Ezra chuckled quietly. “I guess I’d miss it if he ever stopped.”
Their dessert plate was long empty, sitting ignored between them, to one side of the daisy bouquet. Ezra leaned back in his chair, stretching his back, then resettled, looked around… Was he reluctant too, to say good night?
She had blurtedtomorrowlast time their date was winding down. This time she would let him set the pace.
“It’s a nice night,” he said at last. “Would you want to go for a walk? The outdoor mall won’t close for a couple hours, and it’s fully public.”
As opposed to the park, where he could abduct her without witnesses. Nice that he thought of the precautions she had to take. True, some serial killers faked the same sort of care to disarm their victims…and true, she hadn’t known him long enough to be sure of his safeness…but Saffron would check on her within the next thirty minutes, and she’d made sure Ezra knew that. Anyway she couldn’t conceive of him as a serial killer, however little that meant at this stage.
Enough overthinking. Enough filtering her life through her podcasts. “Outdoor mall it is.”
But once they arrived, Ezra fell into silence. They walked the entire strip beneath strings of white lights, until her phone vibrated with Saffron’s text.
Saffron:All okay?
If Willow didn’t respond, or if her response included the wordorange, her sister knew to call the police.
Willow:Yeah, we’re at the mall, walking and talking. He got me flowers.
Saffron:!!!! Pic?
Willow:Later, lol. They’re in the car.
“Good?” Ezra’s smile held a strain that hadn’t been there before.
“Yeah.”
“Good.” He cast his gaze around the mall, then led her to a wood-and-iron bench somewhat out of the way of the main traffic, still at its height at seven in the evening. “There’s something I want to tell you.”
Willow angled her knees toward his. When he didn’t continue, she said, “I’m listening.”
“I know.”
He drew a deep breath that seemed to change him somehow. He’d already been tall, broad, muscular beyond words. But he seemed even bigger as he held his breath a few extra seconds, then let it out.
“Willow, I’m a wolf.”
She replayed his words in her head. Her face tightened as she tried to assign meaning to the weird sentence. Ezra was a guy. Ezra was sitting right here, with hands and feet, not paws. With sandy-blond hair, not fur. She shook her head.
“I am,” he said, firmness and a hint of pride in the words.
“A wolf?” And then…she got it. “A lupine.”
His mouth tightened at her renaming, but he nodded.
“You’re a lupine.”
“Yes.”
She couldn’t deny it, not after she and Saffron had tossed theories around less than a week ago. She couldn’t believe it either, not after his kindness, his attention, his utter lack of lupine behavior—not only on their dates but also since she’d met him. The easy way he leaned against the counter while he waited for his coffee. The quiet way he allowed Aaron to direct most conversations when the guys were there together. And…and he’d bought her flowers in her favorite colors. Again she shook her head.
“It wouldn’t be right to go forward from tonight, and you not know,” he said.
“But you’re so—you’re so human.” She sounded like an idiot.
His entire being, expression and posture, withdrew from her. Tightly he said, “I’m eighty-six percent human. And I’m a wolf.”
Willow pushed her hands through her hair, one finger snagging on a curl. Why couldn’t she process this after she’d wondered about it herself? But it had been so easy to speculate. It hadn’t meant anything then, not really. It had felt no more real than the times she and Saffron speculated about people at the mall:“I bet he’s famous.” “I bet she’s an undercover cop.” “I bet that guy is in witness protection and later he’ll go home to a safehouse in the woods.”
