“What is it, Ez?”
“I don’t want this, not right now. Maybe not ever, I hadn’t decided yet. Anyway we’re practically strangers. She’s got no idea I’m a wolf.”
Trevor squeezed his shoulder one last time and stepped back. He hopped up onto the railing again to study Ezra. “Not like you have to tell her this weekend.”
“It’s lying not to tell her.”
“If too much time goes by, yeah. This weekend just get to know her.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
“Sure it is. Look, don’t strategize the crap out of this. Just let it happen.”
The one thing Ezra could not do. The one thing that shut his lungs down. Of course he had to walk onto the fairground with a detailed strategy if Willow truly was…his mate. Any other time, he’d be able to set Trevor straight on this. Right now he could hardly put a sentence together.
“Wow,” Trevor said, the grin returning. “My brother’s found his mate. Can I tell Kelsey?”
“No,” Ezra snapped. “I don’t know it’s her. I don’t know I’m fated to find a mate at all.”
His brother’s posture deflated, but only a little. Within a few seconds, he perked back up. “You said her name’s Willow?”
Ezra nodded.
“I like it.”
“Trevor…” Ezra dug the knife into the base of the flower with a vengeance that nearly snapped the blade before he controlled his strength.
“What else?”
“Huh?”
Trevor shook his head, serious now, blue eyes deep with feeling. The wolf lived every day with so much feeling, just being around him sometimes left Ezra winded. Kindly he said, “You should say all of it, bro. Get it off your chest.”
No need to ask how Trevor knew there was more. No doubt Ezra smelled as anxious and conflicted as he felt. But there was one thing he couldn’t say to Trevor, would never say to Trevor. So instead he said, “Suppose she hates our kind. Suppose she can’t get past it.”
“Well, that would suck. For both of you.”
“Right.” The vise clamped down again, harder this time.
“Oh,” Trevor said, and his blue eyes clouded. “You don’t want to end up like me.”
Shoot. Trevor wasn’t supposed to guess, but that oversized heart of his cared too much not to. Ezra scrubbed one hand through his hair, his other still gripping the wood half-flower. “Forget it.”
“Fate, bro. We can’t buck it.”
It was what the old wolves said. It had been true for Trevor when, as a scared eighteen-year-old who thought he knew best for the girl he loved, he’d broken up with Kelsey. Nine years without her had caused his wolf gifts to fade. If Kelsey hadn’t come home, if they hadn’t found each other again, Trevor would still be that faded wolf.
Maybe if Ezra never got close to Willow, he wouldn’t have to feel the loss of her.
“That’s a terrible idea,” Trevor said.
Ezra huffed. “Don’t pretend you can read my mind.”
“Don’t have to. Your scent’s all plotting and avoidance and denial.”
Ezra growled.
Trevor growled back, a more harmless sound that lasted longer. In fact it kept lasting. He cast his eyes down the road, and Ezra sniffed the air, picked up the scent too. Trevor’s mate was nearly home.
