleared his throat, and then his face cleared. “It was more the sort to wait until your back was turned and unscrew all your furniture than share its thoughts on the state of the world. Sometimes it didn’t even wait. I’d look down and find myself unravelling my own woolenjersey, and not know I was doing it, just because the bloody thing got bored.”
“Not like that, either.” Damn it. She was going to tell him. She was alreadynottelling him so much—she owed him something of herself other than lies.
And maybe,maybe, if she got to the end of this story… she would tell him the truth. That was where the story ended up, after all.
