“Great. This cookie is seriously marketable.”
“Yeah, that’s Ember.” He shifted in the chair, kept his eyes on the ground. “How’d Maggie do this morning?”
“Not great.”
His head came up, eyes darting to hers, filling with real care. “She need anything?”
“She needs surgery. Nothing you or I can do about that.”
“Yeah.” A furrow formed between his eyes, and again he looked away.
His skittishness was becoming absurd. “Look, Trevor, we don’t have to talk. I appreciate being here, catching up with everybody, but if you’d rather not, that’s really okay.”
“Oh.” He stood up. “Sure, of course. Just—has Ezra talked to you?”
“Not so far, but I’ve been here less than an hour.”
He huffed. “Yeah. Okay. Well, I’m glad you came, Kels. And I hope you have a good time.”
“Hold on.”
He stood looking down at her, silent, the crimp not fading between his eyes. Yeah, something about him was off. Maybe he had a headache. He’d never been prone to them though, except for several months after his first change, a time when rapidly sharpening senses left every new wolf pup overstimulated and exhausted.
“What’s wrong?” Kelsey said.
“Nothing.”
She bit down the hurt of being lied to. They didn’t know each other anymore; she had to remember that. “Okay. Well. I…I won’t bother you then.”
He nodded and still didn’t walk away. She huffed, and the sound wasn’t unlike the one he’d just made. She gave a soft laugh, and he jumped as if startled.
“Trevor, do you want to talk or not?”
“I… Do you want to talk?”
In fairness he should answer her straight, not turn the question back around. She opened her mouth to insist on it, but…his eyes. He really wasn’t all right, and maybe it had nothing to do with her, but maybe it did, and maybe she could help.
“Yeah, I would,” she said. “Please.”
He returned on not-quite-steady legs, and concern blossomed in her chest. Again the urgency rose inside her, the desire to hold her boy close and find out where he hurt. She shook her head to clear the strangeness.
“So,” she said. “Aaron became the pack’s medic, and I’m guessing you’re their contractor and handyman.”
Trevor lowered himself into the chair slowly, didn’t take his eyes off her as he did so. “How’d you guess that?”
“Well, you were always carving and whittling. And all the stuff you knew about Maggie’s house yesterday—there’s no way you learned it just socializing. You’ve got to be her contractor.”
“Aha.” He smiled, a slow light filling his eyes and relieving some of her worry. “Solid guess.”
“What about that curio cabinet in the corner of her kitchen? That’s your work, isn’t it?”
His mouth fell open. “How could you tell?”
“I know your style. Some of those flower petals…” She looked away, pressed her spine into the back of the chair.
“Like the shadowbox,” he whispered, as if they spoke of buried treasure. Well, they did. Buried in her closet at home. Buried in her heart.
Kelsey nodded. “I still have it.”
