"I'm…" Jordan closed his eyes, counted to three, and opened them again.
Kayla was still a woman. There was no evidence of an owl anywhere in the room.
Jordan swallowed. "Did you…just…turn into an owl?"
Kayla pressed her lips together and nodded. "I did. I'm a shifter. An owl shifter."
"And that…is why you don't want people to know about Virtue? Because you're a shifter?"
"Because there are lots of shifters here," Kayla said gently. She offered her hand, but Jordan didn't think he was quite ready to get off the floor yet. The floor was nice and stable and hard to fall off, whereas it had been pretty easy to fall off his feet. "Owl shifters are kind of rare, although there are a couple of families in town," Kayla said, still cautiously gentle. "There are more wolves and bears and big predators and things."
"You…were a big predator," Jordan said cautiously.
A startling grin split Kayla's face. "That's true. I am. Snowy owls are big birds, and shifters run larger than our true animal counterparts. And bird shifters can be unusually large even for shifters."
Jordan said, "Hnneengh," in the same kind of gentle tone Kayla had been using, and guilt flashed across her face. She sat at his side, reaching carefully for his hand, and when he didn't pull away, wrapped her warm fingers around his.
"Sorry. I should have made sure you were sitting down. It's just…this is why I knew you wouldn't believe me if I just told you."
"That's true. That's definitely true. That's very true. Virtue is…how do I notknowthis?"
"I don't know," Kayla said apologetically. "I really thought everybody who grew up here did, even though we're told to be secretive about it. I'm sort of having to recalibrate everything I knew."
"You thinkyouare!" Jordan half-shouted in helpless disbelief, and to his relief, Kayla laughed instead of flinching.
"Yeah, no, that's fair enough. I think probably not more than fifteen or twenty percent of the people here are shifters, if that helps? There are a lot more true humans. But there's a really high concentration of shifters, for a small town."
"Because shifterssettledthis place?"
Kayla nodded, still holding his hand. Jordan felt like he was adjusting, maybe. Like if Kayla kept holding his hand, he could cope with pretty much anything. "Tell me more?"
"Well, you know how the township is the largest in the state? It's because we needed the room to roam. It's why the town square is so silly-big, although I guess it had forest on it for a long time and it's less useful for stretching your lion legs as a huge lawn."
"There arelionsin Virtue?" Jordan's voice went up again, and he wondered if maybe he wasn't adjusting so well after all.
Kayla pursed her lips, which was distractingly pretty. Maybe he was all right, at that. Maybe he was on an emotional roller coaster.
Maybe this was the most amazing evening of his life.
That hit him like a brick. Kayla had just shared what had to bethemost important secret in Virtue, in her life, with him. She was trusting him completely with a secret history of the town and its people. Sharing that with him, so he would understand why she didn't want her stardom to shine any extra light on her hometown.
Suddenly all Jordan wanted in the world was to be worthy of that trust. He sat up, turning his hand in hers to catch her fingers and squeeze them as he whispered, "Thank you for telling me this. I honestly had no idea, but no wonder you want to keep Virtue out of the limelight. Zane Bellamy must have flipped out when the woman who won his design was living in his hometown. Anybody from Virtue who gets famous must spend half their lives redirecting attention from it."
Relief swept Kayla's face. "Exactly. Zane tried not to even come back here, but he was stuck with the rules of the contest, and besides, he found his f—" She swallowed hard, like she was struggling for words, and started over again. "He found his fame didn't cause too much trouble, but we don't want to risk it again.Only maybe it doesn't matter if we're trying to keep Virtue off the map, because it seems like the town is trying really hard to getonit."
"Well, it's…" Jordan trailed off, completely seeing her point of view, and trying to consider the town as he'd come to know it in the past few months since his return. "It's so much more alive here than it was when we were kids," he said slowly. "Maybe trying to keep it quiet and hidden was backfiring. If everybody leaves, even the shifter kids, then…well, where do they end up? Not in one safe community with a lot of people looking out for each other, for sure. Maybe it needs to be a living town to be a good sanctuary. Maybe you and Zane were brought back here by fate."
He laughed at the idea, and at the way Kayla's eyes popped. "Well, don't you think I could be right?"
Kayla mumbled, "I do, although—" and Jordan went on more enthusiastically. "Maybe Virtueneededattention brought to it. Maybe it needs the railroad to come back. Maybe it needs this big holiday market and the great harvest fair and new people moving in, even if they're not shifters. Maybe the shifters here need to trust people like me, who aren't, so we understand how to help Virtue grow safely for them. For everybody. Maybe?—"
Whatever else he'd been going to say, he forgot it forever, because Kayla Walsh leaned forward and kissed him.
Her mouth was soft and warm and confident, and Jordan fell into the kiss, letting go of her hand to slide his fingers against her face, to sink them into the scruffy, messy haircut she was sporting. The whole world stopped for that kiss, as far as he was concerned. When it ended, he gazed at her, stunned, while she gave him a funny little smile. "Sorry. I just had to do that."
"I think that's…that's great," Jordan said a bit hazily. "Feel free to do it again, if you have to."
Kayla laughed and leaned in to do it again, in fact, although a little less intensely the second time. Then she bumped her nose against his and murmured, "I think you might be right about all of that. I've spent my whole professional life worried that I was going to out my hometown if I talked about it, but maybe it just needs us to have a little faith in it."
